USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 1 Connecticut and the British Government > Part 10
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For his companions, it was an anxious hour of waiting but at last he came back, just as darkness fell, leading two hundred old men, women and children, who delivered themselves to the mercy of the English.
All night the English surrounded the swamp as best they could. Half an hour before the break of day, with a great noise according to their custom at such times, the Indians tried to break through the section where Captain Patrick was stationed. They were beaten back, but again and still again they renewed their efforts while the cap- tain held his ground.
The noise was heard throughout the region. It was re- peated and grew louder. Mason in alarm raised the siege on his side of the swamp and rushed towards the point of attack. While on his way, at a turn in the swamp, he saw the Indians forcing themselves towards him and sent them back by rounds of shot.
He halted to wait for a second effort, when the Indians turned about, violently pressed upon Captain Patrick, broke through his line, and some sixty or seventy suc- ceeded in making their escape.
The swamp was searched, but none were found alive and but few slain. The captives taken amounted to one hundred and eighty, who were divided among their con- querors as servants. "Thus did the Lord scatter His ene- mies with His strong arm."
The fleeing Pequots became a prey to all Indians. Those who captured any were glad to do so, sending the heads to Hartford or to Windsor where they were received al- most daily.
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In due time there came from the Mohawks the head of Sassacus himself, as a token of friendship and as a proof that no enemy of the English could find refuge among them.
The surviving Pequots themselves at last grew weary of being hunted, and sent their chiefs to the English of- fering to become subjects to the white men if their lives might be spared. Their plea was granted.
Uncas, and the great chief of the Narragansetts, Mian- tonomo, were summoned to meet them at Hartford.
The Pequots were asked how many still lived, and re- plied one hundred and eighty or two hundred. Of these there were given to Uncas of the Mohegans, eighty; to Miantonomo of the Narragansetts, eighty; to Ninigret the Niantic, twenty, after he should pay the claims made by a Windsor man for a horse killed by one of his tribe.
The Pequots were bound by agreement that none of them should inhabit their native country, nor should they again be called Pequots, but Mohegans and Narra- gansetts forever.
It was an agreement that was hard to keep, and shortly it was found that forty had gone to Mohegan, others to Long Island, and still others had violated their agree- ment and returned to the Pequot country.
Again with a squad of forty men Captain Mason made an expedition from Hartford to clear the Pequot region of those who had violated their pledge. There were many threats, but little fighting, as the Indians said they would not fight with Englishmen "for they were spirits-but would fight with Uncas."
With the brief story of this raid, Mason brings his ac- count of the Pequot War to a close with praises to God for delivery, saying, "Thus the Lord was pleased to smite our enemies and to give us their land for an inheritance."
A monument stands at Westport with the inscription :
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THE GREAT SWAMP FIGHT HERE ENDED THE PEQUOT WAR JULY 13, 1637 * * *
The Pequot War-perhaps like all wars-was fol- lowed by conditions which sound strangely familiar. There were taxes to be raised, and there was increased in- terest in preparation for war. Pay and bonus for soldiers had to be granted, memoirs were written by the leaders, and altercation arose as to who won the war.
The war had been fought to make the Connecticut Valley safe for the English, and had been more success- ful than anyone could have hoped. Yet, within a year after the victory, March 8, 1638, the court ordered fifty cor- selets to be provided, apportioning twenty-one to Hart- ford, twelve to Windsor, ten to Wethersfield, and to Agawam seven. These were ordered to be ready within six months at the most, and to be inspected by the mili- tary officer appointed for the purpose. A fine was pro- vided for the officers who failed to make the proper provision within the specified time. Captain Mason was made public military officer of the plantations of Con- necticut at an annual salary of forty pounds to train in each plantation ten days a year, with a fine for those who failed to appear. All males above sixteen years, the com- missioners and church officers only excepted, were ordered to bear arms. A magazine of powder and shot was re- quired in each plantation and the amounts specified- Hartford two barrels; Windsor one barrel and three hundred and thirty weight of lead; Wethersfield one bar- rel of powder and three hundred of lead; Agawam, half a barrel and one hundred and fifty of lead; and besides
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every military man was to have ready in his house a pound of powder, two pounds of bullets, and a pound of match if he should have a matchlock-with adequate fines for failure to act.
