Indian Summers in the Southern Berkshires

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

The American Missionary Association founded Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in 1868 in Virginia to educate freed blacks. Under supervision of Richard Henry Pratt, it added a program for Native Americans 1878 to 1923.

A dozen Indians including several Kiowa came to Lee in 1879; Deacon Alexander Hyde of that town was a trustee at Hampton. Etahdieuh stayed with Hyde. Koba stayed with sawyer Edin Brewer in South Lee. Howard Charlton stayed with Levi Beebe of Beartown. Tsahdaltah, who stayed with Sarah Goodspeed on her dairy farm in Lee, died while here and is buried in town.

Helen Townsend and her sister, Jessie, daughters of Deacon Jonathan Townsend of Monterey’s Congregational Church, taught at Hampton. “When summer vacation came, many of the Indian students in the school preferred working rather than spending their meager cash paying car fare back to their homes in Oklahoma,” according to historian Julius Miner. “Miss Helen and Miss Jessie Townsend lent their influence in having them come to Monterey to work on the farms. It was at the time when the town’s people began taking summer boarders…”

Hosts “tried to live so that they would gain the love and respect of the Indians who could then carry back good thoughts and habits of Oklahoma. The Indian boys and girls would congregate on the horse block in front of the Miner home in the village and sing their songs together until late in the evening.”

The Berkshire Courier reported in June 1892, “The noon train Thursday brought 17 Indian boys to this station, who will spend the summer on farms in this and neighboring towns.”
The Berkshire Eagle reported in September the same year, “The Indian boys will return to Hampton, Va., this week. Miss Helen Townsend will accompany them and is to remain in her former position at the Institute,”

A Chippewa, Joseph Beapré, was among students who “participated in outings to Massachusetts, at Stockbridge in 1886….,” according to historian Paulette Fairbanks Molin. She said another Chippewa, and the first woman to graduate from Hampton, Anna Bender’s “first summer placement, in 1903, was with the family of a Congregational minister in Richmond, Massachusetts, where she did general housework. She reported learning ‘Yankee thrift,’ earning $1.75 per week, and finding the location beautiful. When asked if she would like to return, however, she wrote ‘no.’”

Historian Lila S. Parrish determined that families in Monterey, Great Barrington, Lee, Curtisville, Sheffield, North and South Egremont and Tyringham also took in Indian boarders. She said one early visitor was Wannapin, a Brulé Sioux from the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was 20 years old when he came in 1881. He stayed at the Peter Anthony farm in Monterey. Wannapin was later a pottery artist of note.

Walter David Owl, a student at Hampton, said the students had a hard time mingling. “So in 1892 Mr. Gleason, the man in charge of the Indian boys, and MissHelen Townsend, the lady in charge of the Indian girls, founded the Indian Christian Endeavor Society at Hampton. This was a great step towards uniting or bringing the Indians together for a common good. There is one obstacle which has retarded the Indians’ progress, and that is the difference in speech. The Cherokees speak one language, the Sioux another, and the Apache still another, and so on. So you can plainly see why it was and is hard to unite them under one common leader.”

— Bernard A. Drew

 

SOURCES

  •   Great Barrington news, Berkshire Courier, ca 25 June 1892.

  •   Miles, Lion G., communication with author, 25 April 2003.

  •   Miner, Julius, and Margery Mansfield. New England Monterey: Stories of The Town — Its Church. Monterey: Congregational Church, ca 1948.

  •   Molin, Paulette Fairbanks, “Training the Hand: Indian Education at Hampton Institute,” Minnesota History Magazine, Vol. 51 No. 3, fall 1988.

  •   Monterey news, Berkshire Eagle, 28 September 1892.

  •   Parrish, Lila H., “When The Sioux Came In Summer,” Great Barrington Historical Society Newsletter, winter 1993.

  •   Reeves, I.S.K. “Keith,” “Wannapin, a Brulé Sioux 1861‐1906,” South Dakota Committee on the Humanities, May 1991.

  •   White Owl, David, entry, First Person Accounts as Qritten by American Indian Students at Hampton Institute, 1878‐1923. http://www.twofrog.com/hamptonstories4.html (viewed 12 November 2016).