USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, Volume I pt 1 > Part 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41
After the visit of the colonial commissioners we next fand the Horse tonic River, under the name of the Westenhook, mentioned in the Cale nial History of New York" as the lonneany lines of the neutrality which.
*Colonial History, Vel. VI .. p. 371.
40)
HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
by treaty with the French Indians of Canada. the Iroquois and Mahicaus were able to maintain in the war of 1204. Says the narrative : " The in- habitants of this province ( New York) who lived on the west side of that river, followed all their occupations in husbandry as in times of peace. while at the same time the inhabitants of New England were in their sight, exposed to the merciless cruelty of the French and their bolian allies." As in 1704 there was on the eastern side of the Housatonic : rough and mountainous region. some twenty five miles wide. totally des tifute of any white population, and on the west a similar region some fifteen miles wile. there seems to be some hyperbole in phis de cription of the neutrality line : but it at least shows the importance of the river in aboriginal geography, and the good will of the Iroquois and Mahigh- toward their nearest white neighbors.
In all this the reader will find little more than conjecture and prob. ability to sustain the theory of the occupation of any portion of Berk shire soil by the Indians, as a permanent home, much prior to 17000. Still, the probability is very strong that some Mahians, passing through the rich interval lands of the Housatonic valley on their way to their mountainous hunting grounds may. before that era. have chosen to abide there with their families. in a region safe from the attack of enemies. favorable to their mode of culture, and in the near neighborhood of abundant game. From the first the Mahicans, withont disturbing their tribal organization, were broken up into subdivisions, often consisting of only two or three families ; generally but the different branches of one In fact, the whole aboriginal constitution of government was a rude ante type of our own national. state, county, and town system, each with cop. tain reserved rights, but all subject in national matters to one sufiend head, or confederacy. Under this system any Mahican could make a settlement anywhere in the territory of the tribe. and thereby, as it seems, by preemption, acquire a title to the soil. The organization of the province of New York into counties, parishes, and other precinct. to which the Indians were compelled to conform in their dealings with the settlers, led to still new subdivisions, and a loover regard for the old. .... in this and other respects, the provincial laws became more inksome. there grew up. on the part of the Indians, an increased disposition to escape from their immediate control and avail themselves of the old tribal freedom of separation and right of preemption.
Previons to the opening of the trade in furs and peltry for exporta tion the Indian hunted the wild animals around his village simply to ob tain food and clothing for himself and family. When their needs were. supplied his natural indolence, or a wise pandence, led him to stay his slaughter. The white man taught him new cravings, if not new need- The very first lesson which Christian civilization tonight the red leur barians, on board Hendrick Hudson's Half Moon, was the delight of spirituous intoxication. and with that it pursued them until, with no aid from war, the Maticans were driven from their native soll, or ted from it to escape contamination.
11
GENERAL HISTORY.
The next boon which the white man bestowed upon the red was fire arms and ammunition. Of course. in the traffic between the races. clothing, food, hatchets, and other articles were sold to the Indians; but the desire for fire-water and fire arms was that which chiefly inclined them to sell their lands and exterminate the animals which for ages had supplied their fathers with food and clothing. They constantly soll of destroyed their permanent resources, receiving in return only that which . perished in the using. The European demand for furs of all kinds was insatiable, and the slaughter of deer, that their hides might be prepared as buckskin and made into breeches, did not cease until, about the close of the Revolutionary War. the last deer in Berkshire were slain diving a winter when the snow was so deep that they were found and murderel in the yards which they had won in it, and from which there was my escape. Of course the depletion of Mahican land of its valuable wild animals was most swift along the shores of the Hudson, where the lails were being rapidly brought into cultivation by Dutch and English farmers. As they became more valuable to the farmer they grew of less and less valne to the hunter and trapper. The Indians. therefore, fir this reason and others, were easily persnaded to sell their rich farming lands and withdraw to the hills, where, they were told, their possessions would be safe. The story is graphically told by Hendrick Anpumut. in his speech as representative of the River Indians, then concentrated at Stockbridge in their conference with the delegates of the six Provinces at Albany in July. 1754 :
.. We would say something of our lands. When the white people purchased of us. from time to time, they said they only wanted the low. lands ; they told us that the hill-land was good for nothing, being full of woods and stones. But now we see people living all about the hills and woods, although they have not purchased the land. When we ask thent what right they have to the land they reply that we are not to be tes garded. as these lands belong to the King. But we were the first passes sors of them. When the King has paid us for them, then they may sas they are his."
