USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Stockbridge > Stockbridge, 1739-1939; a chronicle > Part 8
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meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ ... the green trees and fields, and singing of birds are the emanations of His infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of His beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmering streams are the footsteps of His favor, grace, and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of His glory and goodness; and in the blue sky, of His mildness and gentleness . .
These passionate words have lost their meaning to a generation intent upon raising itself by its own bootstraps. They are like some beautiful but archaic music. And upon the exact spot where they were written, doctors with infinite patience, kindness, and industry are teaching men to live in a ) Godless world. Jonathan Edwards must often turn in his grave.
In 1757, with the Williamses reduced in number, Stock- bridge again seemed to offer peace to Edwards. The Ephraims, young and old, were in their graves, and the Dwights had moved to Great Barrington. Here in a house finer and more pretentious than the Sergeant house, they lived in great elegance and dignity until Dwight's death in 1765. No one was left in the old Williams stronghold on the Hill but Elijah, a still youthful figure, and Josiah, sickening to an early death from a bullet wound received at Crown Point.
The Mohawks and the storms that had raged over them had gone forever, and the town was composed for the most part of sad, gentle-faced Mahicans. Little Jonathan Edwards, only six years old when his father moved to Stockbridge, never talked English outside his own house, for all his play- mates were Indians. Even now, after twenty years of settlement, the total number of courageous souls who dared
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risk life and limb on this exposed frontier consisted of eighteen white families in all.
With Woodbridge to take most of the responsibility of the Indians, Edwards's ministerial duties were not heavy, and a serene and studious old age seemed just within his grasp. He was gathering himself for his mightiest, most monumental effort, A History of the Work of Redemption, when events occurred which were to alter his life completely. His son-in- law died suddenly at Princeton, and to his horrified amazement Edwards found himself elected to succeed him.
In vain he pleaded with the Princeton authorities that he was the wrong man for the position. His constitution was, he said "in many respects peculiarly unhappy, attended with flaccid solids, vapid, sizy, and scarce fluids, and a low tide of spirits; often occasioning a kind of childish weakness & con- temptibleness of speech, presence & demeanor " He was better at the written than the spoken word. A council of ministers was convoked at Stockbridge to deliberate as to whether he should stay where he was or go to Princeton, and they decided he should go. When he heard the unwel- come news, he buried his face in his hands and burst into tears. Failure at Northampton, failure with the Indians, failure finally to complete his life work here, blended to produce this burst of emotion.
A few days later he stood in the rough wooden pulpit for the last time, bending a strangely prophetic gaze upon the congregation, one third rough, burly pioneer, two thirds vacillating, shifty-eyed Indian. He began the Twentieth Chapter of Acts in his quiet, even voice: "And now brethren, I go bound in the spirit into Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there . . . For I know that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock . . . " He read to the end, and then preached
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his last sermon on the text, "We have here no continuing city." A prescient glance into the future showed him that the grand experiment was at an end that had drawn so many and such diverse characters, for as many reasons, to give time, money, and energy to this border village. It was a brave roster that had engaged in making a silk purse out of a sow's ear: John Sergeant, John Stoddard, Governor Belcher, Mr. Hollis, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Isaac Watts, Brigadier General Dwight, and Ephraim Williams. Now
twenty years had passed and Edwards, bidding the Indian town good-bye, knew that it could be "no continuing city."
His own career was to be checked summarily a few weeks after his arrival at Princeton, by a fatal smallpox inoculation, and he was not to see the fulfillment of his prophecy for the Indians. Even Timothy Woodbridge was inclined to be pessimistic about them, feeling that some fatal magnet drew them to all the bad in civilization. They retained an abiding affection for him who had been their patient schoolmaster during all these years. Since 1750, when the land had been divided in severalty, he had brooded over their property like an old hen and, up to the time of Edwards's departure, had been fairly successful in keeping it intact. There is a touching demonstration of their affection for him in a petition to the General Court to be allowed to make him a present of 350 acres "for his continued kindness and care . . . for upward of 20 years."
