You may not have learned about the 19th century Anti-Rent Wars in your high school history class, but the story of indentured farmers fighting for their land and freedom is well-known in parts of the Catskills and Hudson Valley.
Shut out from purchasing their land, upstate New Yorkers who organized and disguised themselves as “Calico Indians” resisted rental payments to wealthy landowners.
The story of resistance, the 1845 killing of a Delaware County undersheriff, a government crackdown, and later, changing public sentiment and land reform, is told through the voices of the descents of the Anti-Rent movement.
The documentary will be screened on Sunday at the New York State Museum in Albany, organized by WMHT.
Lucas Willard spoke with filmmakers Victoria Kupchinetsky and Misha Gutkin about their documentary, “The Calico Rebellion."
Victoria Kupchinetsky: This is a great example of how local politics, seemingly local politics, grows into something grand, really national. The ideas of the Anti-Rent War became the inspiration for the land reform in the United States in in in the 19th century, and some of the rebels, participants, of the war also later participated in creating the Republican Party, which was for free soil and free people, anti-slavery party. Very progressive ideas for the mid-19th century. So, all in all, we feel just so incredibly lucky to by chance stumble upon this story, and we feel that we've made a little our little immigrant contribution into the history and culture of this country. And every time people come to see the film, we feel very grateful.
Lucas Willard: So, I want to talk about just some of the visual aspects of the film. There's interviews with people who are part of the families who originally took part in the Anti-Rent Wars in the 1840s, and as part of that, there is the very striking costumes and masks that were worn by the Calico Indians in the 1840s. One in particular opens the film and is carried through. This is an original leather mask. It has horns and it's really spooky looking. What do you think of these costumes, and why was it so important to feature those so prominently in the film?
Victoria Kupchinetsky: We didn't want to make this very abstract historical narrative where very important and intelligent experts sit in front of the camera and kind of talk about the big context and big ideas. We really wanted to create something that is the voice of the town, the voice of this land, the voice of these counties where the rebellion happened. So, as we started researching, we found a lot of descendants and people in nearby little towns in Andes and Delhi and Rensselaer County, in other counties, in Margaretville, and they all cherished this past. And then, of course, we met the Hubbell family. The Hubbell family is the family that has preserved this this original 1840s costume that that was made by probably the women in in the family in their family. So, that was a great kind of grain, grain of truth, grain of reality in our film. People think that it's some kind of reenactment. “Somebody made this costume as a as a replica of the 19th century.” No, and we make a point of showing at the very end, revealing that this person who walks in this really bizarre and spooky costume is a descendant of the rebellious farmers, and this is the original outfit that they used in 1840s.
Misha Gutkin: When we saw this costume and depictions of other costumes, we said, “This is incredible.” And the costumes, some of them are around, but not too many. And we were really lucky because we found this Hubble families that preserve this costume, and there is not a lot of them around because when the crackdown came in 1845, after Sheriff Steele was murdered in Andes, the National Guard, the militia were going house to house, and the possession of this costume became evidence of participating in the crime. So, a lot of these customs were destroyed, and very few survived. And we were so lucky to have found this one. We found another one, which is now in Andes Society for History and Culture. It was donated there. So….and it's just I don't know. It's just incredible the process of discovering this and finding this costume, finding the people who keep them, who have memories of their fathers having this costume, putting it on once in a while to. Maybe to pull the children or something. It's just an incredible journey,
Lucas Willard: And the connection that the families have to this history, I think, is very unusual. When we're talking about Andes, this is a very small community and a part of the western Catskills that not a ton of people know about or go to, but this history that had such, really, if you draw the connection from the Anti-Rent Wars to the formation of the Republican Party and later the election of Abraham Lincoln, based on the ideas that were forged in parts of upstate New York, in part, this is such an important part of American history, and I think it's rare that we have so many people in one place still connected directly to such a consequential, if small and relatively unknown, event.
Victoria Kupchinetsky: And to us, as immigrants from the former Soviet Union, this was especially important and meaningful because we come from a country where the past was always, like very often, most of the times, destroyed and eliminated from the photographs, from the history books. And there is no...I'm going to sound grand, but there is no nation without its past. There is no national identity, national character without its past. So, to us, it was so rewarding to discover these little villages, a population 1,000 people, 1,300 people, 800 people, and they do carry this history, this past with them. And they pass it on to their children from generation to generation. And…we didn't prepare them. They would just sit in front of the camera and tell the story. So, it was so immediate to them. So, to us, it was kind of even more important. We just recognized it, as the importance of it, as people who came from a completely different environment.
