Unkamet’s Crossing

Main attributes of this Native American place: Archaeological; Native practices; Landmark.

Pittsfield historian J.E.A. Smith said a major Native American archaeological site exists “at Unkamet’s Crossing, around the Canoe Meadows,” where “upon the eastern bank of the river, rises a knoll which was once used as a burial‐place by the Mohegans [sic], who, after they were collected in one community at Stockbridge, were accustomed to make pious pilgrimages to this spot, leaving the birch‐canoes, in which they had ascended the river, in the Meadows to which they thus gave name.”

The crossing, an old fordway, is in the part of Pittsfield settled by whites in the 1750s. They “named their settlement Pontoosuck. Nearby is the ancient Unkamet’s Crossing, an Indian fording place on the east branch of the Housatonic river and the Canoe Meadows, a landing place near a sacred spot to the Indians, where later, Oliver Wendell Holmes [Sr.] spent seven summers,” according to a North Adams Transcript story.

Gazetteer compiler Hamilton Child elaborated, there were conflicting land grants in Pontoosuc, later called Pittsfield. Col. John Stoddard of Northampton received 1,000 acres from the General Court in 1734, “for his services during wartime. The grant was about 16 miles north of Konkapot’s house in Stockbridge, coming to “just above Unkamet’s or Autankamet’s road, where it crosseth said branch [of the Housatonic River]….”

Smith described artifacts found in the soil near the crossing. “Tradition speaks confidently of household implements of stone found abundantly in the olden time, especially near the Canoe Meadows, whose rich soil and neighboring river made them attractive; but such discoveries are rare now, although, in some fields, arrow‐heads are not unfrequently found,—

‘The pointed flints that left his fatal bow,

Chipped with rough art and slow barbarian toil,

Last of his wrecks that strew the alien soil.’

— Holmes.

In reinforcement, Herman Melville’s Pittsfield farmstead, within a mile of Canoe Meadows, is called Arrowhead.

Smith identified a knoll at Canoe Meadows as a burial site, to which Stockbridge Mohicans “were accustomed to make pious pilgrimages… leaving the birch‐canoes, in which they had ascended the river, in the Meadows to which they thus gave name.”
— Bernard A. Drew

SOURCES

  •   Child, Hamilton. Gazetteer of Berkshire County, Mass., 1725‐1885. Syracuse, N.Y.: Journal Office, 1885.

  •   Drew, Bernard A., “A History of the Upper Housatonic River Corridor,” history section, Nomination of the Upper Housatonic River as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern, Leslie Luchonuk and others (Save the Housatonic, June 2008)

  •   Holmes, Oliver Wendell, “A Poem. Dedication of the Pittsfield Cemetery, September 8, 1850.”

  •   Smith, J.E.A. The History of Pittsfield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, From the Year 1734 to the Year 1890. Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1869.

  •   “Select Pittsfield Orchard As New County Fairground,” North Adams Transcript, 31 May 1939.