At the date of this speech the Indians. of Berkshire county. as least, had been paid for all the lands occupied by its settlers ; but of that we must speak hereafter. Their alienation of the rich soil of the low lands began early and increased rapidly, for the natural gasq that their value to the white farmer was constantly enhanced, while for the red hunter they grew more and more barren. Religions and moral causes contributed to the same end, but this was the most potent in fluence in transferring the Mahican conneil fires from the Hudson to the Housatonic. Ruttenber states that the national sont was removed from Schoodag to Westenuck between 1001 and 1734 a wide range. which illustrates the extreme indefiniteness of the aboriginal story of the county : especially as the recognition by the Mountains was at least ten years after 1734. When Mr. Ruttenber tells us that Westewiek
42
HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
was known prior to 1734. both to the Massachusetts authorities ani the Moravian missionaries, as the national seat of the Mahicans, the instances cited show that he refers to the tract sold to the Massachus. setts commissioners, March 25th, 1724, by Konkapot and twenty other Indians, and out of which was carved the Upper and Lower House- tonic townships. This territory, which is about eighteen miles long by twelve wide, covers, with some small reservations made by the granted -. the present towns of Sheffield, Great Barrington, Egre mont, and Mount Washington, most of Alford, and a great portion of Stockbridge. West Stockbridge, and Lee. The comprehensive designation of the whole district was "all of Housatoback alias Westenook." which would -rom to indicate, if any sure inference can be drawn from Indian goods, that these were the limits of what the Mahicans knew as Westenhook. Hooestonnek, and a dozen other forms of spelling the name.
In this district there were, in 1734, two principal villages about eight miles apart, one known as Skatekook. on the border of Sheffield and Great Barrington, and the other near the site of the present village of Stockbridge. The agents of the Massachusetts Board of Commissioners for Indian affairs, who visited the Indians at Housatonic in July, 1731. were Rev. Messrs. Bull and Williams. After a four days' conference the Indians consented to receive a religous teacher. Where this conference was held is not stated; but. in the following October, Mr. Bull termined with the Missionary Sergeant. They went over the same road put-fed by President Wadsworth. and Mr. Sergeant pathetically records that it lay " through a most doleful wilderness." and was, "perhaps, the worst road that was ever rid." They desired the Indians to meet them will. way between their two villages, or near the center of the present town of Great Barrington. The next meeting was. however, held at the dwellings of Lieutenant Umpachene, which is described as " fifty or sixty foot long and quite commodious " Apparently we have here " The Great Wiz! wam " of the Housatonic Indians, in a new locality, but within a few miles of the old; although Konkapot, who lived at Woah ta kook, was a chief superior to Umpachene: Mr. Hopkins, speaking of him as the pain cipal man among the Muhekaneok of Massachusetts. The conference held at Skatekook, in 1734. however, concerned directly only the Mahicaps of Housatonuck, and there is no intimation in the account of it which proves that this was at that time the seat of the Mahiem national govern- ment.
The conference led to great events for the tribe, and, indeed. finally to a complete revolution in its affairs with the establishment of the mis sion, the concentration of the scattered relies of the Muhekaneok . Stockbridge and the transfer of the national council. Laskiel, the Mo- ravian historian, speaks, in 1991, of delegates " sent to the great con full of the Makican nation at Westennek." In 120 Konkret, the Hole tonic sachen, visited Boston, in company with the Handson River class-
GENERAL HISTORY.
