USA > Connecticut > A history of Connecticut, its people and institutions, pt 1 > Part 5
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who seemed to the independent sachems as intruders and usurpers. John Sausaman, a Christian Indian, who had once been a subject of Philip, told the English of the plot. Philip secured the murder of Sausaman. The murderers were tried by English laws and executed. Philip armed his subjects and began to march up and down the country. In June, he made an attack on Swanzey near Mount Hope, killing nine and wounding seven of the people. Other places in the neighborhood were attacked, and the colonies sent soldiers against them. The Narragansetts did not enter very cordially into the alliance, which Philip sought to make as general as possible. They did harbor the old men and women of their warlike neighbors. The chiefs of the Narragansetts, with Canonchet at their head, for a time resisted the appeals of Philip, and a treaty was forced from them which they soon violated. The commissioners of the United Colonies, convinced that the Narragansetts were aiding Philip, decided that an army of a thousand men should be sent against the Indian headquarters in the Nar- ragansett country. Of these Connecticut furnished three hundred Englishmen, and one hundred and fifty Pequot and Mohican Indians, with Major Treat in command.
On December 18, 1675, these made a junction with the Massachusetts and Plymouth forces. Wading through the snow until about one o'clock, they reached the vicinity of the Indian fort, which was on a hill in the center of a great swamp. The fort was attacked with spirit, and after con- siderable loss was taken and given to the flames; hundreds of the Indian · warriors were killed, many captured, and many perished in the snow. It was a costly victory for the colonists, as eighty were killed or mortally wounded, and the sufferings on the return were extreme. Of the five Connecticut captains, three, Seely, Gallup, and Marshall were killed, and Captain Mason died of a wound nine months afterwards. It was a fearful winter for many towns in Massachusetts, as the enemy had lost their dwellings and
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provisions, and there was little to detain them in Rhode Island. March brought disasters to Northampton, Spring- field, Chelmsford, Groton, Sudbury, and Marlborough; Northfield, Hadley, and Deerfield were also sufferers. Con- necticut troops with many faithful Pequots under Majors Talcott and Treat ranged through the country back and forth, destroying many warriors and capturing others, and at length the war came to an end. It is impossible to esti- mate the number of Indians engaged. About six hundred of the sturdiest men in the colonies were killed and wounded, and the country was in mourning. Connecticut suffered nothing from the ravages of the enemy in this war, but it was a time of dread; palisades were erected, guns kept within reach, garrison houses built, heavy expenses incurred, but the country was rid of a dangerous enemy by a campaign determined and thorough. The most serious loss was incurred in the great swamp fight, and the valor of the soldiers was thus described by the General Assembly:
There died many brave officers and sentinels whose memory is blessed, and whose death redeemed our lives. The bitter cold, the tarled swamp, the tedious march, the strong fort, the numer- ous and stubborn enemy they contended with, for their God, King, country, be their trophies our death. Our mourners over all the colony witness for our men that they were not unfaithful in that day.
