USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 3
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The Western Railroad has much reduced this disparity in the external communications of the county. The journey to Boston, which in the best times of staging consumed two weary days, now insensibly glides away in a comfortable ride of six hours. Berkshire, pleasantly conscious of the iron bands that bind her to the rest of
1 The files of " The Hartford Courant," of which two sets, nearly or quite com- plete, are in existence, - one in possession of the present publishers of the paper, and the other in that of the Connecticut Historical Society, - are full of most precious matter for the historian.
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the Commonweath, feels herself more truly than ever a part of the Old Bay State; but still three competing lines of railroad, re-en- forced in summer by steamers on the Hudson and the Sound, cause the great mass of Berkshire trade and travel to seek New York as its metropolis; and, as a natural result, the county receives a powerful social and intellectual influence from the same centre.
Returning to the description of the interior geography of Berk- shire : the bottom of the valley rises, with the bed of the Housatonic, about two hundred and sixty feet from Sheffield to the forks of that river at Pittsfield; thence the bed of the western branch rises over one hundred feet, to the foot of Greylock in New Ashford, where it finds the summit of that division of the main valley.
The many-headed eastern branch is formed by the confluence of innumerable rivulets, which spring up among the hills of Peru, Washington, Windsor, and Hinsdale. In Dalton, it is of sufficient capacity to drive the wheels of the large paper-manufactories of that town; and at Coltsville, where it enters Pittsfield, it furnishes one of the best water-powers of the Upper Housatonic.
At this point, it receives Unkamet Brook, a large tributary which rises in Partridge Meadow, in the north-eastern corner of Pittsfield. This meadow is a singular formation upon the summit of the eastern water-shed of the Berkshire Valley, and about fifty feet above the level of the Housatonic, at the junction of its branches. Filled with pools formed by boiling springs, - the common foun- tains of two rivers, - so level is its surface, that oftentimes it depends upon chance which of the drops that bubble up side by side shall flow into Unkamet Brook, and through the Housatonic to the Sound; and which into the Hoosac, and through the Hud- son to the sea. So slight, indeed, is the rising of the valley-bottom in this vicinity, that a dam raised four feet above the level of the highway at Coltsville would turn all the waters that come in from Dalton, and from Unkamet Brook, northward, into the Hoosac.
Thus the summit of the Berkshire Valley, as it rises north- ward from Connecticut, and southward from the Vermont line, is formed by a ridge extending diagonally from New Ashford, across Lanesborough, to Coltsville; the descent from its highest point in New Ashford to Sheffield being nearly four hundred feet; and upon its opposite declivity five hundred feet, to its lowest point in Williamstown.
Berkshire, the mountain county of Massachusetts, is hardly less
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pre-eminently its lake shire ; for no less than seventy natural sheets of water, - lakes, or ponds fed by springs, - varying in size from twenty acres to nine hundred, are laid down upon its map ; some shimmering upon the very tops of the mountains, some reposing in the shadows of the valley. But, although they add a thousand graces to the landscape, we shall not stay to describe or even enumerate them.
They act, however, an important part in the economy of the county ; being employed as reservoirs in which to store up the waters, which, in seasons of flood, the rivers pour with wasteful impetuosity to the sea. For this purpose, many of the lakes have been considerably enlarged by means of dams of stone masonry of sufficient strength to resist the immense pressure which is often imposed upon them. Their numbers have also been re-enforced by reservoirs, wholly artificial, formed by massive barriers of stone thrown, at great expense, across the outlets of mountain-rivulets. These parvenus of Nature often rival the ancient lakes in extent of surface, and sometimes, as in Wahconah Reservoir at Windsor, in depth.
The waters pent up with this costly economy, as well as those which in the free streams trip with rippling laughter to their tasks, are made to do giant's work before they escape out of the county. Mainly by their aid, manufactures have come to be the chief source of its material prosperity ; so that seventeen millions, of the twenty-four million dollars returned as the value of its industrial products in 1865, were derived from that source.
