USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, Volume I pt 1 > Part 5
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
when he was negotiating treaties, and to collect wampum from the women when it was needed for purposes of state.
This much of the civil government of the Mahican nation ; but in war there was another office, of the first importance, that of Jo-qua pour .. or Hero, which was obtained by contage or prudence, manifested in war like exploits. In time of peace the heroes, whom we should call simply war-chiefs, sat with the sachems and counsellors, but only to assent to their decisions, never to contradict them. But. to use the diplomatic phrase of our chronicler, "when they found it necessary to join in any war," they put the whole business into the hands of the heroes, after ex- horting them to be brave and prudent, and take good care of their young men. When the heroes received propositions of peace from the enemy they were immediately referred to the sachem and his counsellors for their decision. Thus the civil arm of the government did not interfere with the military, nor the military with the civil. At what time this curious constitution was modified, if it ever existed, we have no means of determining. But when Europeans first became acquainted with the Mahicans, their laws. customs, and religious faith do not seem to have differed essentially from those of other tribes in the northern and eastern portions of the continent, which have been too frequently described to need repetition here. They all betoken a common origin. It is certain that the Muhekaneok grew and flourished. gradually expanding their proper empire to the limits we have already defined. They also sent out offshoots northward and southward, which became powerful tribes ; sonte of them more noted in the warfare of red men and the white than the mother tribe, which almost invariably was in alliance with the govem. ments of New York and Massachusetts. The French (Jesnit) Mission aries speak of " the nine nations of Manhingans, gathered between Man hattan Island and the environs of Quebec." These " nations," as newly as can now be ascertained, were the original Mahicans, the Soquatucks. Horicons, Penacooks, Nipmucks, Abenaquis, Nawaas, Sequins, and Wappingers. There seems to have been a mysterious bond between these tribes (whose territory extended from beyond the Connecticut on the east to beyond the Hudson on the west) which, although not amount- ing to a league or compelling all to act together, had no little influence over their conduct in the wars which harrassed the early English and Dutch settlers. The most famous offshoots of the Mahican tribe were. however, the Pequots of Connecticut, and the Mohegans, Who separated from them.
The Mahican chronicler boasts that there was a time when the tribe. not the confederacy, could rally a thousand warriors. In the same region a thousand voters would now indicate a population of five thousand souls, and we may assume, without any violent presumption, that the same proportion would hold good between the numbers of the warriors and of the whole population, when the Mohicans inhabited it. Thesame territory, including the counties of Albany, Rensselaer, Columbia, and
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GENERAL HISTORY.
Washington in New York, and Berkshire in Massachusetts, with por- tions of several others, now has several hundred thousand inhabitants, with ut filling its capacity. Yet. before the year ling, it was so over- crowded, in its savage state, by five of six thousand, that emigration, on a large scale compared with the population from which it was taken, was necessary. There can be no stronger illustration of the extent to which the arts of civilization multiply the gifts of nature. It may be doubted whether the mathematical attainments of the aborigines were sufficient for taking an exact census, accurately defining boundaries, or correctly fixing historical dates. But in their loose ownership. a few lumiredd square miles more or less of border land was of little account. To mace their chronology before the coming of the Dutch would be as hopeless a task as to count the ages which went to make up a Berkshire gravel led. A " thousand" may have meant merely a large number, more or less in different cases than it means in our enumeration. But, as regards the census of the Mulekaneok warriors at the time of the nile's greatest prosperity, other data lead us to believe that a literal interpretation would not, at least. exaggerate the number.
From that point various causes contributed to a decline, umil even on the banks of the Housatonic, to which the conneil fire had been trans ferred from the Hudson, the tribe showed but a shadow, or a skeleton, of its former self.
The causes of this deline, although of a varied character and long misunderstood. are for the most part easily traced.
