USA > Connecticut > A history of Connecticut, its people and institutions, pt 1 > Part 3
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Greenwich was bought of the Indians in 1640, and was under the Dutch government for several years, which was unfortunate for the settlement as the Dutch were hostile to the Indians, and the settlers were in consequence exposed to dangers. The year 1640, also saw the purchase of land on Long Island and the beginning of Southold. In 1641, Rippowams or Stamford was purchased for twelve coats and as many hoes, hatchets, and knives, together with two kettles and four fathoms of white wampum; some of the settlers coming from Wethersfield, under the leadership of Rev. Richard Denton.
In April, 1643, fear of the Indians and of the Dutch caused a union of New Haven, Guilford, Milford and Stam- ford, and this confederacy became a member of the larger confederation of New England, which formed that year. In October, 1643, a constitution was agreed upon, which limited suffrage to church members and established three courts- the Plantation Court for small cases, consisting of "fitt and able" men in each town; the Court of Magistrates, consisting of the governor and three assistants for weighty cases; and
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the General Court, consisting of the magistrates and two deputies for each of the four towns, and this was to sit in New Haven twice a year, to make laws and annually elect magistrates. As trial by jury was not found in the Mosaic law it was dispensed with. In 1649, Southold, in 1651, Branford, and in 1656, Greenwich were admitted to the New Haven Confederacy. These seven towns-New Haven, Guilford, Milford, Stamford, Southold, Branford, and Green- wich-were the only towns that ever belonged to the New Haven Confederacy. Knowing that they were not to be far from Massachusetts, Eaton and Davenport had not brought a military officer, but while at the Bay they discovered a valuable man who had been in the Pequot war, Captain Turner, whom they persuaded to attend the expedition to Quinnipiac, and on November 25, 1639, thirty days after the organization of the court, it was
ordered that every one that bears arms shall be completely furnished with arms; viz., a musket, a sword, bandoleers, a rest, a pound of powder, twenty bullets fitted to the musket, or four pounds of pistol-shot or swan-shot at least, and be ready to show them in the market-place, before Capt. Turner, under the penalty of twenty shillings fine for every default or absence.
Attracted by the fertile meadows ten miles to the west, settlers from Hartford went over the mountain ridge and laid out a beautiful town on the banks of the Tunxis River, buying lands of the Indians, and in 1640, Farmington was incorporated; people from Boston, Cambridge, and Roxbury taking part in the enterprise. In 1646, New London was settled, and two years later more than forty persons joined those who were there, and among them was John Winthrop, Jr. The next town to organize was Stonington, which was settled in 1649, under the leadership of William Cheesborough, a member of the Plymouth Colony. It was at first a part of Massachusetts and was named Southerton; in 1662, it became a part of Connecticut, and was named Stonington.
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Settlement Concluded
Norwalk was settled in 1649, and incorporated in 1651. A committee was appointed in March, 1650, to explore Matta- besett, and it reported that fifteen families might get a living there, and in November, 1653, planters from Wethers- field, Hartford, and England established the settlement of Middletown. The center of every one of these plantations was the meeting-house, which was built after about the same style and composed of wood (except in Guilford where stone was used), and the one in New Haven was fifty feet square, with a roof like a pyramid, ending in a tower and turret. There were also "banisters and rails on the meeting- house top, whence the drummer could summon the people on the Sabbath or when Indians attacked the town."