The peace that was established between England and France in 1761 was to encourage enormously the western migration. Stockbridge had its share of pioneers, who were intent on staking out farms and building houses for them- selves, and who did not pay much attention to the Indians. Johannes Metoxin still blew hopefully upon his conch-shell, and he and King Ben (Konkapot's successor as sachem) were selectmen, as well as on the committee for seating the church.
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But these were empty honors. Although elected to office by necessity-for it was illegal for the English to function without them-they were not called upon to act. In the old days with Woodbridge as selectman "who gently and gradually . . . lead our people into the Knowledge of government and benefits of the English laws," the Indians "went on lovingly with our English brethren" in the management of the town. Now no one called upon the Indian selectmen or asked their advice about village affairs. Their deepest grievance was the election of Elijah Williams as representative to the General Court in 1763. The Indians wailed like unjustly punished children that they hadn't understood that it was necessary to bring their votes on bits of paper. Nobody had explained. Now, by bringing in strangers from out of town to vote for him, they claimed, he had gotten himself elected. "He has made a party in town," they concluded on a familiar note, "endeavoring to get not only all power but all our lands." Elijah was clearly a chip of the old block.
The inevitable sale of the Indian lands had begun. How could it be otherwise? The pioneer from the east had money in his pocket. The Indian, with a perpetual hole in his, was lacking also in that staple New England commodity-char- acter. All that he could call his own was the land, the shaggy green hills, the ample meadows bordering the river, where he loved to sit and watch the speckled backs of the shad and trout flash in the sun. As he was constitutionally unable to do anything to all this richly agricultural landscape, to plough it, to till it, or to fence it, it was taken away from him by those who could.
To sell land in the Indian town of Stockbridge was illegal without the sanction of the General Court, but the need was pressing and the smaller sales seem to have gone through without permission from Boston. An appeal to Elijah Williams runs: "Plase to Let Me have Som money for which
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I desire that you take 50 Eacors of Land for Which I will Give Good deed I am allmost dad for Want of Provetion and I Prey Let Me have fore Pounds of Money Out my Land My Brother Jacob has already said something to you About it and Let My Brother Jacob Aukenock have 4 Pounds out of my Land for Me .-- No More at Present & but Remain yr Humble Servent Abram Aukenock."
A year later, in 1763, a clean sweep was made, giving the title to all remaining land in Berkshire County, with the exception of Stockbridge, to the General Court for the price of £1,800. Stockbridge was left an Indian island in the sea of white occupation, only precariously intact. Now there was a bill due Dr. Erastus Sergeant for doctoring an Indian, to be paid in land. Or Samuel Rowley, in consideration of his liberating Jacob Unkamug from prison by paying £37, received 100 acres. An Indian, who accidentally killed an ox belonging to William Goodrich, gave land in payment.
Finally, in 1765, upon their "pressing application," the General Court decided to recognize a situation which existed anyway, and allowed the Indians to sell their lands for pay- ment of debt. Larger and more generous slices were lopped off the Indians' property. In 1766, Rattlesnake Mountain went for £150 to "Josiah Jones, Joseph Woodbridge yeomen, Elijah Williams esqr. Joseph Jones Junior gentleman and Erastus Sergeant phycisian."
Dr. Stephen West had succeeded to Edwards's pulpit. Hurrying to serve the needs of his growing white congrega- tion, the Indians fitted nowhere into the scheme of his life, and he did not have time even to try to understand them. In 1774, their old friend, Timothy Woodbridge, died. His last act was a recommendation to the General Court that a com- mittee of white men be appointed to be guardians of the money that the Indians received for their lands. Enoch
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Woodbridge and Samuel Brown were chosen by the Indians as agents in all their financial dealings.
