USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Northfield > Puritan outpost, a history of the town and people of Northfield, Massachusetts > Part 2
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"You omit, Captain Goodwin, the welcome given you among us," broke in Captain Henchman, by way of repeating the dubious poet- izing of Cotton Mather :
"'Hearers, like doves, flocked with contentious wings, Who should be first, feed most, most homeward bring, Laden with honey, like Hyblean bees, They knead it into combs upon their knees.
A constellation of great converts there, Shone round him, and his heavenly glory were. Gookins was one of these ; by Thompson's pains CHRIST and NEW ENGLAND a dear Gookins gains.' "
Captain Gookin had been just twenty-five years in New England. Indeed the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day, May 20, 1644, that he had landed in Boston might have been celebrated on the tour of exploration which had led to the Connecticut valley. Leaving Vir-
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A PURITAN OUTPOST
ginia, he had first moved to Maryland, where he acquired another plantation. While Governor Calvert, the Roman Catholic governor of Maryland, was more tolerant of the Puritan presence, Gookin longed for association with those of his own faith and with Thompson, who had continued his missionary work in Maryland, he left his three plantations under overseers and journeyed to Boston. There his name appears enrolled six days after arrival as a member of the First Church in Boston and three days later he was to be made a freeman, a distinction rarely conferred upon so new an arrival. Thenceforth he was prominent in all the affairs of the town and colony. "Though a Puritan of the Puritans," says his biographer, "stern and uncom- promising in matters of religion, the dominating notes in his char- acter were his tenderness of heart and compassion and his abiding sense of justice."
A neighbor in Roxbury of John Eliot, he acquired the missionary interest of this Apostle to the Indians and his later life was largely devoted to efforts at their Christianization. If from this effort there was no fruitage of lasting conversion of the native heathen, there was the permanent gain of his acquirement of the language of the Indians, which not only made him the leader of such expeditions as that on which we now see him but a contributor to the fund of knowledge as to them and their language. He was the close associate of the clergy and the quality of the Bay colony and again the military leader, captain of the Cambridge company through the rest of his days and, while retaining this lesser rank, in time the major general of the colonial troops. There had more recently been a voyage to England, a two-year stay there, within which he became the friend and associate of Cromwell, and the return on the same ship that brought the regicides, Whalley and Goffe, to New England.
Daniel Gookin did not again see Northfield. His name is forgotten in its annals. He had performed the duty laid upon him as an ex- plorer. He was the town's discoverer, leastwise the leader in that group of four stalwart Puritans who were the first of the new race of men to look upon the scene of the thrilling history that was to follow and beyond that the site of the town which through the cen- turies was to maintain, as few such towns have done, the character that is the type of the New England community. His title to local memory is in the fact of discovery but its wider significance lies in the
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DISCOVERY
fact that he was himself the perfected type of the English gentleman, transplanted to the New World, a resolute pioneer and a martyr, if need made him so, to the cause of his Puritan faith. For years to follow, he was to stand high in the counsels of the colony.
Less clearly in subsequent colonial history does there stand out the service of the second of the exploring committee. Appointed by the General Court as "Mr. Daniel Hinckman," his own signature to the report of this excursion of discovery was D. Henchman. He was for some years a deputy to the General Court and in 1670 appears as cornet of the troop of Middlesex.
Both of the other members of the committee link to Northfield by later connection, one of them through a descendant who had a promi- nent place in its life, and one through tragedy which ended in his death and burial on the exact spot where he and his associates first caught a glimpse of the Connecticut valley.
Captain Thomas Prentice was another transplanted Englishman. He was of Cambridge in 1650, a member of the First Church there. In 1661, he was deeded 300 acres of land in the Pequod country, on Long Island sound, a tract that was bounded on the west by that of (Cf.) Daniel Gookin-a hint of the Gookin acquisitiveness of land, the broad acres of Virginia and Maryland, which he seems not to have relinquished, of Cambridge and Worcester and, it now seems, of Connecticut. Captain Prentice had fifty or sixty acres of land in Worcester and built one of the fifty-eight houses that were the first homes on the site of that city. He lived out his days in Newton, where his death, July 6, 1710, was due to a fall from his horse while returning from church. He was a famous soldier as well as legis- lator. In 1675, it is recorded of him that he and his troop of horses were a terror to the Indians by his sudden attacks and impetuous charges. In 1689 he was ordered with his troop to Rhode Island to arrest and bring back Sir Edmund Andros. He, like Gookin, was the friend and counsellor of the converted Indians, who in 1691 petitioned the General Court that he be appointed their overseer and magistrate.