Preparations for the settlement of Norwich began in Saybrook as early as 1654, under the leadership of the famous and martial Captain John Mason, with whom were associ- ated thirty-four others. Mason had been the friend and adviser of the wily Uncas for twenty-four years, and having frequently visited him, was thoroughly acquainted with the country, and it was doubtless by Mason's influence that Uncas and his two sons appeared at Saybrook in June, 1659, and signed a deed of conveyance, which gave the company of thirty-five proprietors a title to a tract of land of nine square miles at Mohican. There was another reason, for in 1645, Uncas was closely besieged by the Narragansetts, and Captain Mason, who was in command at the Saybrook fort, sent a boat-load of beef, corn, and peas by night, under . the command of Thomas Leffingwell, and Uncas never forgot the favor. Seventy pounds was the price for the land, and since Connecticut had bought it before and paid for it, the English were more than fair with the Indians. Mason was then commissioned by the legislature to buy the rest of the Mohican country, which he did, and a deed of cession was signed in August, 1659, and in the following November, a few settlers made their way to the new town and spent the winter there. The Mohicans assisted them
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in carrying their goods, and soon the town was laid out. The earliest act recorded on the town book was on December II, 1660, and the name Norwich was given to the place about 1662. The settlers were the church of Rev. James Fitch of Saybrook, and the minister was a leading spirit in the enterprise. There was much trouble and litigation in later years between the settlers and the Indians over the title to the lands, since it was claimed that Uncas had made over the title to the lands to Mason to secure them to his tribe, of which Mason was the guardian. One phase of this was the act of Mason in 1671, in making over to the tribe a tract of more than four thousand acres, usually called the sequestered lands. But disputes continued for seventy years over the lands occupied by settlers in Colchester, Windham, Mans- field, Hebron, and some other towns, and it was not until 1743, that the case was settled by a decision to refer the matter to the king in council. The final decision was given in 1767, and it was against the Mohicans, who soon faded away. The same year of the settlement of Norwich, 1660, Suffield was settled, the land having been bought of two sachems for one hundred dollars.
There is a curious story about Lyme, which was settled about 1664, taking at first the name of East Saybrook, that in a controversy with New London over the ownership of a tract of land claimed by both Lyme and its neighbor, it was decided to settle the difficulty by a fight with fists by two champions of the towns rather than to go to the expense of an application to the legislature, and as the advantage was with Lyme, it took possession of the land.
The river towns are the mothers of eleven daughters: Windsor of five-East Windsor, South Windsor, Simsbury, Ellington, and Windsor Locks; Hartford of three-East Hartford, West Hartford, and Manchester; Wethersfield of three-Glastonbury, Rocky Hill, and Newington. In 1662, Windsor began to overflow into East Windsor; the same year the lands forming Haddam and East
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Settlement Concluded
Haddam were bought for thirty coats, worth perhaps a hundred dollars, being soon taken up by twenty-eight young men, mostly from Windsor, Hartford, and Wethers- field, and Haddam was incorporated in 1668. In 1663, the legislature approved of a proposition for a town in what is now Killingworth, and twelve planters from Hart- ford, Windsor, and Guilford moved into it at once, liv- ing on friendly terms with the Indians. In the process of filling in around the older towns, land west of Windsor was bought of the Indians in 1670, and the town of Simsbury settled, though six years later, the inhabitants, alarmed by the hostility of the Indians, buried their goods and went back to Windsor, and the savages destroyed every vestige of improvement so completely that on the return of the settlers they could scarcely find their property. As we have seen, in 1638, "New Haven village" was purchased, and it was not until 1670, that it was settled, and then it was called Wallingford, and four years later it received its own minister.
In 1672, the legislature granted liberty to William Curtis and others to make a plantation at Pomeraug; two years later, the settlement was constituted a town with the name of Woodbury, and Southbury was settled the same year. In 1673, a number of the inhabitants of Farmington obtained permission of the legislature to investigate the lands on the Naugatuck, then called Mattatuck, now Waterbury; the dis- tresses of King Philip's war delayed the purchase and settle- ment, but in 1677, there were a few temporary huts on the east bank of the river, and in 1686, it was incorporated and the name changed to Waterbury. The settlement of Dan- bury, one of the county seats of Fairfield County, began in 1683. In 1675, Joshua, son of Uncas, the Mohican sachem, gave by will to Captain John Mason and fifteen others the tract containing Windham, Mansfield, and Canterbury, and in May, 1686, the main streets of Windham were laid out. In 1659, Governor Winthrop obtained permission of the legislature to buy a large tract of land, which in 1689, was
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sold to people from Massachusetts, who settled Plainfield, and lived on friendly terms with the numerous Indians in the neighborhood.
