I spoke too soon about ancient Indian weirs in the neighborhood. So, with new information in hand about the stone fishing structures, a follow-up’s in order.

My last column questioned the curious (to me) design, and thus the functionality, of two extant, manmade, downstream-pointed weirs on the lower Westfield and uppermost Chicopee rivers. Little did I know that recent research has been done to analyze fishing practices on a similar structure closer to my doorstep.

Reader Michael Bosworth alerted me to this fact in a March 30 email query wondering if “the Indian dam on the Ashuelot River in Swanzey, New Hampshire was another example?” Accompanying his question was a reference to Page 50 of Robert G. Goodby’s 2021 book, A Deep Presence: 13,000 Years of Native American History, which I had not previously heard of.

I immediately went online, learned that Goodby is a respected Franklin Pierce College anthropology professor and contract archaeologist, and ordered his book, which had not arrived in the mail before deadline. It’s based on more than 30 years of New England archaeological fieldwork – at least 10 of them (2002-12) on the Swanzey site. After an exchange of emails Goodby sent me his 2014 site report, co-authored by Sarah Tremblay and Edward Bouras: The Swanzey Fish Dam: A Large Precontact Native American Stone Structure in Southeastern New Hampshire.

This 19-page report and its three-page bibliography shed new light on Indian weirs and fishing practices of Eastern Woodlands people. Finally, important information that was at best elusive the last I explored the topic some 35 years ago. Back then, the most helpful source I could find was Hilary Stewart’s liberally illustrated Indian Fishing: Early Methods of the Northwest Coast. Although the Native people she featured lived on the other side of the continent and fished for different but related species, I presumed their practices couldn’t have differed greatly from their Northeastern kin, and still believe that to be true.

One significant difference on this side of the continent, however, seems to have been common use of downstream-pointed weirs to harvest upstream-migrating anadromous fish on their spring spawning runs back to their natal streams.

“Huh?” I pondered. “Upstream-swimming fish on spawning runs confronted first by an abrupt point rather than the inviting, wide-open mouth of a V guiding them into a narrow trap?”

It made no sense based on what I had previously learned about Indian weirs pointing in the same direction as fish migrations and sketched in Stewart’s book. So, I questioned late-19th-century historian and former Whately pastor J.H. Temple, who, in his comprehensive histories of North Brookfield and Palmer, described slightly different fishing practices on downstream-pointed weirs.

That is not to say Eastern Woodlands Native people never built the upstream-pointed weirs preferred by their West Coast cousins. Just that on Connecticut River tributaries and other streams up and down eastern North America on this side of the mighty Mississippi, upstream-pointing weirs or dams spanning the entire width of streams were widely used to harvest migrating fish. These stone structures built across streams forced fish toward narrow manmade shoreline channels in which they were easily harvested by net, spear and arrow.

The Swanzey Fish Dam was such a structure, as were the previously mentioned shore-to-shore weirs or dams on the lower Westfield and uppermost Chicopee rivers. Recent research accelerating during the final quarter of the 20th century has uncovered similar structures begging for additional study. The closest sites to us are in Connecticut, on the Housatonic River and the Bashan Lake outflow in East Haddam, while others are known to exist in Maine’s Kennebec River watershed.

Who knows where else similar structures will turn up now that they are on archaeologists’ radar?

Let’s hope future research uncovers footprints of complementary, wooden, weir-associated apparatuses. Indians knew the value of durable, water-resistant woods like chestnut, cedar, and locust for companion pieces, and would have used them to build fences, lattices, and platforms to aid fish-gathering procedures. Because such woods have shown remarkable survival capabilities in submerged archaeological environments, the outline of such structures could likely still be mapped by field researchers.

Sadly, one important fact now out of reach is quantification of the various pre-colonial fish runs up and down the Connecticut River, and tributaries like the Ashuelot. There is just no way to attach accurate numbers to those prehistoric anadromous and catadromous fish runs. But take it to the bank: they dwarfed the largest modern runs on record. The volume of ancient runs matters in any assessments of pre-European Contact Period Native fishing practices and related structures.