Given insight to the future, Captain Prentice would have seen in the town that was to be in the valley upon which he gazed from Merriman hill in 1669, his descendant in the sixth generation, the leading physician indeed, "the principal operator in these parts, his rides extending to the western part of Massachusetts and into Ver-
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A PURITAN OUTPOST
mont and New Hampshire"-Dr. Samuel Prentice. Through him, he could have looked beyond to a distinguished line of descendants, jurists, educators and statesmen, finding their fields, however, away from the scene of Dr. Prentice's professional activities.
Finally there was in the group, Richard Beers. Of him North- field has permanent memorial in the name of one of its plains and in the monument on the ground where first he saw the town and last saw the light of human existence. Leftenant Beers was of Water- town. At the time of the Northfield discovery he was a representative in the General Court, that service running from 1663 to 1675, the year of his death at Northfield. He had been a leader in the Pequot war and, in 1664, the General Court "in answer to the petition of Left. Richard Beers, having been one of the first planters of the colony to serve this country in their wars against the Pequots twice &c, as is expressed in his petition, which is on file, the court judgeth it meet to grant him 300 acres of land where it is to be had free from other grants according to law." These 300 acres were found for him "lying near Dover" and the lay-out was approved by the General Court October 17, 1673.
These were the men who connected civilization with the Connec- ticut valley at higher reaches than it had thus far been even seen and at a point where was to be established the long exposed outpost. They were the perfected type of New England pioneers, warriors if need be and resolute in the development of the new military strategy which the lurking, scattering methods of the native enemy compelled ; home- makers and builders of new plantations ; builders too of the new order of government which was to be America's; each of them a conspicu- ous sharer in the councils of that government; devout as they were brave and carrying with them in every venture the sense of service to God and truth.
With the solemnity that attended the serious affair, the month of May, 1669, brought the assembling of the General Court at Boston. Within its membership were Daniel Gookin, Esq., one of the twelve in the colony's government to be an "assistant," and Leftenant Rich- ard Beers, one of the two deputies chosen and sent from Watertown. Here, too, were representatives of the remote Connecticut valley plantations, Mr. George Coulton from Springfield and Mr. William
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DISCOVERY
Holton of Hadley, names that carry strong suggestion of the then unknown Northfield.
Beset with problems that might well have barred consideration of new ventures into an exposed wilderness, the serious assembly of assistants and deputies gave heed to the works of the revered Gookin, when, on the 27th, he presented the report of the exploring committee. It set out the attraction of the shore of Quinsigamund, or as the report named it, Quansigamond, for a plantation limited to sixty families, for, as Captain Gookin went on to explain, it seemed that the meadows of the region gave promise of supporting not more than that number. And then he read:
"The committee having in their journey discovered two other places beyond this to the westward that will make two or three towns, the one place called Pomaquiesick, lying upon the head of Checkaby river, the other place called Suckquakege, upon Connecticot river (nearer to Boston than Hadley is) we desire the Court will please to order that these places be reserved to make tounes the better to strengthen those inland parts, & ye laying out of particular grants prohibited in the sajd places."
There was some questioning of the prudence of such distant reser- vations. To acquire them, was to take upon the colony the obligation to protect them and promote their settlement. Had not the General Court gone quite far enough in its ventures in view of the difficulty of maintaining some of the existing towns? If it did not come to the surface, there was wondering that when this committee was only commissioned to find a location near Quinsigamund it had gone far, far beyond. In a later day a point of order might have been raised to the effect that the report exceeded the scope of the instructions upon which it was based. For all the records show, the work of Gookin and his associates was conclusive. The entry in the proceed- ings is :
"The Court approve of this returne & orders that the lands mentioned to be reserved for the publicke vse, for two or three inland tounes, be re- served for those ends."