The cost of the war received even more speedy attention.
In February, 1638, a levy of six hundred and twenty pounds was made to defray the expenses of the war, of which Hartford was to pay two hundred and fifty-one pounds, six shillings; Windsor, one hundred and fifty-eight pounds, two shillings; Wethersfield one hundred and twen- ty-four pounds, and Agawam eighty-six pounds, sixteen shillings. Provision was made, significantly, that these payments could be made either in money, in wampum at four a penny, or in merchantable beaver at nine shillings a pound. Clement Chaplin was made treasurer, with deputies in each plantation-at Hartford, William Wads- worth; at Windsor, Henry Wolcott the elder; Andrew Ward for Wethersfield, and John Burr for Agawam.
The first necessity, however, was to provide pay for the returning soldiers. In November, 1637, the General Court ordered that every soldier who went into the war against the Pequots should have one shilling, three pence per day, at six days a week; the lieutenant twenty shillings per week; the captain forty shillings per week; while those who served, but provided their own food, should receive two shillings a day. These payments cov- ered a month of service, "although in strictness there was but three weeks and three days due." Those who re- turned from the fort at Saybrook but saw no service were allowed pay for twelve days. Not only was this provision made for pay in money, but in time a demand arose for land allotment.
In January, 1642, the court ordered that Captain Mason should have five hundred acres of ground in the
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Pequot country for himself and his heirs, and five hun- dred more to dispose of to such soldiers as joined him in the war. This was the first of the land grants in return for Pequot service. In August, 1663, the record states that in exchange for a farm which had been granted to Mr. Samuel Stone for his good service to the country in the Pequot War and afterwards, there would be given five hundred acres of upland, and fifty acres or so of meadow to his widow and his son Samuel.
In May, 1671, the court acted upon a deluge of appli- cations for land grants and disposed of seven hundred acres, largely in fifty acre lots, to twelve veterans who had been in the Pequot campaign. The court was mani- festly disturbed by the appeal of veterans for land, and passed a resolution, "This Court being often moved for grants of land by those who were Pequot soldiers, do now see cause to resolve that the next Court they will finish that matter, and afterwards give no further audience to such motions."
This ultimatum met with immediate response. At the next session in October there were sixteen applications instead of twelve, and instead of granting seven hundred acres as was done in May, there were nine hundred and twenty acres distributed. A total of three thousand one hundred and seventy acres was granted to some thirty-six individuals of which six allotments were to sons of Pequot veterans whose fathers had died. Some of these allotments were in what came to be known as Sol- diers Field, Hartford, but the majority was elsewhere.
The fight at Mystic Fort was the great battle of the war and this had been planned and executed by Connecticut men. The only assistance had been given by Underhill of Massachusetts and his twenty men who took the place of those who were sent back to Hartford, and regarding the
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value of this help there was question. Captain Patrick had arrived too late to take part, and his relations with Mason had not been pleasant. Although the Massachu- setts men under Stoughton had helped prosecute the affair at the Swamp, the Connecticut men felt it was their triumph. It was therefore somewhat galling to hear ru- mors from Boston exaggerating the part Massachusetts had played in the war. In the frank letter which Thomas Hooker wrote to Governor Winthrop in 1638, he listed the many slighting remarks current in Boston about Con- necticut. As the first of these to be mentioned he said, "If enquiry be, what be the people at Connecticut? The reply is, 'Alas, poor rash-headed creatures, they rushed themselves into a war with the heathen, and, had not we rescued them, at so many hundred charges, they had been utterly undone. In all which as you know there is not a true sentence; for we did not rush into the war; and the Lord himself did rescue, before friends.'"
