USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume I > Part 9
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The hrst planters of New England were some of the best portion of this wine-bibbing, ale-guzzling nation. They abhorred drunken- ness and intended to be temperate drinkers, and they followed the English custom of licensing men to sell intoxicating drinks. Alehouses in England were in bad repute, and the newcomers from across the sea
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avoided using the unsavory name by substituting the word "ordi- nary," which in England signified an eating-house.
The planters of the Connecticut River Valley were conscious of the evil effects of liquor houses, and in no haste to have these ordi- naries. When the subject was agitated in 1663, they proceeded with great caution, and the keepers and retailers in those days were very respectable men. Selectmen would not approve, nor the court license, any others. John Pynchon was licensed to sell wine and strong liquors in 1671.
A while afterward the court that was sitting at Springfield in the house of Nathaniel Ely, ordinary-keeper, fined him forty shillings for selling beer that was not according to law-that is, with four bushels of barley malt to the hogshead. In consequence of drunkenness among the Indians, "the fruits whereof were murder and other out- rages," the General Court, in 1647, forbade all persons to sell or give to any Indian, rum, wine, brandy, cider, or any other strong liquors, under penalty of forty shillings for every pint so sold or given. The Hampshire courts were prompt to punish infractions of this law, and were sustained by nearly all the people. But a few persons could not resist the temptation of exchanging spirits for wampum and beaver skins ; and sometimes a farmer or his wife thought there was no great harm in selling to the red man a few quarts of poor cider. The Indians were sure to be drunk whenever they could get liquor enough for the purpose.
The Indians in this valley were miserable, degraded beings when these towns were settled, and it is evident that they did not become any better. The great and crying sin of drunkenness reigned among them. This was attributed by the courts to selling them cider and strong beer. A very little strong drink would intoxicate their brains ; for being used to drinking water, they could not bear a fourth part of what an Englishman could.
The early drinks in New England were wine of several sorts, beer, ale, brandy and aquavitæ. Wine and beer were the principal drinks until rum was brought from the West Indies. The General Court of Connecticut termed it "Barbadoes liquor, commonly called rum-kill-devil." One of the valley historians in a footnote comment says, "This liquor was strangely misnamed. Instead of killing the
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devil, it has greatly extended and strengthened his kingdom." Aqua- vitæ, which signifies water of life, also had a wrong name. Rum-kill- devil was much cheaper than aquavitæ from Europe, and the use became much more common. Cider was less in favor than beer until after 1700, and about that time New England rum, distilled from molasses, was added to the list of intoxicating drinks.
The county court in 1675 remarked, "it is found by experience that there is too much idle expence of precious time in drinking strong liquors by many of our youth and others." The court ordered that retailers should sell only to governors of families of sober carriage, the "intent being that such persons as have liberty to sell, should use their influence to prevent a trade of drinking and drunkenness."
John Pynchon did not commonly retail wine and spirits, but when he had rum for sale, there was no lack of customers. Reverend Pela- tiah Glover, the Springfield minister, bought of him two gallons of rum and six quarts of wine in a year. Mr. Pynchon, at the raising of his mill dam, in 1654, furnished wine and cakes to the amount of thirteen shillings, sixpence.
Every town was required to have a distinct mark for cattle and horses. What this should be was determined by the General Court. All those animals which fed in the open without constant keepers were to have a brand-mark on a horn, or left buttock or shoulder, so a per- son could tell in what town a stray creature belonged. The brand-marks used for the Hampshire towns in 1681 were: S.P. for Springfield, N.H. for Northampton, H.D. for Hadley, and W.F. for Westfield. The two letters for each town were united, as HD, for Hadley.
Sumptuary laws restraining excess of apparel in some classes were common in England and other countries for centuries. Massachusetts enacted such a law in 1651, ordering that persons whose estates did not exceed two hundred pounds, and those dependent on them, should not wear gold or silver lace, gold or silver buttons, bone lace above two shillings a yard, or silk hoods or scarves, on penalty of ten shill- ings for each offense. Any person wearing such articles might be assessed, as if they had estates of two hundred pounds.
