USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people > Part 4
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Natural Setting
its rugged and picturesque character. This division is also characterized by the many shallow troughs and basins that are eroded on the softer rocks and enclosed by the higher lands of resistant formations. The two largest and most important of these depressions are the Boston and Narragansett Basins.
The most outstanding feature of the division is, without doubt, the peninsula of Cape Cod, which extends for sixty-five miles in the form of an arm bent upward at the elbow. This owes its origin to the glacier, and was refashioned by the sea and wind. Near here are also many islands of the same origin - Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the sixteen Elizabeth islands. The glacial outwash plains of Martha's Vine- yard and Nantucket are now broad grassy heaths. The southern side of the delta-like plain of Cape Cod has been cut along high cliffs by the surf and waves. Here the plain is covered with a growth of pitch pine and scrub oak. Much of the 'forearm' of the Cape is a bleak grassy country, while the outer end is a wild and desolate region with long yellow beaches. Lacking land fit for farming, the Cape and Islands have reared a distinctive type of hardy men who 'farm' the sea.
In the interior of Massachusetts, there are two lowlands or valleys: the Connecticut River Valley and the Berkshire Valley. Each of these is enclosed by uplands. The Connecticut River Valley is a lens-shaped trench extending from the northern boundary of the State to Long Island Sound, and is drained throughout its length by the Connecticut River. Its weak red sandstones give its soil a distinctive ruddy tint. The landscape throughout the valley is dominated by curved wooded ridges that run longitudinally and owe their origin to intrusive trap- lava which resisted erosion after the weaker layers were worn away. Some of these traprock elevations rise, in the southern part, high above the valley, ranging from 954 feet to 1628 feet in Mounts Holyoke, Tom, Toby, and Grace.
The Connecticut Valley, with its rich soil and mild climate, has be- come a productive agricultural country, as well as the seat of many prosperous and populous cities and towns. Its broad open meadows, reddish soil, and tobacco and onion fields present an aspect somewhat unusual in New England.
The Berkshire Valley, shut off by the Berkshire plateau in the east and the Taconic Mountains in the west, is an isolated world of its own. The northern part of the valley is watered by streams that cut through the Taconics to the Hudson, and the southern part by the headwaters of the Housatonic. From Pittsfield northward it is only six miles wide;
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Massachusetts: The General Background
but southward it opens up into the meadowlands of Great Barrington, Lenox, and Sheffield. The valley with its green meadows is largely devoted to dairy farming, and lives a peaceful, isolated life.
The uplands of Massachusetts are two divisions separated by the Con- necticut River, but joining north of the valley to form the great central upland of northern New England.
The western uplands, or, as they are commonly known, the Berk- shire Hills, are a continuation of the Vermont Green Mountains, deeply dissected and composed of a number of ranges and small valleys. The Taconic Range, on the extreme border of the State, attains its highest elevation in Mount Greylock at 3535 feet, and decreases to the south, where Mount Washington in the southeastern corner of Massachusetts rises 2624 feet. The Hoosac Range, farther east, varies in altitude from I200 to 1600 feet, with Spruce Hill at 2588 feet as its highest point.
In the Vermont Green Mountains, only the valleys are cultivated and inhabited; but here in Massachusetts, farms and hamlets are found on the tops of the elevations, often at high altitudes. This is the country of the famous 'hill towns' of the Berkshires, which attract many visitors during the summer to enjoy the health-giving atmosphere and surround- ing scenic beauty. The best known of these hill towns are Florida and Peru. East of these ranges, the uplands slope southeasterly toward the Connecticut River Valley, and are deeply cut by such streams as the Deerfield, Westfield, and Farmington Rivers. The most picturesque of these rivers is the Deerfield, which has an impressive canyon-like valley through the plateau.
The eastern uplands of Worcester County rise gradually from the Connecticut River Valley eastward to an elevation of 1100 feet in the middle of the State, then slope down toward the coast. This plateau is an extension of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, which cross Massachusetts into Connecticut. The outstanding features of the plateau are the monadnocks of Mount Wachusett and Mount Watatic, solitary remnants of once lofty mountains.