Finally, there were memoirs of the war-four of them -two of which were written within a year after its con- clusion. The first of these was by Philip Vincent who was in New England at about the period of the war and wrote with intimate knowledge of its events, although prob- ably not himself present at any phases of the fight. He wrote in a philosophical strain, differing in details from the accounts of others, and by his uncomplimentary illu- sion to the attitude of Underhill at the Indian fort no doubt instigated the second memoir which soon fol- lowed. This was written by John Underhill, in which he appealed to the worthy reader to have a "more charitable opinion of himself than is reported in the other book." He wrote with far more theological setting than the others- more than might be expected from one with so tumultu- ' ous a career in the colonies.
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The third account was written by Lion Gardiner, the gallant commander of the fort at Saybrook during the Indian troubles. About the year 1657, perhaps as a twen- tieth anniversary of the war, he held a reunion at Say- brook with Robert Chapman, Thomas Hurlburt, and Major Mason. They discussed their adventures with the Indians and the passages of God's providence at the time of the Pequot War, and Gardiner was urged to put in writing his version of these historic events. This he did, giving a vivid account of his arrival at Saybrook in 1635 and of the tragic occurrences that presaged the war. Writing in 1660, he could see dangers ahead. "What our enemies will do hereafter I know not. I hope I shall not live so long as to hear or see it, for I am old and out of date else I might be in fear to see and hear that I think ere long will come upon us." His forebodings proved true when in 1675 King Philip's War broke over the colonies.
Gardiner generously made protest against the neglect of the reputations of the heroes of the war. "Our New- England twelve-penny Chronicle is stuffed with a cata- logue of the names of some, as if they had deserved immortal fame; but the right New England military wor- thies are left out for want of room, as Maj. Mason, Capt. Underhill, Lieut. Seeley, who undertook the desperate way and design to Mystic Fort, and killed three hun- dred, burnt the fort and took many prisoners, though they are not once named."
The fourth and last account is by John Mason him- self, written under great urging "so that some small glimmering may be left to Posterity what Difficulties and Obstructions their forefathers met with in their first settling these desert parts of America. ... I desire my name may be sparingly mentioned; my principal aim is that God may have his due praise."
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974.6 5054 no. 6
ConnecLicuL. History
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
QUI
SUSTINET
TRANSTULIT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
The Settlement of the Connecticut Towns (TRIPLE NUMBER)
PUBLISHED FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1933
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
The Settlement of the Connecticut Towns
DOROTHY DEMING
D ESIRE for trade was the motive which first led people to settle in the region we know as the state of Connecticut. Before the year 1630, the Indians, of whom the Pequots and Mohegans were prominent tribes, had used the Connecti- cut beaver trade and the natural meadows on either side of the river for raising corn. The Dutch knew of the river through Adrian Block, who explored the coast in 1614, and had traded there, but not until 1633 had they set up a permanent post. The possibilities of the country were practically unknown to the English at Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay until in 1631 a small band of Mohe- gan Indians came to Plymouth to suggest starting a trade with them in the Connecticut Valley. These Mohegans had been driven from their hunting grounds by the Pe- quots and wanted the protection of the English settle-
Some years ago Miss Deming, then one of my students at Yale, prepared this paper as a seminary exercise, but withdrew from the University without completing it. I have rewritten it, filling in the blanks, shortening it in places and elaborating it in others for the purpose of this series. In its original form it was fully annotated with references to the sources of information, which included not only all necessary printed works but the manuscript volumes in the State Archives also. These annotations have all been omitted here. The portion of Miss Deming's paper relating to Litchfield County will be is- sued as a separate pamphlet. C. M. A.
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ments. They had made a similar offer to the Dutch, but the latter, "their hands being full otherwise-let it pass." Upon invitation from the Indians Edward Winslow and others of Plymouth visited the river and found it "a fine place-and saw that the most certainty of profit would be by keeping a house there to receive the trade when it came down out of the inland."
While the Plymouth people were considering the possi- bilities of the river trade, the Mohegans went to Boston to solicit the interest of the English there. Massachusetts proved friendly, but evasive. Two years later, in 1633, she refused to accept Plymouth's offer to combine with that colony in setting up a joint trading house, for she was unwilling to run the risks of a trade in a strange coun- try, among hostile Indians, and on a dangerous river, but these perils did not deter her from sending out explorers a few weeks later. In September of that year John Oldham, a freeman and an inhabitant of Watertown, journeyed with three companions through the wilderness and brought back glowing accounts of fertile meadows and rich valley lands. His journey was followed by the voyage of the Blessing, a bark owned by Governor Winthrop that was sent out to explore the coast of Long Island and Con- necticut.
