Exploring indigenous origins along the Housatonic River

WASHINGTON — The southern-most Housatonic Heritage Walk of the year brought the socio-ecologically curious to the steep ravines and river valleys of Washington, Conn., for a guided investigation of the region’s original occupants and ongoing stewards.

Hosted on the property of the Institute for American Indian Studies and the adjacent Steep Rock Preserve, Susan Scherf, an educator with the institute, led a leisurely and informative stroll amid pristine fall weather on Sept. 21.

Scherf, who has spent decades teaching students how to read and learn their natural landscapes, began the event with the important clarification that she herself is not Indigenous. “My maiden name was Van Winkle,” she joked.

She acknowledged that the land is the ancestral home of the Weantinock and Pootatuck people and their descendants, now the Schaghticoke. She spoke in awe of the complex technologies indigenous peoples developed through intimate knowledge of the landscape, such as tanning leather and sapping maples. These traditions, of course, were adopted by colonial communities and remain central components of New England culture today.

Scherf led the group of 14 participants down a hemlock-shaded slope into the Steep Rock Preserve proper, explaining that the Eastern Hemlock was almost entirely eliminated in New England by European colonists, who figured out that the tannin-laden bark was effective at curing animal hides. Native communities, on the other hand, used a process that involved curing skins with animal brains and smoking them to preserve and protect the material.

Pointing at a shagbark hickory, Scherf explained that “they never denuded the land,” using woody trees like ash, elm and oak to construct semi-permanent residences but never clear cutting as they moved from place to place. Other plants, like cattails which she described as “the grocery store” for its many uses, were also used to build structures like wigwams in these communities.

Guiding the group to an open area by a sluggish bend in the Shepaug River, a tributary of the Housatonic River, Scherf mentioned that “this would have been a main highway for Natives.” She explained that Connecticut’s rivers were vital infrastructure for these groups who would summer along the coast and winter in the interior. This river would have once been teeming with American Eels and salmon, she said, but Connecticut’s – the namesake of which is the Algonkian Quinnetukut, meaning the land alongside the long tidal river – waterways were also important to industrialists. As a result, the 4,000-odd extant dams have all but eliminated these fish in the state.

As the group crossed an old rail line, covered in century-old coal and slag, she noted that while the river valley was an infrastructural hub for industrialists, it once was a primary thoroughfare for these semi-nomadic Indigenous people who would travel the river on 30-foot, thousand-pound canoes made from the vast trunks of tulip trees.

She led the group back up the gentle wooded slope, pointing out various plants like jewelweed, which is a good balm for itchy ailments, and coltsfoot, which Natives would have burned and used as a spice. She encouraged participants to chew on wintergreen leaves she found alongside the trail, drawing murmurs of approval from the hikers for its fresh, minty taste.

To conclude, she gathered the group between a model longhouse and wigwam in the Institute’s demonstration village. She emphasized that while these communities lived in close mutual respect with the landscape, they also looked out for their fellow humans. “No one was ever excluded,” she said, “it was the whole village constantly working together.”