Housatonic chiefs were recognized by the delegates of the United Pro- vinces as the true representatives of the Mahican nation, to the exclusion of those recognized as such by the New York provincial authorities. But we are getting far in advance of our story, and must return to it. In 1734. when the first measures for the establishment of the mission com- menced, the Indian population of the county, all of it in the central and southern part, was extremely small. According to the history of the mission. Umpachene, with four other families, lived at Skatekook, and Konkapot. with four or five others, at or near the Great Meadow known as Wnahtakook, in Stockbridge. Miss Joues, in .. Stocklaidge Past and Present." states, no doubt correctly, that there were also a few familles in New Marlboro, and in Poontoosuck. now Pittsfield. Probably Kon kapot and the twenty Indians who, with him, signed the deed conveying the District of Housatonic to the Province of Massachusetts, included all the heads of families belonging to the sub-tribal organization which claimed to own it. This would correspond with the number of villages stated, and give a total population of perhaps 125, or less than that of the least populous town which the county now has.
It has long been claimed that, previous to any knowledge of this region by the white man. the native population was very much larger than that which he found. That it was somewhat larger than we find it in 1734 we readily admit. The Mahican trib . had been depleted every- where by warfare and by the diseases which followed in the track of "civilization," and by emigration to join other tribes. Some, converted to Catholicism by the Jesuits. had followed the fathers to Canada ; others, converted to the Moravian faith, found a home, at least for a time. in the settlements of that peaceful sect in Pennsylvania, while mowy wayward ones joined the Iroquois, who were glad to receive then. About 1728, Gideon Mawehm, alias Mayhew. a small Pequot chieftain. who had great ability, and had received an English education. founded the Skatekook tribe in the town of Kent. in Connecticut, on the Housa. tonic River, some twenty-five miles south of Sheffield. The chief had great magnetic power, and the location was very pleasant, so that hedrew followers to himself with astonishing rapidity, the number of his warriors soon reaching 100, or a population of some 500. There was a well worn Indian road, or trail, marked by apple trees, from the village of Skate- kook, in Kent, to that of the same name in Sheffield. That there was some connection between the two is clear, and that May hew's land, occu pying recognized Mahican territory, acknowledged come allegiance to the grand council of the tribe is also certain. Many Mahicans are known to have joined it, and after its conversion to the Moravian faith, to hejte migrated with it to Pennsylvania. Except warfare with the Loqueds none of these causes help to account for the depopulation of Housatomalek, or Westenhuck, before the coming of the white man, when it is said to have taken place; and even in tradition there is no hint preserved ofwhy exterminating warfare specially confined to this point.
44
HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
The belief that long prior to the exploration of the Housatonuck dis triet by the white man it contained a much larger native population that he found there is based upon the frequent finding of Indian huplements of war or house-keeping. and the discovery of large numbers of human bones, often in established burial grounds, but frequently at isolated points. Mr. Taylor, who has made the most thorough research in the matter, reports in his history of Great Barrington. the discovery in that town of a number of aboriginal burial grounds, and human skeletons found in detached localities, which may well be considered remarkable. and which, whatever else it may prove, is certainly conclusive as to the fact that Great Barrington was the chief seat of the Makingns president in what is now Berkshire. Mr. Taylor enumerates other burial grounds of the aboriginal proprietors of the soil, where we might expect to find them. in the neighborhood of the villages of Skatekook and Stockbridge. In the Skatekook and principal Great Barrington burial grounds pieces of rude pottery were found. most of which crumbled when exposed to the air. This would indicate either a remote antiquity or a date after En. ropean goods were introduced. as no mention is anywhere made of poi- tery as an art known to the Indians of New York of Massachusetts. An Indian burial ground, not mentioned by Mr. Taylor, is situated on the east bank of the Housatonic River in Pittsfield, about a mile north of the Lenox line. Between the burial ground and the knoll on which stands the villa built by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the river winds thiongh what were called in old deeds the " Canoe Meadows" Tradition says that the name was derived from the fact that the Indians, coming from Stockbridge, after the settlement, were accustomed to leave their carlos there while they visited the graves of their ancestors. It is quite as like ly that the time of their absence was spent in hunting, or in the neigh. boring tavern, but as the meadows were at about the head of canoe nov - igation, unless the skiff's were carried to the lakes, they afforded a natural harbor for them. The graves were visible about fifty years since but have never been opened. Remains of Indian bodies were also found a little south of Pontoosne Lake.
