USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Our county and its people : A history of Hampden County, Massachusetts. Volume 1 > Part 2
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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
While the general surface of the valley is level, there is one notable exception to this rule in the ridge of hills associated with Mounts Tom and Holyoke. In Hampden county these ridges pass through the western part of Holyoke, West Springfield and Agawam. The structure can be well studied on the line of the
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GEOLOGY
Boston and Albany railroad between Mittineague and Westfield. Two distinct ridges may be seen. There is a cutting through the eastern and lower ridge just west of the station of Tatham. The rock is igneous in origin and is known as the Holyoke diabase. It is dark gray in color, compact and crystalline. A columnar structure is apparent at places, and there is no evidence of bed- ding. Some of the rock is porous and spongy in character and often the cavities are filled with quartz and calcite. At the west end of the cutting the trap diabase will be seen resting on the upper surface of sandstone. Some three-quarters of a mile to the west is another and higher ridge of the trap rock. In this there has been opened a large quarry. The rock is valuable as a material for macadamizing roads. In the walls of the quarry the columnar arrangement of the material is well developed. These two ridges are the result of successive outflows of lava, during the period of the deposition of the sandstone. In all probability the lava flowed over the muddy bottom of the estuary and was then covered by additional layers of mud and sand. These in time hardened into stone and then there was a second and smaller flow of lava. This in turn was covered by sand- stone. As a result of the tilting and faulting of the region, and etching out by subsequent erosion, the trap ridges now stand out in bold relief above the floor of sandstone. On the southern slopes of Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke there are remains of distinct volcanic action; beds of tufa, and lava plugs, the re- mains of ancient volcanos have been mapped by the students of the geology of the region.
Itmust be understood that the rock formations as described in this paper are the foundation for surface materials as soil, sand, gravel and clay. Throughout the upland country these super- ficial deposits can be traced very directly to glacier action. They consist of coarse sand and gravels, and there is no evidence of stratification, nor sorting of the bowlders or pebbles. The rock fragments are not rounded or polished, but are in form sub-angu- lar. Often the fields and pasture land are covered with great bowlders. The ledges of the country rock are in many places smoothed and scratched by the action of the moving ice sheets.
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OUR COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE
In the valleys, great masses of this glacial debris have been washed down by streams and by heavy rains. The thickness of the glacial deposit or drift varies with localities. It is some- times piled up in rounded hills, known as drumlins, and again. occurs as long ridges of gravel-called esker. McCarthy's hill in East Longmeadow is a good example of a drumlin, while a fine esker is to be seen in Monson, east of the village and near the line of railroad.
Under the surface drift there is found, more particularly in the wider valleys, a compact deposit of unstratified clays, sands. and rock fragments, known as bowlder clay or till. In the broad valley of the Connecticut, the action of river and lake have largely rearranged the glacial material. At the close of the ice age extensive lake systems were formed and out of these there were washed by rivers deposits of stratified clays and sands, as delta formations. It is on such a delta that Springfield is situ- ated. The fertile and alluvial meadows are the result of river action in shaping and molding the materials deposited in the glacial lakes.
In studying the geological evolution of the region of Hampden county, attention must be first paid to the problem of the upland country. Originally the materials of the rocks of this country must have been deposited as sands, clays and limestone in waters of sea, bay, or ocean. Then by pressure these deposits were. folded and faulted until mountains of considerable height were. formed. But as soon as the rock materials were exposed to the action of air and water, those latter agents began their work of leveling down the country. In time this process of denudation reduced the region to a base level, near sea level, and there was: thus produced a peneplain of denudation. This peneplain is supposed to have been the result of atmospheric agencies, rather than of wave or sea action.
After reduction to near sea level, the region was raised again, and as a result of this elevation and tilting the streams were once again given a definite slope, and then work of erosion was re- sumed. The comparatively even sky line of the hill country is. an evidence of the peneplain, while the deep, narrow valleys and.
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GEOLOGY
the frequent rapids and cataracts in the streams show that the drainage system is of recent and imperfect development. For the same reason, the brooks and rivers abound in water power facilities.
