Although it’s probably too late to prove the location of an important colonial Greenfield landmark, it never hurts to ponder the possibilities.

The place under consideration is the first overnight encampment occupied by captors and captives retreating from the surprise pre-dawn attack on Old Deerfield by French and Indian raiders on February 29, 1704. The aftermath left much of the small, isolated colonial settlement in smoking ruins, with 47 colonists dead and 112 missing. For the purpose of this probe, we’ll focus on the missing – captives, young and old, tattered and torn, marched to Canada in winter cold by their captors.

Experts and ancestors alike have concurred for centuries that the campsite touched down in the Greenfield Meadows. The question is where? In reviewing this question, I’ll use modern place and road names to avoid confusion.

Actually, during the first couple hundred years after the attack, people were secure on a location. Community memory placed the first campsite less than four miles from the Deerfield stockade in wetlands along the base of Greenfield Mountain – “west of the old Nims farm,” according to Greenfield historian Francis M. Thompson. The Nims farm he refers to was built by Revolutionary War veteran Hull Nims and is today, minus the old farmhouse, owned by the Butynski family at the Lower Meadows address of 370 Colrain Road.

Buttressing Thompson’s claim is an obscure Greenfield map on which an X marks the spot of “De Rouville’s Camp.” The site is between two spring brooks where now lies a small pond dug by the Butynskis for their cows in the mid-20th century. In 1704, the spot would have been ideal for an overnight stay, with a wetland providing thick shelter from the elements along with clean, sparkling water.

The map identifying this and other historic Greenfield sites appeared as a two-fold pullout in a now hard-to-find pamphlet published for the June 26, 1905 unveiling of the Capt. William Turner Monument at Nash’s Mills. Then a tidy neighborhood that included the North Parish Church, a silver factory, a large millpond, and Mill Brook Falls, the Nash’s Mills compound was erased in the early 1960s to clear the way for Interstate 91.

Indians killed Turner, the English Falls Fight commander of King Philip’s War fame, as he crossed the Green River below, just downstream from the so-called Greenfield Pool.

But let’s not confuse matters with Turner. He died a generation before the Deerfield attack. Back to 1704 and, for that matter, to the aforementioned Francis M. Thompson, who with the 1904 publication of his History of Greenfield introduced uncertainty into the previously-accepted location for the first campsite.

The Greenfield historian, who became a “Turner Monument Field Day” organizer the following year, offered this tidbit on Page 90:

“Until recently, the place of their encampment upon the night of the fatal day has been supposed to be in the swamp west of the old Nims farm, but later the discovery of an ancient broad axe (believed to be a portion of the Deerfield plunder) at the former junction of the Hinsdale and Punch brooks, makes it seem more probable that the first camp was made in the middle of the north meadows in Greenfield.”

More probable. Hmmmm? Really? On whose authority? But with that statement, the damage was done.

By now, Thompson’s hypothetical has been so often repeated in conversation and writing that it has grown from lean speculation to common knowledge. I have read of it elsewhere, including in a history of my own tavern home, and been informed of it by friends, colleagues, and neighbors. Until recently, I accepted it without further scrutiny. Took it hook, line and sinker. But when I revisited it recently, I realized Thompson’s off-the-cuff theory was thin indeed on justification.

Let me explain.

First of all, Hinsdale and Punch brooks did not meet in their original courses. They were violently joined by an 1843 flood that roared down from the western uplands to cut a new Hinsdale Brook channel to the Green River, picking up the Punch Brook bed for the final couple hundred yards. Punch Brook did, however, cross the major Indian trail leading through the Meadows to the Pumping Station and on to Leyden, Guilford, Vt., and the eventual site of Fort Dummer on the Connecticut River’s west bank.

Hinsdale and Punch brooks were then separated by nearly a half-mile at their closest point, with the former taking a sharp southern turn a short distance east of my home. From that sharp elbow, it sliced three-quarters of a mile down the Upper Meadows between Plain and Colrain roads, joining Allen Brook for their final half-mile run to the Green River. Before Mother Nature cut the 1843 channel, Allen Brook was thought of as a Hinsdale Brook tributary.

Thompson was aware of this, and even reported it in his Greenfield book. So, he must have forgotten or been confused in his inaccurate description of the axe-head-discovery site. Remember, Thompson was a native of Colrain, not Greenfield, and spent many adult years in Montana. He wasn’t nearly as familiar with Greenfield Meadows topography as his wife, Mary Nims, or her father Lucius Nims, heir to aforementioned Hull Nims farm.

Plus, even if the axe head did date back to 1704, the possibilities are many as to how and when it arrived at the discovery site. More likely than not it had no connection at all to the 1704 captors and captives. And even if it did, it wouldn’t necessarily mark the campsite.

Something else to evaluate when considering the veracity of the two possible encampment sites is sourcing. The best sources would have been captives old enough to remember where they slept in terror that first night. Thirty-one of them returned to live out their lives in Deerfield, and at least three of them were directly related to Hull Nims.

They were Nims’ grandmother, Elizabeth Hull Nims, who would have been 15 for the march, and his great-uncle and aunt, Ebenezer and Sarah Hoyt Nims, both 17 when captured. This trio of relatives died, in the same order listed above, in 1754, 1760, and 1761, and obviously would have been around long enough to identify the site.

Then again, Nims relatives weren’t essential. Community pillar Rev. John Williams was freed from Canadian captivity with four of his children in 1706 and returned to Deerfield, where he died 23 years later. That left him more than enough time to mark for posterity important sites along the march.

Does anyone honestly believe this man of the cloth never returned to the Pumping Station, some 3.5 miles away, where his wife Eunice met her maker? If so, he would surely have pointed out the first-encampment site in passing.

Even Williams’ valuable input was unnecessary. Five members of the Stebbins family who were 12 or older for the march returned to Deerfield with vivid memories, including husband and wife John and Dorothy, ages 56 and 42 in 1704. “Redeemed” sons John and Samuel were 19 and 15 when captured, thus could also have also offered helpful insight.

The reason I mention the Stebbins family – other than the fact that its eight hostages outnumbered all other captive Deerfield families – is that descendant Samuel Stebbins (1725-83) was an early Upper Meadows settler, breaking ground very near to or on the parcel where the axe was found. If the first encampment was there, within earshot of trickling Punch Brook, would he not have known it and told friends and neighbors?

Plus, how about searchers who followed the retreating raiding party’s tracks in the snow after the siege? They obviously would have seen the remnants of the first campsite. If not on the old Nims farm, would the eye witnesses not have quickly corrected the record?

When evaluating such questions, primary sources are always the best place to start. This is no exception. In my mind, the first encampment sat on the old Nims farm, which broke ground some 80 years after the Deerfield attack.