In early times flint arrow heads were found frequently in all parts of the county, and they are still occasionally discovered. In the House- tomuck district hatchets, pestles, and occasionally the mortars used for grinding corn were found in considerable abundance as they were also in the region just below the "Canoe Meadows." Podes, nood in the eper- tion of wigwams, the ends being pointed by charting, have been found east of Lake Onota so deep in the peat beds as to indicate some antiquity and similar relies were found at Housatonack. All these facts give plansibility to the theory that sometime prior to list there was a larger native population in what is now the southern half of the county than there was in that year: still, we apprehend that it was never very large: probably at no time exceeding 300. In weighing the evidence we must remember that in any community to which large accessions are not made
-
15
GENERAL HISTORY.
by immigration, after two or three generations the tenants of the grave. vard ont-number those of the dwellings, and the majority goes on in- creasing from year to year until the number of the living hears but ant inconsiderable proportion to that of the dead. It would not have re. quired a century for the Indians of Westenhook, in the course of nature, to fill many graves, even if the number of the living did not exceed 1ou. So with regard to the implements of war. hunting and household utility; they were made of stone, and not liable to be destroyed by rust. They could be broken, but even then recognizable framments would. in nlost cases, have remained. There is no statement that any great number of these articles were ever carried away. they being considered of link. value, except as curiosities, after the introduction of European wares. The number which have been unearthed is certainly not enough to found a conjecture of a very large population upon, and it is very rarely that new discoveries are now made; the region of the greatest Indian population having been the earliest and most thoroughly cultivated by their successors. That arrow heads should be found everywhere is no marvel, for it is not disputed that, however small the permanent aborigi. nal population of the county may have been, the whole tribe used it as a hunting ground, and that the young warriors followed their quarry in all parts of it with their full force. Its woods were by no means solitary. and if the hunter chanced to die, as might well happen, he was probably buried near the spot where death came to him by accident, violence. or disease.
CHAPTER IN.
SETTLEMENT OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
BY J. E. A. SMITHI.
First settlement .- Causes of its long delay .- Boundary differences .- Political statue- Notices of the settlement .- Early customs.
M ORE than fifty years before the territory which is now Berkshire county had a single white inhabitant, unless some adventurous Dutch trader dwelt among the Indians at Houstonuck. every other county in Massachusetts had begun to receive settlers. So rapid was the advance of population inland that it was only twenty- six years after the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock when Springfield was founded on the eastern shore of the Connectiont. How brief this period was the reader of to-day cannot measure by the events and vicissitudes in the history of the county, within his own memory, of a similar length of time. He must also take into account what 265 years have done to dead- erate the speed of human progress : the very last century having done more than any other to furnish facilities for the extension of a civilized population into new regions-it might be said more than all other con- turies combined, could the invention of fire arms and the mariner's com pass, and the discovery of the New World. be forgotten. Having offer reached the American shore they who. in 1620. laid the foundations of New England life, and of much that is best in all American life. on Plymouth Rock, had little aid from any appliances of civilization in pushing their empire inland, except what protection was afforded them by the possession of fire arms, and these the Indians gradually obtained and learned to use with dire effect. The help of the Pilgrim fathers was from on high : and they had little other except from their sim and far- qualified faith, their brave and true hearts, and stalwart arms, which too often soon became enfeebled by disease arising from nowonted labors and privations. Only a blindly perseenting government in Old England was helping to people New England with men whose children and whose principles in good time rent the British Empire in twain, and give an im- palse to popular and national liberty which has since been felt through -
47
GENERAL HISTORY.
out Europe, and before which crowns and coronets are even now tell. ling.
