USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Farmington > An historical address delivered at the opening of the village library of Farmington, Conn., September 30th, 1890 > Part 17
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of witchcraft, he says, " The New Englanders are a people of God settled in those, which were once the Devil's territories ; and it may easily be supposed that the Devil was exceedingly disturbed when he perceived such a people here accomplishing the promise made of old. An army of Devils is horribly broke in upon the place which is the center and, after a sort, the first born of our English settlements ; and the houses of the good people there are filled with the doleful shrieks of their children and servants tormented by invisible hands, with tortures altogether preternatural." He quotes scriptural au- thority that the number of evil spirits let loose on a single suf- ferer is a legion, and informs us " that a legion consisted of twelve thousand five hundred people." To prove the existence and terrible power of witchcraft. and to justify the recent ex- treme measures for its destruction, he cites numerous instances from all times and lands and concludes with that of Ann Cole of Hartford, the famous "She runs to her rock " case. The picture is a dreary and monotonous one. A single story like that of Goodman Brown dressed up with all the marvelous skill of Hawthorne is attractive reading, but this long list of endless deviltries, repeated over and over again with the same ever recurring incidents, wearies one. They were copied by the wretched children concerned in the delusion, from well- known English cases, without the invention of any new machinery to relieve the monotony. We read of writing in the devil's book with one's own blood, which the devil tells Faust is a very peculiar fluid, of crooked pins as an article of diet, of toads and all manner of reptiles which when thrust in the fire explode and reveal themselves in their true form, some badly signed old bellame. of private marks left by devils oa the persons of their victims that they may know their own. and of all the villainous machinery of witchcraft, never rising to the level of the Walpurgis Night in Fanst, but more sig gestive of a college freshman society initiation of forty years ago. One of the commissioners on his journey to Salem ad
vised whipping the devil out of the afflicted, a procedure which would probably have ended Salem witchcraft then and there. There is, however, a growing belief among the investigators of the unknown if not the unknowable, that the fraud prac- ticed by a few children does not adequately explain the mystery, and the English Society for Psychical Research in its attempt at a scientific proof of a future life is accumulating a new col- lection of the Wonders of the Invisible World. In harmony with this line of research comes a hypothesis thrown out by the latest biographer of Cotton Mather. Briefly stated, his notion is, that before man was evolved from the lower formis of animal life, he was possessed of more than the five senses. These have descended to other animals as instincts, and vestiges of them may still appear under abnormal conditions in man, and, surviving from an age void of the normal sense, suggest the delusions which form the stock in trade of the necromancer. the witch, and the medium. However this may be, it is fair to the memory of the men of Salem to quote the language of one of the latest and most thorough students of the delusion, Mr. William Frederick Poole. He says: "No nation, no age, no form of religion or irreligion, may claim an immunity from this superstition. The Reformers were as zealous in the matter as the Catholics. It is estimated that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries two hundred thousand persons were exe- cuted, mostly burned, in Europe, Germany furnishing one- half the victims, and England thirty thousand. . . The Familiar Letters of James Howell, who, after the restoration of Charles II, was Historiographer Royal, gives a frightful picture of the extent of the delusion in England. Under date of Feb- ruary 3. 1646. he writes, 'We have multitudes of witches among us : for in Essex and Suffolk there were above two hun- dred indicted within these two years, and above the one-half of them executed. I speak it with horror. God guard us from the Devil.' "
The next book on the list is entitled " Some account of the
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Holy Life and Death of Mr. Henry Gearing, late citizen of London ; Who departed this life January 4th, 1693-4, Aged 61, . . By John Shower. Boston, 1705." A book so popular that another edition was called for and issued in 1720. Mr. Gearing seems to have been one of the excellent persons classed by Burns as the " unco guid, or the rigidly righteous." He was the son of a mercer in Lechlade in Gloucestershire ". of extraordinary prudence and piety," and his relatives are enum- erated with much genealogical completeness. There is the usual diary in which the subject enters his daily communings with his soul, but whether for his own profit, or for that of pos- terity or lest the recording angel should forget, is left to con- jecture. The book is dedicated to the widow and children by their afflicted friend and servant in the Gospel John Shower. who tells them " An ordinary Hell will not be punishment enough for the children of such parents if you miscarry, and fall short of Heaven."
