Uncovering an Ancient Pathway

by Kenneth Wapner
© 1994 Rodale Press Inc.
1994 - Backpacker

A varied alliance wants to make sure the once-busy Mohawk Trail thrives again.

Long before the Northeast became a megalopolis and travel was conducted on pavement at high speeds, there were highways of a different sort. Footpaths crisscrossed the countryside from the Potomac River near what's now Washington, DC, to the Great Lakes, allowing native peoples to carry on their daily business, fight their wars, and travel to hunting grounds.

One such path, the Mohawk Trail, was so well traveled it's said to have been a dirt thruway, beaten into the land by countless moccasin-covered feet along its roughly 100-mile course between the Connecticut River in western Massachusetts and the Hudson River in upstate New York. But over the generations the once-clear path nearly disappeared, lost to neglect and more expedient forms of travel.

Late last spring, a diverse group of Native Americans, environmentalists, historians, and trail advocates converged on a small Massachusetts state forest to walk a segment of the Mohawk Trail and kick off efforts to restore the historic pathway along it's entire original length.

"The trail was a major artery long before colonists came," says Johnie Leverett, a Cherokee who helped organize the 2.5-mile walk through Mohawk Trail State Forest in the northern Berkshire Mountains. The Mohawk was part of an ancient trade route, and "items such as flint from as far away as Texas, and quahog beads from the Massachusetts coast have been found along its length."

For thousands of years, the local Mohegan, Pecumtuck, and Deerfield used the trail, as did a host of other, smaller tribes along the Eastern seaboard. "The Pokomtakuke of Turner's Falls, Massachusetts, for example, were wiped out in 1676, but we know they used the trail to get to their salmon fishing at Shelburne Falls, and for hunting and foraging medicinal plants as well," says Leverett. The Squaeag of Northfield, Massachusetts, and the Nonotuck from the Northampton area traveled the path as well as the Agawome-Nayasset from Springfield, whose name means "ground overflowed by water." Advocates hope restoration of the trail will revive the histories of these lost tribes.

Though the trail outside Mohawk State Forest can still be hiked in bits and pieces, much of the route is conjecture. "Tracing the trail is a bit speculative," says Bob Leverett, Johnie's husband and a specialist in Eastern United States old-growth forests. Much of the original route is obscured by Route 2, which runs along the northern tier of Massachusetts, although research is ongoing to determine where significant landmarks were located along the trail. Once established, these landmarks will be renamed by Native American leaders, since the historic monikers have been lost to time.

Dennis Reagan, regional program director with the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), sees the Mohawk as more than just a single historic trail. Its unique east-west orientation "could connect several north-south trails in this area, such as the Taconic Trail System and the Appalachian Trail."

Reagan hopes the long-term restoration of the Mohawk will be geared toward multiuse: part hiking trail, part canoe route, and a pathway that could also be used for mountain biking. He says it could also tie in with proposed north-south greenway trails along the Hudson, Connecticut, and Housatonic rivers.

In addition to the section of trail in Mohawk State Forest, there's a nine-mile hikable segment on Northeast Utility property along the Deerfield River between Wilcox and Shelburne, Massachusetts. A river crossing in the middle of this section is difficult in spring high water or after heavy rains.

To get the restoration under way, the AMC, Hoosic River Watershed Association, Friends of the Mohawk Trail, and the Deerfield River Association have applied for a $50,000 federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act grant. The groups are also creating a slide show about the Mohawk, pursuing access rights from landowners, mapping its course using global satellite technology, and researching Native American use. In addition, they've applied for help from the National Park Service's Rivers and Trails Conservation Assistance Program, which provides technical and organizational assistance.

If all goes according to plan, the Mohawk Trail will be a model of how to reclaim a heritage lost before the collection of states became a nation.

Contact:

AMC Regional Offices
P.O. Box 1800
Lanesboro, MA 01237
(413) 443-0011

Story originally published in:

Backpacker
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