Despite all that has been said to disparage the treatment the Indians received at the hands of the whites, the careful student of the times must admit that it was fair. In the nature of the case there were cases of meanness, cruelty, and revenge. There were men, who, after seeing wife and chil- dren butchered in cold blood in midnight assault, spent the remainder of their days in killing with a kind of mania, a method which partook of the severity of the savage race, and there were many whites who fell below the purpose which filled the minds of some of the noblest of the Puritans when
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they came hither: "the glory of God, and the everlasting welfare of these poore, naked sonnes of Adam." But there were efforts made to teach and evangelize them. In 1650, the colony made some provision for their religious education. In 1654, the General Court, lamenting that so little had been done through want of an able interpreter, ordered that Thomas Myner of Pequot (New London) send his son John to Hartford "where this Court will provide for his maintenance and schooling, to the end that he may be, for the present, assistant to interpret the things of God to them as he shall be directed." Rev. Abraham Pierson of Bran- ford learned the Indian language and preached to the Indi- ans; Fitch and Narber did likewise. Gookin and John Eliot entered the colony for the same purpose, but only the scantiest results followed. In 1657, John Eliot, "the apostle to the Indians," was in Hartford at a council of minis- ters, and desiring to preach to the natives, some of the Podunks across the river were gathered to listen to him. He spoke to them in their own language, and when they were urged to become Christians, they answered angrily, saying that the English had taken away their land and now they were attempting to make the Podunks their servants. It is not strange that men who were addicted to war, revenge, and laziness should have found little in the Bible to please them. The friendly and patient Rev. James Fitch of Nor- wich did everything in his power to Christianize the Mohi- cans, preaching to them in 1671, and later, but he was forced to admit that "Uncas and Owenico at first carried it teachably and tractably, till they discerned that practical religion would throw down their heathenish idols, and the tyrannical authority of the sachems; then they went away and threw off their people, some by flatteries, some by threats." Embittered by their poverty and misery before the advancing prosperity of the English, the Indians were in no mood to receive, with the humility required, the teach- ings of their conquerors, though the commissioners of the
. A Pastoral Scene in Woodstock. Pulpit Rock in Foreground, from which John Eliot Preached to the Indians in 1670
Bissell's Ferry in Windsor, in Continuous Operation since about 1645 Redrawn from an Old Print
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United Colonies voted money for their education in New Haven. Stone, Newton, and Hooker taught in Farmington an Indian school from 1648, to 1697, and further records of the school are dated 1733-36. At one time there were fifteen Tunxis Indians in the school, and in the list of church members of the Farmington church are the names of Solomon Mossock, admitted June, 1763, and Eunice Mossock, ad- mitted in September, 1765. In 1728, a grandson of Captain John Mason taught the Mohicans English and religion, receiving for his services fifteen pounds, and in 1727, a law was passed ordering masters and mistresses to teach their Indian servants to read English, and also the Christian faith by catechizing them, under a penalty of not over forty shillings. In 1733, the legislature made an appropriation for the Indian school at Farmington, and in 1736, contribu- tions for Indian education were ordered from the churches at the next Thanksgiving.
The most celebrated school for the Indians was the "Moor Indian Charity School" in Lebanon. Samson Occum, who had been converted in 1740, in the Great Awak- ening, applied to Rev. Eleazer Wheelock, the pastor in Lebanon, who began preaching to the Indians in 1735; the application was made in 1745, and for three years the young Mohican received instruction from Wheelock. In 1754, Joshua Moor left, after death, his house and two acres for a school. Wheelock gathered pupils in that house, beginning, in 1754, with two Delawares; soon others followed. In 1762, there were over twenty: one Mohican, six Mohawks, and the rest Delawares. Contributions came in from various quarters. Four Indian girls were taught sewing and housework. Occum was ordained by the presbytery of Suffolk Long Island in 1759, and he became a suc- cessful preacher to his people, though it is painful to be obliged to say that this lonely and comparatively respecta- ble product of Christianity among the Indians vibrated between drunkenness and repentance. Thackeray would
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say that he wept over his sins until he grew thirsty, then drank again.
Like similar schools in later days, the treasury was usually empty, and in 1766, Occum and Nathanael Whitaker went to Great Britain for money. The presence of the Mohican there made a decided sensation, and there were large contri- butions to the Lebanon school; the king gave two hundred pounds, Lord Dartmouth fifty pounds, and soon seven thousand pounds was gathered from England and two thousand from Scotland. In 1770, the school moved to some lands that were opening in Hanover, New Hampshire, and it became the foundation of Dartmouth College. Here and there the Indians lingered in Connecticut, with an occasional "praying Indian" like good old Mamousin of the Mattabesetts, but most of them were ignorant, poor, de- graded, and licentious-miserable relics of a barbarous race.
