Kanatsiohareke: The Mohawks Come Home

On the north bank of the Mohawk River near Fonda, New York, a small farm carries an outsized story. This is Kanatsiohareke, a Mohawk word meaning "the place of the clean pot." The Kanien'kehaka, the Mohawk people, cultivated corn here for generations.

After the Revolutionary War they were forced from the valley and scattered, most eventually resettled at Akwesasne and elsewhere. They carried with them a prophecy: someday they would return. In September of nineteen ninety-three, a group of Mohawks left Akwesasne, purchased this farm at auction, and began rebuilding.

It was the first lasting Mohawk community in the Mohawk Valley in more than two hundred years, though an earlier attempt in nineteen fifty-eight had been driven out by local farmers. Today the community offers language immersion programs and cultural gatherings, keeping the Kanien'keha language alive in the valley where it was born.