Review of The Quaboag And Nipmuck Indians: The Quaboag Indians, A Loup People and the Nipmucks of the Upper Quinebaug River Valley

Below is my review of The Quaboag And Nipmuck Indians: The Quaboag Indians, A Loup People and the Nipmucks of the Upper Quinebaug River Valley as submitted to the editor of The Sturbridge Times Magazine for the October 2015 issue.  

The Quaboag And Nipmuck Indians: The Quaboag Indians, A Loup People and the Nipmucks of the Upper Quinebaug River Valley By Donald Duffy

Book review by Richard Morchoe

It has been said that the closest a human population has ever experienced to an invasion from outer space was the American Indian encounter with Europeans. To say that the native population was blindsided is understatement. Out of the blue, beings with different appearance, outlook, history and customs appear, and the invaded must make sense of it, quickly.

No more was that the case than out here in Western Central Massachusetts. The indigenous people had to deal with a geopolitical situation for which they were not and could not be ready.

The meeting of English and Indian in our region has been the subject of a few books. The latest is The Quaboag and Nipmuck Indians. The subtitle, The Quaboag Indians, A Loup People and the Nipmucks of the Upper Quinebaug River Valley is descriptive of where the people lived and that's where we live. The Quaboag tribe made home along that river and the Quinebaug, where it flows through Sturbridge, was the abode of a segment of the Nipmucks.

The author, Donald Duffy of Palmer, has not written a book that will replace any that went before, but is an addition to the genre and stands on its own. The author refers to previous work in the text and the bibliography.

What is an enjoyable aspect is the exploration of geography. The author goes over the conjecture of where places really were. This is useful as we are dealing with a population that had no written language. Never was the term, lost in translation more apt. There are often many spellings for a place. The Brits did as well as they could phonetically, except when they didn't.

Language misunderstandings were a problem, mostly for the indigenes. The settlers had a talent, if not genius for putting more into a deed then the sellers thought was included.

One bit of difficulty for the reviewer is the Massachusetts Indian campaign against the Mohawk. In 1669, an alliance of tribes from the Pioneer Valley eastward mounted an expedition to deal with depredations of the New York tribe. The Mohawk were formidable and feared so the adventure involved serious risk. According to Duffy and some others, it was an unmitigated disaster.

Ill planned and ill executed from start to finish, the Indians from the East came home weakened and some bands were effectively ruined. The defeat was so all encompassing that the Quaboag were happy to have the English settle as protection against the bad boys to the west.

Leo Bonfanti, author of several pamphlet size booklets of English-Native history from settlement to conclusion of the Indian war in Maine, viewed the Mohawk-Massachusetts encounter in a different light. In Volume II of his BIOGRAPHIES AND LEGENDS of the NEW ENGLAND INDIANS, he essentially agrees with Duffy and other writers up until the end of the battle.

According to Bonfanti, under their leader, Chikataubut who fell in the encounter, the Massachusett counterattack defeated the Mohawk. The reverse was enough to cause them to request mediation from the Dutch and English.

This is an important, as Duffy notes the Quaboag welcomed protective English settlement. If they had lost heavily against the Mohawk, siding with KingPhilip could only have been suicidal as they would now have two mortal enemies.

Success against the Mohawk might have allowed them some confidence in their own ability against the colonists.

Then again, maybe none of that mattered. Michael J. Tougias, in his novel of the era, Until I Have No Country, writes of an older Indian speaking to a younger warrior, telling him that the tribes would lose the war. The youthful man asks him why fight then. His reply was that they had, more or less, to do something

That has its own logic, somewhat. Duffy details the fate of the Nipucks of the Quinnebaug who tried to stay out of the war. They avoided the fate of the Quaboag which was immediate death, slavery or exile. In the end it did not matter. They were effaced from the land as were their neighbors to the north, albeit in slow motion with all legal niceties observed, sometimes.

It is fascinating to think that events that shaped where we live played out almost outside our doors. The battles that happened here were local events, but also involved the three major imperial powers of the day, England, France and The Dutch Republic.

It is conceivable that the Quaboag who ambushed the colonials in Wheeler's Surprise could have wiped them out, had it not been for the “Praying Indians” aiding the English. Had they destroyed the remnant on Foster's Hill as well, it would have been an immense victory, but in the end, would have probably changed little.

The Quaboag and Nipmuck Indians is far more than battles in scope, and even if you've read other books, this will be worth your while. The author has a previous work, Around Pottequadic, that looks at the native people and settlers more to the Ware and Palmer area. I look forward to reading it.