USA > Connecticut > The Connecticut River and the valley of the Connecticut, three hundred and fifty miles from mountain to sea; historical and descriptive > Part 3
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A proposal was now made by Plymouth to the Bay men that the two colonies should jointly engage in the trading establishment, and Winslow and Bradford made a pilgrim- age to Boston to confer with them upon the matter. The negotiations failed, however, the Bay men advancing vari- ous weak objections, and displaying a timidity which must have surprised their humbler brethren at the time, but which after events appeared sufficiently to explain. Let Bradford's and Winthrop's versions of this conference be given in their own words :
BRADFORD'S. "A time of meeting was appointed at the Massa- chusetts and some of the chief here were appointed to treat with them, and went accordingly ; but they [the Bay men] cast many fears of danger &c., loss and the like, which was perceived to be the main obstacles, though they alleged they were not provided of trading goods. But those here [the Plymouth men] offered at present to put in sufficient for both, provided they would become engaged for
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the half, and prepare against the next year. They confessed more could not be offered, but thanked them, and told them they had no mind to it. They [the Plymouth men] then answered they hoped it would be no offence unto them [the Bay men] if themselves went on without them, if they saw it meet. They said there was no rea- son they should ; and thus this treaty broke off."
WINTHROP'S. [July 12, 1633.] "Mr. Edward Winslow, gov- ernor of Plimouth, and Mr. Bradford came into the bay, and went away the 18th. They came partly to confer about joining in a trade to Connecticut for beaver and hemp. There was a motion to set up a trading house there to prevent the Dutch, who were about to build one; but in regard the place was not fit for plantation, there being three or four thousand warlike Indians, and the river not to be gone into but by smaller pinnaces, having a bar affording but six feet at high water, and for that no vessels can get in for seven months in the year, partly by reason of the ice, and then the violent stream etc., we thought not fit to meddle with it."
So the Plymouth men went in alone. While, however, they were making their preparations, only a few weeks after the Boston conference, two Bay colony expeditions into the River country were under way. In August Winthrop's " Blessing of the Bay" (the first ship built in Massachu- setts) slipped out of Boston harbor on a trading voyage to Long Island Sound, purposing also to take in the River; and about the same time John Oldham with two compan- ions set out overland on a prospecting expedition to the Val- ley. The " Blessing " duly entered the River, and thus was the first Puritan vessel to venture its waters. Thence she proceeded to Manhattan, and presented a " commission " from the governor of Massachusetts to the director of New Netherland, desiring the Dutch to " forbear " building on the River, for " the King of England had granted the river and country of the Connecticut to his own subjects." The company were " very kindly entertained " and " had some
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beaver and other things for such commodities as they put off," while the director (now Wouter Van Twiller, the suc- cessor of Minuit) wrote his reply to the Bay governor. It was a letter " very courteous & respectful as it had been to a very honorable person," but very definite. The direc- tor " signified that the Lords the States had also granted the same parts to the West India Company & therefore requested that the English would forbear the same till the matter were decided between the King of England and the said Lords," so that the two colonies might live "as good neighbors in these heathenish countries." The "Blessing" was back in Boston with her report on the second of Octo- ber. Oldham and his companions had already returned with pleasant accounts of their experience and observations. They had penetrated to a point on the River about where Springfield now is, and had visited a sachem who had " used them kindly" and given them some beaver.
With this information the Bay men rested till the next year. Then, when the Plymouth men had successfully cleared the way, men from the Bay calmly proceeded to occupy the River where the Plymouth men had planted, and afterward "little better than thrust" them "out." These were the after-events which explain the reluctance of the Bay leaders to join the Pilgrims in the proposed partner- ship, and which led to the unwelcome conclusion so deli- cately expressed by Savage in his note to the entry in Winthrop's Journal of July, 1633, before quoted : "I am constrained to remark that the reasons in the text assigned . .. look to me more like pretexts than real motives. Some disingenuousness, I fear, may be imputed to our council in stating difficulties to deter our brethren of the humble community of Plimouth from extending their limits to so advantageous a situation." : Bradford's terser
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comment is that they had a "hankering mind after it" for themselves.