In general, the topography of Massachusetts is a varied patchwork of physiographic features, the eroded remnants of once high mountains, leveled to a plateau which has been deeply dissected by streams, and scraped and reformed by glaciers. It affords, from its indented and rocky coast in the east to its lofty hills in the extreme west, a cross-section of the Appalachian Mountain system in its old age, when it was covered by the continental ice-sheet. Moreover, this varied topography has had a great influence upon the lives and occupations of its people - the
I3
Natural Setting
fishermen of the coast, the urban dwellers of eastern cities, the industrial workers along the waterways of the mill towns, the suburban farmers, the large-scale planters of the Connecticut Valley, and the Berkshire natives, still somewhat isolated and provincial.
FLORA
Massachusetts lies in an area characterized by a forest cover composed mainly of trees which shed their leaves yearly about the time of approach- ing winter. Nevertheless, within the State are to be found well-defined areas with quite different floristic makeup. These subdivisions might be called: the Cape Cod region; the area of the sea margin extending from Cape Cod to the New Hampshire line; the upland region of Central Massachusetts; and the rugged area of the Berkshires in the western part of the State. To the above might also be added the tops of the two high- est points of land within the State, Mount Greylock and Mount Wa- chusett.
In the morainal and outwash area characterizing Cape Cod is found a floristic composition similar in certain respects to that of southern New Jersey, since the Cape is really the only close approach to coastal plain within the State.
Northward along the seacoast are many plants which do not stray far from the influence of the sea. Exceptions range from the low-growing beach plants to the marsh grasses, sedges, and rushes.
By far the largest area of the State is included in the upland region, which is covered by a typical northern deciduous forest of maples, birches, beeches, oaks, with a scattering of pine and an occasional stand of hem- lock and larch. The forest floor is covered with a host of low-growing herbs varying according to their particular habitat. In the low marshy spots will be found many early spring plants such as skunk cabbage, American white hellebore, marsh marigold, white and blue violets; while on the drier slopes grow the false spikenard, Solomon's-seal, Canada mayflower, wild oats, and various trilliums. From early spring to late fall there is a constant parade of gorgeous color with such striking plants as rhodora, azalea, mountain laurel, shad, dogwood, viburnum, aug- mented by innumerable herbaceous types. The ferns add materially to the charm of the landscape, from the low, delicate maidenhair spleenwort to the large, graceful osmundas.
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Massachusetts: The General Background
The Berkshires offer still another scenic and floristic type, much more rugged than the last, and to some much more beautiful. The forest is still of the deciduous type, but with a ground cover differing in certain respects, for here will be found plants more often associated with cooler regions of the North.
Space does not permit mention of the great variety of plants growing within the State, but there are available at least three collections of mounted plants. The herbarium of the New England Botanical Club, located at the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University, has an excellent representative collection. The herbarium of the Hadwen Botanical Club, located at Clark University in Worcester, specializes in the flora of Worcester County, which is of the general upland region; while that at Amherst College in Amherst contains plants of the western region. All three of these herbaria are available to the genuinely interested person. Harvard University also maintains the famous Arnold Arboretum where trees and shrubs are appropriately planted and labeled.
FAUNA
The effigy of a codfish hanging since 1784 in the assembly room of the State House on Beacon Hill, and the fact that early settlers used beaver skins as currency, testify to the firmness with which the existence of early Massachusetts men was rooted in the abundance of wild life. Fishing has maintained its economic importance through three centuries, but when in 1636 William Pynchon removed to the wilderness of Springfield to trade in beaver, he signified the beginning of a process of extinction of Massachusetts fauna halted only in recent years.
The forests preserve today a much narrower range of wild life. The gray wolf and the black bear have been extirpated. The lynx, once com- mon, only accidentally finds its way into the mountainous portions of the State at long intervals. The beaver is gone. The northern Virginia deer, almost driven out during the nineteenth century, has appeared in larger numbers in late years, but is scarce. Of the larger forms of wild life, only the fox holds its own. In spite of hunters, the red fox, cross fox, and black fox are still commonly seen.
