UMass Boson Students Topple Rock With Offensive Name From 1920 - Immovable 'Indian Head Stone' On Its Side (Boson Globe) 19 Nov 2020

 

(Staff) The large bolder on Lookout Hill at the University of Massachusetts at Boson campus was targeted by student radicals and Boson Black Lives Matter activists as 'an offensive racist symbol that makes students of color and therefore black students feel unsafe.' 

The immovable bolder has been in place since at least before the first English settlers arrived in 1630 and wrote about the 'large bolder with native symbols' at the top of what they dubbed 'Lookout Hill' after the natives Outlook Hill appellation. 

After chiselling off the pagan symbols of the Indians after getting rid of the Native Americans with King Philips war the English of the town of Boson began to call the glacial stone "Indian Head Stone."  People would go to climb on top of the rock and get a view of the Neponset River and Boson Harbour and have picnics after church in the 1890's.  Later, when Boson got a branch of the University of Massachusetts Lookout Hill was made a part of the campus greens.  A plaque was added in 1920 honoring the first president of the college Hoover F. Thatcher.  The bronze attachment also calls the rock "Indian Head Stone."

"I get shivers of fear very time I hear the words," said a masked activist who asked not to be named.  "I don't go to this school, and I don't live in Boson, I came from Quincy on my bike.  But just to think of this daily insult to Native Americans is enough to make any just person sick.  If you don't think there is something wrong here, you need to look in the mirror, because you are siding with Christopher Columbus and Saint Junipero Serra who enslaved native Americans.  We are on stolen land.  White silence equals violence.  Get out and topple a statue and show that you care about the future of humanity!"  

Almost two hundred people where used to overturn the glacial bolder probably resting in that spot since the last glaciers retreated from the Massachusetts area about 10,000 years ago.  They did have a large truck and grappling straps and hooks.  Some of the protesters wore safety helmets and steel toed boots for safety.  

Police in riot gear stood nearby with orders not to intervene in the mostly peaceful protest.