History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Vol. I, Part 5

Author: L.H. Everts & Co
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts
Number of Pages: 700

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In the Algonquin speech of the Connecticut River Indians the Mohawks were called Mau-qua-wogs or Ma-quas, that is to say, "man-eaters."*

The Mohawk country proper, called by themselves Ga-ne- a-ga-o-no-ga, all lay on and beyond the westerly bank of the Hudson, but by right of conquest they claimed all the terri- tory lying between the Hudson and the sources of the easterly branches of the Connecticut.

By virtue of this claim all the Indians in the valley of the Connecticut paid annual tribute to the Mohawks.

Every year two old Mohawk chiefs would leave their castles on the Mohawk River, in their elm-bark canoes, and crossing the Hudson, ascend the Hus-sicke ( Hoosac) to its head, and carrying them over the mountain range, re-embark in the head- waters of the Ag-a-wam (Westfield River) and the Deerfield River, come down to the villages of the Wo-ro-noaks, the Ag-a-wams, the Non-o-tucks, the Pa-comp-tucks, the Squak- heags, in the valley, and to the Nip-mucks at the head of the Chicopee, and gather the wampum in which tribute was paid.

As will be seen further on in these pages, when all these river tribes joined King Philip in his attempt to exterminate the whites in New England the Mohawks sided with the Eng- lish, and did material service against Philip.t

1V. THE ALGONQUIN FAMILY.

Surrounding the few tribes of the Iroquois on every hand dwelt the much more numerous tribes of the Algonquin family, to which belonged all the New England tribes, as well as the New York Indians who dwelt east of the Hudson.

Northward of the Iroquois were the Nipissings, La Petite Nation, and Lu Nation de l'Isle, and other tribes in the valley of the Ottowa River. Along the valley of the St. Lawrence dwelt the Algonquins proper, the Abenaquis, the Montagnais, and other roving bands below the mouth of the Saguenay.

The Algonquins and Montagnais, and the other wild rovers of the country of the Saguenay, who subsisted mostly by the chase, were often during the long Canadian winters, when game grew scarce, driven by hunger to subsist for many weeks together upon the buds and bark, and sometimes upon the young wood, of forest-trees. Hence their hereditary enemies, the more favored Mohawks, called them in mockery of their condition Ad-i-ron-daks, that is to say tree-caters. This name, thus borne in derision, was given by Prof. Emmons to the principal mountain chain of Northern New York, and has since been applied to its whole wilderness region, now so famous as a summer resort .;

The New England tribes of the Algonquin family dwelt mostly along the sea-coast, and on the banks of larger streams. In Maine the Et-ct-che-mins dwelt farthest east at the mouth of the St. Croix River. The Abenaquis, with their kindred tribe the Taratines, had their hunting-grounds in the valley of the Penobseot, and as far west as the river Saco and the Piseata- qua. In the southeast corner of New Hampshire, and over the Massachusetts border, dwelt the Pennacook or Pawtucket tribe. The Massachusetts nation had their home along the bay of that name and the contiguous islands. It was a tradi-

tion of this tribe that they formerly dwelt farther to the south- west, near the Blue Mountains, and hence their name Mass- ad-chu-sit, "near the great mountains."?

The Wampanoags or Pokanokcts dwelt along the easterly shore of Narragansett Bay, in Southeastern Rhode Island, and in the contiguous part of Massachusetts adjoining these, being near neighbors of the Plymouth Pilgrims. The Nansets along Cape Cod were a family of the l'ampanoags, and paid them tribute. Next in line were the Narragansetts, and their sister tribe the Nyantics, along the westerly shore of Narra- gansett Bay, in Western Rhode Island. Between the Narra- gansetts and the river Thames in Southeastern Connecticut, then called the Pequot River, dwelt the Pequot nation ; and between the Pequots and the east bank of the Connecticut River was the home of Uncas and his Mahicans.

On the west side of the Connecticut the territory of the Mo- hawks was supposed to begin ; and in Western Massachusetts, and in what is now the State of Vermont, no Indian tribes had permanent homes. This large territory was a beaver- hunting country of the Iroquois.

Before the great distemper visited these New England In- dian nations, just prior to the landing of the Plymouth Pil- grims, their numbers must have been from thirty to forty thousand souls. Of these Connecticut and Rhode Island probably contained one-half.

THE INDIANS OF THE VALLEY.

The valley of the Connecticut in Massachusetts was oceu- pied by several tribes, or remnants of tribes, all of which seemed to owe some sort of fealty to the Nipmueks or Nipnets of Central Massachusetts, if not to the more powerful Pequots, Wampanoags, and Narragansetts.