The first attempt to have this law observed in our locality was made in 1673. At the March court, twenty-five wives and five maids belonging to Springfield, Northampton, Hadley, Hatfield and West- field, were presented by the jury as "persons of small estate, who
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wear silk contrary to law." Some were acquitted, some were fined, and others were admonished. Of the thirty, only three were fined, and the fines were remitted at the next court.
The jury of the March court in 1676 presented sixty-eight per- sons, of whom thirty-eight were wives and maids, and thirty young men, some for wearing silk, "and that in a flaunting manner," and others for long hair and other extravagances. Two were fined ten shillings and many others were ordered to pay the clerk's fees, two shillings, six pence each. Several of the sixty-eight were wives, daughters or sons of well-to-do men.
MEMORIAL BRIDGE, SPRINGFIELD
In those days the March courts were held at the house of a North- ampton man who kept an ordinary, and most of the women and men of the five Hampshire towns of that period who were summoned to answer for their finery, came to the ordinary and appeared before the judges in the courtroom. They, and the spectators, attracted by the novelty of the proceedings, must have filled the house.
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The men on the bench when the females appeared in court on a March day in 1673 were: John Pynchon and Elizur Holyoke, of Springfield; William Clark, of Northampton; and Henry Clarke, of Hadley. In September, a few years later, the selectmen of all the five towns were presented to the court for not assessing according to law their inhabitants that wore silk and were excessive in their apparel. The court endeavored to stir up the selectmen to assess those wearing unsuitable and excessive apparel, but it was too late; the women had already gained the victory and no longer feared fines or taxes for wearing silks; "yet many good men lamented the extravagance of the age, and the love of finery among the women."
The court sessions continued one, two or three days. There were commissioners or judges, jurors and a constable or marshal, making sixteen to eighteen persons who dined together, or dined at the same place, every court day at the ordinary where the court sat, and those from other towns had supper, lodging and breakfast. Some wine and considerable beer were drank. The judges and jurymen from these upper towns, in order to attend court one day at Springfield, had to be absent from home two nights. They lived well and the ordinary keeper charged much more than the common price for their meals. The food, drink and horse-keeping, which were paid for by the county, seemed to be the principal compensation they received. Twice the record mentions that most of the county rate was needed to pay the county reward for killing wolves. Nothing was received directly by the keepers of ordinaries for the room used by the court, or for fuel. Litigation was not cheap in Massachusetts, for every person who sued another in a county court was required to pay ten shillings for the privilege.
All the produce that went to Boston was carried down the river, and all the merchandise from that place, except a few light articles, was brought up the river. John Pynchon sometimes sent to Boston more than 2,000 bushels of wheat and peas in a year. At Springfield there were small boats carrying three or four tons, and in the accounts of William and John Pynchon these were called canoes. Each boat was managed by two men down and up the river and at Enfield Falls. Grain was carried to Hartford in the boats, and so were barrels of flour and pork and hogsheads of beaver. Sometimes the Springfield boats brought up the furniture of families moving.
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The first settlers of New England knew nothing about sleds and sleighs, nor did they use them for some years. Heavy sleds came long before sleighs. Some wood was sledded before 1670, but in general it was carted many years after that date. Also, for a consid- erable period, logs were conveyed to saw-pits and sawmills on wheels; indeed, nearly everything was carted. Logs were carted to John Pynchon's sawmill some years after 1667, but in 1674 he bought a sled, and many logs were sledded. People did not keep sled roads open in winter even for fifteen or twenty miles, and there were no sleigh rides in the Hampshire towns until about 1740.
New England was far from being an unbroken wilderness when first settled by the English. In the vicinity of the Indian settlements there were not only plots of cleared land on which the squaws raised Indian corn, beans and squashes, but many openings that were cov- ered with grass, and extensive tracts of woodland, where the trees were so scattered that green herbage and even strawberries flourished among them. The early settlers thought these thin forests resembled the English parks, and a Salem man wrote, in 1629, that the country was "very beautiful in open lands mixed with goodly woods, and with plains that in some places exceed five hundred acres, yet are not much troublesome to clear for the plow. The grass and weeds grow up to a man's face, and in the lowlands and by fresh rivers is abundance of grass, and large meadows without any tree or shrub."
