Quinnitukqut means “long river” in our language.

I think about our relatives, the Pocumtuck People, often. The mid-section of the Connecticut River Valley was full of life when they lived within it. I think about how the Pocumtuck and the Agawam and the Nonotuck and all their family are no more.

They were murdered. They were stolen. They were driven out.

All these communities had existed for more than 12,000 years along the quinnitukqut. Yet just decades after the English (and the French and the Dutch) arrived on our shores, they ceased to exist.

An entire People gone. And their homelands were renamed ‘Pioneer Valley’.

That fate could have been the fate of my people. We lived just next door. The multitude of separate and yet linked Nipmuc communities that occupied our homelands could have also been wiped out by the same greed and avarice demonstrated by the English towards those living along the quinnitukqut.

But we are still here.

And our relatives are not.

Some of our land-back opportunities are within the quinnitukqut valley. And there are some Nipmucs who claim the valley as our homeland. But doing that negates the lives of those who lived here before us. It takes away the memory of the Agawam and the Nonotuck and the Pocumtuck. They did exist, they loved, they fought, and they died on those lands. They raised children, they grew crops, they hunted and fished throughout that watershed. And they should never be forgotten or overlooked.

It could easily have been the Nipmuc who were wiped out by the colonists. They came close to it. Only three bands of Nipmuc survive to this day out of the many.

It is our hope that our present course of rematriation within our homelands and the revitalization of our language, our foodways, and so many other things will create a sustainable future for us.

A future for Nipmuc People that not even Americans can wipe out.

Aquene, Cher

BTW – We did not have a written language when the colonists invaded. So there are a multitude of spelling variations with regard to the what the Indigenous communities were called.