Before the Plymouth men started in affairs about the River had shaped themselves for a pretty quarrel. The Dutch had fortified their position with an Indian deed of lands on either side of the River, which they had procured in June from "Tattoebum," the Pequot sachem who held the terri- tory by conquest; giving in payment for the lands this job lot of articles : "1 piece of duffel 27 ells long, 6 axes, 6 ket- tles, 18 knives, one sword blade, 1 pr. of shears, some toys, and a musket." They had taken formal possession of the mouth of the River at Saybrook Point, an officer of the Dutch West India Company, Hans den Sluys, in token there- of affixing the arms of the States General to a tree. They had completed their trading house and redoubt where their palisaded post had been, had mounted two cannon, run up the Dutch flag, and given the structure the trustful name of the "House of Hope."
So much the Dutch had accomplished since the early summer under the energetic orders of Wouter Van Twiller, acting under instructions from the home company. Mean- while in England a movement was developing which was soon to bring a new disturbing factor into the region. In the previous year (March, 1631-2), certain " Lords and Gen- tlemen" obtained the grant of a great territory extending from Point Judith to New York and west to the Pacific, and reaching back from the New England coast over Con- necticut and a part of Massachusetts; and steps were now taking to plant on the River under this charter. This was the instrument, referred to in the histories as the "Old Pa- tent of Connecticut," in which Robert, Earl of Warwick, conveyed the rights to the tract in question, which he had
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received from the Plymouth Company in England, to a " syn- dicate " composed of Lord Say and Sele, Lord Brooke, Lord Rich (the two latter of the family of Warwick), Sir Richard Saltonstall, John Pym, and John Hampden, the great com- moner. It was brought about through Sir Richard Salton- stall of the Bay Colony, and resulted directly from the roseate accounts of our River and its fertile lands which Sir Richard, returning to England in 1631, had given to his friends there. The Dutch West India Company early be- came aware of this grant, -perhaps from Minuit, who was detained in England at the time, while on his homeward journey after his recall,-and the activity of Van Twiller was due as much, probably, to a desire to get the Dutch preserves here in readiness for defence against the English Lords and Gentlemen as against the Plymouth Pilgrims.
The Plymouth leaders equipped a "great new bark" for their voyage of occupation, and put the expedition in charge of Lieutenant William Holmes, a resolute man, with an equally resolute crew. In the hold of the vessel was stored the frame of a small house that had been prepared, with "boards to cover and finish it," and other things necessary for its quick erection as against hostile attacks. A goodly store of provisions was also put in. With the ship's company were taken several River Indians, among them "Altarbaenhoot" or "Netawanute," sachem of the territory whither they were bound, whom the Pequot "Tat- toebum" had exiled, and whom they proposed to restore to his domain. From him the Plymouth leaders had prev- iously acquired the lands they were to occupy.
The expedition sailed from Plymouth early in October and reached the River without incident. So also without incident they made the entrance and proceeded up stream
Near Moodus.
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to the point where stood the new Dutch "House of Hope," with Jacob Van Curler and a small force in charge. As they came alongside the fort the " drum-beats resounded from the walls, and the cannoniers stood with lighted matches beside the two guns, under the banner of New Netherland." The Dutch commander challenged, with the demand "what they intended and whither they would go." The Pilgrim skipper responded, "Up the River to trade." Van Curler bade them "strike and stay," or he would order the gun- ners to fire. Holmes retorted that they were under com- mission from the governor of Plymouth to go up the River to the place for which they were bound, and "go they would." The Dutchmen might shoot, but they must obey their orders and proceed. They would molest no one, but they would go on. And so they did go on, while the Dutchmen "threatened them hard" but "shot not."
Arriving at their destination, at a point just below the mouth of the Tunxis, they landed, quickly "clapt up" their house, and unloaded their provisions. This accomplished, the bark departed to return to Plymouth, and the little band left to establish the plantation proceeded to make themselves as comfortable as possible. With a palisade erected about their house they were soon in condition to defend themselves against the Dutch if further opposed, but more especially against the greater danger of the Pequot enemies of the sachems whom they reinstated. Thus began the first English plantation on the River, which became Windsor.