The Indians burned the country that it might not be overgrown with underwood, and the burning made the region passable by destroy- ing the brushwood. At the same time it scorched the older trees and hindered their growth. In many places the land was so free from obstruction that a person could ride when hunting.
The Indian custom was to burn the woods in November when the grass was withered and the leaves dry, for then the raging fire con- sumed all the underwood and rubbish, besides presenting a grand spectacle. That this Norwottuck Valley was wild, and its scenery to some degree gloomy, may be granted, but there must also have been much that was pleasant and full of natural charm.
The first planters of New England were entirely unaccustomed to the business of clearing woodlands, and they selected places for their homes where they could immediately begin to cultivate the earth. The rich alluvial lands that bordered the Connecticut and its tribu-
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taries attracted them at once. They found plenty of land ready for the plow and as soon as they could establish themselves, they began to raise Indian corn and other grain. Besides, there was grass to harvest and protect from the weather. The upland woods on each side of the river, above and below the towns, were passable for men on horseback, and with a little preparation, for carts.
After the Indians ceased to burn over a tract of land, bushes and brambles commonly began to grow in abundance on it, and this was considered very injurious by those who came to inhabit afterward.
Those bushes that sprang up so plentifully in the home-lots, high- ways, and elsewhere were indeed a great annoyance. There was so little travel within and between the towns with wheels and two animals a breast that the bushes choked up the ways, and it was difficult to keep an open path.
For a long time the woods were used by the English as pasture grounds, where all kinds of domestic animals grazed, and they fired the woods annually, as the Indians had before them. But there was no setting of fires near their habitations and fenced fields. That was reserved for the more distant parts of the township. Massachu- setts enacted a law forbidding any person to set the common wood- lands on fire, except between March 10 and April 30. According to tradition, there were some splendid burnings in the woods on the hills and mountains around this valley, especially in the night. The fires continued down to 1743, when a Massachusetts law was made to restrain such fires, arguing that the burning of the woods greatly impoverished the soil, prevented the growth of the wood, and destroyed much fence. Traditional accounts affirm that the woods used to be so free from underbrush, and the trees so thinly scattered, that a deer could be seen forty rods on the wooded hills. The burn- ings were as favorable to the white deer hunters as they were of old to the Indian hunters.
Valuable timber was not so plenty as some have imagined, and there were river towns that had fears of a scarcity very early. Spring- field voted in 1647 that no timber, boards, planks nor shingle-timber should be carried out of the town from the east side of the river.
New England's first settlers knew the value of oak, but did not at first understand the importance of pine. In many places they not only used oak timber for the frames of buildings, but oak clapboards
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and oak shingles, and some used oak boards to wainscot rooms. Where pine was plenty, pine boards were perhaps sawed as early as oak boards, and everywhere the tendency was for pine shingles and clapboards to take the place of oak. Our forefathers had to learn how to split rails from logs after they came to this country.
When John Pynchon built his brick house in 1660 he put on shingles eighteen inches long and an inch thick at the thick end. In 1677 he used cedar shingles for one of his structures. He built saw- mills in Springfield, Suffield, and Enfield. After the first mill was completed he hired men to cut logs ready for the saw at eight pence each; and other men were engaged to cart them to the mill with their own teams at one shilling, eight pence each. The logs were to be from twelve to twenty-five feet in length, and from seventeen to twenty-four inches in diameter at the small end. Most of them were pine. White oak logs cost much more.
Lath for plastering are rarely mentioned in the writings of the seventeenth century. The wealthy plastered their rooms, but the farmers got along either with very little plaster, or none at all.
The first pastures in this and other British colonies were the woods that previously had been the hunting grounds of the Indians. These woodlands gave the inhabitants of the Norwottuck Valley a very wide range for their cattle during more than half a century.