The Connecticut valley is much different in topographical features from the valleys in the upland country. It presents evidences of mature development in its broad river plain, and its gently sloping sides. It has none of the canyon-like character of the valley of the Westfield river. The explanation of these dif- ferences, however, is not so much one of age as of the conditions of rock and structure.
At some time, long before the development of the peneplain, the area of the valley lowland was subjected to a marked depres- sion in level. As a result, the waters of the sea covered the crys- talline rocks and a broad, shallow estuary was formed. In this estuary deposits of mud and sand were made. These deposits were coarsest along the eastern and western slopes of the bay, where the currents and tides were strongest, and these materials when consolidated formed the present Sugar Loaf sandstone and Mt. Toby conglomerate. Towards the center of the basin finer materials were laid down and became in time the Longmeadow sandstone and Chicopee shale. In such an estuary the tides are very high and when there was low water, extensive mud and sand flats were exposed. There was thus given an opportunity for impressions of various kinds to be made on the fresh surface. As the mud dried and hardened these were preserved under the layer of deposit made by the waters when the mud banks were next covered. The completed result was a very deep bed of sandstone rock.
In connection with the deposit of sandstone came the period of volcanic activity, which gave rise to the ridges of Mounts Tom and Holyoke. These trap ridges extend to Long Island sound, and constitute a most striking feature of the valley scenery. The outflow of trap occurred from certain fissures in the muddy bot- tom of the estuary. When the first and greatest flow occurred, the trap rolled slowly westward under the waters of the estuary and then cooled and hardened. More sandstone was deposited
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OUR COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE
and then came a second flow, the material for the lesser ridge. The deposit of sandstone ceased with the general uplifting and tilting of the region and a period of erosion began.
Under this process the sandstones yielded rapidly because of their loose structure and lack of power to resist the weather. The trap and the older crystalline rocks yielded but slowly to the erosive agencies, and so the general level of the Connecticut valley was cut down below that of the rocks to the east and west. The trap ridges also resisted the erosion and so gained a clear relief against the level of the sandstone.
At a much later period there came a change in climate and arctic conditions prevailed in New England. Snow and ice accumulated until the country was covered with a glacier mass, like that which at present rests on Greenland. This ice mass moved in a general southerly direction in the Connecticut valley. It continued the work of erosion and scratched, scarred, smoothed or crumbled into fragments the rocks over which it passed. The drift material left by the glacier is found widely distributed over the face of the country. Bowlders and pebbles with the marks of glacial action abound, and often the ledges from which these bowlders were torn are many miles to the northward.
With another change of climate, a rise in temperature, the ice melted and the glacial sheet retreated. This disappearance of the ice was not rapid or continuous. There were times when the glacier front halted or even resumed its advance. In the deeper valleys long lobes of ice were extended southward. By reason of the melting of the ice and the damming up of the natural drainage channels, extensive lake formations were formed in
Western Massachusetts. In the valley, the Springfield lake extended from Mount Holyoke on the north to Middletown, Conn., on the south. Its westward boundary was the ridge of Mount Tom, and on the east it washed the lower slopes of the Wilbraham hills. There was a smaller lake in the basin east of Wilbraham mountain, and the plain of Westfield was covered by the waters of a lake that extended from north of the Holyoke range.
In such quiet, land-locked bodies of water, there was abundant
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GEOLOGY
opportunity for extensive deposits, and the streams from north, east and west carried into these lakes, sands, gravels and fine silt. The central and deeper water contained finer material. Such was the formation of the clays, that now constitute the east bank of the river. Coarser materials were found near the outlets of rivers, as for example the gravels in the vicinity of Indian Or- chard. The Chicopee river built up in the Springfield lake a great delta of clay covered with sands. These deposits are strat- ified, and in this respect present a striking contrast to the glacial drift.