The Dutch made only one more warlike demonstration against these virile "Plymoutheans," and this was deferred for some months. First a formal protest was made with an order to quit. Upon receiving Van Curler's report, Van Twiller at once forwarded to him a notification which
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was successfully served upon Holmes before the departure of the bark. It was a formidable document, but less dan- gerous than bullets to both interests :
" The Director and Council of Nieuw Netherland hereby give notice to Mr. Holmes, lieut and trader acting on behalf of the Eng- lish governor of Plymouth, at present in the service of that nation, that he depart forthwith, with all his people and houses, from the lands lying on the Fresh River, continually traded upon by our nation, and at present occupied by a fort, which lands have been pur- chased from the Indians and paid for. And in case of refusal, we hereby protest against all loss and interest which the Privileged West India Company may sustain.
"Given at Fort Amsterdam in Nieuw Netherland, this XXVth Octob. 1633."
A written answer was requested from Holmes, but he declined to give it. He would only say that he was here "in the name of the King of England whose servant he was," and here " he would remain." All this Van Twiller reported to his superiors in Holland, and asked for further instructions. While he was awaiting them a strategic move was attempted to establish a connection with the tribe liv- ing above the Plymouth settling place, about where West- field, Massachusetts, now is, and head off their trade. Thus were repeated the tactics of the Plymoutheans in planting themselves above the Dutch.
But the move failed through the breaking out of the smallpox among these Indians with great virulence and dreadful mortality. The Dutchmen sent on the mission most wretchedly spent the early winter months in the midst of this havoc. Finally getting away in February, they were kindly taken in at the Plymouth House on their return journey, "being almost spent with hunger and cold," and here were "refreshed divers days." For this good Sama- ritan act those at the House of Hope were most grateful.
--
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But when at length, in the following summer, Van Twil- ler's instructions had come out, the hostile attitude was resumed.
Then the final demonstration was made. A force of " about seventy men " was sent from Manhattan to dislodge the intruders. The troops approached the English " in a warlike manner, with colors displayed." But " seeing them strengthened," and that "it would cost blood " to make an attack, the Dutch commander " came to a parley " instead. Then he withdrew his force "without offering any vio- lence"; and the Plymoutheans were left in peace.
III The Pioneer River Settlements
Puritans from the Bay Colony Entering in 1635- Beginnings of Wethersfield and Windsor -Intrusion on the Plymouth Meadows - Governor Brad- ford's Ineffectual Protest - The Dream of a " New Plymouth " Dispelled - John Winthrop, the Younger, Governor for the " Lords and Gentlemen ""_ Lodgment at the River's Mouth - Coming of Hooker and his Congregation in 1636-The Old Connecticut Path, The Second Connecticut Trail, and the Bay Path as traced to-day - Beginnings of Hartford and Springfield - Secession of River Towns.
THE year 1635 was a year of events in the Lower Valley. Now the Bay Puritans began to appear in considerable numbers. First came prospectors seeking the sightliest spots for plantation. By July the agent at the Plymouth Trading House, Jonathan Brewster, report- ed that Massachusetts men were "coming almost daily, some by water and some by land." Following the pros- pectors, groups and companies prepared to settle arrived.
Earliest among these were folk from Watertown and Dorchester, with a few from Cambridge, then New Towne. Early in November a band of sixty arrived, men, women and little children. They had travelled overland by a compass, a hundred miles through the wilderness, making the autumn journey of two weeks on foot and driving their live-stock, cattle, horses, and swine, before them. Around by water their household goods were brought, in barks from Boston, with provisions for the first winter.
Before the winter had set in three English plantations were established, and a fourth had been ventured, where
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The Pioneer River Settlements
but one had been at break of summer. Below the Dutch
" House of Hope " a new Watertown had been begun by
the Watertown group where now is Wethersfield. Above the Dutchmen, at Windsor, were the Plymouth folk and the settlers from Dorchester cheek by jowl. On the Plymouth Great Meadow the Dorchester leaders were beginning a new
Dorchester, ignoring the Pilgrims' claims to the territory,
just as the Plymouth men had ignored the claims of the Dutch. Unmindful of protest, they were proposing to allow the Plymouth House one share only " as to a single family"
the fourth plantation had been attempted as a foothold in the distribution of lands. On the same Great Meadow
under the "Lords and Gentlemen's" patent. This was an undertaking of the "Stiles party," sent out from England by Sir Richard Saltonstall at his personal expense. They were a band of twenty men, one or two accompanied by
their families. Francis Stiles, their leader, was a master carpenter from London. He had been instructed to "im- pale " grounds for cattle, and to prepare a house against the coming of Sir Richard, who never came. The Dorches- ter prospectors, returning from a view of lands farther up the River toward Enfield Rapids, and finding them here about to begin their work, nipped the scheme in the bud. Saltonstall's right in the premises was denied, and Stiles curtly ordered to "keep hands off." So Stiles prudently "stayed his hands," and reported back to Sir Richard. A small part of his company returned to England in his ves- sel, which was wrecked on the voyage, but her passengers were saved. He and the others who remained took up lands assigned them in a corner of the Dorchester bailiwick.
