USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Mount Carmel > The old Mount Carmel parish, origins & outgrowths > Part 2
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
trade in furs came, trails multiplied and the old ones took on a new meaning. The main paths, in particular, trodden by less stealthy feet and by the heavier tread of men carrying on their shoulders huge loads, were worn so deeply that no one could miss them. These became the trunk lines of busi- ness. So they took on a sort of permanence and were found ready for use when the English settlers arrived on the ground. In the course of time, many of them were widened into cart-paths and eventually into highways. A good many of the old colonial highways afford convincing proof of hav- ing originated in such Indian paths.
A number of the highways leading out of New Haven are of this sort. The old road to Milford, and on to Stratford, Bridgeport, and New York, is undoubtedly on the line of an old trade route of the Dutch and Indians. The highway through East Haven to Branford, Guilford, Clinton, and Saybrook, has a similar historical significance. The old Derby road, with the connecting line along the Housatonic to the valley of the Hudson, was probably the route of communi- cation with the post at Albany. But the roads out of New Haven to the north are especially interesting because of Fort Good Hope; for the overland route from that point would naturally have been over one or more of these lines. Most of the traffic was, of course, by water, down the river and through the Sound, but this was slow and uncertain at times; hence, when there was need of dispatch, a swift Indian run- ner was the resort. There were other reasons, too, for such a route, which lay in the purposes of trade along the way.
New Haven, like a number of Connecticut towns, has a locality known as "Beaver Pond," commemorative of the primeval occupants so dear to the heart of a Dutchman. In the country around are many gushing springs, flowing brooks, and placid ponds; and it is the same throughout the valley reaching back in the Farmington region to Hartford and Northampton; all of which made this a beavers' para- dise in the centuries before their pelts had become a market- able commodity. So the explorers found it when they landed at their Roodenbergh; and from this region were carried
Photo by B. A. Tucker
Valley of Mill River from East Rock See note on page 15
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The Quest for Beaver.
large quantities of furs to swell the cargoes that went out from Manhattan. Not only the beaver, but various other animals as well gave their names to localities where they were once found. New Milford, Middletown, and Boz- rah-each has a "Bear Hill"; and Salisbury, a "Bear Moun- tain." Roxbury has a hill and a brook called "Moose Horn." There is a "Moose Hill" in Oxford and another in Guil- ford, while Willington has a "Moose Meadow." Suffield has a "Buck Hill" and Woodbury, its "White Deer Rocks." "Cat Hole" is Meriden's name for a mountain and for the brook that runs from its side. Stafford has a "Hedge-hog Hill." Other towns have mountains or hills that perpetuate their fame as the lair of rattlesnakes. All these creatures and many others were here, living and thriving without molesta- tion, except as they preyed on one another, or as a few of them were needed by their Indian neighbors for food and clothing.
All the main paths of trade had uses enough; and particu- larly those over the shortest way from Fort Good Hope to Roodenbergh. The hunters had trod them long before the post was established on the Connecticut River, and they were used all the more for the greater requirements of trade which came with that new enterprise.
The effect of all these movements of trade on the Indians was very great. When the Europeans began to come, the Indians were simple children of the woods. They wore little clothing; their houses were the rudest of huts; their food was the fish easily caught, the game quite as easily snared or brought down with an arrow, the nuts that fell from the trees, and corn with a few vegetables raised by their women. There were not many things that they cared for. They had their fierce wars, tribe against tribe, with battles that were sometimes orgies of vindictive cruelty. But ordinarily, their time was passed in indolence, basking in the sunshine of sum- mer and huddled in their wigwams to keep from freezing in winter, ignorant, superstitious, with some traits that were noble and others the opposite.
The Dutch were keen enough to see that their business de-
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
pended on their success in getting along with these people and in handling them for the ends of enterprise. Their good will and interest in trade were as plain an asset of the under- taking as ships or beaver skins. And so the Dutch proceeded systematically and took care not to let a trifling thing or any momentary impulse defeat their object. At all hazards, the Indians must be their friends.
