Historians call the land where my house sits the “Apple Tree” section of New Fairfield. Europeans came here nearly 400 years ago. A grainy photo documents meticulously planted orchards overlooking the lush Housatonic Valley.

 

Apple trees brought to North America by

 white men, and traded for...

 whatever a European might want 

from an Indigenous.

 

I think of the unspoken past

And the Indigenous farmers 

whose muscle and calculus

cleared the land

and planted those trees.

 

No historian even whispers their name,

while touting the Martinis, 

the Stevens, the Kelloggs,

and their beehive ovens,

fermented blackberries,

clapboard houses with

candles of welcome 

in the windows.

 

No, 

no one ever mentions their name:

The Golden Hill Paugussett,

 of the Algonquin Nation.

Peaceful agrarians

who fished the Housatonic for shad

And salmon.

Their weathered hands

weaving saplings and deer sinews 

 into domed wigwams.

And clearing the land

to plant the crop of the three sisters,

   and apple trees.

 

Before long,

The Golden Hill Paugussett,

 families, children, elders,

were decimated by greed;

firearms,  

and smallpox.

Their orchard taken over by 

white men; Paugussett homeland

 systematically whittled down 

to a small patch on the other side

of the valley.

 

Today I make applesauce,

and crisp 

with the season’s last fruits,

from the only remaining apple tree

 in the Paugussett Orchard.

 

They’re wild apples now;

 dimpled green globes, skins

 dotted with flyspeck. 

Soft brown trails from the apple worm

lace the crisp, sweet flesh.

 

My kitchen fills 

with the Spirits of the Indigenous Orchardists,

floating in the fragrance of the simmering fruit.

Skin, stems, seeds,

I waste nothing,

and say their name, 

The Golden Hill Paugussett,

with gratitude

and grief.

​

Joanne Cafiero is a Sierra Club member from Brookfield.