A new generation of whites was now dealing with a new generation of Indians. Enoch Woodbridge would not protect their interests with the devotion that Timothy had. Timothy Edwards, returning to town in 1772 to start a store, would be more preoccupied with his merchandise than his father had ever been with metaphysics. It was a cold world, with less room in it for Indians every year that passed. But the new generation was to produce one friend of the old stamp. In John Sergeant, Abigail's son, survived a single spark of the missionary zeal which had founded the town thirty-six years before. A gentler, less incisive John Sergeant, he had grown up with the sheep-dog instinct strong within him. For a number of years he had been studying theology under Dr. West, and had gradually assumed the Indian services. In 1775, Dr. West was thankful formally to hand over to him this responsibility, for which he received a salary of $400 from The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
The split was now complete between the Indians and the whites. They each had their own ministers, attended separate schools, and the Indians were perched forlornly on the out- skirts of the town. King Ben lived at the western extremity in a little frame house. Tradition claims that he sold it to Electa Sergeant before he died in 1781, at the advanced age of 104. King Solomon, who succeeded him, pitched his wigwam across the river from Laurel Hill, on a piece of land that for the moment he could call his own. Here he held around him what shreds of independence and dignity he could. The empty form of the old town government, half Indian, half white, persisted until 1779, which was the last year that an Indian held office in the town.
Their hour had clearly struck. The hunting ground which had been theirs time out of mind belonged to the white man.
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They must gather up their mongrel inheritance, neither English nor Indian, and depart. Their removal to a tract offered them by the Oneida tribe in Madison County, New York, in the year 1785, was to be the first of many and, like old trees with their roots struck deep in the native soil, they stood up badly under transplanting. With each removal, as they traveled gradually farther west, the sap ran less freely, their vitality diminished. Color and character fail to emerge from the dry statistics of the missionaries as they labored pain- fully on decade after decade. The picture they give of the Indians presents a discouraging uniformity from beginning to end: intemperance, sloth, and broken promises to reform- always one step forward and two steps back. Occasionally the dull pages are enlivened by the interpolation of an Indian speech, some Chief melodiously lifting up his voice to lament the tragedy of his race. For they were always to retain this grave dignity of utterance, no matter how low they fell in the world.
The new territory under the protection of the Oneidas was hopefully called New Stockbridge, and there, between 1783 and 1788, the Indians-about 200 in number-gathered. Sergeant traveled back and forth between the new Stockbridge and the old, rounding up the stragglers until 1796 when he and his family settled permanently in the Oneida tract. Everything that could be thought of was done to uplift and sustain. His daughter even started a Female Society for Promoting Good Morals, Industry and Manufactures among the women of the tribe, and monthly concerts were instituted. The land was rich, well watered with lakes and streams. Under the wing of the Oneidas they were more isolated from the whites, but it was no use. In 1796, The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel making its rounds, sadly shook its head over New Stockbridge. The Oneidas, it seemed, were undesirable neighbors. "The indecency of the males, they
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being universally sans culottes is not a favorable symptom and hard treatment the women receive from their husbands does not indicate the prevalence of Christian principles to any great extent." In a flash of clear-sightedness the report stated that the Stockbridge Indians seemed insensible to the advant- ages offered them and unaccountably "attached to their ancient habits which are now become impracticable. They must lay aside the character of hunters, because their game is gone, & its haunts are rendered infinitely more valuable by cultivation. They cannot be warriors, because they have no enemies to contend with. If, therefore, they continue to despise husbandry, the only remaining source of opulence & independence, they must either retire to some distant region of the American forest, or live as spendthrifts on the price of their lands; or become strollers & beggars . . . "
By 1808, it had become evident that their tenure on New Stockbridge was as insecure as it had formerly been on the original Stockbridge. Characteristically they pleaded with the Governor and Council of New York to "buy a part of their Dish" in order to enable those who so wished to be on their way again. A tract on the White River in Ohio near the border of Indiana had been given by the Miami tribe to the Stockbridges and the Delawares, who were already established there. Aware of the pressure to sell, to which the Delawares were being subjected by the whites, the older members of the Stockbridge tribe were reluctant to move, but the Delawares wrote reassuringly: "When we rise in the morning, we have our eyes fixed toward the way you are to come, in expectation of seeing you coming to sit down by us as a nation." In 1818, a group of sixty or seventy bold hearts set forth, armed with Scott's Commentary and a farewell address of Sergeant, which he enjoined them to read at least once a year. But the best- laid plans of Indians could be guaranteed to go astray. Before they arrived at White River, news reached them that the
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Delawares had sold their land. Disheartened, they scattered, some to return home to New Stockbridge, some to hang on in Ohio, dumbly and hopelessly waiting for the United States government to restore them their lands.