The title of the next book sufficiently indicates its character .. the great number read, and one of the curious customs of the times. It is named " The Great Concern ; or, A serious warning to a timely and thorough preparation for death, with helps and directions in order thereto. By Edward Pearse. Rec- ommended as proper to be given at funerals. The twenty- second edition. Boston in New England. Eleven chapters and a last letter. 118 pages. The custom of giving books at funerals as a reminder of the deceased, was much like that also in vogue of distributing funeral rings duly inscribed, and was so common that Judge Sewall used to ex- tend the custom also to weddings and records in his diary gift - of elegantly bound psalm books to the happy pair, accompany- ing his gifts with much excellent advice.
The next book was a copy of the New Testament, and this was followed by " A book on Numbers." There were two commentaries on this book of the Pentateuch in common use at that time, but which was the favorite of Mr. Gridley is not
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very important for us to know. Next comes a Law Book. This was without doubt one of the copies of the " Whole body of laws now in force in the colony." which the General Court at its May Session of the previous year ordered printed and distributed by the towns to the several inhabitants, as they shall see cause. With the exception of an entry of 18 pence as the value of several books and pieces of books not named, one more book closes the list. This was a catechism valued at 4 pence, probably the one entitled "A short Catechism drawn out of the Word of God by Samuel Stone, Minister of the Word at Hartford on Connecticut. Boston in New England. Printed by Samuel Green, for John Wadsworth of Farming- ton. _ 1684." It must have been written more than twenty years previously, for Mr. Stone died in 1663. The catechism in previous use can be found on our records, and one of our pastors informs us that it was ascribed to Rev. Thomas Hooker. but does not give his authority. Why Deacon Wadsworth so much preferred this compilation as to be at the expense of publishing it, is a matter of conjecture. If a printed book was to be preferred to one in manuscript, the Westminster Shorter Catechism printed in Boston in 1691 might have sufficed. but the worthy men of that day were very precise about their doc- trines. Personal friendship for Mr. Stone can hardly account for the preference. Some of his prominent antagonists in the great quarrel in Hartford had removed to Hadley four years before his death, and came thence to this town just before. or during, the Indian atrocities of King Philip's War. Many of our prominent men would not, therefore, have been likely to be personal friends of Mr. Stone. Of this catechism only two copies are known to exist, one bought by the Lenox Library at a cost of one hundred dollars and one by the Watkinson Library at Hartford for sixty dollars. Of the nice shades of difference in the doctrines inculcated in its eighty-one ques- tions and answers, none but a skilled theologian could give an intelligent account, and no audience but one drilled from child-
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hood in subtle metaphysical niceties, as our fathers were, need attempt to listen.
Such is a very brief and inadequate account of the library of a village blacksmith of this town in the year 1712, but prob- ably as lengthy as you care for. Let us not think too lightly of the somber taste of its collector. Apart from religious works very few books could be had even in England. Before 1712 Addison and Pope had published almost nothing. The great novelists were yet to appear. The poetry of Dryden and Milton was indeed available and was probably read by our an- cestors as much as by us. Dramatic literature was almost the only secular kind obtainable, but the New Englander had not yet learned to distinguish between the plays of Shakespeare and those which pleased the licentious court of the merry monarch. The first settlers and their children after them were moreover too much occupied with turning the forest into fertile fields, defending their homes from the torch of the savage and organizing expeditions against their northern neighbors, who urged the savages on, to have much time for literary culture. Let us not criticise them too sharply, but rather be grateful for their lives of self-denial which made our larger store of knowl- edge possible.
THE TUNXIS INDIANS
AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS
DELIVERED AT THE
Annual Meeting OF
THE VILLAGE LIBRARY COMPANY OF
FARMINGTON, CONN.
September 11, 1901
By JULIUS GAY
HARTFORD PRESS The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company 1901
THE TUNXIS INDIANS
AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS
DELIVERED AT THE
Annual Meeting
OF
THE VILLAGE LIBRARY COMPANY OF
FARMINGTON, CONN.
September 11, 1901
By JULIUS GAY
HARTFORD PRESS The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company
1901
ADDRESS.