Of the family Leporidae, the eastern varying hare or white rabbit is occasionally seen. The northern cottontail or gray rabbit is more un- common. The family Muridae is represented by many varieties of mice
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Natural Setting
and rats and by the muskrat. The skunk is very common in open wood- lands and fields. There are two varieties of weasels: the little brown weasel, often seen in stony places, and the New York weasel, which is not very common and usually lives in the woods. The large brown mink is sometimes found along the coast. Shrews and moles exist in numbers, and several varieties of bat are common. Especially large is the family of Rodentia, whose members are the northern gray squirrel and the southern red squirrel, the chipmunk or ground squirrel, the woodchuck or groundhog, the rare Canadian flying squirrel, and the more common southern flying squirrel. A most remarkable creature, the one member in the State of the family Zapodidae, is the Hudson Bay jumping mouse.
Whales, though no longer numerous, are sometimes sighted off the coast or washed up on the beach. Many varieties of snakes are found, as are lizards, tortoises, and toads, frogs, and salamanders.
The seacoast and secluded streams and ponds inland are the home of a large variety of water, marsh, and shore birds, including the diving birds, the grebe, the puffin, guillemot, murre, razor-billed auk, little auk, and loon. The great northern loon and the red-throated loon visit the State during part of the year.
The gulls and terns are the best-known members of the long-winged swimmers. In this same class are the skuas and jaegers, virtually sea- hawks, with powerful wings, beaks, and claws.
The tube-nosed swimmers, having tubular nostrils and exceptional powers of flight, are represented by fulmars, shearwaters, and petrels. The four-toed, fully-webbed, Totipolmate order of water birds includes gannets, cormorants, and man-o'-war birds.
Among the better-known river ducks are the black, red-legged black, baldpate, and wood ducks. Rarer varieties include the mallard, European widgeon, golden teal, blue-winged teal, and American pintail. The sea ducks are the canvasback scaup, lesser scaup, golden-eye, bufflehead, old-squaw, eider, and scoter ducks, as well as the rare ring-necked and harlequin varieties. The Canada and brant goose visit the State during part of the year, though not in great numbers, and the whistling swan is a rare migrant.
Of Herodiones are the great blue heron, little blue heron, green heron, black-crowned night heron, bittern, and the rare least bittern. A few examples of the order Paludicolae still remain, chiefly the sora and yellow rail; gallimulea and coots are rare, and the crane is merely an accidental visitor.
The shore birds are waders differing from herons and marsh birds in
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Massachusetts: The General Background
having a body rounded or slightly depressed rather than narrow and compressed. Body and bill are small, and these birds build no regular nest.
The ground-dwelling, scratching game birds are found in diminishing numbers. Probably the ring-necked pheasant is the most common. Bobwhites, which flourished locally when introduced and protected, are now uncommon. The ruffed and Witlow grouse and the heath hen re- main in only a few places. The domestic dove or pigeon is found in the larger cities, less commonly in rural districts; and the mourning dove is frequently seen.
Among the birds of prey are such accidental visitors as the turkey vulture and the eagle. The hawk family has many members in the State, as has the owl family.
The cuckoos and the belted kingfisher comprise an order by themselves. Another order includes the woodpeckers. The Macrochire family, with peculiar wing development and frail feet, has for members the whip- poor-will, nighthawk, chimney swift, ruby-throated hummingbird, and the very rare goatsucker.
The Passeres, or perching birds, are the largest of all orders. Of the songless perching birds the tyrant flycatcher is typical. The songbirds of the Passeres are very numerous, including the larks and starlings, the blue jay, bobolink, cowbird, blackbird, meadowlark, oriole, rusty black- bird, and grackle. Of the family Fringillidae, the largest family of perch- ing songbirds, the most numerous group is the sparrow with twenty varieties.
Fish caught in the lakes and rivers and along the coast of Massachu- setts include alewives, bass, rockbass, bluefish, bonito, butterfish, carp, catfish, cod, cunners, cusk, eels, flounders, haddock, hake, halibut, her- ring, kingfish, mackerel, Spanish mackerel, perch, pickerel, pollock, salmon, scup, shad, skate, smelt, sturgeon, swordfish, tautog, tom-cod, trout, turbot, and weakfish. The State is well known for its shellfish: clams, lobsters, oysters, scallops, and shrimp.