After the lakes were filled with these materials, sands, clays and gravels, the river began to develop the present drainage system of the lowland. The Connecticut river as it made a pendulum-like motion from east to west, at the same time cut down through the lacustrine deposits. In this way there were formed the fine terraces which add so much to the beauty of Springfield. The Chicopee river was pushed northward by the delta formation. Thus, through the action of the main stream and its tributaries, the valley has attained its present contour. Now the river is engaged in two kinds of work. It is at certain places tearing down the banks, while a short distance away it is building alluvial plains like the meadows of Agawam.
In geological history, the sandstones of the valley are placed in the Triassic period, the drift in the Glacial epoch, the clays and sand are of the Champlain period, and the cutting down of the river through the clays and sands occurred in the Terrace period.
NOTE-Any one who wishes to make an exhaustive study of the geology of this region is referred to the elaborate monograph of Professor B. K. Emerson of Amherst. This work is entitled Geology of Old Hampshire county, Massachu- setts, and is volume XXIX of the monographs of the United States geological survey. Much use has been made of this monograph in the preparation of this chapter.
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CHAPTER II
DISCOVERY AND OCCUPATION
Early European Discoveries in America-The French in Canada -The Dutch in New York-The English in Virginia-The Puritans in New England-Three European Powers Claim Sovereignty over the Territory comprising Massachusetts- Overthrow of the Dutch in the Netherlands-Struggle for Supremacy between the French and English-End of the French Dominion.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus, a Genoese, sailing under the flag of Spain, made his wonderful discoveries in the Western hemisphere. This event in history always has been referred to as the discovery of America, yet the first Europeans to visit the continent were Scandinavians, who colonized Iceland A. D., 875, Greenland in 983, and about the year 1000 had cruised south- ward as far as the Massachusetts coast.
Following close upon the discoveries of Columbus and other early explorers, various foreign powers fitted out fleets and commissioned navigators to establish colonies in the new country. In 1508 Aubert discovered the St. Lawrence river; and in 1524, Francis I, king of France, sent Jean Verrazzani on a voyage of exploration to the new world. He entered a harbor, supposed to have been that of New York, where he remained fifteen days. This Gallic explorer cruised along the coast more than 2,100 miles, sailing as far north as Labrador, and giving to the whole region the name of "New France"-a name by which the French possessions in America were afterward known during the domin- ion of that power.
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DISCOVERY AND OCCUPATION
In 1534 the French king sent Jacques Cartier to the country. He made two voyages and ascended the St. Lawrence as far as Montreal. The next year he again visited the region with a fleet, which brought a number of the French nobility, all filled with high hopes and bearing the blessings of the church. This party was determined upon the colonization of the country, but after a winter of extreme suffering on the Isle of Orleans they aban- doned their scheme and returned to France; and as a beginning of the long list of needless and shameful betrayals, treacheries and other abuses to which the too confiding natives were sub- jected, Cartier inveigled into his vessel the Indian chief who had been his generous host and bore him with several others into hopeless captivity and final death.
In 1540 Cartier again visited the scene of his former explora- tions, and was accompanied by Jean Francis de Roberval, the latter holding a king's commission as governor-general and being vested with plenary powers of vice-royalty. The results of this voyage, however, were no more satisfactory than those of their predecessor, and no further attempts were made in the same direction until 1598, when New France, particularly its Canadian portion, was made a place of banishment for French convicts ; but even this scheme failed, and it remained for private enter- prise, stimulated by the hope of gain, to make the first successful effort toward the colonization of the country.
The real discoverer and founder of a permanent colony in New France was Samuel de Champlain, who, in 1608, having counseled his patrons that the banks of the St. Lawrence was the most favorable site for founding a new empire, was sent to the country and founded Quebec. To satisfy his love for explora- tion Champlain united with the Canadian Indians and marched into the country southward, which the latter had described to him. The result was the discovery of the lake which bears his name, the invasion of the Iroquois country and a conflict between the Algonquins (aided by Champlain) and a portion of the con- federacy, in which the latter lost two of their chiefs who fell by the hands of Champlain himself.