The Northfield of the future had its legislative authorization. Henceforth there could be no exploitation of the land without the General Court's consent. And there the matter ends until quite an- other group of adventurers, approaching from another direction, came to the territory of the Squakheags to trade for the lands.
Worcester for in the 60 families
CHAPTER II THE ABORIGINES
Making Ready the Land for Unwelcome Tenants
IT WAS A DISHEARTENED and a depleted aboriginal people that held a lingering grasp upon the lands of the Connecticut valley when they first came within the vision of the white men. Not otherwise would the planting of towns on this frontier have been feasible in so short a time as the half-century within the landing at Plymouth. Not possible would have been the purchase, for considerations far below value, of lands that in the day of fading memory to the na- tives were the homes, the fields, the fishing points and the hunting grounds of their numerous tribes. The price-fixing upon these great stretches of meadow and plain was no more the product of the prudent and not plethoric advance agents of English settlers than of the compliance of titular possessors who had almost ceased to occupy, and to whom the value had well-nigh vanished.
In ways, it would seem that the Indians of this region had been but the agents, unwitting and unwilling though they may have been, for the preparation of the valley for its destined occupation. The invaders were told that the plague which in 1612 and 1613 had swept over the more easterly tribes had here also wrought its destruc- tion. And a worse, because a continuing, cause reduced their strength both in numbers and in sense of security. It was the menace of the tribes beyond the hills marking the boundary between the Connec- ticut and the Hudson valleys. The triumphal slaughtering march of the Mohawks over this range had fallen with greatest fury upon the Indians farther up the valley than the settlements had reached in 1663, when it occurred. Its rankling memory was linked with the sense that there must be a demonstration in return that would pro- tect for the future what was left. It was not revenge alone that moved the Massachusetts tribes to unite their forces, such as they were, for a vindictive return over those same hills and trails into Mohawk country.
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THE ABORIGINES
It was their need to show strength equal to the defence of themselves, to warn against further incursion.
Thus it was a well-nigh deserted region that Gookin and his associates invaded as discoverers in the spring days of 1669. There were hardly more than straggling remnants of the Squakheag tribe in the villages. Everywhere were the marks of more numerous occu- pation. There was the evidence in the numerous grain pits of an agriculture now carried on, as the need still required, by the squaws of the village. The braves at the moment were away to the East, in council with the Merrimac and Massachusetts tribes, for the return visit to the Mohawks, to be undertaken the coming summer. Even were they here, with the women and children and old men, they would have numbered all told far fewer than the population of the earlier years of the century, before the plague had swept away uncounted tribespeople and the Mohawk onslaught of 1663 had wrought their ruin.
Moreover, the valley Indians had reduced the land to perfect readiness for tillage. Through generations uncounted they had kept the meadows and adjoining plains deforested. The keen eye of Captain Beers had detected this treelessness on the day of the white man's first glimpse of the region. It was clearly in a condition of readiness for settlement that had been accomplished by long continued industry with fire for its instrument. The ranging hills were heavy with forests and in their depth game abounded, and here again there was a possible gift of the native to the invading people in some arts of cap- ture. Here was the trap for the deer, the birch tree bent with its tip on the ground, ready to spring when released by the nibbling animal and suspend it in air. Here on the plain was the fenced enclosure, into which the alarmed fleet-footed creatures were driven by a sur- rounding troop, not to make their way out. The ingenuity of the centuries had pointed ways of capture, only to go into decline as the fire-arm, carrying death at longer range than bow and arrow, proved a better substitute.
Next and chief of the gifts the natives passed to their white suc- cessors was the product not more of the soil than of their husbandry- corn. Corn! Has anybody given corn its due as the reliance of New England settlers for their very existence? Stories are familiar to every child of these later days of the gifts of corn to the nearly starving
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A PURITAN OUTPOST
people of the Plymouth colony from their Indian neighbors. There are less noble stories of forays upon the rude granaries and of acts that if they neared to larceny had a certain moral justification in the dire need of Puritan stomachs for food. Corn! A commonplace of the New England farm from its first rude days to the time when its production has dwindled because on broad plains to the west the towering growth of the maize plant out of soil needing only to be turned and seeded completed in yield and costlessness to the defeat of the New England product. Corn! The food product, new to the world, come to the major place in the value of its service to man- kind.
