(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved. Contact us for information about using this image.
In this re-creation from the early 20th century, members of a Puritan family say good-bye to their father as the ox carts filled with wheat pull away. This scene depicts the often-told Deerfield, Massachusetts, story of Bloody Brook. During King Philip's war in 1676 a party of Native Americans ambushed a convoy of English militia driving ox carts of wheat from Deerfield to Hadley. Reenacting the event labeled "the darkest pages in the history of our town," emphasized for the pageant audience the price the first English settlers paid to establish the frontier town.