Thus was signalized the first hostile meeting between the white man and the Indian. Low as the latter may have been found in
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OUR COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE
the scale of intelligence and humanity, and terrible as were many of the subsequent deeds of the Indians, it cannot be claimed that their early treatment at the hands of the whites could foster in the savage breast any other than feelings of bitterest hostility. Champlain's declaration, "I had put four balls into my arque- bus," is a vivid testimony of how little mercy the Indians thence- forth were to receive from the pale-faced race which was event- ually to drive them from their domain. It was an age, however, in which might was appealed to as right more frequently than in later years, and the planting of the lowly banner of the cross was often preceded by bloody conquest. However, it is in the light of the prevailing custom of the old world in Champlain's time that we must view his ready hostility to the Indian. Soon after 1622 a member of the Weymouth colony in New England, either in absolute need or in a spirit of wantonness, stole from the Indians of the region, and in so doing incurred the hatred of the savages for all the whites of the plantation, who narrowly escaped a fearful slaughter at their hands.
In 1609, a few weeks after the battle between Champlain and the Iroquois, Henry Hudson, a navigator in the service of the Dutch East India company, anchored his ship (the Half- Moon) at the mouth of the river which now bears his name. He met the savages and was hospitably received by them ; but before his departure he subjected them to an experimental knowledge of the effects of intoxicating liquor-an experience perhaps more baneful in its results than that inflicted by Champlain with his murderous weapon.
Hudson ascended the river to a point within a hundred miles of that reached by Champlain, then returned to Europe and, through the information he had gained, soon afterward established a Dutch colony, for which a charter was granted in 1614, naming the region "New Netherland." The same year the Dutch built a fort on Manhattan Island, and another the next year, called Fort Orange, on the site of Albany. In 1621 the Dutch West India company was formed and took possession of New Amsterdam and the Netherlands, and in 1626 the terri- tory was made a province of Holland. Under its charter the
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DISCOVERY AND OCCUPATION
company laid claim to the region of the Connecticut valley, and made explorations in that locality previous to 1630. Three years later the Dutch built a fortification on the bank of the river at "Dutch Point" (site of Hartford), and made some feeble at- tempts to control the valley and its settlement against the Puritan colonists of New England. For fifteen years the Dutch remained at peace with the Indians, but the unwise action of Governor Kieft provoked hostilities that continued with little cessation during the remainder of the Dutch dominion.
Meanwhile, in 1607, the English had made their first perma- nent settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, and in 1620 had planted their historic colony at Plymouth Rock.1 These two. colonies became the successful rivals of all others in that strife which finally left them masters of the entire country.
On the discoveries and colonizations thus briefly noted, three great European powers based claims to at least a part of the territory embraced in the state of Massachusetts ; first, England, by reason of the discovery of John Cabot, who sailed under a commission from Henry VII, and in 1497 reached the sterile coast of Labrador, also that made in the following year by his son Sebastian, who explored the same coast from New Foundland to Florida, claiming territory eleven degrees in width and extend- ing westward indefinitely ; second, France, which from the dis- coveries of Verrazzani claimed a portion of the Atlantic coast, and also (under the title of New France) an almost boundless region westward; and third, Holland, which based on Hudson's discoveries a claim to the entire country from Cape Cod to the southern shore of Delaware Bay. (If we picture a triangle with angles at Montreal, New York and Plymouth, the central point of the figure thus formed will be found in the region of the Con- necticut valley in Massachusetts, for the possession of which these powers were contending.)
1In 1620 James I, of England, issued a charter to the Duke of Lenox, Mar- quis of Buckingham, and others, styling them the "Grand Council of Plymouth for planting and governing New England in America." This patent granted to them the territory between the 40th and 48th degrees of north latitude. The territory granted, which had previously been called North Virginia, now received the name of New England, by royal authority. From this patent were derived all the sub- sequent grants of the several parts of the territory .- Willard.