Yet, not to natural causes but to Indian husbandry is to be placed the credit for America's, and the world's, possession of this grain of gold. Nowhere on the face of the globe was corn known before it was found faithfully tilled by the American Indian. Nowhere on earth can modern man find corn growing naturally. Nowhere has the wild corn plant, nor any plant from which it could be bred, by the utmost skill of plant-breeders, been discovered.
Nor, again, is corn found seeding itself. Has the country boy keenest in his search for the freaks and sports of plant growth ever come across the corn springing from the ear dropped from a previous year's growth? With its seeds set firm upon the woody cob and enclosed in fold upon fold of husk, and with the winters killing the germ if left exposed in the field, it is completely unreproductive in nature. Its preservation from an uncertain beginning, far back of history's record, has been completely dependent upon human care. And that care the American Indian gave it, as if to pass it, unthanked, to the race that was in time to drive him from the fields where he faithfully sowed it with each coming spring and garnered it with each advancing autumn, to store it for the winter as seed for another year. Let that protection for a single season have failed and corn would be as unknown now as it was unknown to the Old World before it was found by America's settlers.
Perils there were in the path of the frontier settlement. North- field was to know them and to be twice overcome by them. In their midst, at the outset of the advance to this new possession, were the favoring circumstances of Indian racial depletion, broken spirit, loosened hold; of land reduced to tillage; of a grain which should
corn - the IndiANS as farmers
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THE ABORIGINES
become the main staple, preserved by the husbandry of native genera- tions. It was a land made ready.
The Connecticut has all the characteristics of New England rivers, of which it is one of the longest and most voluminous. Alternately swift and calm but never sluggish, its water is clear and sparkling, save at those seasons of spring, and rarely of autumn, flood when it gathers a load of tilth and gives to the intervales which were once its bed a new enrichment. It is protected against the invasion of traffic by its successive rapids and falls until in its lower reaches, after it has left Massachusetts, it becomes tidal. Here and there it has become harnessed to industry; only so in later periods than the colonial. Its lure to settlement was in its productive meadows, the ample home sites, the abundant water springs, and its many tributaries with their minor water powers. Here was a region of strong attraction to an advancing people, pioneers moving inland from a rugged and sandy coast, much less richly responsive to their husbandry. Here indeed was invitation to new occupation to a people who needed none save that of open spaces to which they might advance.
The pioneer is the least calculating of human beings. He is to be accounted for on no basis of advantage balanced against peril, of reward estimated against labor. Here in the valley was room, space, boundlessness. One of the reasons urged upon the General Court for authority to occupy the upper reaches of the valley, now North- field, was that the inhabitants of Northampton were "sorely pressed." There were some 200 of them penned into territory where later dwelt 20,000.
Indian husbandry had added another item to the invitation of the Connecticut valley to white settlement. The native folk were not wandering tribes. They were villagers. In the main they were not warriors. It is worth a moment's pause to free the New England Indian-if indeed not the American Indian more generally-from the imputation of fondness for war for war's sake. It would have been manifestly less picturesque to have placed an Indian on the azure of the great seal of the Commonwealth with a stone implement in his hand and exterminating the weeds from his corn than with the bow ready to bend to the extermination of intruders; but it would have been a warrantable anticipation of the "Man with the Hoe" which it took three centuries of white occupation to lift into a classic. How
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A PURITAN OUTPOST
far he sought war, for what reasons he went into war different from those of the claimants to the name of civilization-this is a theme the events of Northfield's settlements will illuminate.
Food supply for the natives was from the three natural sources --- the forest with its game and nuts, the streams and ponds, with the places of greatest yield gaining their permanent names from this feature, and the soil. For the fuller gain from each came the devel- opment of skill-the sure marksmanship of the bowsman and the spearer, the ingenuity of the trapper, and the toil and routine of the farmer. It was the last of these which revealed to the white pros- pector the fruitfulness of the Connecticut valley meadows and made them ready to his hand.