Other visitors from Europe had not been so wise. Many of the explorers had behaved toward the Indians in such a manner as to wreck any business and ruin any undertaking. Some of them had betrayed confidence and violated hospi- tality in a way that might well have shocked the sensibilities of a brute. One trick was to beguile unsuspecting natives on board their ships and sail away to exhibit the captives before a curious audience, or to sell them in a slave market. Verra- zano, who was here in 1524, stole an Indian boy in this way. Some ten years later, Jacques Cartier, on the St. Lawrence, repaid the hospitality of a sachem by carrying him off to France. Weymouth, in 1605, landed at Pemaquid on the Maine coast and took five natives home with him to Eng- land. In 1611, Captain Edward Harlow kidnapped three Indians at Monhegan, a fourth at another island, and two more at Martha's Vineyard; one of the Monhegans got away, but the other five Indians were taken to England. Captain John Smith was at Monhegan in 1614, and told of getting 11,000 beaver skins, 100 martens, and many other pelts for a mere trifle; but a man named Hunt who was with him, remaining behind, "betrayed four and twenty of those poor savages aboard his ship, and most dishonestly and in- humanly, for their kind usage of me and all our men, car- ried them to Malaga and sold them for rials [royals] of eight"; on which Smith makes the comment, "this vile act kept him ever after from any employment to those parts." Who could wonder if such treatment changed inoffensive people into bitter enemies and led them to repay treachery with treachery and cruelty with a responsive cruelty?
The Dutch knew better than to deal with the Indians in any such way. Whether or not they were too just and hu-
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The Quest for Beaver.
mane for such iniquities, they at least had too much sense. Their judgment as to what were the requirements of busi- ness was too sound. Provocations did indeed arise, and very early. On that first trip of Hudson in the Halve Maene, or Half Moon, a sailor was killed by an Indian arrow, for no apparent reason; but they did not think best to imperil the whole expedition by wild retaliation. A few years later, Hendrick Christiaenssen was killed in a similar manner. But these traders held themselves in hand. They buried their comrades with all respect, like soldiers who had fallen on duty, guarded themselves with more care, and went on with their barter.
So the Indians came to believe in the Dutch and to like them. In the summer of 1609, Champlain made his expedi- tion from Quebec up the lake that now bears his name, and gave to the Iroquois their first experience of gunpowder. He had joined himself to the enemies of the Iroquois, the Al- gonquins and the Hurons, and employed the new and ter- rible weapons with which his soldiers were armed in their behalf. Always thereafter the Iroquois hated the French. A few weeks after that famous battle of 1609, Hudson and his Dutchmen from the Halve Maene were fraternizing with Indians in the neighborhood of Albany, regaling them with dainties that were new and giving them a first taste of strong drink, quite unlike the first taste of powder and ball that had been given them by Champlain. When the Halve Maene sailed back down the river, her captain and crew bade good- bye to a people whose lasting friendship they had won. Their visit was soon known to the whole Iroquois tribe and thenceforward the Iroquois loved the Dutch as heartily as they hated the French.
On account of this friendly feeling, the Dutch came to . have great influence over the Indians. They learned continu- ally from the Indians, and the Indians from them. They brought over from Holland great stocks of merchandise chosen with care for its attractiveness to the natives. There were gewgaws, more fascinating to the savage than of real value; but there were other things in great number to con-
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
tribute to their solid comfort, clothes to cover their naked- ness, blankets to keep them warm against the winter's cold; kettles, pots, and pans for cooking; garden tools, spades, hoes, and rakes; axes and knives, forks and spoons and dishes. Cultivating a desire for all such useful commodities was a most natural way of awaking the Indians out of their indolence and making them active assistants in the carrying- out of the Dutch plans. Multiplying their desires made them better hunters that they might bring more pelts to bar- ter for the things they wanted. They grew to want more and more of the white man's store goods; and their ambition did not halt till they began to ask for a gun and powder and balls; and too often for the gin and rum that became their ruin.