Horses, horned cattle, sheep and hogs were pastured on the plains, hills and mountainsides. Cows were under a keeper, and so were sheep after they were numerous enough for a shepherd. In some towns there was an abundance of goats. Young horses and cattle commonly roved without restraint, and so did hogs. In many places the wages of a cowherd were twelve shillings a week, and very likely he was to drive out the herd every morning by the time the sun was an hour high, take them to good feed, and bring them home reason- ably at night. A farmer who had only a few sheep would keep them on his home-lots and about the village, until the number had increased enough to afford paying a shepherd.
The owners of the herds and flocks usually tock care of them on Sundays, so the keepers might attend public worship.
The common fields and private lots needed strong barriers to pro- tect them against restless, rambling animals. Young cattle and horses often remained in the woods until winter, and some of them became
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wild and unruly and strayed to other towns. Many days were spent both in winter and other seasons looking for cattle and horses in the woodlands.
Swine were seldom killed by wolves or bears, for they defended themselves and their young with great vigor when attacked. By a law of the Colony, a dog that bit or killed sheep was to be hanged. The hanging of untrustworthy dogs sometimes gave a name to the vicinity where the execution took place. "Hang-dog Swamp" is an instance. The dog was taken to the woods, a leaning staddle bent down and a cord fastened to the dog's neck. Then the elastic staddle sprung back with the dog dangling in the air. There has been a time still more remote when cats and dogs were hanged at the heavy end of a well-sweep.
Settlers and Soldiers
CHAPTER IX
Settlers and Soldiers
The Indians of the Connecticut River Valley were eager to have the English settle among them, and they gladly sold their lands. No urging was necessary. Also, they knew perfectly well what use the English made of the lands they had bought in other places long before. Nor did they ever pretend they were ignorant of what was intended by a sale of land, and no quarrels resulted on that score. In the opinion of many intelligent men, the price the Indians received for land was all it was worth.
As one authority has said, "Whoever is conversant with the toils and privations attending a new settlement in the wilderness, and will take the trouble to compute what is expended and laid out to make the land produce anything, and how much its value depends on neighbor- ing settlements, and on roads and the various improvements of civil- ized life, will come to the conclusion that wild land in a wilderness, remote from neighbors, can not be of much value." The Indians themselves manifestly were not conscious of giving up much that was useful or important to them. The Indian men were fond of fighting, hunting, and fishing, and they disdained other pursuits. Agricultural labor, and all kinds of drudgery were the lot of the women, who, with hoes of shells, wood or iron, cultivated small patches of land. Rais- ing crops was a minor object with the Indians. Many of their deeds retained the liberty of hunting and fowling on the lands they sold, and of fishing in the streams. There are rare instances, too, of reserving the privilege of setting their wigwams on the commons, and getting firewood from there.
President Dwight, in his "Travels in New England" says, "the Indians were always considered as having a right to dwell and to hunt within the lands which they had sold." Such a right seems to have been practically enjoyed, though not expressly reserved, in all the
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deeds. When the women took land of the English for half the crop they may have obtained from well plowed land more corn than the same amount of labor produced when the land and all the crop were theirs.
The relations of the English with the Indians were far from tyrannical. In a land deal with John Pynchon that made a tract abso- lutely his, the Indians wanted sometimes to set their wigwams within the bounds of what they had sold. He agreed "he would be kind and neighborly to them," and besides he promised not to prohibit them from getting firewood out of the forest.
Pynchon was very careful in making deeds, as may be seen in this fragment wherein a chief, Umpanchala, "do give, grant, bargain, and sell to John Pynchon of Springfield, all the grounds, woods, ponds, waters, trees, stones, meadows and uplands lying at Norwotogg, on the west side of Quenecticut River."