The principal branches into which the manufactures of Berk- shire are divided are, in the order of the comparative value of their products, woollen and cotton cloths, paper, crude iron, leather, flour, lime, and glass. There is one large paper-mill in Pittsfield ; but Lee and Dalton are the great paper-making towns, each sending more of that product to market than any others on the continent. Cylinder glass is made at East Lanesborough and Cheshire, and plate glass at Lenox Furnace, from the purest and best granulated quartz known, of which inexhaustible beds are scattered in Berk- shire. Iron to the annual value of seven hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars is made from a superior brown hematite, of which deposits are abundant. Lime is made from pure carbonates to the value of seventy-five thousand dollars annually; and the marble quarries of Berkshire are famous.
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In agriculture, Berkshire ranks among the foremost counties of the State; although the climate of the more elevated sections forbids the culture of some products which flourish in the Valley of the Connecticut, and are not excluded from the farms of Shef- field and Great Barrington. Facilities for the intermixture of soils, and abundant deposits of marl and muck, favor the improvement of inferior lands; while the mountain-grazing tracts afford cheap pasturage for herds of cattle and sheep, to whose breeding much successful attention has been given. Still, in spite of the never glntted market furnished by the manufacturing towns and by the influx of summer visitors, the total value of the agricultural products of Berkshire in 1865 was only $5,374,163.
In addition to the sources of wealth of which the official statis- tician takes note, that of Berkshire is augmented by the attrac- tions which its superb scenery and the purity of its atmosphere offer to permanent and migratory residents, summer travellers, and students in its numerous literary institutions. The expendi- tures incident to the working of the railroads which traverse the county are also a source of no little emolument to its citizens.
The great variety of resources, thus only partially enumerated, tend to prevent, in a great measure, those periods of distress which are apt to overtake whole communities, when, depending upon a single fountain of employment, they find that suddenly dried up. Diversity of occupation has also its beneficial effect upon the intellectual character of the people, in modes of operation which need not be specified.
Such, analytically, is the fair county, which, in the early pages of this chapter, we attempted to portray as a whole. Somewhat more cheerless must have been its aspect when the white man first began to penetrate its wilds; and especially when he found it shrouded in the snows of winter. There is extant an old Dutch map (it sends a shudder through one to remember it), upon which, across a ghastly expanse of white, denoting the whole territory which is now Berkshire and Vermont, stretch in frightful loneliness the frigid syllables, Win-ter-berg-e, -" Winter Mountains," -meaning the hills which we, with a pleasant fiction of perpetual summer, christen Green : a very dreary map, and surely not the work of any speculator in wild lands upon the Hoosac Mountains.
Yet even then Berkshire had a unity in its natural features,
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which to the observer overlooking it from some elevated spot, or" threading its paths as a surveyor, must have marked it out for the home of a community with common interests and with a homo- gencous character. Time has developed and strengthened these characteristics ; but there is no reason to doubt, that, from the first, they were patent to such men as Wendell, Stoddard, Pomeroy, the Williamses, and others, who, with shrewdness as well as energy, pushed Massachusetts civilization towards the Hudson.
The name of the Winterberge suggests that the geographical nomenclature of Berkshire has undergone great changes since the days of the Dutch explorers. In the ancient records, deeds, leases, and the like, of this as of other localities, the aboriginal names are often spelled with lamentable carelessness or caprice; two or three forms of the same word often appearing in a single document. Every provincial scrivener held himself at liberty to satisfy his own notions of euphony by lopping off, eliminating, or selecting from the luxuriant syllables which were said to have been grow- ing since the confusion of Babel. The result is, that the dismem- bered trunks of the unfortunate victims often defy recognition by any except the most patient and painstaking philology. The name Taconic, for instance, - however regretfully, we yield the gut- tural and natural gh to persistent innovation, - assumes more than two score of transformations in the archives of Massachusetts ; now expanding to generous Taughkaughnick, and now shrinking to curt Tacon : while the original form, Taghkanak, is derived from Taakhan, or Taghkan, "a wood;" and aki, "place;" and, as ap- plied to the mountains may be translated, "The Forest Hills." 1 Poontoosuck, the aboriginal name of the site of Pittsfield, appears to be derived from Poon, the Mohegan word for " winter ;" Attuck, "a deer ; " and Suck, the final syllable in which that language makes its plural, and signifies "the winter deer ;"2 or the terminal ak, which indicates the name of a place, being merged in the plural ending, - " the haunt of the winter deer."
