Sally Maminash – Last of the Indians Here
by Dr. Margaret Bruchac
(An edited version of this text is in print as “Native Presence in Nonotuck and Northampton” in A Place Called Paradise: Culture and Community in Northampton, Massachusetts, 1654-2004, edited by Kerry Buckley, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press 2004, pp. 18-38.)
by Dr. Margaret Bruchac
(An edited version of this text is in print as “Native Presence in Nonotuck and Northampton” in A Place Called Paradise: Culture and Community in Northampton, Massachusetts, 1654-2004, edited by Kerry Buckley, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press 2004, pp. 18-38.)
Chair of Sally Maminash
Historic Northampton Estate of Ruth S. Strong |
Gravestones of Warham Clapp, Sophia Clapp and Sally Maminash in the Bridge Street Cemetery.
Photo by Marge Bruchac, 2019 |
Marge Bruchac researching the Bible of Sally Maminash
at Forbes Library. |
. . . Although there was not a large Native community in Northampton, a number of local Native families and individuals continued to circulate within their traditional homelands, marketing baskets and brooms, hiring out as day labor, and dispensing traditional Native medicines to their white neighbors. Many were frequent travelers, tracing inter-tribal connections and kinship networks within a broad homeland (Baron, Hood, Izard 1994; Doughton 1997). Certain kinds of work – particularly basket-making, chair seat-weaving, administering Native medicines and crafting splint brooms – were regular occupations of Native itinerants. Sylvester Judd, a Northampton newspaper writer and local historian, personally knew the Sampson family, local Indians living in Amherst and Hadley, who made baskets and brooms and hunted: “Joseph Sampson had a hut near Smiths mills…He was an excellent marksman, and could shoot a swallow flying” (Judd Manuscript 19, p. 141). Mrs. Newton of Hadley told Judd in 1859 that only “Indians and squaws peddled brooms and baskets in Hadley when she was young and after. She does not recollect that white people made or peddled brooms.” (Judd Manuscript 19, p. 159)
In 1861, Massachusetts Commissioner John Milton Earle summarized the general public’s view of Native peoples when he wrote:
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Much ignorance and misapprehension prevail in the community at large, among those who have not had the opportunity of personal observation relative to these remnants of their race. They seem to suppose that they have hardly emerged from their aboriginal state, although the painted face may not now be seen, nor the war whoop, the tomahawk, or the scalping knife . . . and the questions: “What sort of people are they?” “Do they dress like white folks?” “Can they speak the English language?” “Do they live in wigwams?” or other of like nature are often asked. (Earle 1861)
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The popular media often depicted Indians as exotic outsiders, and dubbing those who still lingered around the outskirts of Yankee villages as “the last of their kind.” In 1838, One such group was depicted in disparaging terms by the local newspaper:
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The Miserable Remnants of a tribe of Indians from Canada, squatting in the woods a mile or two from town have been, and continue to be, the lions in this vicinity. Strange how demoralizing the contact of civilization with that of savage life, where it is but partial and of a loose and anti-Christian character... They are a slothful, ragged, dirty, squalid race, appearing to have adopted the vices of the whites without seeming to emulate any of their virtues. The lofty bearing and noble demeanor of the primitive Indians are gone, and nothing is left but the abject and debased exterior of the red man... Altogether considered, they are merely a wretched remnant of a race of noble and proud Red men, who once tenanted this fair valley, and whose stealthy tread and uplifted tomohawk, carried death to hearts terrified by their appalling war-cry. (Northampton Courier, June 6, 1838)
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Local historians perpetuated these kinds of racial and cultural prejudices, and these biased representations of what was a very complex inter-cultural history, in historical texts, children’s stories, speeches, and pageantry. During Northampton’s Quarter Millennial Commemoration, in 1904, Smith College President L. Clarke Seelye intoned:
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How different the scenes which greet us from those which greeted her [Northampton’s] infancy. Above are the same heavens; the same majestic river flows through the meadows; our horizon is bounded by the same picturesque mountain ranges; but how changed the inhabitants and their environment! No longer unbroken forests stretch as far as the eye can reach, concealing in their unexplored recesses wild beasts and savages; no longer men fear lest a sudden Indian raid may massacre the few inhabitants...In place of a rude and contracted society, we behold a prosperous and highly civilized community... (Seelye in City of Northampton 1904:155)
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By 1916, a Rhode Island newspaper declared that the Nonotucks had utterly vanished: “In regard to the Nonotucks...there is almost no historical account except the mark of a few of them upon local deeds mostly made out to the Pyncheon company at Springfield” (Providence Sunday Journal, March 13, 1916). This reporter praised the exhibits created by Smith College Professor Harris Hawthorne Wilder, noting that this “restoration has thus a special interest, as it supplies data that were supposedly lost forever. . . ."