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OUR COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE
The Dutch became the temporary occupants of a portion of the region under consideration, but their dominion was of brief duration. Indian hostilities were provoked through the unwise policy of Governor Kieft, whose official career was continued about ten years, he being superseded by Peter Stuyvesant in 1649. His equitable policy harmonized the Indians so far as the Dutch themselves were concerned, but his subordinates occa- sionally attempted to incite the Connecticut Indians against the New England colonists and their western plantations, but with- out serious effect. The Dutch had become thrifty by trading guns and rum to the Indians in exchange for furs, and thus the latter were supplied with doubly destructive weapons.
However, in March, 1664, Charles II, of England, conveyed to his brother James, duke of York, all the country from the River St. Croix to the Kennebec in Maine, together with all the land from the west bank of the Connecticut river to the east side of Delaware bay. The duke sent an English squadron to secure the gift, and in September of the same year Governor Stuyvesant capitulated, being constrained to that course by the Dutch col- onists, who preferred peace with the same privileges accorded to the English settlers rather than a prolonged and probably fruit- less contest. The English changed the name of New Amsterdam to New York, and thus ended the Dutch dominion in America.
For many years previous to the overthrow of the Dutch in America, and for nearly a century afterward, the English and French were rival powers, each struggling for the mastery on both sides of the Atlantic; and with each succeeding outbreak of war in the mother countries there were renewed hostilities in their American colonies. King William's war, about the close of the seventeenth century, was the first of these events that seriously involved the New England plantations. In 1702, on the accession of Anne to the throne as successor to King William, what was known as Queen Anne's war was soon begun; and it was continued until the treaty of Utrecht, April 11, 1713. While the powers were nominally at peace for many years afterward, each was constantly strengthening its possessions and using every endeavor to establish an alliance with the Indians, all prepara-
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DISCOVERY AND OCCUPATION
tory to the final struggle, which must come in order to settle the question of supremacy on this side of the Atlantic. Fortunately for the united colonies of New England, they had by this time effectually quieted the Indians within their own jurisdiction, and when at length the contest was begun they had only to contend against the French and the Canadian Indians.
In March, 1744, war again was declared between Great Britain and France, and the New York and New England colonies united in an expedition against the French stronghold of Louis- burg, in Canada, which capitulated in the following year. The contest was continued until 1748, when the ineffectual treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle temporarily put an end to hostilities. In the meantime, while nominally at peace, both sides were preparing for a renewal of the contest. At the suggestion of Massachusetts delegates to a convention at Albany, a plan for a union of all the English colonies in America was taken into consideration. The suggestion was favorably received and the fertile brain of Benja- min Franklin prepared the plan that finally was adopted. It was the forerunner of our federal constitution ; but the colonial assemblies rejected it, deeming that it encroached on their liber- ties, while the home government rejected it on the ground that it granted too much power to the people of the colonies.
The concluding war between Great Britain and France, so far as related to their American colonies, was begun in 1756 and continued with great vigor until the fall of Quebec in September, 1759, although a formal peace was not established until 1763, when, on February 10, the treaty of Paris was signed, whereby France ceded to Great Britain all her possessions in Canada.
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CHAPTER III
THE INDIANS
French and Jesuit Influence among the Indians-The New Eng- land Missionaries-Location and Probable Origin of the New England Indian Tribes-The Connecticut River Indians- Their Habits and Characteristics-Efforts to Establish Educa- tion and Christianity among the Tribes-Dutch Settlers sell Them Guns and Rum.
When Champlain opened the way for the French dominion in America the task of planting Christianity among the Indians was assigned to the Jesuits (a name derived from the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola, A. D. 1539), but while their primary object was to spread the gospel, their secondary and hardly less important purpose was to extend the dominion of France. In 1629 an English fleet sailed up the St. Lawrence river and captured Quebec, but upon the conclusion of a treaty of Peace in 1636, Canada was restored to King Louis. In less than three years from that time no less than fifteen Jesuit missionaries were laboring among the Indians in the region of the provinces of Massachusetts and New York, and in extending their line of possessions the French established strongholds within the limits of the present states of New Hampshire, Vermont and New York, and there is evidence tending to show that the Jesuit fathers carried their work into the Connecticut valley within the bound- aries of this state.
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