But the problem which has longest and most profoundly per- plexed the students of our aboriginal geography concerns the name of that beautiful river which is designated by syllables as intricate as the windings of its graceful curves, and, in the form which they have finally taken, are as musical as the murmur of
1 Trans. Am. Ant. Soc., v. 2, p. 337.
2 Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan.
mar AGRICULTURAL ₹ COLLEGE.
TOPOGRAPHY OF PITTSFIELD. 17
its ripples. The whole difficulty has, however, we apprehend, arisen from the very natural mistake of seeking for the word " Housatonic " an aboriginal derivation, while its primitive form was, in fact, Dutch. In the writings of the early settlers and surveyors, and even of the missionaries, no word suffered more severely from the confused orthography of the period than this. Its trans- mntations were innumerable. Hubbard of Ipswich, the early New-England annalist, wrote, Ausotunnoog; which has a quasi Algonquin twang, and was, doubtless, communicated to him through the medium of Algonquin throats, whose owners could, nevertheless, have gathered from the grating sounds only a purely arbitrary meaning. If Mr. Hubbard had asked them why they so designated the river, they could have given him no better reason than that of the comic song, -
" The reason why they called him John Was because it was his name."
In the papers preserved in the archives of the Commonwealth, the county, and towns, some of the more frequent forms which the word assumes are Housatunnuk, Houssatonnoc, Houstunnok, Hooestenok, Awoostenok, Asotonik, Ousatonac; and in all these forms, the consonants, except the final, are made double or single, and the terminal syllable is spelled indifferently, ik, ak, ok, or uk. Sergeant and Hopkins, the earliest preachers among the Indians, wrote Housatunnok; but comparison with other forms leads to the belief that what is now pronounced as the first syllable was originally two, - Ho-us. President Dwight preferred Hooestennuc, and, probably, with good reason; although the meaning which he ascribes to the word, " the river beyond the mountains," after the most patient and laborious research by the most competent students, finds nothing to give it color, either in the language spoken by the Mohegans or in that of their Iroquois conquerors. And yet, in a certain sense, this may have been the meaning at- tached to it by the Mohegans; for, if the name was bestowed while the tribe, dwelling in the Valley of the Hudson, were accus- tomed annually to cross the Taconics for hunting-seasons in the Valley of the Housatonic, the name of the latter river, whatever, may have been the original signification of its syllables, would have represented to them, in ordinary thought, the river beyond the mountains : precisely as when the Narragansett slaughter was 2
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called to mind, it represented the river of the massacre; or, in another mood of thought, the stream on whose banks the white man preached the Christian gospel. But in process of time the relation in which the river was most commonly contemplated would communicate its peculiar significance to its name. And thus, when President Dwight asked of some Mohegan, " What do you mean by Hooestenok?" it is altogether likely that the answer was, " The river beyond the mountains;" just as we should reply to a similar question, " The winding river of the Berkshire Valley." 1
We can thus well understand how the learned president's habits of investigation, while they would lead him very near to accuracy in adjusting his orthography to the native pronunciation, would not necessarily protect him from falling into error in the transla- tion.2
Those who read the traditions told by the Stockbridge Indians will suspect them of imaginations fertile in statements adapted to the tastes of their hearers; but, to do them justice, none of them (or, at least, none of any reputation) ever pretended to attribute a descriptive meaning to any of the forms which the name of the river of their homes put on. The chiefs Konkapot - or, not to dwarf their somewhat unmanageable patronymic, Poph-ne-hon- nul-woh - were men of good natural parts, and received excellent educations. They were also profoundly versed in all the lore of their tribe. From them were obtained the names given by the natives to many features of Berkshire geography, and the transla- tions of their meaning ; but they could make nothing except an ar- bitrary appellation of the word "Housatonic ; " nor could Hendrick Aupaumut, the professed chronicler of his people. Several mis- sionaries familiarized themselves with the Mohegan tongue, and,
1 Since the foregoing paragraphs were written, we have been informed by Mr. Charles J. Taylor, that, in the copy of the deeds of the Upper and Lower Housatonic townships, the name of the river is given once as the " Housatonic or Westanock," and again as the " Housatonie or Westonook." Mr. Taylor, who has given much thought and investigation to the subject, has no doubt, that, in the different deeds and patents of the Livingston Manor, the words, " Wawwichtonock," " Waw- yachtanock," " Wawijchtanok," and " Wawijachtanook " are as correct represen- tations of the Indian pronunciation of the word we call Housatonic as the writers of those papers could make with our alphabet.
