Using the Web to Rewrite the History of the "Deerfield Massacre"
Lynne Spichiger, Director of Website Exhibits, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association/Memorial Hall Museum, in a piece written expressly for HNN (April 29, 2004):
In the pre-dawn hours of February 29, 1704, a force of 240 French and Native allies launched a daring, surprise, three-hour raid on the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts. By the end of the attack, 112 Deerfield men, women, and children were taken captive on a 300-mile forced march to Canada in brutal winter conditions. Some of the captives were later"redeemed" and returned to Deerfield, but some chose to remain living among their former French and Native captors.
For 300 years, this assault in contested lands has been interpreted via the dominant European viewpoint: as an unprovoked, brutal attack on an innocent village of English settlers. But the same event can be seen as a justified military action against a highly-fortified settlement in Native homelands.
Multiple Perspectives
On the three-hundredth anniversary of the raid, the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association/Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, MA, launched a website that commemorates and reinterprets this event from the perspectives of the participants who were present, and their descendents, allowing the viewer to reach his or her own conclusions. In doing so, this project has created a model for how any historical event—indeed, any controversial subject—might be presented to online viewers.
The website, Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704 (www.1704.deerfield.history.museum), presents the perspectives of the Kanienkehaka, Wobanakiak, Wendats, French and English. Along with these five viewpoints, come different versions of the "facts," different meanings that have been made out of the experience, and different stories that have been, and continue to be told. There is no "one truth" on this website; rather, it is for the visitor to determine his or her own truth and meaning about this event, the crosscurrents and forces that led up to it, and its powerful legacies.
While conventional history may have relegated the raid on Deerfield to one small episode in a larger global contest as European powers vied for control of the Spanish throne, it was—and is to this day —much more. When examined closely, the raid is a military saga, a collection of family stories, an exploration of the meaning of land ownership, a confrontation among different values, a case study of colonialism. When viewed from all sides, it is a multi-cultural glimpse of early American history, rooted in cultural and religious conflicts, trade and kinship ties, personal and family honor, and genocidal expansion. The attack on Deerfield left a profound legacy which influenced the English colonies, the Native peoples, and the French, through the colonial period, and which influences these groups and New England to this day.
Methodology
The website brings together historical scenes, stories of real and composite characters' lives, historical artifacts and documents, interactive maps, voices and songs, essays, and a timeline, to illuminate broad and competing perspectives on this dramatic event.
The website uses a ‘tab’ design for historical scenes that allows users to move easily among the different perspectives, facilitating comparison and enabling the telling of the story from conflicting points of view without the loss of coherence in the narrative. A pyramidal content structure permits storytelling in small, understandable, compelling segments, supported by fuller context, thereby capturing the casual user's attention, and then providing a rich context to satisfy his/her deeper interest.
Website design by Juliet Jacobson, c PVMA 2003
In his essay "Who Owns History," Barry O'Connell, Professor of History at Amherst College, tells us that
The end to be sought is not to get something "absolutely right," but to make it come alive in all of its uncertainties. The more we can multiply perspectives from many different kinds of people, the better able we are to ask useful and specific questions out of which can come the fullest sense both of what did happen in the past and how we might understand and judge it…It is our task, as students and teachers, writers and citizens, to bring everyone and everything out of the mist so we might hear their voices, follow their actions, and respect each person, past and present, as a maker as well as a subject of history.
Conclusion
This website endeavors to "bring everyone and everything out of the mist" so that we might hear the voices and follow the actions of the people who were present on that day so very long ago. It is our charge, as a website project funded by grants from both the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH ) and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS), to provide an online model for other museums and organizations wanting to present stories and events from a multiple perspective approach. We hope that in telling this old story in a new way, we have achieved that goal. However, the website is not yet complete. By October, we will have added several additional scenes, including a Legacies section that brings the story up to the present day. We will also add "how to" and curriculum sections. Please visit us often!