T HE Tunxis Indians, who once occupied the broad meadows and forests surrounding our village, first came within the range of our ancestors' knowledge about the year 1640. Already in January, 1639, the inhabi- tants of the three river towns, in the westward march of em- pire, before they were hardly settled on the Connecticut, moved the court for some enlargement of their accommoda- tions. A committee was therefore appointed to " view those parts by Vnxus Sepus which may be suitable for those pur- poses and make report of their doings to the court which is adjourned for that end to the 20th of February at 10 of the clock in the morning." The depth of a New England win- ter did not prove an attractive time for exploring an un- known forest buried beneath the snow, and when the court was duly opened it was informed that "our neighbors of Wethersfield, in regard the weather hath not hitherto suited for the viewing of Vnxus Sepus. intimated their willingness to defer the issue of the business." In Decem- ber, 1645, the court "ordered that the Plantation called Tunxis shall be called Farmington." So in the year 1645 the settlement had been made long enough to be called a plantation. and two years earlier. in 1643. Stephen Hart had recorded the purchase of land on the west side of the river from a previous owner.
The place was known as Tunxis Sepus, Tunxis signify- ing crooked and Sepus a river, or the little river, in distinc- tion from the " Great River, the river of Connecticut." Dr. Trumbull translates the name as meaning " at the bend of the
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little river," for here the Farmington River turns abruptly northward and finds its way to the Connecticut at- Windsor.
In 1642 we read of a grand conspiracy of the Narraganset Indians and of the tribes living at Hartford and Middletown, and the General Court ordered preparations to be made " to defeat the plot of the Indians meeting about Tunxis." We hear nothing further of the plot, and on the 9th of April. 1650, the Indians of this vicinity execute a deed described as " A discovery in writing of such agreements as were made by the magistrates with the Indians of Tunxis Sepus con- cerning the lands and such things in reference thereto as tend to settle peace in a way of truth and righteousness betwixt the English and them." It states that it is " taken for granted that the magistrates bought the whole country, to the Mo- hawk country, of Sequasson. the chief sachem." The docu- ment then proceeds in a rambling, incoherent manner to stipulate that the Indians should surrender their land, rc- serving the " ground in place together compassed about with a creek and trees and now also to be staked out. also one little slipe which is also to be staked out." The English were to plough up the land for the Indians, who were allowed to cut wood for fuel. Fishing, fowling, and hunting were to be enjoyed by the English and Indians alike. The deed was signed by Gov. Haynes on the part of the English and by Pethus and Ahamo on the part of the Indians. The con- sideration was the protection afforded the Indians and the lucrative trade offered them in corn and furs. Nor was the consideration a small one. Before the coming of the English the tribe was between two hostile and powerful enemies, the Pequots on the east and the Mohawks on the west. The brilliant campaign of Captain John Mason had indeed re- lieved them from the former, but from the Mohawks they were still wont to run in abject terror to the houses of their new friends. The signatures of Pethus and Alano to the deed are bits of picture writing not easily explainable. In
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dian signatures are often uncouth representations of their totems; that is, of the animals after which the clan, and sometimes the individual. was named. Pethus' signature is a mere scrawl, but Ahamo's elaborate drawing resembles nothing "in heaven above. or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." We must remember. however, that the record is only a copy of the original deed transcribed January 18. 1667, by William Lewis Register. who may not have sufficiently admired Indian art and heraldry to have taken much pains with his copy.
The deed of 1650 remained in force twenty-three years. but all compacts, whether in the nature of treaties like that of Clayton and Bulwer, or of constitution's like that of Con- necticut, do in time cease to meet all the requirements of new- conditions. In 1673, the Indians having become dissatisfied. the town " gave them a meeting by a committee wherein they came to a friendly and final conclusion." The Indians re- leased their right to a rectangular piece of land drawn out in diagram upon the deed that they might see definitely what they conveyed. The piece measured five miles north from Wepansock or Round Hill, three miles to the east, ten miles to the south, and eight miles to the west. "The town of Farmington freely giving to the Indians aforesaid two hun- dred acres of upland within the lands of their plantation. as also three pounds in other pay." In a postscript (so called) to this deed the Indians are confirmed in their possession of land in the Indian Neck. This deed was signed by twenty- one Indians and by five of their squaws. Squaws often signed deeds with their husbands. They might be treated by them worse than beasts of burden : nevertheless. if de- scended from sachems or sagamores. their right in the body politic and that of their children was respected. The salic law of old world nations did not hold with them. According to Parkman, among the Iroquois, the royal line followel the totem down the female line. If a Wolf warrior married a
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Hawk squaw, the children were Hawks and not Wolves, and a reputed son of the chief was sometimes set aside for the children of a sister, for a sister must necessarily be his kindred, and of the line royal.
