Why Great Falls?
Great Falls is the name of one of the 5 villages of the Town of Montague, and lies on the banks of the Connecticut River, about 250 miles downstream from the river’s source on the Northern New Hampshire Border. Here the river bends to the west and then falls about 50 feet, coursing southward toward Long Island Sound.
Before Colonial times, the area by the Great Falls, Peskeompskut, was a sacred place of Convergence, traditionally shared by the Pocumtuk Confederacy, the Narragansetts, the Nipmucs, the Wampanoag, and the Wabanaki . It was a place of abundance, with great runs of salmon and shad in the Spring. And it was a place of Peace and Spirit, where many tribes gathered for Ceremony and Council.
In 1676, during the King Phillip War, a group of about 160 mounted soldiers and colonial settlers from Hadley, led by Captain William Turner, made a surprise attack on an Indian encampment located near the falls. The 300 victims were women, children and elders. This is what is now known as the Turner’s Falls Massacre.
Three Hundred and Twenty Eight Years later, in 2004, seeking to heal the traumatic echoes of the past, a Reconciliation Ceremony between the Montague Board of Selectmen and Tribal Leaders of the Narragansett was performed on the banks of the river, just above the falls.
I have chosen to name my practice Great Falls to honor that call for Reconciliation, and the call to be in harmony with our environment, with our neighbors and with ourselves.