The organization of the towns stimulated vigor and individuality, furnishing a bulwark of singular pertinacity, and one method of strengthening this was the giving so many people something to do in public affairs. "Every town had two or more townsmen, or, as they came to be called toward the end of the seventeenth century, selectmen, also justices of the peace, constables, town clerk, treasurer, highway surveyors-sometimes to the number of twenty, fence-view- ers, listers, collectors of taxes, leather-sealers, grand jurors, tithing-men, haywards, or guardians of the boundaries, chimney-viewers, gaugers, packers, sealers of weights and measures, key-keepers, recorders of sheep marks, branders of horses, and others. These offices gave more or less of influence and authority, and a little salary to many men. If the oldest office in the town was the constable, the oldest institution was the pound, which is said to be older than the kingdom in the history of England. Before the community was recognized as a civic or religious unit, the settlers were given permission to "make and maintain a pound," some- times without conditions, sometimes subject to the approval of the town from which the settlement was made. The next step was often a request for "winter privileges," with a remission of one half of the ministerial taxes; this was the case where the settlement was six or eight miles from the center. Sometimes the "liberty of a minister" was asked for at first, and sometimes, when the call was made for a pound there was also a petition for a separate church. Then followed the incorporation of the society by a charter from the legislature, following which was election of officers. Glastonbury stepped at once into the possession of the full privileges of a town. Towns were less republican than now, more overshadowed by the General Court, and questions regarding religious differences, choice of sites for meeting-
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houses, organization of ministers, and settlement of ministers were decided by the legislature, with or without the request of the town. In the first sixty years it was easy to obtain permission to form a new town, but later on it was differ- ent, and some towns petitioned years for the privileges of incorporation. The settlement of the commonwealth was promoted by the coming of many settlers from England during the disturbances of the Puritan uprising, as well as by church quarrels and Anglo-Saxon enterprise.
CHAPTER IV
THE INDIANS
O NE of the most powerful influences affecting the early life of the settlers was that of the aborigines, the Indians, who belonged to the Algonkin stock, members of which were found from Labrador to South Carolina; King Philip, Powhatan, Pocahontas, and Black Hawk, who have appealed most to our novelists and dramatists, were all of Algonkin lineage. It is believed that widespread pestilences had carried off many of the natives, so that the process of taking possession of the country was less difficult than it would have been a few years earlier. It was trying enough as it was, for the Indians were swift, wary, cruel in war, shrewd in council, ingenious and skillful with their devices. The name Connecticut is the same as the name of the Indi- ans dwelling on its banks, and it vividly reminds us of the tribal title of the people, whose rude faces looked on the first boat-load of settlers ascending the river. It is pure guesswork to try to estimate the number of the Connecticut Indians. There is evidence that the Pequots could muster six hundred warriors, and it is probable that they were as numerous as all the other tribes of Connecticut combined. The Quinnipiacs extended along the shore from Milford to Madison, holding the bay of New Haven and the little rivers that empty into it as fishing-places. Yet when they sold their country in 1638, to Davenport and his associates, they could state that the number of men of their tribe was
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Whitefield House, Guilford, in 1640. This Is the Oldest House in Connecticut, and the Oldest Stone-house in New England
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The Indians
only forty-seven, their total population being but two hun- dred souls. The sea-coast was the most thickly peopled, and next to this the river courses, on account of the fishing. The Paugussetts, who inhabited Stratford, Huntington, and the surrounding townships, and the Wepawaugs, who lived opposite them on the east bank of the Housatonics, were similar people, and were not very numerous. Litch- field County, the northern part of Fairfield County, and the western part of Hartford County were an uninhabited wilderness. On the Farmington River, ten miles west of Hartford, lived a small tribe, the Tunxis Indians, who, according to tradition, had been conquered some years before by the Stockbridge Indians. There was evidently a considerable tribe in the vicinity of Hartford, or it may have been a confederacy, as some of the same names are found attached to deeds in the town records from Windsor to Middletown. They embraced the bands that Blok in 1614, described as the "nation called the Sequins," with lodges on both sides of the river at or above the great bend at Middletown, and also the Nawaas with their fortified town at South Windsor. The capital of the Sequins, or Wangunks as they were afterwards called, was Middletown, and their chieftain Sowheag sold Wethersfield to the settlers. Allied with him was Sequasson, sachem of Hartford. In East Hartford and East Windsor lived the Podunks. There was a small clan in Haddam and East Haddam, much given to religious ceremonies, and who "drove a prodigious trade at worshiping the devil," being aided in their superstitious ceremonies by the earthquake shocks, or whatever else it was-the famous "Moodus noises"-prevailing in early times. Tolland and Windham counties had a scattered population of Nipmucks, who were peculiarly degraded and repulsive.