This story from that stern, fierce age is too bloody to be romantic, too bitter and cruel to be proud of, too sad to dwell upon longer. It is a story of courage and daring on both sides. It is not strange that the Indians should have hated the English, when they saw their hunting-grounds vanishing. Nothing short of miracles could have prevented injustice and ill-feeling. The destruction of the Pequots and the Narragansetts has been stigmatized as cruel by critics, sitting in their studies or on their verandas, but there was only one issue-to destroy or be destroyed. The struggle had to come, soon or late. Indians, wolves, and panthers were doomed to death or exile. The work of extermination was done in a grim age thoroughly, save for a few that yielded to the civilizing influences so patiently exerted: some went to newer parts of the country; some stayed in Connecticut communities, as slaves or thievish, drunken remnants of a race in which civilization found thin soil. The descendants now living in the state are hardly enough to count.
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CHAPTER VI FORMING THE GOVERNMENT
T' "HE process of establishing a government over a new state by men of such decided ideas and keen consciences was a difficult one, and they could not take the mother colony of Massachusetts as a model in every respect because, as we have seen, their settlement on the Connecticut was due in part to a protest against the methods of the Bay State. New ground had to be broken in the forming of constitution and laws, and the process was necessarily one of evolution. As soon as the sharp collision with the Pequots was over, the able men, with whom the young commonwealth was well supplied, addressed themselves resolutely to the task of establishing a system of laws which would make perma- nent and secure the principles which had led to the migration.
It is impossible to understand the early conditions without taking notice of the fact that Springfield was settled at the same time with Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield. In 1635, William Pynchon, the principal man of Roxbury, Massachusetts, with the main body of the church and com- munity, followed the Indian trail, the famous Bay Path, westward until he reached Agawam or Springfield, at the intersection of a trail north and south,-a convenient center for trade in furs; and near Enfield Falls, Pynchon built a warehouse, at a place now called Warehouse Point, conve- nient for the Agawam settlers. From the first, the emi- grants on the Connecticut were recognized as four distinct
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companies, and William Pynchon and Henry Smith repre- sented the Roxbury party.
There is one thing to be made clear at this point and that is that the towns did not migrate as towns; not one half of the Dorchester people went to Connecticut; of the ten townsmen elected in 1634, only three went; of the nine elected in 1635, only three went, and of the thirteen later, only four migrated. There is nothing in the records to indicate a removal or reorganization. The assessment lists of Massachusetts contain the names of Newtowne, Dor- chester, and Watertown after 1636. Companies from those towns migrated and not towns. In each of the three settle- ments on the Connecticut there was the embryo of a town, which in four years came into organization, having of course local management from the first, but the government was purely democratic, and not the government of an independ- ent town. The settlements were forced to form a provi- sional government early, for the dreams of trading with the Indians as a lucrative line of business in addition to farming soon changed into the stark proposition of fighting the fiercest tribe in New England. The agricultural settlements changed into armed camps, and farmers into soldiers.
The first government was provisional, and was under the authority of Massachusetts, which gave her first recog- nition of the Connecticut plantations in June, 1635, ap- pointing one of the settlers as constable, "sworn constable of the plantations, till some other be chosen." Three months later, permission was given by the mother colony for the loan of military stores, and the election by each plantation of its own constable, who was to be sworn in by a magistrate of the Bay Colony. The constable was a com- mander of militia, and the first organization was for defense. When Massachusetts was forced to allow the churches to emigrate, the Newtowne church came to Hartford in the spring of 1636, with its two ministers, and a new stage of organization began. It is clear that the church organiza-
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tion did not coincide then with the town organization; it certainly did not in Wethersfield, where seven men consti- tuted the legal church, while there were more than fifty in the plantation. At a later time town and church were one, but at first the township was broader than the parish.