Meanwhile, the Dutch, claiming right to the soil by a grant to the Dutch West India Company by the States General of Holland, had sailed up the river to the present site of Hartford, where they bought land of the Pequots, built a small house, and fortified it with two cannon. They had scarcely finished their labors, when Captain William Holmes of Plymouth sailed past them to a point near the mouth of the Tunxis (now the Farmington) River, bought land of the Mohegans, the true owners of the soil, and set up a frame house he had brought from
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Plymouth. Thus the first settlements of the white man on the river were in the interest of trade with the Indians.
At Newtown in Massachusetts the people were begin- ning to feel "straitened" for want of land, especially meadow. The inhabitants were wealthy and kept many cattle, while the township was long and narrow, ne- cessitating scattered divisions of land, which were not very fertile. The arrival of the ships Francis and Elizabeth from England in 1634, bringing many new families to Newtown, served to increase the desire to move on to the reputed region of abundance and fertility. There were un- doubtedly other causes of discontent among the men of Newtown. Thomas Hooker and his party arrived in 1633, adding several more eminent men to the long list of those already in the Bay colony. Hooker found himself out of sympathy with many of the political practices of the other Puritan leaders and he did not hesitate to disagree openly with the policy of placing so much power in the hands of the magistrates and of maintaining so strict a religious qualification for the franchise. Moreover, he and his con- gregation believed that he might find a larger field for his unusual talents in a new locality where the public offices were not already filled by competent men and the churches not overstocked with ministers.
A petition from some of the Newtown people was granted by the General Court in May, 1634, and gave them leave to find a location elsewhere. But finding no suitable land near Ipswich and the Merrimac River, they renewed the petition and asked permission to remove to Connecticut, a region of which they were now hearing much from Oldham and others, for six Newtown men had been part of the crew of the Blessing. The General Court refused their request and endeavored to compromise matters by making an additional grant of land to relieve
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the crowded conditions in the town. In spite of this re- fusal, a few inhabitants of Watertown, a settlement far- ther up the river, made their way to Connecticut, guided by John Oldham, and stopped at Pyquag (Wethers- field), a few miles below the Dutch fort. There they re- mained through the winter and in the spring Oldham returned and conducted another group of Watertown people to the same place, this time with the consent of the General Court.
A month later, leave was granted to some of the Dor- chester people to remove to Connecticut. As eighty addi- tional immigrants had arrived there in 1633, the inhabit- ants had a great deal of trouble in providing grants of land and their desire to remove was well founded. A party left that summer, settling near the Plymouth trading house, and the relations with the traders were for a time strained, on account of the intrusion. The latter argued, reasonably, that Massachusetts had forfeited her right to
trade there, having refused to join with Plymouth in the enterprise, and that the land on which the Dorchester people had settled was Plymouth's by right of purchase and prior occupation. The increasing number of the Mas- sachusetts people that were daily arriving finally over- whelmed the Plymouth arguments by sheer weight of numbers and the traders were at length forced to com- promise. They gave up all but a sixteenth of their origi- nal purchase and the trading house, surrendering the rest to the Dorchester immigrants. The southern part of this ceded tract, known as the "Lord's Waste," was occupied in the summer of 1635 by a group of young men from Newtown, called the "Adventurers" and became known as the "Venturers Fields," a section of thirty-five acres, which was purchased from the Dorchester settlers and became a part of Hartford.