AG-A-WAMS .- In the vicinity of what is now the city of Springfield dwelt the Ag-a-wam Indians. They claimed all the territory lying on both sides of the Connecticut, between the Enfield Falls below and the South Hadley Falls above. The principal village of the Ag-a-wams was situated on the Pecowsie Brook, which heads in the eastern part of Longmeadow and discharges into the Connecticut nearly on the town line be- tween Springfield and Longmeadow ; another on the bank of the Ag-a-wam River, and probably others in various parts of the county.

On a peculiarly-shaped bluff, about a mile and a half south of the centre of Springfield and some fifty rods southeasterly of the east end of the new bridge crossing to Agawam and on what is called " Long Hill," they had a strong palisaded work overlooking the valley and virtually impregnable to Indian attack. It was protected on all sides excepting a narrow neck, fifty yards in width, which connected it with the mainland by steep banks deseending to two deep ravines on the north and south, and to the bottom-lands hordering the Connecticut on the west. Water was convenient immediately under the wall of the fortress on the south, and the whole area, occupying from one to two acres, was admirably adapted for defense against anything except artillery.

The meadows or corn-planting grounds of the Ag-a-wams, called by them muck-cos-quit-taj, were quite extensive. On the leaf of the book containing the record of the first Indian deed of what is now Springfield and vicinity is a memorandum in the following words, supposed to have been made by John Holyoke, in the year 1679, which contains an accurate descrip- tion, doubtless, of the situation of the various corn-planting meadows of the Ag-a-wams :

" Memorandum : Agaam or Agawam. It is that meadow on the South of Agawam Rivr wheer ye English did first build a house, wch now we comonly cal ye house meadow. that piece of ground is it weh ye Indians do call Agawam, & yr ye English

* Brief History by Increase Mather, p. 38.

+ Conn. Col. Rec., Vol. II., p. 461, etc.

# Ser Historical Sketchesof Northern New York, by N. B. Sylvester, pp. 39, 40.

¿ See Collections of Conn. His. Soc., Vol. II., p. 8.

HISTORY OF THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

kept yr residence who first came to settle and plant at Spring- field now so ealled : & at yt place it was (as is supposed ) that this purchase was made of the Indians. Quana is the middle medow adjoyning to Agawm or house meadow. Masacksick is yt yt English call the Longmeadow below Springfield, on ye East of Quinecticat River ; Usquaiok is the Mil River wth the land adjoyning ; Nayasset is the lands of Three corner meadow & of the Plaine."

From the date of the first settlement, in the year 1636, the Ag-a-wam Indians lived on terms of peace and amity with their white neighbors until the year 1675, when they joined King Philip in his war of extermination. On the evening of the 4th day of October, 1675, they admitted into their fort three hundred hostile Indians, who assisted them on the morrow in the burning of Springfield. Upon the arrival of Maj. Treat with his men from Conneetient, and Maj. Pynchon with the Springfield troops from Hadley, on the afternoon of the burn- ing, We-quo-gan, the chief sachem of the Ag-a-wams and ring- leader in the affair, with all his people suddenly left their vil- Jage, fort, and corn-planting ground, never to return.

Wo-RO-NOAKS .- Ten or twelve miles up the Agawam River, in a direction nearly west from Springfield, on the site of what is now Westfield, dwelt the tribe of Indians called the Il'o-ro-nonks, who were a part of the Ag-a-wams.

The Wo-ro-noaks were famous for the number of beaver- skins and other furs caught by them on the near mountains to the west of them, along both branches of the Agawam, now Westfield River, and in the marshes at their head-waters. So famous was their village for its furs that Governor Hop- kins, of Hartford, as early as the year 1640, obtained a grant of land there, and that year or the next built trading-houses there. This grant was made to him by the Connecticut peo- ple, who supposed it to be within their jurisdiction. But the earliest surveys showed it to be within the boundaries of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Connecticut settlement was abandoned.

NON-O-TUCKS .- Above the point in the Connecticut River where it breaks through between Mounts Tom and Holyoke its valley widens and the river takes an extremely tortuous course, winding around two or three peninsulas which are almost islands, on one of which is situated the village of Ilad- ley. Between Northampton and Mount Tom is another of these bends in the river, which is called the Oxbow, in the middle of which lies an island.

The name Noen-tuk, No-ah-tuk, or, as it is now written, Non- o-tuck, means "in the middle of the river," in allusion to such peninsulas and islands.