For an immemorial period before the Mahicans, in September. 1602. saw Hendrick Hudson sailing up to their doors in the Half Moon, and made their first acquaintance with the white man, they had been engaged in an implacable and murderous warfare with their western neighbors. the renowned Iroquois or Six Nations, and especially the fiercest tribe of them all, the Mohawks. Ruttenber denies indignantly that they were ever reduced to subjection by that powerful confederacy ; but however that may have been, it is quite clear that at one time they were reduced by them to straits which were very much like it. This, however, is not so much to our present purpose as the fact that the wars were soon le. sumed with more murderous fury than ever : fortune now often favoring the Mahicans, but never without slaughter which reduced their numbers. Victorious or defeated, almost every fight dwindled their people : bus especially if defeated, for then if women or children were spared it was only to be transferred to the victors.
Both the Mahicans and the Iroquois occupied territory over which the British Crown claimed sovereignty, and its subjects found a land of treasure ; but their wars were a serious obstacle to the trade with both. and with other Indians, in furs and other peltry, which was a source of large revenue to the proprietors and traders of the province of New York. Governor Lovelace, who came from England in 1670, was there fore charged to bring about a peace between the hostile tribes, which he
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
succeeded in doing in 1672 or 1673. The tribes were treated on terms of perfect equality, and their reconciliation was cordial, sincere, and per- manent. Their friendship was as warm as their hatred had been. and they did not again meet each other in arms until the War of the Revolu- tion, when the Mohawks adhered to their British alliance, while the Ma- hicans, then mostly concentrated at Stockbridge. warmly espoused the cause of the patriots.
In the course of these wars, besides the waste of life, the Maticans lost all of their territory north of the Mohawk River and west of the Hudson. The Mohawks obtained it by conquest. In April, 1680. they sold a large portion of their land in the vicinity of the city of Allergy to the Patroon Van Rensselaer, who continned purchasing in the suno vicinity until the original owners had little left on that side of the river Other purchases of valley lands on the eastern Shore, by Livingston and others, followed. The original ocenpants of the soil fell back to the hills regions on the borders of New York, Massachusetts, and Connections, making their homes in their sunny valleys. Disgraceful as it is to our civilization, it is no uncommon story that we repeat when we add that the wise chiefs favored the abandonment of the homes of their fathers in order that their young men, and young women too, might be withdrawn from the vicious contamination inseparable from contact with the white. man. It is still more disgraceful that the white rumseller was aldo to follow them, even to their mountain refuge. until the strong arm of Mas sachusetts stayed his course. New diseases also followed in the track of the white man. and found many victims among those not provided with the means of treating them medically. In the year 1701 these evils and their results, had by no means reached their full extent : but in that year we have data by which to measure the decline of the tribe from its pris- tine estate. In a conference that year with Governor Bellmont. Sognaus. the Mahican chief. who had been engaged in bringing immigrants into his tribe, was exultant in being able to report. " We have two hundred fighting men belonging to this county of Albany, from Katskill to Skach kook, and hope to increase in a year's time to three hundred." He er. pected the increase from the Penacooks and other eastern Indians. The county of Albany then included all the territory in that State north of Ulster, on the west side of the Hudson, and north of Duchess, on the east side, besides, as New York claimed. all of Massachusetts west of the Can- necticut River.
" Sketchbook" is a corruption of the word Schughticoke, which is also only a corruption of Fishquelook. "the place where a large and small stream moet, with corn lands adjoining." This is rather a descrip tion than a name, and it is applied to two localities: One in the present town of Schaghticoke, in Rensselaer county : one in Litchfield county. Connecticut, which extends northward into Sheffield. in Berkshire county, where a few families resided at a point where the Green River formerly joined the larger Housatonic. Tribes made up from Pequot
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GENERAL HISTORY. 35
fugitives received lands from then Mahican brethren at pour these points. and attained importance, taking the name of their locality. That re- ferred to by Sognans was probably on the Housatonic, and intended to indicate the eastern limit of the territory actually inhabited by his people in 1701. The southern Schaghticoke tribe had. however, not hoan organized.