The Swanzey Fish Dam is shaped like a checkmark. It rests approximately eight straight-line miles –perhaps 12 meandering river miles – from the Ashuelot River’s Hinsdale, New Hampshire mouth. Radiocarbon dating brings the structure back to the Terminal Archaic Period, some 4,000 B.P. (years before present). It was still in use by Squakheag or Sokoki Indians into the second half of the 17th-century – likely one of many fish-gathering constructions of various styles built along the Ashuelot’s 65-mile reach.

The most important fish migrations targeted by our indigenous fishers were the upstream anadromous spring runs of shad, salmon, lampreys, sturgeon, and herrings. Then came the downstream fall runs of valued catadromous American eels. The Indians would have known what type of adaptations were best for each species, and most of the adjustments would have involved wooden embellishments.

Although the Swanzey Fish Dam was known to colonial settlers at an early date and became local tradition, little effort was taken to understand the indigenous fishing operation. Goodby first showed interest in the site at the dawning of the 21st century. He ramped up his investigative efforts after the August 2010 removal of West Swanzey’s 1860s Homestead Woolen Mill dam. As had previously been the case during a 1950 dam-repair project that drew down the upstream impoundment, the Indian stonework was exposed, setting the wheels of discovery into motion.

The rest is history. Goodby’s site report appeared in 2014. Seven years later, A Deep Presence hit the street. Now, following local press coverage, scholarly articles in academic journals, a dissertation, and random book reviews, the Swanzey site is in the public eye… sort of.

Although there’s still plenty to learn about the social and economic activities at ancient indigenous fishing camps situated along large and small Connecticut Valley streams, at least new discovery is underway. New information will hopefully continue to surface, starting with radiocarbon dating of the other aforementioned New England sites.

As archaeologists continue poking and probing, they may yet open a clear window into what ancient indigenous fishing operations looked like in our fertile valley before the post-King Philip’s War (1775-76) diaspora took hold.

Buried in the floodplain meadows and river sediments are the answers we seek.

One never knows what peripheral treasures will appear during deed research. This one focuses on new information about a brook I wrote about less than two years ago.

First, a preface.

The brook reference jumped off a deed last week while I was trying to figure out a fascinating Revolutionary War powder horn owned by a friend. This map horn was carried some 250 years ago by a clever Greenfield Meadows soldier and blacksmith. Upon its face is carved a record of the man’s 1777-78 military travels through the Lake George/Lake Champlain corridor along with symbols of war, patriotism, God, Indians and country.

By tugging at many loose threads of inquiry in an effort to understand the carvings from the “Northern Campaign” that won the war for American patriots, I was led straight to a famous Greenfield character with whom I was already quite familiar. Not the owner of the horn, his name was Captain Agrippa Wells (1738-1809) – son of Deerfield’s Dr. Thomas and Sarah Hawks Wells, older brother of Whately’s first minister, Rev. Rufus Wells, and the leader of a Greenfield militia unit that included men from Bernardston and Shelburne.

Capt. Wells was a swashbuckling downtown Greenfield blacksmith. He began his storied military career as a teenaged member of the elite Rogers Rangers of French and Indian War fame. Captured by Native warriors in June 1757 near Lake George, he lived to tell of running the gauntlet with his typical bold, confident spirit.

Almost a generation later, he led local patriots to the 1775 Lexington Alarm. Then, two years later, he took many of the same fighting men to the Lake George/Champlain corridor, where they participated in the battles of Fort Ticonderoga, Bennington, and Saratoga. His fighting spirit still burning hot as he approached 50, Wells then earned a bold star of dishonor in government circles for marching with anti-government insurgents in Shays’ Rebellion.