In March, 1636, the Massachusetts Court instituted a provisional government under a commission, or in the quaint words of the time, "graunted to severall prsons to governe the People att Connecticott fr the Space of a Yeare nowe nexte comeing," and it ordered that Roger Ludlowe, Esquire, William Pynchon, Esquire, John Steele, William Swaine, Henry Smith, William Phelps, William Westwood, and An- drew Ward, "or the greatr pte of them shall haue full power and aucthoritie." It was a court for the investigation of questions that might arise, and for the decision of all public matters pertaining to the settlements. This was the first General Court, and its authority came from the mother colony, which expected these eight magistrates to issue decrees and govern the towns. This Court met eight times between April 26, 1636, and May 1, 1637, Agawam not being represented until the fifth meeting on November 1, 1636. The Massachusetts Court provided that after the close of a year for which the eight commissioners were appointed, there could be held a convention of the inhabitants "to any convenient place that they shall think meet, in a legal and open manner by way of court." It came to pass that on March 3, 1637, Connecticut ceased to acknowledge political . dependence on Massachusetts, and in the next Court the people were represented by committees to the number of nine men, who were present with the magistrates at the session of May 1, 1637, to take action concerning the Pequots, the additional men being called to act with the magistrates on account of the gravity of the situation. Under this arrangement the Connecticut people were governed for three years, war being undertaken, troops equipped, heavy taxes levied and collected and the Pequots destroyed, with
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but little help from Massachusetts. The inhabitants signed a written compact of local government May 14, 1636, and by action of the court which met in February, 1637, Newtowne became Hartford, Watertown Wethersfield, and Dorchester Windsor. The basis of this government was the assumed consent of the grantees under the alleged Warwick patent, represented by John Winthrop, Jr., rather than on any inherent authority of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
One of the earliest acts of the court was to declare officially that the government of the towns was determined by the constables-the military officers, with cannon, watch, and train-band, and this was done in April, 1636, when it was voted that the three plantations could each appoint a constable. It thus appears that the towns drew their authority from the government established by Massachu- setts, and this Court went on to bound and name settlements, increase the powers for self-support and defense, and legally organize the church in Wethersfield. Hartford was more advanced than the other plantations, and was probably first to establish a town organization, which was started in December, 1639. There is no evidence of official organiza- tion in the towns in the first years, and the only officers were probably a constable, collector, and commissioner for each town, selected by the central authority. In short, there was a provisional government in 1636-37, an inde- pendent government in 1637-38, and a regularly organized government in 1639.
At the court of March 8, 1637, Pynchon and Smith rep- resented Agawam, and again at the court of March 28, 1638; a tax for the Pequot war was levied upon the up-river settlement, the separation of which from the others came in 1638, being hastened by a business difficulty. The General Court gave a monopoly of the trade with the Indians to Pynchon, on condition that he supply Connecticut with five hundred bushels of corn at five shillings a bushel. A bitter
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controversy followed, as Pynchon was charged with bad faith, and was fined forty bushels of corn, but an olive branch was offered him in the shape of a monopoly of the beaver trade. The four towns evidently worked together through the fall of 1648, for an Agawam culprit was then punished by the General Court, and Hooker spoke in the fall of that year of magistrates from the four towns. On January 14, 1639, the court met, but Agawam had no part in it, and two days later, the fine was demanded of Pynchon. Mas- sachusetts hesitated to take Agawam, which seemed as far away as the Philippines do now; Cotton Mather expressed the opinion many held in Massachusetts of the settlements on the Connecticut when he said that "worthy, learned and genteel persons were going to bury themselves alive on the banks of the Connecticut." The colonists decided the question for themselves and on February 14, 1639, Agawam voted to cast in her lot with Massachusetts, and on April 16, 1640, it was voted to wipe out the Connecticut name and "call the plantation Springfield." It was several years before the matter was entirely settled; Haynes and Hooker went to Boston to propose a renewal of the treaty, though nothing came of it, and it was ten years before Springfield delegates were received at the Court at Boston.