In the earlier days of the tribe they made their homes in the valley along the banks of the Hudson, from which they were known to the whites as "The River Indians," by which name they are called in the colonial records. The mountain regions of Berkshire and the neighbo- ing counties were reserved as special hunting grounds. Their chronicler tells us that they hunted occasionally the whole year. but there were tyco special hunting seasons In the fall they hunted the deer, bear, raccoon, beaver, otter, fisher, and martin. for clothing and drying meat for the winter. In the beginning of March they went out to hunt the moose. on the Green Mountains, where these animals went for winter quarter .. There they went again, for beaver hunting. as soon as the rivers, ponds. and creeks were open ; but they took good care not to stay beyond two months.
It is singular that in the enumeration of the wild animals of Bork. shire by Professor Dewey no mention is made of the moose, the offer, of the beaver. The ease with which the moose could be slaughtered in the se narrow valleys may have caused its early extermination, or driven it to a remote refuge : but the beaver and the otter long remained in such abundance as to afford profitable hunting and trapping. their fur being a valuable item in traffic with the great markets. The otter has not yet entirely disappeared, several having been caught, within a few years, in a limited locality hardly six miles from the center of Pittsfield.
It has been stated, from the earliest knowledge which the white men had of the region. that the site of the town of Pittsfield was called by the Indians Poontoosuck. " The Field of the Winter Deer." by which perhaps the moose was meant. But the same name was applied to certain words in Cummington, in the Hoosac Mountains, in Hampshire county, and it is not improbable that it designated all the mountainous hunting gromad of the Magicans. But. be this as it may. when the English of Massweken setts first explored the Berkshire valley there were scarcely any aborigs inal families permanently resident in it, nor were there many more when the settlement was commenced. in 1725.
The Housatonic River and the valley through which it passes in Southern Berkshire are localities of great interest in the aboriginal oren pation of the county. We have described its course in a previous chap- ter. The orthography and meaning of the name have been subjects of much speculation. The early writers, after their manner of representing the pronunciation of Indian names by every possible combination of lut- ters, vary from "Aussatonag," through a dozen different forms, to "Ousatonuck."
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
After diligent inquiry among the Stockbridge Indians, and critical comparison of anthorities. Dr. Dwight considers Hoo-es ten nue to be the orthography which best represents the Mahican pronunciation: the interpretation being " The River beyond the Mountains." Isaac Hunting, of Pine Plains, N. Y., J. Hammond Trumbull, of Hartford. the eminent Indian philologist, and Charles J. Taylor, of Great Barrington, the most competent of recent crities of this question. assent to Dr. Dwight's con- clusion, omitting the word " River," and substituting "over" for " beyond." which makes the phrase a little more strikingly signifie int by indicating that the point designated is immediately beyond the moun- tain which those who used the term familiarly were in the habit of the quently passing over to reach it. Of course it was not intended to convey the idea that the river was suspended over the mountain, like a bird in its flight of the moon in the heavens. Mr. Hunting holds, also, that the syllables "ten-nuc," meaning " mountain." included, in the Indian's un- derstanding of it, the idea of a mountain of trees, or one covered with forests, which accords with one meaning ascribed to the word Taghconie or Talgkanik. All the modern crities agree that the name was origi- nally applied to the locality through which it passes in Berkshire, from which the river received it just as, upon New York maps, it became the Westenhook when it reaches the Westenhook Patent, and in Connecticut was called the Stratford, from the name of the town at which it joins Long Island Sound. Mr. Taylor holds the word Westenhook to be a Dutch corruption of Hooestennue. Good taste and love of enphony have changed the spelling and the pronunciation to Housatonic, and extended it to the whole stream.
From our first knowledge of it the Housatonic has been a river of frequent historic incidents. In August, 1676, when at the close of King Phillip's war, the ruined remnant of the Narragansett tribe were flying westward, Major John Talcot, who, with a body of Connecticut troops, was stationed at Westfield, learned that the trail of some two hundred of the fugitives, tending toward the Hudson, had been discovered. He fol lowed it and discovered them lying in the utmost confidence and security at some point on the west bank of the Housatonic. As they were entirely unsuspicious of his presence in the neighborhood he determined to post- pone the attack until morning. when he ordered one division of his men to pass down the river, and, by a detour, take a position on the west side of the sleeping enemy, while he led the other to the attack in front. It happened, however, that a wakeful Indian, who had gone down the river to fish, discovered the movement of the first division and gave the usual alarm: " Awanux! Awanux!"' A fatal bullet from the white ranks to. warded his vigilance with death, but he saved the lives of many of his brethren. Talcot, who was already in position, hearing the alarm, poured in a volley upon the sleepers as they rose in terror. They filed in con- sternation to the woods, and. although closely pursued by the troops. most of those who were not killed or badly wounded by the first fire
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GENERAL HISTORY.