The so-called “last” of Northampton’s Nonotuck Indians, Sally Maminash (alternately spelled Mammanash, Mammanache, etc.), is buried in Northampton’s Bridge Street Cemetery. Her gravestone, situated in the family plot of Warham and Sophia Clapp, reads: “Sally Maminash. The last of the Indians here. A niece of Occum. A Christian. Died in the family of Warham & Sophia Clap. Jan. 3, 1853. Aged 88.”
A collection of fading newspaper clippings from the Daily Hampshire Gazette add a few more tragically cryptic details to Sally’s story - her father Joseph’s gravestone stolen from a “lonely grave on Pancake Plain,” her mother Elizabeth “stoned to death by local boys,” her dying brother “neglected and alone,” her grandmother “old, lousy and lame,” and Sally herself, a “wild, passionate, wilful” girl who worked as an itinerant spinner and weaver, transformed into a “sweet, saintly Christian,” sitting peacefully in her chair reading her Bible (Bridgeman 1936, Dean 1958, Wilbur 1987).
Almost every town in New England had an individual who was described as “the last of the Indians,” a popular, if somewhat misleading sobriquet. Molly Ockett, an Indian Doctress who was survived by several daughters and an ex-husband, was called “the last of the Pequawkets” when she died in 1816. In 1859, Eunice Mauwee, a Pequot/Schaghticoke elder who is the direct ancestor of many members of the Schaghticoke tribe today, was dubbed “the last of the Pequots” (Richmond 1994:103). As one example of the popularity and absurdity of this designation, the Webster Times identified Paine Henries as the “last of the Nipmucks,” when he died in 1936. The article noted that Henries was survived by two brothers, a sister, and several nieces and nephews.
In Northampton, the largest concentration of Native peoples seems to have centered around Pancake Plain and Hospital Hill, where the Maminash gravesites were located. Over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the site became home to a mental hospital, rural fields grown up to brush, and, eventually, homeless shelters. Charles Dean wrote, in a 1958 article for the Daily Hampshire Gazette:
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Hospital Hill, the beginnings of which are either distorted or utterly lost in the mists of legendary lore...became the end of the trail for the last Native Americans, whose ancestors roamed the forests and fished the streams hereabouts before the coming of the white man...perhaps the most reasonable explanation for the retarded development of this part of Northampton was its remoteness...a narrow flat strip of land lying between the foot of the hill itself and the southern bank of Mill River... but even as late as the 1830s only seven or eight houses were located there, devoid of elegance or comfort, and occupied by person noticeable for the peculiarities, habits, and dress which makes them known as characters... “Ratty Clark” and family... made a somewhat precarious living as potters... But the most colorful inhabitant of the plain perhaps, was “Aunt Nab” whom a contemporary once described as a “maker and vendor of cornhusk mats” and as having a “cracked voice and garrulous manner”... (Dean 1958)
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For much of her life, Sally Maminash lived, not among these colorful folks, but in the center of town, where she was well-known to many Northampton residents as an itinerant weaver. In 1816, she joined First Church along with seventy-six other people, including several other Indians and/or African Americans, and a Nipmuc family named Bakeman. By 1819 large numbers of people had left First Church to join new congregations - Edwards Church, the Unitarian Society, Methodists, Baptists and others. Rev. Solomon Williams recorded Sally Maminash’s name on a “List of Church Members 1819 who were living or have not taken a dismissal...” after religious controversy split the congregation (First Church Records, Book 2, 1819:43). Decades after her death, when Solomon Clark compiled his Historical Catalogue, Sally Maminash was described as follows:
Sally Maminash. The last of the Indian race in Northampton; long and tenderly cared for, under the infirmities of age, by Mrs. Warham Clapp, and her son Edward and his wife (Clark 1891:121).