By such processes, the good and bad mixed, the traders got a control over the Indians that made them ready and eager to take their suggestions and fulfill almost any task for which they were needed. They would bring in packages of furs as required to make up a cargo, and then more furs for the next cargo. They were willing to go far into the forest, where game was still abundant, to meet the increasing de- mand. They were on hand always to carry messages on swift feet to distant posts, partly for the reward promised, but also out of personal interest in their employers and the enter- prises in which they were engaged.
Of course, this manner of treatment was not unvarying. Dutchmen sometimes wronged the Indians shamefully and the Indians sometimes gave the Dutchmen shocking illustra- tions of wild savagery. But, in general, relations were much better and more kindly and peaceable in the Dutch settle- ments than in most of the others. The ascendency of the traders habituated the natives to the usages of civilization. Some of these usages were adopted with advantage and raised their standards of conduct. Others, however, worked serious injury and impaired the healthy vigor of their life. In their contact with white men, the Indians learned new vices, and with these came diseases that undermined their vitality and hastened their doom.
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The Quest for Beaver.
Such incessant and wide-reaching activities, such com- manding influences, marked the rule of the New Netherland Company. Twenty-five or more years of their work had ef- fects that one can hardly imagine. In 1638, the Indians of this whole region, and the region itself, were greatly changed from what they were when the Onrust made her cruise.
NOTE: In the picture of the Mill River Valley from East Rock, the dam of the New Haven Water Company is shown on the right, with the lake above it. This is where the founders of New Haven built the first dam and set up their corn mill, to be managed in succession by John Wakefield, William Bradley, and Christopher Todd with his sons. The mill gave the river its name of Mill River. The river below the dam, as shown in the picture, has probably changed but little since those early days. But it is different above the dam. As the old dam was only a few feet high, the flow of the river was not much changed and the set back of water made but a little pond. Until recent years, the stream kept to its narrow ancient bed, and the road followed along not far from its bank. Raising the dam to its present height caused an overflow of extensive tracts of low land and formed the lake, which is now so great an ornament to the landscape.
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New Netherland and New England.
T HE enterprising spirit of the Dutch had a great deal to do with Connecticut in the beginning of its history; more than is contained in the story of the traders. Some of the boldest pioneers who came after the traders had lived in the atmosphere of the Netherlands and had learned there habits of free investigation and large pur- pose which remained with them after crossing the Atlantic. The Pilgrims who founded Plymouth had received their training, not only in England where they were born and grew up, but at Amsterdam and Leyden with their far dif- ferent associations. And to an extent we can easily imagine, Thomas Hooker of Hartford and John Davenport of New Haven, each in his own way, added to their intellectual and moral equipment during the years of their exile in the land of Barneveldt and Grotius.
It was the purpose of the Mayflower voyagers, Bradford tells us, "to find some place about Hudson's river for their habitation," but on account of the lateness of the season and the necessity of hastening to build themselves shelter against the winter's cold, they changed their plan and made for the nearest port. There was reason enough for this desire to plant their settlement where they would have the Dutch for near neighbors. The Dutch had proved their friendship for them through many years by hospitable behavior toward them when they were needy refugees. Besides, they had shown a positive interest in their undertaking. Indeed, it would seem that the exiles had consulted their Dutch neigh- bors rather freely in forming their project of removal to America. The project was a large one, involving the removal of four hundred families with their minister. The directors of the trading company knew all about it and favored it, be- lieving that a settlement of these people somewhere in the vicinity of Manhattan would be of advantage to their enter- prises. Consequently, the directors made a formal petition to
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New Netherland and New England.
the States General to assume responsibility in the case, and to plant a commonwealth with the minister and four hundred families under protection of the Dutch government. If the question had been only one of good will, the petition would no doubt have been granted. But political considerations made it impracticable. It was all-important to cultivate friendly relations with England; and for the States General to assume such a responsibility was likely to imperil these relations.