escaped into the woods. Twenty-five men were left upon the ground. and twenty taken prisoners. Talcot lost but one man, and he was a Mohegan Indian.
We condense this account, which bears the impress of perfect truth. fulness, from Hoyt's " Antiquarian Researches." published in 1824. Hubbard, in his narrative of the Jadian wars, speaks of Major Taleat's overtaking and figlning the " Narragansetts on the Ansomunnug River. in the middle way between Westfield and the Dutch River and Fort Albany, where he killed and took prisoners forty five of them, whereof twenty -five were fighting men." He adds " that many of the rest ware sorely wounded. as appeared by the dabbling of the bushes with blood. as was observed by those who followed them a littb. finther." Hubbard! had also a later report from Albany that, in addition to the forty five men killed and taken prisoners, other Narragansetts were slain, so that their whole loss was sixty. It is to be hoped, for his soul's welfare, that the historian did not gleefully add to this grim record of death and misery that 120 were dead from sickness. We do not put the same implicit faith in what Historian Hubbard heard from Albany that we do in Hoyt's record founded upon official sources of information: still. in the flight which followed that fearful reveille of musketry there must have been much of suffering and death-nselessly inflicted.
There was not much glory to be acquired in such an encounter. al. though the Indians were treated in the manner which they had themselves taught their Christian foes, finding them apt scholars in the school of blood. Still, this affair requires notice at our hands as the first and the most bloody of the very few hostile meetings of the red man and the white on Berkshire soil: and the reader will note. as we speak of them. that in no one instance were the Mahicans, under whatever name. engaged against the soldiers or the people of Massachusetts. The locality of such a fight as that of Major Taleot and the Narragansetts would be considered as an interesting or "romantic" spot, wherever it was sitnated. In supers stitious times ghosts, or some sort of spectres, would surely have haunted ' the spot; and some evidence from the other world is needed, even now. to point it out with any certainty, for it is claimed for Stockbridge, Grent Barrington, and Salisbury. Hoyt, in a foot note to his account, states that it was in the upper part of Sheffield, and that at the time he wrote. (1824) it was still known to the inhabitants. Rev. Dr. Field, whose his: tory was published five years later, seems to have known nothing of this. but supposes that the battle was probably fought near the site of the Stock bridge meeting house. built in 1784, because Indian bones were found in digging for its foundation. The peculiar boundary of the river at this point does not favor this theory, and the finding of Indian bones in Southern Berk- shire is a too common occurrence to greatly strengthen it. The claim of Salisbury. in Connecticut, has some strong points of probability, but it is very indistinctly made, and may refer to some other staller conflict. Mr. Taylor, in his History of Great Barrington, suggests very modestis
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
that the scene of the slaughter was not improbably at the fordway by "The Great Wigwam," in that village, where the Indian trail from Weste field to the Hudson crossed the Housatonic. As there were no white set. tlers near this point, and, so far as appears in any account of the slangh. ter, no Mahicans, there was no reason why, in their perilous flight, they should not have chosen this, the easiest and most direct path to safety It would certainly have been the most natural course; but we must con- fess that it is impossible to fix, with anything approaching to absolute certainty, the locality where Major Taleot surprised the flying Narragan; sett: and slew so many of them.