Sophia Clapp, who sponsored Sally’s membership in the church, had offered Sally a home in her old age. Although the Clapps clearly considered her a close family friend, later writers seem to have embellished the earlier accounts to make Sally appear more simple, more destitute, and more alone than she was in real life. In the Northampton of the late nineteenth century, Sally seems to have been cast as a token “civilized Indian,” an icon of what was romantically believed to be a “vanishing race.” The Maminash family were not uncivilized remnants of vanishing tribes – they served as soldiers, did weaving in local homes, attended local churches, and participated in the social milieau of Northampton much like their white neighbors. They were, however, vulnerable to racial prejudice and danger from their less tolerant neighbors.
Sally’s father, Joseph Maminash, was identified in colonial records as Podunk, Nonotuck, and/or Pocumtuck Indian, listing places of residence in Norwich, CT, East Windsor, CT, Southampton, MA and Northampton, MA (Bruchac 1997). The Maminash men, like many Native men in New England, mustered in alongside their white neighbors in local regiments for military service. When Mohegan men from Connecticut were recruited for the English campaign against Louisbourg in 1745, Joseph Mammanash[sic], Sally’s father, joined Nathan Whiting’s 11th company, along with a number of Indian men in this and related companies, including members of the Uncas, Dick, Nanapau, Quaquequid and Wetowomp families (Whiting 1745). When he died in 1767, Joseph was buried on the site that is now called “Hospital Hill,” for the mental hospital that was built there in the 1880s. His grave was marked with a brown stone bearing the mark of the turtle, the clan totem of the family. During the 1860s, the stone was stolen, and has never been found. (Bridgeman 1936)
Sally’s mother, Elizabeth, who was identified as the sister of the Mohegan minister Samson Occum, apparently came from the community of Mohegan Indians in southeastern Connecticut. In 1779, then sixty-year-old Elizabeth met an untimely, as-yet-unexplained death. Some traditions say she was stoned to death by a gang of Northampton boys; others that she died in liquor (Dean 1958, Bridgeman 1936, Wilbur 1987). She was buried beside her husband, and her children took up residence among their Native neighbors.
Sally’s brother, Joseph, served in the military during the American Revolution, and is listed in Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors as follows:
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Mamanash, Joseph, Hadley. List of men raised to serve in the Continental Army from the 4th Hampshire regiment as returned by Capt. Samuel Cook; residence, Hadley; engaged for town of Hadley; joined Capt. Shay’s co., Col. Putnam’s regt,; term 3 years; also, Private, Capt. Daniel Shays co., Col. Rufus Putnam’s (5th) regt.; Continental Pay accounts for service from Jan. 15, 1777 to Aug, 31, 1778; reported died Aug. 31, 1778;-also, same co. and regt.; return dated Albany, Feb. 9, 1778; mustered by Col. Woodbridge (Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1902: 161)
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He, too, is buried in an unmarked grave on Hospital Hill. Among the few artifacts remaining from the Maminash family are Sally’s Bible, stored at Forbes Library, and her favorite chair, a low ladder back with its original ash-splint seat, donated by Clapp descendants to Historic Northampton.