The first problem of reduction of wild land to tillage is forest removal and it had been met completely and effectively by Indian enterprise. The valley of our story has no greater contrast between its aspect in the twentieth century and in the seventeenth than in its forestation now and its treelessness then. The levels which could yield corn and pumpkins, the two crops of interest to the natives, were swept of wood. Fire was the Indian instrument to keep them in yield. Annually it was turned loose upon these stretches so effec- tively that only along the streams and in the ravines through which they coursed were remnants of the natural wood. Northfield has on its map one name that stands for an exception that proves the rule. The "Pine Meadow" of present-day farm value had been spared from the burning and as first known was covered with the conifers that supplied its name and the settlers with material for their homes.
If it were Nennepownam, Pammook's squaw, who entertained the first white visitors to the land of the Squakheags-a fact of which Captain Gookin was uncertain or at least which he failed to record- she gave them a feast of the order that the spring season made possible. She had drawn from the slender stock remaining of the corn crop of '68 and pounded it into samp, which she had boiled and now served only over-sweetened with the thick and black maple syrup. It was offset by the freshly gathered green and tender leaves of the cowslip. There were nuts which had been under the winter snows and now opened easily into unbroken meats. Earlier in the day she had gone to the mouth of the brook that flowed through Squenatock
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THE ABORIGINES
and fished shad from the great river whose waters were alive with the fish running up-stream. One, perhaps more, she had baked just as they were caught. Her guests recalled the better practice of the coast tribes in dressing their fish-a contrast in culinary art that was char- acteristic.
The story is told that some members of the eastern tribes paying a visit to inland Indians offered a criticism of the cooking of fish as caught and of eating flesh and entrails together and that for this they were promptly knocked in the head, a native response to criticism of cookery only more violent in expression than civilized resentment ordinarily is.
It is believable that the white guests partook of shad au naturel only as freely as was prudent in avoidance of the dusky cook's dis- turbance of mind. They quite avoided the soup which they detected had angle-worms for its stock, even though concealed in a measure by the thickening with flour made from dried chestnuts ; by gesture they indicated they had been sufficiently served. There were also bulbous roots of brakes and flags, spicy enough, but not quite certain of welcome in unaccustomed stomachs.
The hostess of the day was of the Suckquakeges-as nearly as Captain Gookin could render into English spelling the name he first heard that day. Down the river were the Agawams, in the region where Pynchon had struck his settlement more than thirty years before. Next them, around the falls called Pasquamscot, and with domain extending to the hill Wequomp that stood boldly out from the level lands, were the Nonotucks. Along the great river thence northward and with their villages to the westward up the other valley of the river that took their name, were the Pacomptocks. Their great domain had its end at Nallahamcomgon, the meadow that lies below the highlands back of the hill where some day Philip was to have his lookout fort. Possessing the eastern bank, the tribe now found claimed all to the north, and no tribal name has from that day been revealed to dispute the claim. What was to be English frontier was Indian frontier.
Within these ample ranges "were located the detached villages of the river tribes at points which commanded the readiest means of subsistence and safety." The down-river tribes had already sold the best of their lands, reserving in all cases certain planting fields and
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A PURITAN OUTPOST
the right of hunting, fowling and fishing and setting their wigwams on the commons. The white settlers had been welcomed. They had paid for their lands to the satisfaction of the owners. They were neighbors and the relations were neighborly, with trade in terms of advantage to both the parties. Had not the Pynchons within a score of years packed and sent to England thousands of beaver skins, hundreds of other pelts, muskrat, along with fox, coon, marten, mink and wild-cat skins, and even a few hundred moose skins? And were not the deer skins of use in both white and Indian garb? In return, had there not come wealth and new means of dress and adornment? Moreover, was not the presence of these new people, with their fearful weapons, assurance of strength against that enemy which had threat- ened the very life of these tribal tenants of a precious valley, the region in the west, the always menacing Mohawks?
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