As time went on, and a land company in New York became anxious to get hold of the rich Oneida territory, it became evident that this nation, "scattered and peeled, and trodden under the foot of others," as one of their teachers described it, must move on. Starting in 1822, for nine years they slowly trailed westward. A new tract had been secured for them near · Green Bay, Wisconsin, on the Fox River. They took their Bible with them this time-a sure sign that New Stockbridge would see them no more.
Here in a depth of wilderness so unbroken as not yet to have evolved itself into the state of Wisconsin, they built another New England town, rough as a child's drawing, but clearly recognizable in its outlines. John Metoxin, descend- ant of the conch-shell Metoxin, and his wife established in this territory the first Puritan church. It was complete with two tithingmen, who wielded their switches over the heads of the irreverent, and a Sabbath School, run along orthodox lines. The Sabbath began at sunset on Saturday evening, in the old fashion. John Sergeant and Timothy Woodbridge would have glowed with pride. They had learned at least a part of their lesson well. Religion always walking hand in hand with education, the first free school in a yet unborn Wisconsin soon followed, started by another Stockbridge Indian, Electa Quinney.
Before they were fairly settled, a blow fell upon them in the death of their old pastor, John Sergeant, far away in New Stockbridge. His last strength had been spent persuading a few lingering and ingrained New Stockbridgians to go west. His death accomplished what his efforts could not, for without him New Stockbridge became an alien land. Bewildered,
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they declared that their "sun was setting and did not know but darkness would succeed." Shivering, the last of the tribe turned west. If they hoped that Fox River, Green Bay, Wisconsin, was to be a resting place, they were disappointed. Only three years later they were on the road again. It was the same story. Their presence on the Fox River interfered with the whites' monopoly of the water power. Again church, school, sawmill, and pathetic frame dwellings were thrown into the discard, and the tribe moved on. This time the new settlement, on the east side of Lake Winnebago, received the old name of Stockbridge.
The Indian memory was long, reaching easily over time and distance. During these years of wandering, occasionally a solitary Indian, homesick for a sight of the happy valley, would turn up in Stockbridge. One day, after the removal to Lake Winnebago, an ancient survivor of the old days was found seated on a slope above the town, gazing sad-eyed at the familiar outline of hill and valley. What was he thinking of, sitting there in wooden immobility? The words of another member of his tribe may have described the current of his thoughts: "Where are the twenty-five thousand in number and four thousand warriors who constituted the power and population of the great Muh-he-co-new Nation in 1604? They have been victims of vice and disease which the white men imported. The small-pox, measles and 'strong waters' have done the work of annihilation . .. One removal follows another and thus your sympathies and justices are evinced in speedily fulfilling the terrible destinies of our race . . . " A grandson of the original Sergeant was delegated to question him. Yes, he had come all the way from Winnebago, and wanted to see the town once more before his own departure from this world. He was not communicative but gravely accepted as his right and without thanks the hospitality that was offered him. He lingered several days, revisiting his
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ancestral countryside, and then disappeared as he had come, silently and alone.
Another story of this period concerns the local blacksmith. One day he ran out of coal, and an Indian-for there were a few who had never left-volunteered to go and get him some. He came back with a load of anthracite coal, which he said he had found on Monument Mountain, somewhere on the Stock- bridge side. No one since has ever been able to find the place, for the Indian refused to tell his secret. It was a very small retaliation from the underdog.