The Pequots, the most numerous, the fiercest, the brav- est of all the tribes of Connecticut, had two forts at Mystic, but their wigwams extended for miles along the stony hills
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of New London County, a district of about five hundred square miles; their northernmost community, the Mohicans, living on the Thames where Norwich and the neighboring towns are now. Pequots and Mohicans were of the same race as the Hudson River Mohicans, and not much before 1600, it is supposed that they abandoned their lodges on the Hudson and fought their way into southeastern Connecticut, killing and driving out the Indians there, going by way of Massachusetts, as Pequot traditions agree in asserting that they migrated from the north shortly before the arrival of the English. It is probable that the predecessors of the Pequots and Mohicans were of the same family as the Narragansetts; and since the Niantics of Lyme were con- nected with the Niantics of Rhode Island, and Sequasson, chief of Farmington and Connecticut River countries, was a connection of the Narragansett sachems, and the Indians of Windsor were closely united to the Wepawaugs of Milford, it appears reasonable that before the Pequots came upon the scene, the Rhode Island and Connecticut Indians were of one great family or confederation.
The interloping Pequots found themselves in a large and attractive country, furnishing ample food supply, and their fierce war parties swept into the Narragansett country on the east; and thrice their armies came into collision with Sequasson, the most powerful of the sachems of central Connecticut. Sequasson was completely overthrown, and became their subject until relieved by the English. The Pequots conquered as far as the bay of New Haven, com- pelling the Quinnipiacs to pay tribute. Then they crossed in their canoes to Long Island and to Block Island and extorted tribute there. The sagamore of the Mohicans was Uncas, a man of powerful build, and heir apparent to the Pequot sachemdom through the female line, his mother being aunt to the reigning sachem when the English moved to the river. Growing proud, and becoming treacherous, it is said, to the reigning sachem, he suffered repeated hum-
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blings, and was driven from his country, and permitted to return only on the promise of submission.
After Wapegoot, the Pequot sachem, was slain, Uncas made claim to the sachemdom, but the aggressive Sassacus was chosen, and he with his twenty-six war captains became a terror to Uncas and the River Indians. The Narragan- setts were the only tribe in New England which the Pequots had not conquered, and there was perpetual war between the two tribes. Canonicus was chief of the Narragansetts, but his wily nephew, Miantonomo, was the ruling spirit.
There was another reason why Uncas and the Indians on the river cordially welcomed the coming of the English, and that was the hostility of the Mohawks, fierce members of the Five Nations of the Iroquois in central New York, who were the leading Indian power in North America. The Connecticut Indians were in deadly fear of the Hudson River Indians, and when a band of those warriors appeared they fled with the cry, "The Mohawks are coming." The Mo- hawks would cry out, "We are come, we are come to suck your blood." When the Connecticut Indians could not escape to their forts, they would run into English houses for shelter, and sometimes the Mohawks would pursue so closely as to enter with them, and kill them in the presence of the family, if there was not time to shut the door, but they would never enter by force, nor would they injure the Eng- lish. Every summer, two old Mohawks would visit the River Indians, issuing orders and collecting tribute. Up and down the Connecticut valley they passed, seizing wampum and weapons, and proclaiming the last stern edict of the savage council of Onondaga, heedless of the scowling Mohicans and Sequins, ground between Mohawks and Pequots.
The Indians were large, straight, well-built men, capable of enduring excessive hardships and torture. They could run a hundred miles in a summer day. They were unclean in their habits and cruel to the last degree. As a warrior
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the Indian was a master, reveling in war. The approved tactics of our day are those which Indians developed, which the whites learned from them at large expense. Discipline was preserved, yet there was abundant opportunity for personal initiative. Their methods of signal service, finding and using cover, scouting, gaining information, keeping in touch with the enemy, learning as much as possible of the foe without self-betrayal, became a revelation to men familiar only with European ways. It is too much to say that the United States owes to Indians its independence, but they emphasized the value of individual effort, and taught a new science of warfare, by which the colonial troops harassed the British regulars to desperation, and overmatched English pluck and endurance.