“Capt. Grip” settled in Leyden – then the Fall Town or Bernardston Gore – after the Revolution and is said to have moved back to Greenfield in 1793, dying there in 1809. His and wife Mehitable Smead’s (1742-1801) gravesite remains unknown, as obviously planned by the rugged individual. Meanwhile, deeds offer no evidence of him buying a Greenfield home for his final years. Perhaps he moved in with a son, a daughter or a friend after selling his Leyden Glen farm.

Enough said about the pugnacious Captain, though. His is an often-told tale. And the time is not yet right to share what I have learned about the fascinating, travelogue powder horn carved and carried by one of his townsman troopers – one who was a generation younger and eventually opposed him during Shays Rebellion. That discussion will have to wait until further discovery is exhausted.

So, let’s move to the brook reference. I stumbled across it in an 18th-century deed conveying a small parcel of upper Greenfield Meadows land from Agrippa Wells to abutter Samuel Stebbins. Written on April 1, 1786 and recorded nearly 20 years later, Stebbins piggybacked onto his Meadows farm a 6 2/3 -acre parcel that “layeth by a brook known by the name of Punch Brook.”

Aha! Finally a clue.

Punch Brook rises from prolific Smead Hill springs just above Greenfield’s northwest corner and runs through a deep ravine to a wetland meadow once owned by the people who built and owned my Upper Meadows home. Once known by anglers as a splendid little trout stream with a never-ending supply of tasty native brook trout, it passes under Green River Road and curls south and east toward its confluence with Hinsdale Brook, across Plain Road from Brookside Animal Hospital.

Because I pass this little stream at two sites along my daily morning walk, I had no trouble understanding the deed. It describes a strip of land across from Martin’s Farm, bordered west by the brook that passes through the Mary Potter Lane/Plumb Tree Lane neighborhood.

Punch Brook has been an interest of mine for most of my 26-year Meadows residence, and was the subject of a June 2022 column cited above. I suppose its most alluring attraction was historians’ speculation that the 1704 Deerfield captives marched to Canada by their Native American captors camped overnight where the stream crossed the old Indian trail east of my home.

It was also a source of personal interest because I was familiar with its upland spring hole from hunting, and am always interested in old squaretail streams. However, one vexing mystery continued to stir my inquisitive juices: When was it named Punch Brook and, better still, why?

I found no answer in histories of Greenfield by Thompson and Willard, or in Sheldon’s History of Deerfield. Nope. Not a hint. Undaunted, I queried neighbors with deeper Meadows roots than mine. Still, nada.

After probing my go-to neighborhood source to no avail, I caught a pleasant couple from across the brook walking past my home one morning. They live in the home the woman grew up in, built about 1950 for her father on the old Poor House lot. As we got to chatting about this and that, I asked her what she knew about Punch Brook, which crosses the road a short distance from her home.

She said she and her sisters played there as kids, and that their late father often mentioned it as a remarkable rivulet that never froze. Bingo! That little speck of information set my wheels awhirl. Was the brook that never froze a neighborhood tradition? Could it have been the impetus for the name Punch Brook, because, like rum punch, it didn’t freeze even in bone-chilling cold?

I went back to my top neighborhood source, who had nothing to add, then questioned a woman whose childhood home bordered the stream and, likewise, nothing new. Neither of them had heard a whisper about the brook that didn’t freeze.

Maybe my original source’s father would have known something, but he’s been in his grave for many years, would be over 100 today. It’s possible that members of old Meadows families who still occupied historic family homes carried the fading tradition well into the 20th century before it vanished. Very possible, yet difficult to substantiate.

Then appeared that Agrippa Wells deed reference concerning family land originally granted to his Deerfield-proprietor father. Yes, there it was, Book 19, Page 381, 1786: Punch Brook. The name was obviously well-known by then, which suggests a much earlier origin that dated back at least to Dr. Thomas Wells (1693-1743).

