Meet the People of the Berkshires

Video Interviews

Indigenous peoples lived on the Housatonic River for more than 10,000 years. Artifacts and burial sites of the Mohicans—or Muh-he-con-ne-ok, “People of the Waters That are Never Still”—have been found throughout the Housatonic River Valley. The Mohicans were known as River Indians and traditionally lived close to rivers and streams, using them for both sustenance and transportation. 

In the early 18th century, English colonists began to trickle into the Berkshire Mountains. One of the earliest settlers was the English missionary John Sargeant, who established a mission at present-day Stockbridge where he converted Native Americans to Christianity. During the Revolutionary War, men from the Mohican and closely affiliated tribes formed the Stockbridge Militia, the first Native American group to fight on the American side. Despite their loyalty, the tribesmen returned from war to find they had been dispossessed of their lands through debt and fraud. 

With their families, they soon moved to upstate New York and eventually settled in Wisconsin, where they became known as the Stockbridge Munsee. In recent years, the Stockbridge Munsee have reestablished relations with the town and people of Berkshire County, and they are now working together to recover and preserve the Mohican heritage of the Housatonic River Valley. 

The English colonists who settled on the banks of the Housatonic were largely subsistence farmers relocating from Cape Cod and Connecticut. The town of Lee was founded in 1760 by Isaac Davis, a farmer, who built the first frame house in the town. Within 10 years, a grist mill and a paper mill had been erected in Lee thanks to its favorable location on the Housatonic River. 

The region’s dense forests and impenetrable terrain kept the Housatonic Valley a sparsely settled backwater until after the Revolutionary War. In the early 19th century, the country’s rapid industrialization caused the area’s population and economy to diversify quickly. The Town of Lee welcomed many Irish immigrants to work in its marble quarries and paper and textile mills, followed by Italian and other European immigrants who supplied valuable labor to the town’s economy. 

After the  railroad arrived in the 1840s, the Housatonic River Valley developed into a summer playground for wealthy Bostonians and New Yorkers. Fabled families such as the Morgans, Vanderbilts, and Choates constructed enormous mansions (ironically known as “cottages”) around the region. These houses were visited by literary luminaries including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Henry James. The homes were staffed and maintained by residents of Lee and other working class towns.

African Americans have lived in Housatonic River Valley since the 18th century, when  some English families settling in the region came accompanied by enslaved Blacks. The institution of slavery largely died out in Massachusetts by the beginning of the 19th century. A small community of African Americans remained in area and, among others, produced W.E.B. Dubois, one of the United States’ leading civil rights advocates.

Perhaps because of its dreamy landscape and dramatic climate, the Berkshires have attracted visionaries and artists since the 19th centuries. Numerous Shaker communities dotted the area, including the City of Peace (today known as the Hancock Shaker Village) near Pittsfield, where more than 300 Shakers lived communally, practiced their unique form of worship, and perfected woodworking and other trades. Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau were frequent visitors to the area, and Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick from his home in Pittsfield. The sculptor Daniel Chester French illustrator Norman Rockwell also lived in the area.

After WWII, Berkshire County’s population diversified slightly. While remaining overwhelmingly White, Hispanic and East and South Asian communities are growing and constitute an expanding portion of the population. At the same time, the county’s overall population has steadily declined since peaking in the 1970s. The trend was kickstarted by the closure of GE’s large factory in Pittsfield and many paper mills and quarries and persists today owing to the lack of well-paying jobs and affordable housing.