By a not unusual human phenomenon, as wild life has declined, in- terest in natural history has increased. In the mid-nineteenth century Agassiz laid the basis for a pre-eminence in the field of biology retained by Massachusetts institutions to this day. Agassiz's pioneer work in classification was carried on by his son, and his students became foremost scientists - Jeffries Wyman, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, Burt G. Wilder, among others. The biological museum at Harvard bears Agas- siz's name, and he founded the Marine Biological Institute at Woods
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Natural Setting
Hole. The splendid theoretical and practical work being done by the Massachusetts Bureau of Fisheries, the biological departments of Massa- chusetts universities, the Boston Society of Natural History, the State Department of Conservation may be properly said to owe much to the pioneer labors of the Swiss-American scientist.
Massachusetts philosophers and naturalists from Thoreau to Dallas Lore Sharp have drawn much of their inspiration from native wild life. Artists, too, have turned to birds and animals for their subjects, notably Frank W. Benson, the well-known painter and etcher of waterfowl, whose work may be seen in many private galleries and in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, as well as Charles Heil, whose studies of birds in water- colors are exceptional.
Of the organizations which foster the study of nature in a broader sense, the Boston Society of Natural History, founded in 1830, itself the out- growth of the Linnaean Society dating back to 1814, is evidence of the early interest in the subject. The Audubon Society, the Field and Forest Club, the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Green Mountain Club, and numerous bird clubs throughout the State serve to center the interest of nature-lovers today.
FIRST AMERICANS
THE remote ancestors of the Indian tribes in Massachusetts were a hunting and fishing people without agriculture. They had learned to fashion several varieties of stone implements, but did not use either tobacco, pottery, or axes. These early people were probably related to the Beothuk red Indians of Newfoundland, and burial places belonging to their culture have been unearthed at Marblehead and near Fresh Pond in Cambridge. Excavations at Grassy Island in Berkley on the Taunton River indicate the presence of an ancient village, established by the depth of the salt peat overlay as being at least one thousand years old.
The Indians encountered by the first Europeans in Massachusetts belonged to the Algonquin linguistic stock, and occupied the large area ranging from the Maritime Provinces of Canada to the Gulf of Florida and as far west as the Mississippi. The old Algonquins of Massachusetts came from the west, gradually pushing the pre-Algonquin inhabitants to the coast, where they were finally assimilated or wiped out. Favorite camping places were the areas near the falls of the larger rivers, which were later picked by the white men as sites for dams and factories.
Roger Williams has preserved the legend that a crow brought a grain of corn in one ear and a bean in the other from the field of the great god Kauntantouwit in the southwest. This fable assumes historical im- portance in view of the fact that it was precisely the old Algonquins, coming from the west and south, who introduced agriculture. They also brought with them the art of pottery-making, although its forms were restricted to tobacco pipes and cooking vessels. Many of the vessels had pointed bases, made to be supported by hearthstones and not suspended over the fire. Ornamentation consisted largely of lines and dots arranged in zones or other patterns, one of the most persistent of which was a zigzag design commonly found in pottery from the mound groups of the Ohio region.
Like their white successors, the earliest Massachusetts Indians got much of their food from the sea. Some of the tribes made desultory visits to the salt water; others lived permanently near the shore. Clams, quahogs, scallops, and oysters formed an important addition to their
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First Americans
food supply, and the shells heaped up in the course of many years have aided in preserving fragments of their pottery and the more perishable implements used in their rude arts. An invasion of the Iroquois separated the old Algonquin and later Algonquin cultures. Shell beads belong almost invariably to the later Algonquin period. Pottery vessels shaped in globu- lar form for suspension over the fire and terra cotta pipes of the later Algonquins show Iroquois influence. The purple quahog shell wam- pum and the white wampum were borrowed from the Dutch of Long Island.
The occasional presence in early Indian graves of porcelain and glass beads and of copper and brass ornaments emphasizes the fact that early contact of Europeans with Massachusetts Indians did not begin at Plymouth. In the year 1578, for example, no fewer than four hundred European vessels were engaged in whaling and fishing along the New England coast, and most of these traded with the Indians. The ‘Skeleton in Armor' found at Fall River in 1831 wore a brass breastplate about fourteen inches long, and around his lower torso was a belt of brass tubes closed together lengthwise. The fact that similar tubes arranged in like manner had been found in Denmark made Longfellow believe that the grave was that of a Norseman, and in this belief he wrote his poem. Later examination showed that the skeleton was that of an Indian not ante- dating 1650, and as no Indian could have manufactured brass, the ' armor' was probably hammered from a brass kettle received in trade.