The Maminash family, although a Native family with deep roots in New England, had seemingly “arrived” in the records of Northampton towards the end of the French and Indian wars and the beginning of the American Revolution, the very era when American history was being re-scripted to write Indians out of the picture. Indian deeds had long since been signed, and Northampton’s settlers refused to see the cornfields in the meadows, the graves on Hospital Hill, the basketmakers on the streets, or the houses on the edge of the river as evidence of Native persistence. The Indian graves today are surrounded by homeless shelters, empty homes, a crumbling mental hospital, and the Smith playing fields, on the backside of town. Mary Brewster foreshadowed their present obscurity:
The Maminash family, although a Native family with deep roots in New England, had seemingly “arrived” in the records of Northampton towards the end of the French and Indian wars and the beginning of the American Revolution, the very era when American history was being re-scripted to write Indians out of the picture. Indian deeds had long since been signed, and Northampton’s settlers refused to see the cornfields in the meadows, the graves on Hospital Hill, the basketmakers on the streets, or the houses on the edge of the river as evidence of Native persistence. The Indian graves today are surrounded by homeless shelters, empty homes, a crumbling mental hospital, and the Smith playing fields, on the backside of town. Mary Brewster foreshadowed their present obscurity:
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The field where the Indians were buried, now owned by the state hospital, was owned by W.F. Arnold who left standing the group of gaunt pines that long guarded the “Indian Grave” in picturesque and poignant contrast to the spot today where, in sunny bleakness below a stone-covered ridge, gone is the last trace of a historic burial place, unmarked and generally unremembered (Brewster 1872).
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Although it seems remote today, it's important to note that the Maminash burial site was, in its time, centrally located in a long-inhabited indigenous landscape. This was recognized in 1920 by a Smith College anthropologist who plotted out the surviving evidence of inter-related Nonotuck sites in Northampton, including: village locations on the bluffs overlooking the Mill River; a burial sites along present-day South Street and beside the river; and corn planting fields in a meadow now shut off by a railroad embankment, close by the foot of present-day Hospital Hill.
Sources Cited:
Anonymous. “Indian Princess Restored,” Providence Sunday Journal, 5th section, March 16, 1913.
Anonymous. "Last of Nipmucks Claimed by Death," Webster Times, Webster, MA, September 28, 1936.
Anonymous. “The Maminash Gravestone Stolen From Pancake Plain,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA, August 12, 1884.
Anonymous. Northampton Courier, Northampton, MA, June 6, 1838.
Baron, Donna K. and Hood, J. Edward and Izard, Holly V. “They Were Here All Along: The Native American Presence in Central New England in the 18th and 19th Centuries,” research summary for Old Sturbridge Village, Sturbridge, MA, 1994.
Anonymous. “Indian Princess Restored,” Providence Sunday Journal, 5th section, March 16, 1913.
Anonymous. "Last of Nipmucks Claimed by Death," Webster Times, Webster, MA, September 28, 1936.
Anonymous. “The Maminash Gravestone Stolen From Pancake Plain,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA, August 12, 1884.
Anonymous. Northampton Courier, Northampton, MA, June 6, 1838.
Baron, Donna K. and Hood, J. Edward and Izard, Holly V. “They Were Here All Along: The Native American Presence in Central New England in the 18th and 19th Centuries,” research summary for Old Sturbridge Village, Sturbridge, MA, 1994.
Brewster, Mary. “Last Indian of Northampton” Chapter XLVI: Historical Miscellany, in Harry Andrew Wright, ed., The Story of Western Massachusetts, New York, NY: Lewis Historical Publications, 1949.
Bridgeman, Sidney E. “Sally Mammanash is Recalled Here: Daughter of Indian Woman Who Was Stoned to Death Lived With the Bridgemans,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA, August 25, 1936.
Bruchac, Margaret. “The True History of Sally Maminash, 'The Last Indian' in Northampton,” unpublished research report, 1996.
Bruchac, Margaret. “The True History of Sally Maminash,” Weathervane, Northampton, MA: Historic Northampton, Winter 1996, 1-2.
Bridgeman, Sidney E. “Sally Mammanash is Recalled Here: Daughter of Indian Woman Who Was Stoned to Death Lived With the Bridgemans,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA, August 25, 1936.
Bruchac, Margaret. “The True History of Sally Maminash, 'The Last Indian' in Northampton,” unpublished research report, 1996.
Bruchac, Margaret. “The True History of Sally Maminash,” Weathervane, Northampton, MA: Historic Northampton, Winter 1996, 1-2.