In 1694 Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth. of Boston. afterward president of Harvard College, accompanied the commissioners of Massachusetts and Connecticut on their way to AAlbany to attend a conference of similar com- missioners from New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, with the rep resentatives of the Iroquois and Mahicans. His journal throws much light upon the country before it received Massachusetts settlers. The party, with a guard of sixty dragoons commanded by Capt. Wadsworth. of Hartford, a relative of the chaplain, left Boston August 6th, and reached Westfield on the ninth. Thus far there was a road-as ronds were in those days. From Westfield there was scarcely more than an Indian trail-" the nearest way through the woods." The days' march was twenty-five miles, to the banks of the Farmington River, in Otis. The road was " very woody, rocky, mountainous, and swampy." " Extream bad riding it was?" exclaims the reverend traveller. "I never vet saw so bad travelling as this was." Capt. Wadsworth doubtless considered it ill-adapted to the operations of cavalry and reasonably counted twenty- five miles a fair day's march under the ciremustances. The next day they made another twenty-five miles, the greater part of it through "a ยท hideous wilderness, although some parts of the road was not not so e ... tream bad." " We took up our lodging, " continues the journal, "about sun-down in ye woods, at a place called Onsetonuck formerly inhabited by Indians. Through this place was a very cutions river, the same ( which some say) runs through Stratford; and it has on each side some parcels of pleasant fertile interval land." To complete the story of this march. be- fore commenting on it, the commissioners and their escort. "setting for. ward about sunrise." reached Kinderhook, "the foremost of us." at about three o'clock in the afternoon of August 10th. From Kinderhook to Albany, the road was short, safe, and reasonably good: an easy ride would have brought the party into Albany before the sun of August 11th. 1694. had gone down.
President Wadsworth's journal throws valuable light upon the con dition of the territory of Berkshire before its settlement, while it sig- gests to the student of its early history problems which he will not find it easy to solve. The reader will first observe that, while with the best facilities then attainable it required four days of thesame and unconfort. able travel for the party starting from Boston to reach a point very pour
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GENERAL HISTORY.
the center of the present village of Great Barrington. a comparatively easy ride of less than a day brought them to Allany. There is another point of no little significance. The trail followed by this oficial party was that ordinarily pursued by all persons whose ill fortune compelled them to pass between Boston and Albany, either upon public or private business, unless they chose to make the detour through Comeeticui. which this party did on their return to Boston. Whatever culture nog have since made the route traversed by the Honorable Commissioners, il was, with the exception of the brief interval on the Housatonic. one of the most repulsive in Berkshire. So far as their observations and repads went travellers over it did not encourage the settlement of the region. and it was years before any except the daring, adventurous, and hands explorer pursued any other. This fact aids somewhat in the explanation of the long delay in the settlement of the county.
But there are other questions raised by President Wadsworth's brief words which are not so easily comprehended or explained. He confirms the opinion that the word of multitudinous orthography, which we have reduced to Housatonic, was originally applied rather to the country, of a part of it, through which the Housatonic River passes than to the stream itself. It is true. also, that in speaking of " a place called Onsetonnick. formerly inhabited by Indians." he refers to a limited locality, and. it our conjectures as to the locality of Major Talent's suprise are correct. at the same place in Great Barrington where his muskets roused the sleeping fugitives. It is not at all strange that the pleasant valley of the . Housatonic in Southern Berkshire should have been inhabited early lo the Mahicans, for it was quite as well adapted to their purposes as the valley of the Hudson-safer from hostile attacks, and never to theel mountainous spring hunting grounds. The mystery is why they skwohl have abandoned it. It certainly was not to join the Narragansett in their flight. for there is no information in any account of the affair of any inhabitants near their fatal encampment west of the wold ford." not of any addition to their number afterward, as there surely would have flown if any had existed. Indeed. the friendship of the tribe with the English of Massachusetts would have rendered such a flight absurd. It is possible that some of the Berkshire Mahicans may have aided the Narragansetts in making their escape. It is an old proverb " that blood is thicker than water." and the old Mahicans may have thought it thicker than the ink upon parchment treaties. If they did we can only honor them for it. hvor we cannot believe that any Mahican, living, as he could. very much at his ease in Onsetounek, deserted it to take his chances with hunted meg. pursued by powerful and vindictive fors. President Walworth do .. not inform us upon what ground he believed that the joace called Onse- tonnek had been inhabited by indians previous to 1094.
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