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Until the spring of 1635, settlement in Connecticut had been largely temporary, of an experimental nature, but with the removal of the larger bodies of people from the Massachusetts towns permanent home-making was be- gun. The title to the territory was doubtful. It was king's demesne, which had been granted, together with the rest of New England, to the Council for New England in its charter of incorporation of 1620. Supposedly a grant of this southern portion had been made by the council in 1632 to a group of Puritan lords and gentlemen who were planning to leave England, if conditions there became un- bearable, and to settle somewhere in the grant. But there is nothing to show that the patent was ever issued, though there is no doubt that the grantees-Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, Richard Saltonstall, John Pym, John Hampden, and others-and many in Connecticut profoundly believed in the legality of the title. When the settlers began to go to Connecticut, the agents of the pat- entees, John Winthrop, jr., the Reverend Hugh Peter, and young Harry Vane, called upon the emigrants to know by what right they were taking up land there and de- manded that they acknowledge the title of the patentees and their governor, Winthrop, jr., whom they had re- cently appointed for a year. The patentees were not averse to having settlers on their land as it strengthened their claim to the territory; nor were the emigrants sorry to find themselves outside the bounds of Massachu- setts, with a good chance of obtaining a title, by allow- ance of the patentees, to a soil of their own. Their only serious objection was the acknowledgment of a governor, who was not of their own choosing. It would appear that the appointment by Massachusetts in 1636 of a com- mission from among the emigrants to govern the terri- tory was a compromise arrangement and was suggested
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and the text drawn up by the emigrants themselves. By this plan they acquired the right to look after their own affairs, leaving the question of a governor open until the expiration of Winthrop's term, or until it was finally de- cided what the lords and gentlemen proposed to do. It is interesting to note that Connecticut had no governor until after the issue of the Fundamental Orders in 1639.
Once the movement toward Connecticut was begun it proceeded rapidly. Additional planters arrived in October, 1635, from Dorchester, with a few from Newtown and Watertown, but unfortunately an exceptionally severe winter drove many of them back to Massachusetts for the cold months. They returned in the spring to complete their half-built houses and to plant their new fields. For them Massachusetts appointed a constable, from their own number, to order the affairs of the plantation. In May of the same year (1636) William Pynchon led a company from Roxbury to settle higher up on the river at Agawam (Springfield), there to secure new land and to engage in traffic with the Indians for furs and truck. Aga- wam was later found to lie within the bounds of the Mas- sachusetts Bay charter and Pynchon, for personal and other reasons, did not join with the people down the river after 1638, thus severing intimate relations with the Con- necticut plantations though always remaining in close commercial contact with them.
The great migration came in the summer of 1636. Thomas Hooker, with his wife and the larger part of his congregation, driving their cattle before them, and fol- lowing Indian trails to the river and there turning south- ward, finally reached a resting place at what is now Hart- ford. In the case of Windsor, Hartford, and Springfield, the people moved as organized churches and no reor- ganization took place after arrival. Not so with Wethers-
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field, to which locality the people came in scattered groups and at different times, without a minister, so that the church there was "gathered" and "approved" in April, 1636, after the plantation was organized. On the civil side the plantation organization was probably very incomplete, constables apparently being the only civil officials, with functions that were largely military. Doubt- less arrangements were made whereby lands were dis- tributed, order maintained, and necessary prudential affairs carried on, but it was not until toward the end of the decade (October, 1639) and after the Fundamental Orders had been adopted, that any system of town gov- ernment was agreed upon. Then each town elected towns- men, afterward called selectmen, to look after the business of each plantation.
With the expiration of the commission authorized by Massachusetts for one year (1636-1637), the plantations were given their present day names, Hartford, Wethers- field, and Windsor, boundaries were decided on, and the towns were instructed to send committees of three to rep- resent them in a general court to meet at Hartford. They, with the magistrates, were to sit together and issue or- ders for the management and well-being of the four settle- ments. Owing to the declaration of war against the Pe- quots in May, 1637, the main duties of this "corte" were military, but once the war was over, lawmaking began. In 1638 Thomas Hooker laid his views regarding govern- ment before the court and that body, guided and directed by its two most important members, John Haynes and Roger Ludlow, drew up the document known as the Fun- damental Orders, consisting of a plantation covenant or agreement and a series of eleven orders or laws, defining in general terms the kind of a government that the leaders desired. They provided for a "publike state or
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