December 14, 2003

Burial site helps tell story of Brothertown Indians

Nov. 21, 2003

By LINDA MURPHY

Observer-Dispatch

DEANSBORO — Last August a packed bus stopped on the side of

rural Brothertown Road. Its passengers, some young, many old,

piled out and climbed the hill to the site of their ancestors’ burial ground.

Descendents of the Brothertown Indians who had settled in

Marshall and Kirkland gathered this summer from Wisconsin, Washington, Texas and other states to pay homage to their earliest brethren.

“They wanted to see where their ancestors were buried,” said

Marshall Town Clerk and Historian Dorothy McConnell. “They had a little ceremony and put tobacco on the graves.”

Remnants of the Brothertown Indian settlement remain. The

tribe of roughly 400 existed in Oneida County from 1774 to 1831.

The most obvious reminder is the Brothertown Road burial site.

It holds 24 graves, all marked by stones.

To visit the site, turn left on Route 315 from Route 12B in

Deansboro. Turn right on Brothertown Road. The site is identified by a historical marker on the left side of Brothertown Road. Park, then climb the hill behind the sign. The graveyard is on the plateau at the top of the hill.

Another small graveyard is behind a residence on Route 315.

The burial site of Nancy Welch, a Brothertown Indian who is the direct ancestor of about half of this summer’s visitors,

is on Van Hyning Road.

The Rev. Samson Occom’s grave site is on Bogusville Road in

Kirkland, McConnell said. The marker is on the side of the road; the grave is in the woods about a quarter mile.

“Occom was the Christian minister (also an Indian) who brought these many tribes together to live as brothers,” McConnell said. The 18th century Brothertowns built houses, some of which remain today, McConnell said.

“The house on the corner of Burnham and Route 315 was built by

Asa Dick, a Brothertown Indian,” McConnell said.

The Brothertowns had come to Marshall for a fresh start. Wisconsin Historian Lyman C. Draper wrote about them in 1858:

These tribes were in a fallen and degraded condition “and

unless they soon emigrated to some more friendly clime, where they would be more free from the contaminating influence and evil example of their white brethren, and be farther removed from that great destroyer, worst of all, “Fire-Water,” they would become wholly extinct.”

The chief of the Oneida Indians felt compassion on the tribes and gave a “very valuable tract of land, about 12 miles square, situated 14 miles south of where the city of Utica now stands.”

By the 1830s, the scourge of alcoholism, the encroachment of

“pale-faces” into their settlement, and border disputes forced the Brothertowns to emigrate again, this time to Wisconsin.

Today the Brothertown Indians of Wisconsin are the core of the

tribe, though its members are scattered around the nation.

Trips such as the one to Marshall helps the roughly 3,000-member tribe stay true to part of their mission: To restore and preserve their unique history, and their cultural and religious beliefs.

While in Central New York, they found evidence of baskets created by their ancestors. Today they are making new baskets based on the design of those made by their forebears.

Linda Murphy is the writer/editor of GO!, the

Observer-Dispatch guide to fun, fitness and the great

outdoors. Contact her at lamurphy@utica.gannett.com.