The mountain called by this name is a remarkable precipice in Great
Barrington, overlooking the rich and picturesque valley of the
Housatonic, in the western part of Massachusetts. At the southern
extremity is, or was a few years since, a conical pile of small stones,
erected, according to the tradition of the surrounding country, by the
Indians, in memory of a woman of the Stockbridge tribe who killed
herself by leaping from the edge of the precipice. Until within a few
years past, small parties of that tribe used to arrive from their
settlement in the western part of the State of New York, on visits to
Stockbridge, the place of their nativity and former residence. A young
woman belonging to one of these parties related, to a friend of the
author, the story on which the poem of Monument Mountain is founded. An
Indian girl had formed an attachment for her cousin, which, according to
the customs of the tribe, was unlawful. She was, in consequence, seized
with a deep melancholy, and resolved to destroy herself. In company with
a female friend, she repaired to the mountain, decked out for the
occasion in all her ornaments, and, after passing the day on the summit
in singing with her companion the traditional songs of her nation, she
threw herself headlong from the rock, and was killed.
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