Eight years afterward, Mesecope executes another deed confirming that of 1673, and again in 1683, becoming dissatis- fied with these not very well understood legal documents. takes the town authorities with him, and in a businesslike manner goes to the southern limit of the grant, marks a trec and builds a monument. In like manner he defines the eastern and western bounds, so that all men could see and understand, and then goes home and signs his heraldic device, a bow and arrow, to a long account of his day's work. His son Sassenakum, "in the presence and by the help of his father," adds his device, which may represent the sun with its surrounding halo. The document was duly recorded and is the last deed we need consider. Peace was firmly established. and with few exceptions the relations between the whites and Indians were from first to last friendly. For an account of one sad exception we must go back a little. John Hull. mint master of Boston, in his diary under date of April 23, 1657. says : " We received letters from Hartford, and heard that at a town called Farmington, near Hartford, an Indian was so bold as to kill an English woman great with child, and likewise her maid, and sorely wounded a little child - all within their house - and then fired the house. which also fired some other barns or houses. The Indians. being apprehended, delivered up the murderer, who was brought to Hartford and (after he had his right hand cut off) was, with an axe, knocked on the head by the executioner." This story is worth a little study as illustrative of the manner in which much grave history is evolved. Given a few fact- many years apart, a few traditions and a lively imagination and there results a story that shall go down through all time as authentic as the exploits of Old Testament heroes. Let us
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consider the facts and then the story. The General Court in April, 1657, takes notice of " a most horrid murder committed by some Indians at Farmington, and though Mesapano seems to be the principal actor, yet the accessories are not yet clearly discovered." Messengers were sent to the Nor- wootuck and the Pocumtuck Indians, that is, to those of Had- ley and Deerfield, to deliver up Mesapano, which would sug- gest that those Indians rather than the Tunxis tribe were the guilty parties. The latter, however, had been duly . warned against entertaining hostile Indians and were there- fore held responsible for the murder and the firing of a house, and they "mutually agreed and obliged themselves to pay unto the General Court in October, or to their order, yearly, for the term of seven years, the full sum of eighty fathoms of wampum, well strung and merchantable." Nearly ten years afterward the house of John Hart takes fire one De- cember night and all his family, save one son who was ab- sent, were burned. We have several contemporary records of the disaster, but no suspicion of foul play appeared. Put- ting together these stories separated by ten years of time we have full materials for the historic tale. The Indians sur- round the house of John Hart at midnight, murder the en- tire family, and burn the house over their remains. The town records perish in the flames, and the tribe pay a fine of eighty fathoms of wampum yearly thereafter. In point of fact the Indians did not murder John Hart or burn his house. No records were destroyed, and the court complained that the Indians did not pay the fine for their transgression of ten years before. The murder of 1657 was probably the work of strange Indians and not of the friendly Tunxis tribe. The Indians living to the north within the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Colony were for many years a menace to the whites and friendly Indians alike. There is a well-known tradition that about the year 1657 a marauding party from the north, seeking captives to hold for ransom, appeared at
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the Hart farm, one mile north of the present south line of Avon, and, proceeding thence southward, murdered a Mr. Scott at a place thenceforth known as Scott's Swamp. The earliest record of the tradition is that by Mr. Ezekiel Cowles. father of the late Egbert Cowles, Esq., which I give in his own words. He says: "Two Indians came to Old Farm, where a man by the name of Hart was hoeing corn. He had a gun. He would hoe along a little way and then move his gun a little, and then hoe again. He also had two dogs. The dogs were disturbed by the Indians and would run towards the woods. A partridge flew upon a tree near where he was hoeing. He shot at it and then loaded his gun be- fore he moved. The Indians concluded they could not get him and went on upon the mountain until they came near the south part of the village and got something to eat, but found too many houses to attempt to take any prisoners. Went on. Saw Root's house on Great Plain. He was at prayers. The Indians heard him; thought there were many persons in the house. Dogs barked. They ran. Found Scott alone. Took him. He resisted. Halloed. They cut out his tongue and finally killed him." This atrocity also is attributed to stranger Indians. The differences between the whites and the Tunxis tribe during this period were com- paratively slight and appear mostly in the records of fines imposed on the whites for selling cider and strong drink to the Indians, and on the Indians for the consequences which naturally followed. The cases were all petty and a single example will sufficiently illustrate their nature. In 1654 " Papaqurrote is adjudged to pay unto Jackstraw six fathoms of wampum for his injurious pulling of his hair from his head by the roots." Now, if the Indians indulged in such an ir- regular form of scalping as this, and the injured party ap- pealed to a Yankee justice of the peace for redress, it would seem that their savagery was beginning to take on a rather mild form.
