David Brule, Chairman of the Nehantic Tribal Council and of the Nolumbeka Project, presented the most recent findings in the on-going National Park Service study of the 1676 fight at Turner’s Falls, Massachusetts, at the Hatfield Congregational Church on May 15, 2025. Click here for the 114-minute video of his talk posted on May 19th by Hatfield Community Television. Click here for a summary of the Battlefields of Great Falls.

Brule began with a list of the towns that had been settled in Central and Western Massachusetts during the latter half of the 17th century as English settlers moved west from Boston to establish new farm lands on former Native territory.

Brule read an excerpt form George Sheldon’s History of Deerfield in which he described the settlements and places where Beer’s Ambush took place and where the Indian Council Fires were held.

Brule also noted Lisa Brook’s book, Our Beloved Kin, in which she mapped the route that Mary Rowlandson followed during her capture and the report that the American Battlefield Protection Program, recently issued by the National Park Service, describing the massacre at Turner’s Falls.