City of Northampton. The Meadow City’s Quarter Millennial Book: A Memorial of the Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of Northampton, Massachusetts. Northampton, MA: City of Northampton 1904.
Clark, Rev. Solomon. Historical Catalogue of the Northampton First Church 1661-1891, Northampton, MA: Gazette Printing Company 1891.
Dean, Charles J. “Hospital Hill and its Riddles of Yesterday,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA, November 15, 1958.
Delabarre, E. B. and Wilder, Harris H. "Indian Corn Hills in Massachusetts," American Anthropologist Vol. 22 (1920): 203-255.
Doughton, Thomas L. “Unseen Neighbors: Native Americans of Central Massachusetts, A People Who Had Vanished,” in After King Philip’s War: Presence and Persistence in Indian New England, edited by Colin G. Calloway, 207-230. Dartmouth College, University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 1997.
Earle, John Milton. Report to the Governor and Council Concerning the Indians of the Commonwealth, Boston, MA: Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1861.
First Church Records, Book 1 and 2, 1819, First Churches Archives, Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts.
Judd, Sylvester. History of Hadley: Including the Early History of Hatfield, South Hadley, Amherst, and Granby, Massachusetts. Northampton, MA: Metcalf and Company 1863.
Judd, Sylvester. Selected papers from the Sylvester Judd Manuscript, Gregory H. Nobles and Herbert L. Zarov, eds. Northampton, MA: Forbes Library, 1976.
Richmond, Trudie Lamb. “A Native Perspective of History: The Schaghticoke Nation, Resistance and Survival,” in Enduring Traditions: The Native Peoples of New England, edited by Laurie Weinstein,103-112. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey 1994.
Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War. Boston, MA: Wright & Potter Printing 1902.
Whiting, Nathan. List of Soldiers, 1745, from Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society Vol. XIII, p. 76-80.
Wilbur, Keith. Land of the Nonotucks. Northampton, MA: Historic Northampton 1987.
Wright, Harry Andrew. “Indians Who Roamed Around Early Springfield Dressed Like Settlers,” Springfield Union and Republican, Springfield, MA, August 29, 1926.
Clark, Rev. Solomon. Historical Catalogue of the Northampton First Church 1661-1891, Northampton, MA: Gazette Printing Company 1891.
Dean, Charles J. “Hospital Hill and its Riddles of Yesterday,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA, November 15, 1958.
Delabarre, E. B. and Wilder, Harris H. "Indian Corn Hills in Massachusetts," American Anthropologist Vol. 22 (1920): 203-255.
Doughton, Thomas L. “Unseen Neighbors: Native Americans of Central Massachusetts, A People Who Had Vanished,” in After King Philip’s War: Presence and Persistence in Indian New England, edited by Colin G. Calloway, 207-230. Dartmouth College, University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 1997.
Earle, John Milton. Report to the Governor and Council Concerning the Indians of the Commonwealth, Boston, MA: Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1861.
First Church Records, Book 1 and 2, 1819, First Churches Archives, Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts.
Judd, Sylvester. History of Hadley: Including the Early History of Hatfield, South Hadley, Amherst, and Granby, Massachusetts. Northampton, MA: Metcalf and Company 1863.
Judd, Sylvester. Selected papers from the Sylvester Judd Manuscript, Gregory H. Nobles and Herbert L. Zarov, eds. Northampton, MA: Forbes Library, 1976.
Richmond, Trudie Lamb. “A Native Perspective of History: The Schaghticoke Nation, Resistance and Survival,” in Enduring Traditions: The Native Peoples of New England, edited by Laurie Weinstein,103-112. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey 1994.
Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War. Boston, MA: Wright & Potter Printing 1902.
Whiting, Nathan. List of Soldiers, 1745, from Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society Vol. XIII, p. 76-80.
Wilbur, Keith. Land of the Nonotucks. Northampton, MA: Historic Northampton 1987.
Wright, Harry Andrew. “Indians Who Roamed Around Early Springfield Dressed Like Settlers,” Springfield Union and Republican, Springfield, MA, August 29, 1926.