The Non-o-tucks elaimed all the country on both sides of the river, from the head of the South Hadley Falls to the south side of Mount We-quomps, now Sugar-Loaf Mountain.

They had several villages and forts on both sides of the river, and numerous corn-planting fields of from twelve to sixteen aeres each. Their principal fort was on a high bank near the mouth of Half-Way Brook, between Northampton and Hadley. This fort was occupied until the night of the 24th August, when Um-pan-cha-la, chief sachem of the Non-o-tucks, left the land with all his tribe for some far-off Western home, no one knows whither. Another fort, containing about an acre inelosed, was occupied by another Non-o-tuck sachem, ealled Quon-quont. It stood on the east side of the river, in Hadley, on a ridge between East and West School Meadow.

PA-COMP-TUCKS .- In the fertile valley of Deerfield River, and on its adjoining hills, dwelt the Pa-comp-tucks, the most numerous, best known, warlike, and powerful tribe in the valley. They claimed all the country lying on the east side of the river, from Mount H'e-quomps to the north side of the meadow called Nal-la-hum-com-gon, now Bennett's Meadow, in Northfield, and indefinitely westward. Their principal fort was on what is now known as Fort Hill, which is about one-half mile northeast of the Deerfickl meeting-house. Their

eorn-planting fields were in the valley of the Deerfield River. Ilere they raised such quantities of corn that in the spring of the year 1638 they furnished fifty eanoe-loads for the starving people of Connecticut, impoverished by the Pequot war of the year before.

In the year 1656, Uneas, with his Mahicans, made war upon the Pa-comp-tucks, but was defeated and driven back. The next year the Pu-comp-tucks invaded the country of Uneas and did his people considerable damage.

In the year 1663 the Mohawks made war upon the Pa-comp- tucks, and invaded their country. They attacked the fort on Fort IIill, and carried it after a severe contest, driving the Pa- comp-tucks before them with great slaughter. From this severe blow the Pa-comp-tucks never recovered. In the year 1669 the Pa-comp-tucks, Non-o-tucks, and Squak-heags united with the Massachusetts Indians and the Narragansetts in an expedition into the Mohawk country. Chic-ka-taw-but, the chief sachem of the Massachusetts tribe, was in command. The band num- bered some seven hundred warriors. They penetrated the Mo- hawk conntry and laid siege to the nearest castle, called Te-hon- de-lo-ga, at the mouth of the Schoharie kill, afterwards the site of Fort Hunter. But failing in the attempt, the allied tribes retreated towards their own country. The Mohawks followed, and making a détour formed an ambuscade, into which the Eastern Indians fell and suffered fearful loss. After King Philip's war the Pa-comp-tucks went west, and settling on the east bank of the Hudson, at the mouth of the Hoosac River, became known as the Schaghticoke Indians. A part of the H'ampanoags and Narragansetts fled with them .*

SQUAK-HEAOS .- On the northerly border of the State, at what is now Northfield, dwelt the fourth tribe of river Indians. Their country reached on both sides of the Connecticut north- erly beyond the bounds of the State. The Squak-heags were allied by consanguinity to the Pennacooks of the New Hamp- shire sea-coast. They had numerous corn-planting fields, and also villages and forts. The famous fishing-ground which they called Pas-quams-cut, now Turner's Falls, was in the country of the Squak-heags. When the Mohawks, in the year 1663, invaded the Pa-comp-tucks they also overran the whole territory of the Squak-hcays, captured all their forts, destroyed their villages, and drove them from their homes. From this blow as a tribe they never recovered.+ In King Philip's war Squakheag was an important post to the hostile Indians. At its elose the Squak-heags went east and north into Canada.

FORTS .- The Indians of the valley built their forts on high bluffs near springs of water, and usually on or not far from the bank of some river. The forts were cireular in form, in- elosing about one aere of ground, and constructed of palisades set close together in the ground, and some twelve or fifteen feet in height. Within they built rows of wigwams along both sides of well-defined streets.

WIGWAMS .- The Indians of the Algonquin family of na- tions built their wigwams small and circular, and for one or two families only, unlike the Iroquois nations, who built theirs long and narrow, each for the use of many families. The Al- gonquin-shaped wigwam of the valley tribes was made of poles set up around a circle, from ten to twelve feet across. The poles met together at the top, thus forming a conical frame-work, which was covered with bark mats or skins; in the centre was their fireplace, the smoke escaping through a hole in the top. In these wigwams men, women, children, and dogs crowded promiscuously together in distressing viola- tion of all our rules of modern housekeeping.