That brings us back to pre-settlement Upper Meadows days. Who knows? Perhaps even back to the 1704 Deerfield attack and the overnight stay by the captives, who remembered savoring its water in frigid winter darkness. Those captives who survived the perilous northern trek to return may have pointed out the campsite many times in their travels, and told of the spring that flowed freely across the frozen Indian trail. Maybe they said it flowed like rum punch on cold winter nights. Thus, the name Punch Brook that’s recorded on 19th-century maps, and on the 18th-century Wells-Stebbins deed.

Although I cannot be certain, it makes a lot of sense to me.

I wonder what the Indians called it?

These days, I find myself wandering back and forth between local history and prehistory, and although my current focus leans strongly toward the former, the latter is always within reach.

I get a good dose of cutting-edge discovery about ancient human-proboscidean (mastodon and wooly mammoth) interactions from archaeologist friend Mike Gramly, who in recent years has uncovered ground-breaking (no pun intended) evidence of 14,000-year-old ritualistic offerings at kill sites in New York and Kentucky. That alone is enough to keep North American anthropology on a front burner. Plus, I always keep my finger to the wind about local activity related to Native American studies.

So, it should come as no surprise that a recent email invitation from Northampton book dealer Betsy Frederick piqued my interest. With a fascination in all things local and indigenous, she reached out after reading my recent column about a manmade stone structure I found about a decade ago, buried high and deep in the forest. An expert who studied photos of the feature said it was a Native American prayer seat, which led to my own speculation that the ridgetop enclosure could have been used for vision- or spirit-questing.

Frederick was eager to show me a similar feature she thought could have served the same deep-history function in the woods above her Sunderland home, nestled into Mount Toby’s western skirt.

We met on a Sunday morning at her home overlooking Route 47 from a forested knoll. From there, we drove a short distance to a woods trail that took us to within quick walking distance of the dark-gray stone feature. And, there it sat, a large, sturdy, squared U-shaped stone enclosure poking out from knoll near the edge of a three-story-high cliff. Facing south and east, it appeared to be a natural formation that could, I suppose, have been tweaked at some point by human hands.

Someone with more expertise than I would have to make that call, especially these days when Native American stone-structure fanatics identify every stone wall as a serpent, every game and old logging trail as an ancient path, and every pointed irregularity on forest boulders as raptors’ beaks. I listen, but it’s getting ridiculous.

Frederick isn’t one of them. She came to the Connecticut Valley as a Gloucester college student, liked what she found, and settled in. Her suspicion that the hidden feature could have Native American significance is grounded in reality. She’s sat in this sturdy stone seat for winter-solstice sunrises, the first rays of which stare her in the face.

Frederick knew me from my near-40-year Greenfield Recorder columns. We met many years ago when, similar to this latest rendezvous, she wanted to introduce me to the incredible ledges in the woods enveloping her home. She believed that several overhangs along the base of the tall ledges showed great promise as ancient rock shelters that could have been inhabited during the peopling of our valley during early or even pre-Clovis epic. Who knew? She could be onto something. These shelf caves would have been conveniently located along the shoreline of proglacial Lake Hitchcock, which drained some 13,500 years ago.

***

Though I thought of it more than once on my recent ride to meet her, I never mentioned the poignancy of our first, unforgettable meeting. It occurred at about 11 on the morning of April 6, 2014 at her home. I had stayed up the previous night to watch Coach John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats advance to the NCAA men’s basketball championship game with a win over Wisconsin. Several times during the game, I had called son Ryan’s Northfield apartment to chat, and all my calls went curiously unanswered. I knew he’d be watching. He was a big “Coach Cal” fan dating back to the rags-to-riches days when he put UMass Hoops on national center stage. I was sure “Rynie” would be eager to discuss the game.

My wife was concerned. I told her to relax. Maybe he was visiting a friend or entertaining a girlfriend.