Brewster promptly reported home to Plymouth the intrusion of the Dorchester men, and Governor Bradford as promptly entered his protest against these "doings and
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proceedings." They were not only intrusions into the " rights and possessions " of the Plymouth Colony, he con- tended, but were attempts "in effect to thrust them all out"; as it ultimately proved. Brewster early " perceived the minds" of the intruders from their servants' talk, but treated them from the beginning considerately. The first lot of prospectors "had well nigh starved had it not been for this house for want of victuals," he wrote in one of his reports. A later company he had entertained with marked hospitality. He had supplied them with canoes and guides, and had given room to their goods in the Plymouth House. He had even been so generous as to go with them to the Dutch fort, notwithstanding the strained relations between the two houses, to see if he could " procure some of them to have quiet settling" in its vicinage. The Dutch " did peremptorily withstand them ": quite naturally, we should say, under the circumstances. Writing before the arrival of the main company, Brewster expressed the hope that their leaders would " hear reason," and rehearsed the chief points of the argument: that the Pilgrims were here first, that they had entered with great "difficulty and danger both in regard of the Dutch and Indians," that they had bought the land, had since held here a " chargeable posses- sion," and had kept the Dutch from further encroaching, " which would else before this day have possessed all and kept out all others." These considerations he trusted would stop them.
But they did not even check them. Winslow went up from Plymouth to Boston and there had a conference with the Dorchester leaders without avail. Negotiations with the Bay magistrates were also fruitless. "Many were the letters and passages" that followed, says Bradford, between the aggrieved and the aggressors. His summary of the
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The Pioneer River Settlements
correspondence, disclosing on the one side a curious mixture of piety and greed, is interesting reading.
The Dorchester men started out with the assumption of title to the lands they coveted through an act of Provi- dence. "God in his providence," they wrote, cast them on this identical spot, " and, as we conceive, in a fair way of providence, tendered it to us as a meet place to receive our body now upon removal." The Plymouth men met this sophistry with the blunt retort : "Whereas you say God in his providence cast you &c., we told you before and (upon this occasion) must now tell you still that our mind is otherwise, and that you cast rather a partial, if not a covet- ous eye upon that which is your neighbors and not yours ; and in so doing your way could not be fair unto it. Look that you abuse not God's providence in such allegations." At this the Dorchester men took another tack : "Now, albeit we at first judged the place so free that we might with God's good leave take and use it, without just offence to any man, it being the Lord's waste, and for the present altogether void of inhabitants, that indeed, minded [of] the employment thereof to the right end for which land was created, Gen. 1: 28, ... therefore did we make some weak beginnings in that good work in the place aforesaid." This reasoning the Plymouth men easily overset with the reply : "If it was the Lord's waste it was themselves [the Plymouth men] that found it so and not they [the Dorches- ter men]; and have since bought it of the right owners and maintained a chargeable possession upon it all this while, as themselves could not but know. And because of present engagements and other hindrances which lay at present upon them [the Plymouth Colony] must it therefore be lawful for them [the Dorchester men] to go and take it from them?" The hope of the Plymouth Colony to leave
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the " barren place where they were by necessity cast," and make a new Plymouth in Connecticut is then frankly stated, and it is pertinently asked, " Why should they [the Dorchester men] (because they were more ready and able at present) go and deprive them [the Plymouth folk ] of that which they had with charge and hazard provided and in- tended to remove to ?"