Here follows a portion of another Indian deed written by John Pynchon, who now had reached a maturity and influence that entitled him to be called the Worshipful Major Pynchon :
"Be it known by these presents, that Wequagon and his wife Amonusk, and Squomp, their son, being the sole owners of the land at Norwotogg, on the east side of Quenicticutt River, southward toward Springfield, sell unto John Pynchon the neck or meadow which the English call Hoccanum, together with the uplands adjoining, and the brook or riverett called Cowachuck. Only a parcel of land upwards of sixty acres, being already mortgaged to Joseph Parsons of Northampton and bounded out to him by stakes and marks in the presence of two Northampton men, they exempt from this sale. The rest of the land, said John Pynchon, and his successors shall enjoy forever, absolutely, clearly and free from all molesta- tion by Indians. We, the said Wequogon, Awonunske and Squomp will defend the will unto the said Pynchon against all lawful claims whatsoever. The intent is not to exclude the Indians from hunting deer, beaver or other wild creatures on the tract aforesaid, which liberty they yet reserve to them- selves, and also to take fish, and sometime to set their wig- wams on the commons, and to take wood and trees off the
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commons for their own use. In witness whereof the said Indians have hereunto set their hands and marks this eighth day of August, 1662."
Indian chiefs were inclined to get into debt. Wequagon and his wife and son, Squomp, owed Joseph Parsons eighty beaver skins for coats, wampum and goods, and they mortgaged to him a parcel of land in the meadow and upland called Hockanum. The debt was not paid when due, and Parsons sold the land for a considerable sum.
Indians, in signing deeds, commonly did something more than make a mark; most made a picture or representation of some object. In the old records at Springfield may be seen many of these Indian hieroglyphics, such as a beaver, a snake, a snow-shoe, a bow, a hand, and so on.
In John Pynchon's account book are charged all the wampum and other articles sold to Umpanchala, to pay him seventy-five pounds or three hundred fathoms of wampum for some land, including a fine for being drunk. Accounts with Indians were kept in fathoms and hands of wampum. Pynchon, in this account, estimated ten hands equal to a fathom, and made his hands more than seven inches, instead of the usual hand of four inches. Wampum was an article of traffic, and also the money of the Indians, the standard by which they measured the value of all other things. A fathom of wampum was a string of beads six feet long and made of shells.
Pynchon paid from his shop in wampum and merchandise, for nearly all the lands in the vicinity of the river that were bought of the Indians, from Suffield and Enfield, to Deerfield and Northfield, and received his pay from the settlers and proprietors of the new towns, to whom he assigned the Indian deeds.
From 1636, when Springfield was settled, until the Indian War of 1675, the Nipmucks inhabited the interior of Massachusetts, occu- pying many places in the present county of Worcester, and in the old county of Hampshire. They were not subject to a common sachem, but had many petty chiefs. Four small clans dwelt in the Connecticut Valley or within a few miles of it. These were the Agawams at Springfield and Westfield, the Waranokes at Westfield, the Norwot- tucks at Northampton, Hadley, and Hatfield, and the Pocomtucks at Deerfield. The four tribes of western Nipmucks may be reckoned
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at about eleven hundred when most numerous, and when they left this part of the country their numbers were much reduced. The Norwot- tuck chiefs had little authority, and were of slight importance. One writer makes the comment that the historians and novelists will not be able to make heroes of any river sachems, from Saybrook to Northfield.
At times our valley Indians had no acknowledged leader, and in 1668 they agreed that Chickwallop should be their chief, but there was nothing in Chickwallop to inspire the English or Indians with respect. The Norwottucks committed no great offenses, but there were times when they harbored evil-doers from other tribes, and there were some inclined to petty thefts. When they could get strong drink they became drunk, and brawls and tumults followed. At such a time they would insult and abuse the constable or anyone else. Yet when free from liquor they were generally peaceful and respectful toward the whites, who intended to treat them justly and humanely.
There is no reason to think that the Indians of the valley lacked food or that their supplies had been perceptibly diminished previous to their departure. The forests in every direction remained nearly as extensive as ever, and wild animals, fish and wild fruits were still abundant. The whites sometimes hunted and fowled, but they were too industrious to spend much time in such pursuits. There was land enough for corn, but without fences it was useless, and the squaws took meadow land on shares after the English had plowed it. They planted and hoed the corn, and picked and husked it without any aid from their lazy husbands.
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