Next morning, still worried, she called his apartment first thing. Still no answer. Sensing something had gone amiss, she showered, dressed, and drove to Northfield to check on him. He was still in recovery from open-heart surgery seven months earlier to repair an aortic dissection that could have killed him.

She called me moments before I left for Frederick’s house. Bad news. She found Rynie unresponsive in his recliner. It was very serious. He was alive, en route by ambulance to the Greenfield hospital. She was on her way. It looked like sepsis. No reason to cancel my appointment. There was nothing I could do at the moment. We could talk later.

Soon I was knocking on Frederick’s door. She asked me in and we exchanged pleasantries. I told her of my son’s dire situation. He may not make it. I don’t recall her reaction. Probably that maybe we should cancel and reschedule. I stayed.

My host threw on a jacket and we took a short drive in my truck, parked, and walked to the base of a series of impressive tall ledges. Following them north, with a sandy-bedded spring brook snaking its way through marsh to our left, we stopped to examine several shallow caves that would have been more than capable of sheltering several people under large, sturdy overhangs.

I returned home to learn that Rynie was indeed septic, and “critical.” An ambulance was transporting him to Springfield’s Baystate Medical Center. It was touch and go. Nine days later, on the day before his 29^th birthday, he was dead.

***

The impetus for that 2014 walk with Frederick was columns I had written about the 12,400-year-old Paleo “Sugarloaf Site,” and the indigenous “Great Beaver” origin tale of Mount Sugarloaf and its Pocumtuck Range. The Sugarloaf Site – a Clovis archaeological treasure trove straddling the Deerfield-Whately line across the river from Frederick’s home – was a multi-occupation, seasonal place of repeat encampments, visited for decades by nomadic bands of Paleoindian caribou hunters.

There some of our valley’s earliest human inhabitants left many fascinating traces of their Clovis culture buried on a sandy outwash plain that was once lake bottom. Now the raised terrace is cropland, bordering fertile river meadows between it and the river. Gramly believes it’s one of North American’s largest, most important, Paleoindian sites.

Although Gramly’s 1995 and 2013 excavations uncovered many important artifacts there, he believes his limited research only scratched the surface. There is much more to be gleaned from the site. Nonetheless, it has been largely ignored due to strict state oversight and secrecy.

After my first tour of the Toby rock shelters, I reported to Gramly what I had seen. Months later, I explored similar cliffs and rock shelters behind the Ward Cemetery along the eastern base of North Sugarloaf, just around the corner from the Sugarloaf Site. Since then, Gramly has himself visited some of the ledges along Toby’s western skirt as well as a secluded waterfall in the same area. He was impressed with what he saw, and in awe of what that landscape may someday reveal about the peopling of our valley.

What is it, he wonders, that has kept UMass archaeologists away? Are they shamefully unaware? Have they not a hint of intellectual curiosity? How can they call themselves scientists, he asks?

Gramly can only imagine what would come to light if someone – even an untrained hobbyist with limited knowledge of what to look for – started probing the old Lake Hitchcock shoreline on both sides of our valley. All it would take to scratch up important discoveries around rock shelters, forgotten springs, and waterfalls is a little energy, intellectual curiosity, and the type of hand-held, five-finger claws found in most garden sheds.

Gramly, a Harvard PhD archaeologist with beaucoup field experience, scoffs at the notion that such surface investigation would be invasive, irresponsible and destructive. He calls that opinion a red herring disseminated by cultural-resource-management devotees. In fact, he believes a little “poking around” would be no threat to future professional exploration.

In his mind, someone ought to get the ball rolling toward further research. He himself tried twice, yet today the archaeological hot spot known in the field as the Ulrich Locus languishes under a 15-foot mound of dirt I sarcastically named Mount Dincauze years ago in dishonor of late, respected UMass scholar Dena F. Dincauze (1934-2016). It was she who ordered heavy-equipment operators excavating the site to cover it with a protective mound before convincing the state to buy private land and prevent future archaeological digs.