That the Plymouth men had the best of the argument must be admitted ; but the Dorchester men had the power. So the old familiar story was repeated, as it is still repeated over and over in our modern days, in which Might, with many pious reflections and pratings of high intentions, overthrows Right and struts off proudly locking arms with Virtue. The Plymouth men would make no forcible resist- ance. That was " far from their thoughts : to live in contin- ual contention with their friends and brethren would be un- comfortable, and too heavy a burden to bear." Accordingly, for the sake of peace, " though they conceived they suffered much in this thing," they finally concluded to give up the contest and to enter into treaty as to terms for the release of the territory seized. Before undertaking to bargain, however, they insisted that the Dorchester men must ac- knowledge their right to the territory, else "they would never treat about it." This easy point being freely yielded, with the abandonment of the providential title to the lands as "God's waste," a conclusion was reached "after much ado." The Plymouth House was to be retained by the Ply- mouth men with a sixteenth part of all the territory that they had bought from the Indians : the Dorchester men to have the remainder, reserving a moiety for " those of New Town" who were coming in, and paying Plymouth "accord- ing to proportion what had been disbursed to the Indians."
Thus, Bradford recorded, " was the controversy ended,
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The Pioneer River Settlements
but the unkindness not so soon forgotten." The dream of an ultimate abandonment of their "barren place" on the Massachusetts coast for a second New Plymouth in the sweet and fertile region of the Connecticut was forever dispelled from the Pilgrim mind. The hurt was slow in healing. When later two shallops bound from Massachu- setts to the River with goods and supplies for the settlers were wrecked on the Plymouth shore, one after the other, and their cargoes in each case strewn along the beaches, were carefully gathered and preserved for their owners by the kindly Plymouth folk, the good Bradford wrote down in his history: "Such crosses they met in their beginnings ; which some imputed as a correction from God for their intrusion (to the wrong of others) into the place. But I dare not be bold with God's judgment in this kind."
While these settlements were becoming established up the River on either side of the Dutch post, steps were tak- ing by stronger agents than Stiles of the " Lords and Gen- tlemen " to secure the River's mouth. On the 6th of October, 1635, there arrived at Boston the ship "Abigail" from England, bringing among her passengers three men of note representing directly or indirectly the " Lords and Gentlemen." These were John Winthrop, Jr., Governor Winthrop's eldest and ablest son, who had been back in England for a twelvemonth; young Sir Harry Vane; and the Rev. Hugh Peter. The latter had joined the younger Winthrop and Sir Harry by boarding the ship in the Downs, after an escape from Holland, where, as the non- conforming minister of the English church at Rotterdam, he was being persecuted by the English ambassador. The younger Winthrop bore a commission from the "Lords and Gentlemen," dated July 15, naming him as " governor of
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the River Connecticut with the places adjoining thereunto, for and during the space of one whole year after arrival there," with " full power to do and execute any such lawful act and thing ... as to the dignity or office of a governor doth or may appertain." By preliminary articles he en- gaged to repair to the River with "all convenient speed," and to abide there " for the best advancement of the com- pany's service."
This governor's first duty was to engage, upon his arrival at Massachusetts Bay, a force of at least fifty "able men," and to despatch them to erect a fortification at the River's entrance and to build houses. The first houses were to be for their own needs. After these were up more substantial ones were to be erected within the fort, proper "to receive men of quality" who were expected later to come out and make a noble plantation; but who never came. Winthrop the younger was provided with four hundred pounds to meet first expenses ; and a few men and some ammunition for his service came out in the " Abi- gail " with him. Haste being necessary because of reported intentions of the Dutch, he did not wait to gather the full complement of fifty men, but hurried off a force of twenty, under one Lieutenant Gibbons and Sergeant Willard, to occupy Saybrook Point and begin the works. Four days later a "norsey " - a North Sea bark - arrived at Boston bringing Lieutenant Lion Gardiner with a dozen men and " provisions of all sorts " for building a fortification. Lion Gardiner was a Scotchman, an accomplished engineer and master of fortification, who had been with the Prince of Orange in the Low Countries. At Rotterdam, " through the persuasion of Mr. John Davenport [afterward founder of New Haven], Mr. Hugh Peter and other well affected Englishmen," he had made an agreement with Mr. Peter
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