For the first time in over 340 years we unlocked the gates to the property for ourselves and walked onto our land.”

Dancing Star, Tracey Brown

On Friday, Nov. 15, Brown University transferred 255 acres of their Mount Hope property to a preservation trust established by the Pokanoket tribe, ensuring that access to the land and waters extends to tribes and Native peoples of the region for whom the land has significance. The remaining 120 acres will be sold to the Town of Bristol for $1.7 million, and that land will also be conserved, as a community forest, providing a buffer between the Pokanoket trust and the developed land beyond the Town’s conservation easement.

The homeland of the Pokanoket encompasses an area including Barrington, Bristol, East Providence, a portion of Providence, and Warren, as well as Rehoboth, Seekonk, Somerset, and Swansea, Mass. But the Mount Hope property is uniquely significant. It was their principal village, the seat of power of Metacomet, son of Massasoit (called King Philip by the colonists), and the site of his 1676 assassination. Following Metacomet’s death, the land was taken from the tribe by the founders of Bristol in the 1600s by way of a “Turf and Twig” transfer.

Turf and Twig was a ceremony used in medieval England, by which a person would take a piece of turf and stab it with a twig to confirm a transfer of land from one party to another. This practice continued in the American Colonies until the late 1600s.

The Pokanokets have always maintained that the land was rightfully theirs.

In the early 20th century, the land was owned by the Haffenreffer family, which donated it to Brown in 1955. It was home to the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology as well as an outing center used for educational programs and field research until recently.

Encampment led to negotiations

In August of 2017, the Pokanoket, led by their Sagamore Po Wauipi Neimpaug, Winds of Thunder, William Guy, held an encampment on the property in an attempt to return ownership to the tribe.

“We want to repatriate the land back to the tribal trust,” said Guy in a 2017 interview. “We have a territorial right to the land … We want our village back.”

In 2015, the Pokanokets flew a tribal flag over the village, which Brown officials removed, angering the tribe. “Removal of our flag is an act of war,” Guy said, noting the tribe’s encampment was a peaceful protest. “Brown has benefited grossly since they’ve had our land … They own those buildings, but they don’t own this land.”

Complicating the negotiations was the fact that the federal government did not recognize the Pokanoket.

Guy, a 10th-generation descendant of Metacomet, tells the story of the outlawing of the use of the name Pokanoket: “After the King Philip War, the word Wampanoag was the name given to the tribal members by whites. If you were male and over 14 years of age and dared utter the word Pokanoket, you could be shot on sight.”

The encampment ultimately had the desired effect, and the resulting agreement between the university and the Pokanoket tribe saw Brown committing to an orderly transfer of land into a preservation trust to ensure appropriate stewardship of the unique historical, sacred and natural resource for generations to come. Part of that agreement included consulting the Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc. to conduct a tribal cultural sensitivity assessment. They recommended that a portion of the Bristol land should be considered a traditional cultural property given specific sites and features of significance and, accordingly, conserved in perpetuity.

Russell Carey, executive vice president for planning and policy at Brown, said the university’s goal has been and remains the preservation of the land, along with sustainable access by Native tribes with ties to its historic sites.

“The 1955 letter from the Haffenreffer Family upon the donation of the Mount Hope property to the University noted that the family felt ‘sure that the Trustees of an institution like Brown will not be unmindful of the property’s great natural beauty, its historical background or the best interests of the Bristol community,’ ” Carey said. “Those words remain as true and relevant today as when they were written nearly 70 years ago, and the steps we are taking to preserve the land in perpetuity are, we believe, fully consistent with that vision.”

Given the significant historical and cultural value of the Mount Hope land to Native peoples in the region, the deed of conveyance for the land transfer — which cannot be amended in the future — states that the Pokanoket “shall at all times and in perpetuity provide and maintain access to the lands and waters of the Property to all members of all Tribes historically part of the Pokanoket Nation/Confederacy, and to all members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation, the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe and the Pocasset Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation.”

The Nov. 15 transfer marks the first of two transactions to formally convey those 255 acres to the preservation trust, and includes the vast majority of that land. Brown is in the process of preparing to move its Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology collections from Bristol to Providence, and the university will retain ownership and control of the parcels where the research collection is held and associated support buildings (museum, barn and outing center) until the collection is fully relocated.

Phase two of the conveyance to the trust will take place when that process is complete. Carey said the university expects to begin moving the museum collection in the fall of 2025 — and while schedules could shift due to the uncertainties of moving thousands of objects, Brown anticipates fully vacating the facilities the museum and collection occupy on the Mount Hope property by summer 2026.

Because the land has been transferred in a “preservation trust,” there are restrictions that would limit future large-scale development, commercial activities, or activities that would significantly alter the natural environment.

Town to purchase, conserve adjacent land

In addition to the 255 acres transferred to the preservation trust, approximately 120 acres of land along the north and south of Tower Road are separate and apart from the Mount Hope property identified by the Public Archaeology Laboratory in consultation with Pokanoket Tribe representatives as being traditional cultural property. Brown has agreed on the terms of a sale and entered into an agreement with the Town of Bristol to transfer those parcels to the town for preservation and conservation.

“The sale of these parcels, which we expect to be finalized early in 2025, to the Town of Bristol for preservation and conservation will ensure that no development occurs on them and further protects and buffers the land being placed in the preservation trust,” Carey said.

“We are pleased we were able to negotiate this deal to conserve this property for the future,” said Town Administrator Steven Contente, of the adjacent land that might have otherwise been sold and developed. “And we are happy the Pokanoket were able to to get the trust established and the land transferred into their control.” To purchase the land, Bristol has received two open space grants from DEM totaling approximately $800,000; and there is a $541,000 grant from the U.S. Forestry Service pending. The remaining $359,000 cost will be borne by the town.

Reached Monday, the day after the Pokanoket made a triumphant return to their land, Sachem Po Pummukoank Anogqs, Dancing Star, Tracey Brown, was joyful.

“For the first time in over 340 years we unlocked the gates to the property for ourselves and walked onto our land. We had been working on getting our land back well before the 2017 occupation, and then actively negotiating with Brown for the last seven years to make this happen,” she said. “At this point, we need to catch our breath and plan to have an assessment done on the property so that we can prioritize what needs to be done going forward.

“We are the original stewards of this land,” Brown continued. “The Creator entrusted us with this land, and we will do nothing less than what needs to be done in the best interest of it.”