On Dighton Rock, a sandstone boulder, eleven feet high, on Assonet Neck in Berkley, appear pecked incisions of questionable origin, some ap- parently alphabetical and some pictorial. Certain authorities have read among them a Latin record of a visit of the Portuguese Miguel Cortereal some years after he and his ship disappeared from history on the rocky coast of Newfoundland in 1502, supporting their case by recalling a local Indian legend that strange men in a wooden house came up the river and fought with the natives.
However vague pre-Colonial history of the Indians must remain, we know that during the early Colonial period seven tribes inhabited Massachusetts: the Massachusetts, the Wampanoags, the Nausets, the Pennacooks, the Nipmucks, the Pocumtucs, and the Mohicans.
The Massachusetts dominated the territory enclosed in a circle drawn through Boston and Charlestown harbors, Malden, Nantucket, Hingham, Weymouth, Braintree, and Dorchester. Before the arrival of the first settlers the Massachusetts had reached the height of their importance. The plague of 1616-17 wrecked their power, and by 1631 they numbered
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Massachusetts: The General Background
only about five hundred. Ultimately they were gathered into the villages of the Christianized or Praying Indians - almost the last act of a tragic drama.
The Wampanoags held sovereignty over the whole tract from Cape Cod to Massachusetts Bay, with some control over the petty tribes of the interior.
The Nausets, a friendly tribe who accepted the white man as a brother, occupied Cape Cod and the adjacent islands under the dominion of the Wampanoags. Most of them became Christianized before King Philip's War. Nauset Light at Truro commemorates these gentle red men.
The Pennacooks, allied with the quarrelsome Abanaki of Maine who continually raided the lands of the Massachusetts, originally inhabited northern Massachusetts. At the close of King Philip's War in 1676 the remnant of the Pennacooks migrated to Canada.
The Nipmucks roamed the eastern interior of Massachusetts from Boston on the east to Bennington, Vermont, on the west. Concord, New Hampshire, on the north, and Connecticut and Rhode Island on the south bounded their territory, which centered in Worcester County.
The Pocumtucs, whose chief village was near the present town of Deerfield, dominated all the Indians of the Connecticut Valley in Massa- chusetts.
Like the Massachusetts, the Mohicans, popularly memorialized in Cooper's novel, were decimated by the plague of 1616-17. This tribe had originally ranged from New York into the upper portions of the Housatonic Valley. In 1664 their Council moved its fire from Albany to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. From Stockbridge some of the Mohicans migrated to the Susquehanna River, but the remnants of this picturesque people were gathered into a mission at Stockbridge - a forlorn hope for perpetuation.
All these Indians were typical long-headed Algonquins, with smooth skins, swarthy complexions, black hair and eyes, and high foreheads. They had broad shoulders and brawny arms, but lean bellies, flat knees, and small hands and feet. Their skins were redder and less coppery than those of their western relations.
The men wore in winter a costume later adopted by white hunters - leggings, dressed buckskin shirts, breech clouts and moccasins, and sometimes fur caps. In summer the breech clouts and moccasins formed a complete costume. Women wore leggings and long gowns. Garments were decorated with fringes and sometimes painted with simple designs.
Both sexes painted their faces. Tattooing was confined to the cheeks,
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First Americans
upon which totemic figures were permanently placed by the insertion of black pigment beneath the surface of the skin. The men plucked their beards, and hair was dressed in various styles according to the sex, age, and station of the individual.
The primary weapon was the wooden bow strung with moose sinew, and wooden arrows tipped with stone or bone and carried in quivers of otter skin. In warfare the usual offensive weapon was the tomahawk, with bark shields serving to some extent for defense.
Communities were built on hunting and agriculture. The members of the tribes or communities were the recognized proprietors of certain hunting, fishing, and agricultural lands, held as a rule in common. The winter villages were usually situated in warm, thickly wooded valleys near a lake or river. The early spring was spent on the fishing grounds, and when the planting season arrived the tribe moved to its summer fields. Each family had its garden of corn, beans, pumpkins, squash, artichokes, and tobacco, cultivated with hoes of stone, wood, or clam shells and fertilized by herring and shad. Wild berries, roots, and nuts furnished other sources of food, supplemented by fish and by the meat of the larger mammals preserved by cutting in strips and smoke-drying.
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