major attractions. An account of the town's early history was written by local historian George Sheldon and published in the late nineteenth century. By this time, South Deerfield and other New England villages were already absorbing a new wave of Eastern European immigration, particularly from Poland. The new people influenced Deerfield's demographics and culture. They were mostly Catholic peasants, who built their own churches and first worked as laborers, forming a community later known as Old Polonia. Later twentieth-century immigrants from Poland tended to be more educated, but settled in the larger cities. Immigrants in smaller communities followed different paths, and their descendants often moved to cities for more opportunities. Greenfield Pocumtuck Indians first settled and originally inhabited the Greenfield area. Native American artifacts found in the area have been dated as originating between 7,000 and 9,000 years BC. The Pocumtucks planted field crops and fished the rivers, but were wiped out as a tribe by the Mohawks in 1664. Thereafter, the newly unoccupied area - being the eastern terminus of the Mohawk Trail, a principal route for Native American trade traveling west into New York - was colonized by the English in 1686 as part of Deerfield. In 1753, Greenfield was set off from Deerfield and incorporated as a separate town, named for the Green River. In 1795, the South Hadley Canal opened, allowing boats to bypass the South Hadley falls and reach Greenfield via the Connecticut River. Located at the confluence of the Deerfield and Green rivers, and not far from where they merge into the Connecticut River, Greenfield developed into a trade center. It was designated county seat when Franklin County was created from Hampshire County in 1811. Falls provided water power for industry, and Greenfield grew into a prosperous mill town. Culture Hampshire County Residents benefit from a rich cultural array of fine arts, performances, notable architecture and sidewalks of strolling scientists and literary VIPs – mostly in the college towns and in Springfield. According to the 2010 Census, per capita, Northampton has the highest concentration of lesbians in the United States, and perhaps the world. Hampshire County is certainly the "Valley full o' Pioneer ... in the sleepy west of the woody east", of which the Pixies sang in the song "U-Mass". Springfield Springfield's cultural contributions to the United States and world at large have been so numerous that here, only brief descriptions of very