The earliest place for the assembling of the Court may have been at the home of one of the magistrates, and after a little while at the meeting-house, probably not far from the site of the Hartford Post-office. Some have held that the place of assembling until 1661, was in an upper room in the meeting-house, but others have insisted that since that room was but ten feet square it is improbable that such was the case. There is no certain information on the subject of the meeting place until September, 1661, when the General Court took up its abode for nearly fifty years in Jeremy Adams's tavern, which was situated on a lot of two or three acres south of "Meeting house Yard," a little south of the present City Hall Square. There was a well on the
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north of the lot one hundred and twenty-five feet from Main Street, and the tavern stood fifty or sixty feet back of the well. There is a record of 1661, that "Jer. Adams hath mortgaged his house and home lot whch. he bought of John Mouice with all other ye buildings erected thereon since his Purchase (unto Capt. John Talcott as Treasurer to Con- necticut Collony)," and in the Colonial Records of May, 1662, "It is granted and ordered by this court upon the motion and desire of Jeremiah Adams that ye house that the said Jeremy doth now possess and improve for an Ordin- ary, or house of common entertainment, shalbe and remaine to ye said Jeremie and his successors, provided as hereafter expressed." This license was perpetual, obligatory, and irrevocable, and the colony was mortgagee of the tavern. Among the requirements aside from the usual "accom- modation and provision for the entertainment of Travellers with horse and otherwise and that both respecting wine and liquors and other provision for food and comfortable refresh- ing, both for man and beast," was this, that Adams was to provide "a chamber for the meeting of the court, furnished with chairs and tables, a large leather chair and carpet, with accommodation for forty or fifty people." In that court chamber the committee of the Indian Court met in 1678; there laws were enacted to establish new towns and settle difficulties in older ones; to provide for taxes for King Philip's war and guard against the dreaded Quakers; to settle estates and allay church quarrels; to arrange treaties with Indians and determine the policy toward England and the other colonies; to decide on post roads and decree the ordinances of trade and commerce. There Winthrop de- scribed his brilliant success with Charles II., and there it is probable was held the controversy with Andros over the charter and the government of the colony.
Jeremy Adams died in 1684, and the following year the court appointed a committee to make sale of the house and lot, authorized the treasurer to sign the deed of sale,
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indicating that the colony was proprietor in fee; on December 2, 1685, the lot was conveyed by the treasurer to Zachary Sanford, grandson of Jeremy Adams, and the Court continued to sit in the Court chamber of the tavern. In 1713, Landlord Sanford died, and by his will the tavern and home lot passed to his daughter Sarah and her husband, Jonathan Bunce. The tavern had grown dilapidated, and soon after the death of Sanford the court moved to the new tavern of Caleb Williamson, which stood on the site of the old Travelers' Building. As the colony advanced in wealth and importance, it became evident that more suitable pro- vision should be made for the General Court, and in October, 1717, the Colonial Records tell us it was voted "that a quantity of the ungranted lands of the Colony be sold to procure" six hundred and fifty pounds for a state-house, besides money for county court-houses. A year later it was voted to allow five hundred pounds toward the state-house, and a building committee was appointed to consist of Wil- liam Pitkin, Joseph Talcott, and Aaron Cook. In 1719, it was voted that this committee
with all convenient speed proceed to carry on said building ac- cording to the dimensions given or agreed upon by this As- sembly, viz. 70 foot in length, 30 foot in width, and 24 foot between joynts & that in pursuance thereof the said committee are ordered to receive of the committees appointed for the sale of land the sum of 500 pounds, which the said committees are hereby ordered to pay to the said committee for building the State House: and that the county of Hartford shall pay toward the finishing of said State House the sum of 250 pounds, and it shall be requisite to the finishing said house, which sum this As- sembly impower the judges of the county court of Hartford to levy upon the polls, and what is wanting, draw on the public Treasury.
The further specifications of the building were as follows: With a range of pillars under the middle of the beams of the chamber floor, a door on each side, & at each end, a staircase at
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the south-west, and another at the south-east corner; two cham- bers of 30 foot long at each end, one for the Council and another for the Representatives, with a space of 12 foot between the 2 houses, and a staircase into the garrets, and on either side a lobby to the council chamber will serve the occasions designed by the Assembly.
This building stood on the west side of the square, near Main Street, and it had a gambrel roof. In 1792, the General Assembly appointed a committee to build a state-house of brick, and Hartford County bore part of the expense that it might have a room in the building for its courts. This well-known state-house was completed in 1795, and was in use by the Assembly from 1796, to 1878. The present state- house was completed in January, 1880, and it is upon a site bought by the city of Trinity College. The cost of erec- tion was three million three hundred and forty-two thousand dollars, and it is the custom to emphasize the fact that it was finished within the appropriation.
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