both agriculture and trading- in modern-day Agawam, adjacent to modern Metro Center, Springfield. In 1636, a group of English colonists—lured by the promise of a "great river" and the northeast's most fertile farmland—ventured to Springfield, where they established a permanent colony. Originally, this settlement was called Agawam Plantation, and administered by the Connecticut Colony. (Springfield lies only 4 miles north of Connecticut; however, Agawam included lands as far south as Windsor Locks, as far north as Holyoke, and as far west as Westfield.) In 1640, Springfield voted to separate from the Connecticut Colony following a series of contentious incidents, and after a brief period of independence, decided to align with the coastal Massachusetts Bay Colony, shaping the region's political boundaries. The Massachusetts Bay Colony settled at the Connecticut River Valley's most fertile land - stretching from Windsor, Connecticut, (once part of Springfield,) to Northampton, Massachusetts - from 1636 to 1654. For the next several decades, Native people experienced a complex relationship with European settlers. The fur trade stood at the heart of their economic interactions, a lucrative business that guided many other policy decisions. White settlers traded wampum, cloth and metal in exchange for furs, as well as horticultural produce. Because of the seasonal nature of goods provided by Native people, compared with the constant availability of colonial goods, a credit system developed. Land, the natural resource whose availability did not fluctuate, served as collateral for mortgages in which Native people bought goods from the colonists in exchange for the future promise of beavers. However, trade with the colonists made pelts so lucrative that the beaver was rapidly overhunted. The volume of the trade fell, from a 1654 high of 3723 pelts to a mere 191 ten years later. With every mortgage, Native people lost more land, although their population recovered and expanded from the old plague. In a process that historian Lisa Brooks calls "the deed game", colonists acquired an increasing amount of land from Indian tribes through debt, fraudulent purchases and a variety of other methods. Native people began to construct and gather in palisaded “forts” - structures that were not necessary beforehand. These sites were excavated in the 19th and 20th centuries by anthropologists who took cultural objects and human remains and displayed them for years in area museums. With the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990, a long process