The Reverend Cutting Marsh, missionary to the Stock- bridge Indians in Wisconsin for fourteen years, finally gave up in 1848 in a mood of deep discouragement. "The trials which the Rev. David Brainerd experienced among the Indians 100 years ago are the trials of the missionary at the present day," he said. "Even now in the grd or 4th gener- ation which has risen up since the first introduction of the Gospel amongst these Indians, fickleness, want of integrity of character, want of principle . . . want of love of truth, aver- sion to mental effort and an unconquerable one to restraint are amongst my severest trials . . . "
The sale of their property at Lake Winnebago followed in 1848, the same year that Mr. Marsh left them. In 1850 the American Board of Missions gave up supporting them and, with the departure of Mr. Marsh, their spiritual leadership was taken over by Jeremiah Slingerland, a somewhat unre- liable half-breed, who had the distinction of having received an education at Dartmouth College. They now moved to Shawano County, Wisconsin, between the years of 1856 and 1859. Abandoned by the American Board of Missions, the old church lapsed. Mr. Slingerland obligingly became a Presbyterian, as that was the prevailing church of the neighborhood.
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Gradually the years were erasing all traces of their remarkable history from the Stockbridge Indians, and they became more uniform with the other remnants of the great Indian tribes, who drag out a half-civilized existence on a reservation somewhere in the west. The wonderful Bible, that high-water mark of the Christian experiment, was mislaid and finally found by an enterprising Indian-in the rubbish heap! He pulled it out and dusted it off and it became his most cherished possession. Finally he consented to have it kept in the church in a safe, of which he alone knew the combination.
The Indians have bowed their heads to their inevitable tragedy, with their customary dignity. The following was written in 1810, but would fit any year in the last two centur- ies: "Brothers, with sorrowful hearts we now desire to look back a little, and view the ruins of our mighty trees -- you can scarcely find where they are fallen-scarcely find any stump or roots remaining but if you look down near your feet, you will see the remnant of your brethren like small bushes, who now looking up speak to you, for you are become very great, you 1 reach to the clouds you can see all over this island, but we can scarcely reach to your ankles."
Chapter V
THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH TOWN
T HE breathing spell which came after the French and Indian War was one of burgeoning for early Stock- bridge. No longer did its citizens feel the menace of possible Indian descents. Now that Quebec had fallen, and with it the power of France in North America, the Joneses and the Woodbridges could take a firmer grip on their axes and lead their cattle to pasture with a peaceful heart. The raging wilderness of earlier days was assuming settled contours.
William Williams, Grand Panjandrum of the twenty log huts which called themselves Pittsfield, could write to his brother-in-law in the eastern part of the state, urging imme- diate immigration. Of the climate he could speak highly. "Languor, Sickness and Excruciating Pain were my Portion," he wrote, "while I . .. was Obliged to Tabernacle in the narrows between the West and East Mountains of Deerfield. Since I removed to this place I challenge any man in the Government to compare with me for Health and freedom from Pain. All my doctor's bill has been a gallipot or two of Unguent for the Itch . .. No Man or Woman that ever came and got settled among us wished themselves back. The air suited them and they felt frisk and alert." "This salubrious air," he claimed, "makes barren women bring forth men," and he went on to point with pride to his fellow citizens. "Look at Colonel Ephraim Williams in Stockbridge and Joseph
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Woodbridge. They started poor and now they are exceed- ingly well off." This was, of course, all for the benefit of a brother-in-law who might be induced to buy some of the lands in which the family of Williams had so heavily invested. His long complaints to the General Court about his own embarrassed finances present a reverse side of the coin.
The picture William Williams painted was more than mere sales talk, however. There was plenty in the wooded hills and grassy meadows to attract settlers from the more civilized sections of the east. The soil had not yet become exhausted by recurrent crops. Wheat could be grown until the ground became too poor, then barley and rye, and finally beans. There was pasture for cattle and sheep, and brisk little streams on which to set up grist and fulling mills. What to John Sergeant had been a wilderness was now a possible real-estate development, and the citizens of Massachusetts were in enterprising mood. For over 100 years they had been in the New World and in the recent struggle with France the colonists had won their spurs. It had been their struggle, fought and won upon their own soil, and so intimately was it their affair that they even resented being taxed for the British soldiery they themselves had asked for. The surrender of Quebec was like a diploma to a graduating class. The colonists for the first time surveyed their untapped resources maturely. Were these to be exploited for their own benefit, or used to swell the revenues of a king thousands of miles away? As more and more immigrants moved into Berkshire and cut down the forests to build their log cabins, the future was big with that surmise.
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