This persecution ceased before the assembly of the Long Parliament. in 1640. four years after the settlement of Springfield, and with it ceased some of the motives of emigration from Old to New England. As the conflict in England went on and resulted in the establishment of the commonwealth. some who had sought refuge in Massachusetts returned to England to take a part in the conflict there. Emigration still con- tinned, but so long as Parliament or Cromwell reigned. no longer im the same reasons or to the same extent as before. Still. within thirty years after the settlement of Springfield the fine tier of towns along the western shore of the Connectieut in Hampden and Hampshire counties began Lo be peopled. though Holland estimates the whole population of the Con- necticut valley in 1673 at less than 1.500. In 1670 the first daring pioneer built his log cabin on what was destined to be " the dark and bloody ground " of Deerfield. Up to this time, and until the breaking out of King Philip's war in 1675, the settlements on the Connection! were un molested by savage warfare, and extended. at some points. as at West- field, more than ten miles west of the river. Here the advance of popu Jation was stayed and remained stationary, and often with difficulty main tained its position, for more than half a century, although, with the re turn of the Stuarts to royal power. the motives for the emigration of Puritans from England had not only been revived but redoubled, at letht under the second James. Mount Tekoa continued to mark the western boundary of civilized Massachusetts. Until the year 1725 the region from this point westward almost to the Hudson River was an unbroken willer ness. The same desolation prevailed northward, and on the northwest to Canada, and sonthward far into Connectient. For obvious reasons, which it is not necessary to recount here, the time had not yet come for pushing settlements into northern New York and Vermont. The case was ofbey- wise with regard to the large expanse of forest in western Massachusetts and northwestern Connecticut, which lay between communities that. in spite of Indian wars and all other obstacles, were growing up to thrift in the Connectient and Hudson valleys and along the shores of Long Island Sound. This was not an unknown region. It had been visited by pubdie spirited citizens, explored by scouts and engineers, and " prospected " by land speculators. Why, then, was the settlement of Berkshire, with all the natural advantages which it possessed, so long delived? And why. after that delay. was it commenced at the time and at the place it was 1
The rugged barriers interposed by the House Mountains were for- midable in fact, and still more forbidding in aspret. Descriptions hast been given by travelers between Boston and AAlbany of the hideousnes. of the intervening country, except for a narrow interval along the House- tonic. No newspapers, inspired by advertising speculations, bad as ver begun to offset these diatribes and the oval accounts, by reassuring eui- torial paragraphs and glowing correspondence, urging young men of the
48
HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
more eastern counties to go west and settle on the rich and virgin lands of western Hampshire, which then extended to the New York line, where ever that might be, and were so remarkably well adapted to the culture of wheat and the raising of cattle, " besides having innumerable other ad. vantages." And yet it is certain that far sighted men on both sides of the border had already fixed keen and shrewd eyes upon choice tracts in these " unappropriated lands." The forbidding aspect of a region now ranked among the most beautiful and attractive in the world had some effect in extending its settlement, but not much, for the der evel ex- plorers soon discovered the smiling face behind the frowning mask, A much more effective obstacle lay in the Indian wars and depredations which, commencing with the plotting and tribal leaguing of King Philip of the Wampanoags in 1675, continued until the close of Queen Anne's war in 1713. For thirty-eight years, with brief and trouble ! intervals. the Connecticut valley and the region in Worcester county immediately east of it were harrassed continually by savage hordes, their villages burned, their fields laid waste. and their people mindered. This was the territory from which population might be expected to flow into the Housatonic valley and over the Green Mountains which bordered it. But even while the musket was as needful to the husbandman at his work as the hoe, the spade, and the scythe. the farms of the Connecticut valley must be cultivated, and its young men could be ill spared either from its Inisbandry or from the defense of its homes. To be sure the war path of the Canadian Indians lay across the northern section of what is now Berkshire, and a new frontier might have been established there for the protection of the settlements at the east ; but the time had not yet come for that.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.