CORN-PLANTING FIELDS .- The meadows of the Connecti- cut Valley were famous in Indian annals for their eorn-fields. Every autumn, after the fall of the leaf, came the Indian sum- mer, in which they set fire to the woods and fields, and thus

* See paper by John Fitch, in New York His. Mag., June, 1876.

+ History of Northfield, by Temple and Sheldon.

HISTORY OF THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

burned over the whole country, both upland and meadow, once a year. This burning destroyed all the underbrush, and mostly all the timber on the uplands save that growing in swales and on wet lands. When the whites came they found much of the State of Massachusetts as bare of timber as the Western prairies. Their corn-fields on the meadows usually contained from fifteen to twenty acres of ground. One tool for planting was all they had. This was a hoe, made of the shoulder-blade of a deer or moose, or a clam-shell fastened into a wooden handle. For manure they covered over a fish in each hill of corn at planting-time. Their planting-time was about the 10th of May, or as soon as the butternut-leaves were as large as squirrels' ears. Some idea may be formed of the large extent of their planting-fields, when it is stated that the Pa-comp-tucks alone planted in the valley of the Deerfield River in the spring of 1676, the second year of Philip's war, about three hundred acres. Perhaps this was an exaggerated story, and that one hundred acres would have been nearer the truth. But Philip was killed in the summer following, and the Pa- comp-tucks abandoned their unharvested corn-field for the new home on the east bank of the Hudson, at the mouth of the Hoosac. They took what is now the " Tunnel Route" for the west. The women did all the corn-planting and raising, but the men alone planted and took care of the tobacco. It was too sacred a plant for women to handle or smoke, and no young brave was allowed to use it until he had made himself a name in the chase or on the war-path.

FOOD .- The Indians had fish and game, nuts, roots, berries, acorns, corn, squashes, a kind of bean now called seiva-bean, and a species of sunflower whose tuberous root was like the artichoke.

Fish were taken with lines or nets made of the sinews of the deer or of the fibres of the dog-bane. Their fish-hooks were made of the bones of fishes and birds.

They caught the moose, the dear, and the bear in the win- ter season by shooting with bows and arrows, by snaring or in pitfalls. In the summer they took a variety of birds.

They cooked their fish and flesh by roasting before the fire on the point of a long stick, or by boiling in stone or wooden vessels. They made water to boil, not by hanging over the fire, but by the immersion in it of heated stones. Their corn boiled alone they called hominy; when mixed with beans it was succotash. They made a cake of meal, pounded fine by a stone-pestle in a wooden mortar, which they called nookhik, corrupted by the English into " no cake."*

SOCIAL CONDITION .- Their government was entirely patri- archal. Each Indian was in his solitary cabin the head of his family. His wife was treated as a slave, and did all the drudg- ery. The only law that bound the Indian was the custom of his tribe. Subject to that only, he was as free as the air he breathed, following the bent of his own wild will. Over tribes were principal chiefs called sachems, and inferior ones called sagamores. The succession was always in the female line. Their war-chiefs were not necessarily sachems in time of peace. They won their distinction only by prowess on the war-path.

The language of the Indian, in the terms of modern com- parative philology, was neither the monosyllabic, like the Chinese, nor infleeting, like that of the civilized Caucasian stock, but was agglutinating, like many of the northwestern Asiatic tribes, and those of southeastern Europe. They express ideas by stringing words together in one compound vocable. The Algonquin languages were not euphonious, like the Iro- quois dialects, but were harsh, and full of consonants, Con- trast the Iroquois names, Ta-wa-sen-ta, Hi-a-wat-ha, or O-no-

a-la-go-na, with the Algonquin names, Squak-heag, Qua-boay, or Wampan-oag.

RELIGION .- The Indian had but the crudest possible ideas, if any at all, of an abstract religion. He had no priests, no altars, no sacrifice. His medicine men were mere conjurers. Yet he was superstitious to the last degree, and spiritualized everything in nature. The mysterious realm about him he did not attempt to unravel, but bowed submissively before it with what crude ideas he had of religion and worship. The flight or cry of a bird, the humming of a bee, the crawling of an insect, the turning of a leaf, the whisper of a breeze, were to him mystic signals of good or evil import, by which he was guided in the most important relations of life.