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Until the year 1658 the tribe lived mostly on the east side of the river, where they buried their dead and where they maintained a fort. Hither came strange Indians, sometimes as friends and 'sometimes as foes, until the court found it necessary to order " that notice shall be given to the Indians living at Farmington that in regard of their hostile pursuits, contrary to former orders of court, and considering their en- tertainment of strange Indians, contrary to the agreement with the English when they sat down in Farmington, whence ensues danger to the English by bullets shot into the town in their skirmishes, that they shall speedily provide another place for their habitation and desert that place wherein they are now garrisoned." In the year 1711, and perhaps carlier. a certain piece of land was known in the town records as Fort Lot, and it retained the name until it was absorbed into the golf grounds of the Country Club. It is the part bounded west by the bed of the old canal and north by land recently of Mr. Henry C. Rice. Here were formerly ploughed up in great numbers two kinds of Indian arrow heads, the broad. black kind used by the Tunxis Indians, and a lesser number of a kind narrower, more pointed. and of a lighter color. These latter we were told were the weapons of a hostile tribe left here after a great battle. Of this battle, Deacon Elijalı Porter has left us an account based on the traditions of a hundred years ago. He says the whites "made an agree- ment with them to remove to the west side of the meadow. but before they left their old settlement they had intelligence that the Stockbridge Indians were preparing to come and try their strength with the Tunxis tribe. They met accordingly at what is called the Little Meadow. The battle was fought with true Indian courage and was very bloody, but the Stock- bridge Indians were too powerful for the Tunxis, and they gave way and retreated to their settlement, whereupon the squaws formed a battalion and, attacking the enemy on their flank, soon drove them from the field and gained a complete
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victory. The Indians, soon after the battle, made prepara- tion to remove to the west side of the meadow." The re- moval of the Indians ordered by the General Court in 1658 was probably soon accomplished, for as early as 1662 the high ground west of Pequabuc meadow was known on the town records as Fort Hill, where may still be seen the grave- stones which marked the new place of Indian burials. In 1675 the Court admitted that they had "set their wigwams where the authority appoints."
During the whole of King Philip's war in 1675 and 1676. when the towns around us suffered the horrors of Indian warfare, the Tunxis tribe remained faithful to the English. and on the 6th of October, 1675. sent six of their warriors to assist them at Springfield. They were Nesehegan. Wanawmesse, Woewassa, Sepoose, Unckchepassun, and Unckcowott. In the year 1682 we get a passing glimpse of the relations of the whites and Indians from a single leaf of the account book of Deacon Thomas Bull, in which he re- corded his dealings with the Indians. Deacon Bull lived on the east side of the road which diverges from Main Street a little south of the Congregational Church. To Cherry he sells two hoes for which he was to receive five and one-half bushels of corn at harvest time. For one broad hoe John Indian promises a buckskin well dressed and duly pays the same. To Taphow he loaned one bushel of grain and got back one-half bushel. He sells Arwous a hatchet to hunt with, for which he was to receive nine pounds of tallow. From Mintoo he received ten pounds of tallow for a hunting hatchet, four more for mending his gun, and another four for a half bushel of corn. He has accounts also with Wono mie, Judas, and others for sales and repairs of axes. bush scythes, guns, gunlocks, hoes, picks, knives, hatchets, etc. Implements for hunting seem to have been most in demand and were paid for from the proceeds of the hunt. They bought some seed corn and hoes, and it is to be hoped made
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