The claim that a few Indians-perhaps six thousand- had a property right over great forest lands which they did not clear and till, whose boundaries they did not mark, on which they had no fixed habitation, about whose ownership they did not fight with one another, except over game, is about as reasonable as would be the claims of the bears of the wilds. As a rule the whites paid the Indians all the lands were worth, and saved not a few from death at the hands of other Indians. Pequots were interlopers equally with the English; they tortured captives to death, cut large gashes in the flesh and poured in live coals, and made sufferers eat pieces of their own bodies. True, it was a cruel age; torture was a civil institution in England and Scotland. As late as 1646, a woman had her tongue nailed to a board at Henley-on-the-Thames, because she complained of a tax levied by Parliament. Frontenac burned prisoners at the stake in 1692. It was a common thing for European armies to kill all prisoners.
It is not strange that the Indians should have been jealous of the English. It could not be otherwise when men determined, aggressive, and not too gentle, came in contact with a people little above the brutes, whose religion
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was a kind of pantheism; the sun a god, the moon a goddess; every fish, bird, reptile, tree, endued with mysterious powers; whose religious leaders were conjurers; whose good god Kiehtan was a cloudy bewilderment of goodness, whom they thanked for favors; whose devil Hobbamocke received the majority of their prayers and offerings; whose women were slavish beasts of burden; whose ruling ... passions were ambition, envy, jealousy, revenge; whose treachery was surpassed by their suspicion of the treachery of others. "They are a people," wrote Edward Winslow, "without any religion or knowledge of God." Mather and Eliot were obliged to use the English word for the supreme being in describing their beliefs. They had no sacred days or machin- ery of religion, hence nothing entitled to the name of reli- gious sentiments. The medicine-man or powwow was not so much a priest as a conjurer, a healer of diseases, and supposed to control the elements by virtue of mystic arts. The Algonkins had a myth-cycle of the rabbit, like the tar-baby tales. From the burial customs it is evident that Indians had some idea of a future life, but the belief in a happy hunting-ground is more radiant in the imagination of sentimental writers than in the faith of "these dregs of mankind," as their faithful friend, Roger Williams, called them; after extended experience with them, he said, "There is no fear of God before their eyes; and all the cords that ever bound the barbarians to foreigners were made of self and covetousness." In a letter to Winslow, Williams wrote, "Lying, stealing, lying and uncleanness are Indian epidemical sins."
The head chiefs were in absolute authority, surrounded by courtiers, the largest, wisest, bravest men, a bodyguard firm and undaunted, trained from boyhood by coarse fare and whips. The mugwump was head of a subtribal band, the boss of the concern; the hereditary sachem entertained travelers and ambassadors; he was brave, subtle, and some- times eloquent, careful to move in accordance with the
3
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wishes of the people. Indians usually hunted alone, but sometimes grand hunts were organized. Their dwelling places were made of poles set firmly in the ground, bent together and fastened at the top; the sides were covered with boughs, thatched with rushes or bark. Sanitary laws and cleanliness were unknown, and the diseases few but deadly, for want of proper treatment, and when the small- pox appeared it swept away hundreds of the people. Quin- sies, pleurisies, rheumatisms, and quick consumption were common, and toothache a dreaded malady; Roger Wil- liams records the fact that while they could endure every other pain with fortitude, this was too much for their resolu- tion, and they would cry and groan after the most piteous fashion.
For curatives they used sweating, and sometimes purged the system with herbs, which they knew how to select. One mode of sweating was by standing closely wrapped over a hole in the earth containing a heated stone. Another was to remain an hour or more in a little cabin or sweating hut, which was always on the bank of a pond or stream, so that when the patient had perspired sufficiently, he could finish the prescription by a swift plunge in the water. But another method was considered vastly more efficacious, and the practitioner was the powwow, who began his treatment after receiving a present, the size of which regulated his violence and effectiveness. Attiring himself like a wild beast or gorgon, he entered the presence of the patient and began in a low tone to invoke the deities, singing and gestur- ing; becoming frantic and violent he closed with furious howls and shouts; the sick man, forgetting his pain, joined in the hideous song. After the powwow had exhausted himself and worked out his gift, he breathed a few times on the patient, and went away. If the disease was too deep and death came, friends would visit the mourners, stroking gently cheek or head and saying, "Be of good cheer." Then a respected man would adorn the body with such ornaments
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