What is the Monument in Monument Mountain Reservation?
There is a legend that has survived over time about a young Mahican maiden who fell in love with her cousin. This was considered a taboo in the Mahican culture. William Cullen Bryant, a Great Barrington resident and America’s first acclaimed poet, wrote a poem about the beautiful Mahican maiden and her unlawful love. Titled “Monument Mountain”, his poem in excerpts follows: “There is a tale about these reverend rocks, a sad tradition of unhappy love. She loved her cousin: such a love was deemed by the morality of those stern tribes, incestuous, and she struggled hard and long, against her love, and reasoned with her heart. All that look on me, do seem to know my shame, I cannot bear their eyes: I cannot from my heart root out, the love that wrings it so, and I must die…when the sun grew low and the hill shadows long, she threw herself from the steep rock and perished…and o’er the mould that covered her, the tribe built up a simple monument, a cone of small loose stones. Thence forw