The circumstances of the hour drove the exiles back to England for authorization of their undertaking. There a pe- tition in their behalf was granted, though somewhat grudg- ingly. The Virginia Company of London wanted them for its Jamestown settlement and were willing to grant a patent with ample privileges, and the King assured them that they should not be molested if they carried themselves peaceably, but he positively refused the act of toleration under his seal by which their religious rights would have been secure. Hav- ing to depend on London merchants for ships and outfit, the Pilgrims were cruelly imposed upon, as everyone knows, till a rotten ship and a long delayed voyage brought disasters unlooked for. How much more happy their removal from Holland and their establishment in America might have been, if only the circumstances had allowed them to come under protection of the States General, it is not difficult to imagine.
The friendly attitude of the Dutch toward the Pilgrims found fresh illustration after the removal to Plymouth. Bradford tells of an occasion when some of the Dutch trad- ers were at Plymouth and how, seeing the barren shore and the sad plight the settlers were in, they told them of the at- tractive lands by the Connecticut River with opportunities for trading with the natives and urged them to go thither and start a trading house. For a number of years, however, the Plymouth people turned their attention to Maine, where they set up a trading post on the Kennebec River that did a lucrative business, so that in five years 12,500 pounds of beaver were shipped to England, besides skins of deer,
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
moose, bears, foxes, otter, and marten. The exiles learned the ways of trade and acquired a spirit of adventure in Hol- land that they could never have gained in their old rural homes at Scrooby. Bradford says that one of the anxieties of the exiles in Amsterdam and Leyden was that some of their boys went on far voyages by sea,* which suggests that these young men may have gone on trading vessels to Manhattan, and possibly have tramped with Indians over hunters' trails in Connecticut woods. However that may have been, there certainly were men at Plymouth who had learned the Dutchmen's methods of dealing with Indians, and who ri- valled their exploits at the post on the Kennebec.
Eventually, however, some of the Plymouth adventurers turned their minds to the Connecticut River and undertook to start a trading post near the one already managed by the Dutch. Conditions there had changed greatly in the ten or twelve years since the suggestion was first made. The pre- serves of game that had once seemed so unlimited were be- coming exhausted and new hunters were no longer welcome to share in the spoils. Also the tenure of the Dutch in this territory was being disputed by the English, who claimed the rights of earlier discovery. So the Plymouth people. finally came over to the Connecticut under protest of the Dutch.t Yet they came all the same. Perhaps they were of a different sort from the first settlers at Plymouth, coarser and rougher in their disposition. Such as they were, they started the flow of English pioneers to the Connecticut valley. True, these first comers did not stay long, but others came in larger numbers from Massachusetts Bay and eventually displaced the Dutch altogether.
Still, these were but incidents of a larger movement. For this region, the day of the hunter and trader was passing away. The day of the tiller of the soil and the builder of a home in an orderly society was at hand. Beaver were grow- ing scarce and hunters from the English settlements were competing sharply with the Dutch for those that were left. At just this time, too, a pestilence came and swept away the
* History of Plymouth, p. 46.
t Ibid., pp. 301-302.
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New Netherland and New England.
Indians in large numbers, so that it was no longer easy to find hunters who would go out and scour distant forests for pelts. Between the dwindling of the fur traffic and the in- creasing pressure of unwelcome neighbors, the pursuits to which the traders were accustomed lost their charm. So the old Dutch traders went out of the valley and English farm- ers came in.
Yet at this point another influence from the Netherlands, in the person of the Reverend Thomas Hooker, was about to have power over the building of the community life. Like the Plymouth Pilgrims, he had lived for several years as an exile in Holland before coming to America. Hooker in Eng- land had proved himself to be a man of great abilities. At Cambridge he was distinguished for his scholarship. As lec- turer at the Church of St. Mary's in Chelmsford, he at- tracted great congregations and made a deep impression on his hearers. Among these were some in high position, such as the Earl of Warwick, who afterward sheltered his family when he was compelled to leave the country. Complaint was made against him by an emissary of Archbishop Laud, when fifty-one ministers of Essex County signed a petition vouch- ing for his worth and the soundness of his teachings. Never- theless, he was forbidden to preach. Then he went away to Little Braddow and opened a school, in which he engaged, as a teacher, John Eliot, who afterward became famous in New England as the "Apostle to the Indians." But even there Hooker could not stay unmolested, and when it was deter- mined to shut him up in prison, he escaped in a vessel to Amsterdam.