In dreams the Indian placed the most implicit confidence. They seemed to him to be revelations from the spirit-world, guiding him to the places where his game lurked and to the haunts of his enemies. He invoked their aid on all occasions. They taught him how to cure the sick, and revealed to him his guardian spirit, as well as all the secrets of his good or evil destiny.

Although the Indian has been for three centuries in more or less contact with the civilized life of the white man, he is still the untamed child of nature. " He will not," says Park- man, " learn the arts of civilization, and he and his forest must perish together. The stern, unchanging features of his mind excite our admiration from their very immutability ; and we look with deep interest on the fate of this irreclaima- ble son of the wilderness, the child who will not be weaned from the breast of his rugged mother."t

CHAPTER VI.

EARLY EXPLORERS-EARLY PATENTS OF NEW ENGLAND-THE CHARTER OF THE COLONY OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY.

I. EARLY EXPLORERS.

As the early settlers of the Connecticut Valley were them- selves among the comparatively early voyagers to the New World, and in coming here suffered the dangers of the deep incident to early navigation, it will be necessary, in order properly to understand their history, briefly to consider the voyagers who preceded them, as well as the results of their explorations and attempts at settlement.

If the glory of the discovery of the New World by Euro- peans belongs forever to Columbus, under Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, on the 12th day of October, 1492, it is no less certain that the honor of the first exploration of the con- tinent of North America belongs to John Cabot and his son, Sebastian Cabot, under Henry VII. of England. If neither can justly claim that glory or this honor, but both must give way to the Scandinavian mariners,-the Northmen of the tenth century,-then it was upon the virgin soil of New Eng- land that the first white men landed, and within her borders that the first white settlement was attempted on the wild American shore.

Of this visit of the Danes to America in the tenth century there is considerable evidence, amounting almost to a demon- stration of the theory; but there are still some missing links in the chain of testimony, which, until supplied, will forever place the matter, with the burial-place of Moses, the coming of the Etruscans to Italy, the building of the pyramids, and the story of the Western mound-builders, among the unsolved problems of history.

THE NORTHMEN.

The historical evidence upon the coming of the Danes to America as early as the tenth century consists principally in

* What we now call johnny-cake, in the early days was known as journey- cake, from the facility with which it was carried while traveling. It is said that it was changed to johnny-cake in honor of Governor Jonathan Trumbull, of Con- nertient, the friend of Washington, who always addressed him familiarly as " Brother Jonathan." Hence that title of the typical Yankee to this day.

+ Conspiracy of Pontiac, Vol. I., p. 44.

HISTORY OF THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

extraets from the compositions of some eighteen writers, chiefly Icelandic, which have been published by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen.

If the accounts of these writers are not romance, hut are veritable history, then about the year 986 one Biorne sailed from Iceland for Greenland in search of his father, who had preceded him thither. He was overtaken by fogs and lost his way. When the weather cleared, and he recovered his lost reckoning, to his surprise he discovered that, while he was sailing in the wrong direction, on his larboard-side lay a low woodland shore. Continuing the same course for nine days, he reached Greenland in a direction directly opposite to that with which the voyage bad been begun.

It is evident, from the direction Biorne was sailing after having recovered his reckoning, that he saw on his larboard- side the "low and wooded land" of the eastern shore of North America. If the account of this voyage is trustworthy, Biorne was the discoverer of the New World.

For fourteen years the discovery of Biorne was talked about hy the Danish navigators, when, in the year 1000, Lief Ericson, with a single ship and a crew of thirty men, went in search of the newly-found land. Lief found it and, landing, gave it the name of Helluland, signifying in leelandic the land of slate. Re-embarking and sailing southerly along the coast, he came to a country " well wooded and level," which he called Markland, in allusion to its wood. Sailing in a southwesterly direction out of sight of land for two days more, he came to an island, along whose northern shore he passed westwardly, and reaching the mainland went on shore and built huts, in which he passed the winter. One of his men, a German, while wandering in the woods found an abundance of wild grapes, such as wine was made of in his own country, and from this circumstance Lief called the country Finland.

It is supposed that the name Helluland was applied hy Lief to the rocky shore of Labrador, long since famous for its beds of dark Laurentian rock, mistaken by him for slate. Mark- land may have been Nova Scotia, and it is highly probable that Finland was the southeastern shore of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In the year 1003 Thorwald, and in the year 1005 Thorfinn, are said to have visited Vinland, and such visits are said to have been continued until the middle of the four- teenth century.

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History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Vol. I, Part 5

Author: L.H. Everts & Co Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts Number of Pages: 700

Author: L.H. Everts & Co
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts
Number of Pages: 700