This brought a relief from galling shackles. It was hard, indeed, to be cut off from his family and the many fast friends he had made in his work; but it was good to be out of the bondage of constant fear, away from malignant spies who hounded his steps wherever he went. It was a joy to be able to think with freedom, and without bothering over questions of fitting fresh truths into worn-out artifices of the past. It was a great thing, too, to be in such a country as the Netherlands. It is well understood that a sojourn abroad of-
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
fers rare privileges to men of intellect, and that universities encourage their instructors to spend a year now and then in foreign travel to broaden their scholarship. Such privileges came to Hooker in his enforced sojourn. He was in the coun- try of all others whose associations were the most inspiring for a man like him, where the spirit of personal rectitude had struggled with brutal oppression in more ways than can be told.
Amsterdam was a commercial metropolis, perhaps before all others in the world at that time. It had a population of 100,000, while London, whose commercial interests were secondary, had only about 130,000. A most informing place for an English observer, with forceful characters of many sorts from many lands, bringing him into touch with mani- fold phases of life! In this city, Hooker was the assistant pastor of the English Presbyterian Church for a number of weeks and awakened unusual attention by bold utterances in behalf of toleration, a defence of that "Brownist" fellow- ship to which the Plymouth settlers belonged. From Am- sterdam, he went to Delft, and was for two years associate pastor of the English church in that place. Delft is close by The Hague, the seat of government, and some fourteen miles from Leyden with its university, where was the mother church of the Pilgrims. Delft is the birthplace of Hugo Grotius, who like Hooker was at that time in exile for righteous principles. What better place than this to ponder on the subjects that were most in Hooker's thought? After the years at Delft, Hooker spent a few months at Rotterdam in association with those of congenial spirit. Then he re- turned to England, where he took ship with his family and other friends and sailed for Massachusetts. On their arrival, he became pastor of the newly organized church at New- town, where he continued for over two years, and then with the greater part of his people removed to Connecticut.
Following the varied incidents of this story, and bearing in mind how much the play of such incidents has to do with the unfolding of mind and heart to form a great life, one cannot but feel that those years in the Netherlands were of
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New Netherland and New England.
far-reaching consequence. They gave the finishing lessons, the crowning discipline, to a remarkable educational growth whose flower and fruit were to come in the new world. This master spirit of the community in the Connecticut valley owed not a little of his wisdom to those older masters who made the United Netherlands so great in constitutional gov- ernment.
It is an impressive coincidence that the Reverend John Davenport of the New Haven colony had a course of ex- periences not altogether unlike those of the Hartford founder. After his university training at Oxford, he became conspicuous for his power as a preacher in one of the London churches. Crowds went to hear him and to be stirred by his eloquence. His eminence brought on him the wrath of the prelacy. An attempt was made to arrest him, when he es- caped in a vessel to Amsterdam. This was in the very year of Hooker's return from the Netherlands. Singularly enough, he was engaged to be the assistant minister in the same church where Hooker had preached. Unlike Hooker, how- ever, he continued to live in Amsterdam after his connection with this church was closed, occupying himself with teaching private classes. He had been used to association with mer- chants and business men in London and on this account, per- haps, found the atmosphere of Amsterdam congenial. In this mart of trade he made himself quite at home. We may sup- pose that he saw merchants and talked with mariners, watch- ing ships as they left the wharves for all parts of the world and returned again from their voyages. He interested him- self in commerce, and here, no doubt, employed his mind on the conception of a seaport community in America. In this place of exile, we may surmise, he had communication from time to time with his merchant friends, Eaton, Goodyear, Gregson, and Lamberton, outlining to their sympathetic minds the enterprise which afterward they undertook to- gether in planting the settlement of New Haven. In a some- what different way from that of Hooker, but to a like end, he, also, learned in exile what was to be of vast significance in the building of a commonwealth.
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