2 It must be remembered that Dr. Dwight's inquiries were made by him as a curious traveller, rather than as an exact philologist.
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being men of cultivated and inquiring minds, would not have left so interesting a subject uninvestigated ; but they extracted no in- terpretation of this word from their philological researches.1 Mr. J. Hammond Trumbull, the most eminent student at the present day in the Algonquin dialects, and perhaps in all the aboriginal languages of North America, confesses himself unable to find a satisfactory interpretation for the refractory syllables. The most plausible suggestion, which considers the word as of Algonquin origin, is that of Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan, the able historian of the State of New York, who supposes it to be derived from Husson, "rock," and Aki, "place;" the at being introduced for the sake of euphony. This theory is favored by the fact that the Stockbridge chiefs, in their address to the Commissioners of the Provinces at Albany in 1754, characterized their home as "a rocky place." This interpretation is, however, met by the objection, that, had it been correct, it would have almost certainly been given by the native chroniclers, who translated with great precision the names of the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers, and affirmed the reasons for them with entire positiveness. And the still more serious diffi- culty lies in its way, that it is inapplicable to several of the more frequent forms which the word assumes.
Now, to abandon the field which has been so faithfully explored with such meagre results, let us turn to one which is at least fresh, if, at first thought, less promising.
Previous to the Revolution, then, a chorographic map of the Province of New York, including the disputed territory as far as the Connecticut River, was, by order of Gov. Tryon, compiled from actual surveys deposited in the patent office. This authoritative work was published at London in 1779, and reproduced in 1849, in the first volume of "The Documentary History of New York," where the reader may probably have access to it. And, upon in- specting the course of the Housatonic River, he will find, that near its source it is styled the Stratford, and above tide-water the Westenhok or Housatunnuk.
The difference, it will readily be perceived, between the Dutch
1 Rev. Dr. Field, the accurate, learned, and painstaking historian of the county, is silent on this subject ; and Rev. Dr. William Allen, the best authority upon matters pertaining to the early Berkshire divines, says in a note to his poem at the Berkshire Jubilee, " It is remarkable that none of the teachers of the Indians have in any of their writings given the meaning of the word 'Housatonic.'"
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Westenhok and President Dwight's Hooestennuc, - or, as it is also written, Hoocstenok, - is barely the transfer of the aspirate from the last syllable to the first.
The inference is almost irresistible, that the long-sought deriva- tion of our musical Housatonic is found in the not unmusical Dutch of Westenhok; for it is hardly possible that so close a resem- blance between the two names of the river was a mere accidental coincidence. The translation of the word is, " West corner," (or "nook") ; and the appellation Housatonic is thus both truthfully and poctically descriptive of the winding river of our western nook among the mountains.
The origin and subsequent transformations of the name may easily be deduced from well-authenticated facts. The capital village of the Mohegans was at Schodac on the Hudson, but little farther than twenty-five miles from the Housatonic at Pitts- field. Here Hendrick Hudson, in 1609, visited them in " The Half- Moon," and, forming the chain of friendship, commenced an inter- course which was kept up from that time, with little intermission, by the Dutch of the New Netherlands. Trading and military posts were established at Castle Island 1 in 1614, and, three years later, at the mouth of the Tawasentha. In 1615, we find Jacob Elkins, an active and energetic commander and commercial agent, prosc- cuting a quiet traffic, already commenced, with the Mohawks and Mohegans ; while his " scouting-parties were constantly engaged in exploring all the neighboring country, and in becoming better acquainted with the savage tribes around them, with all of whom it was the constant policy of the Dutch to cultivate the most friendly relations." 2
These scouting-parties, traversing the forests in all directions, often visited the Valley of the Housatonic ; where, indeed, the Eng- lish pioneers a century afterwards found Dutchmen domiciled among the natives - who had made them gifts of lands - acting as interpreters, and possessing much influence. Now, the Mohe- gans, in their first intercourse with these winsome strangers, when- ever they had occasion to speak of the winding-river-of-their-hunt- ing-grounds-beyond-the-mountains, doubtless indicated it by some
1 A locality now so completely merged in the city of Albany as to almost lose its insular character. The Tawasentha River, or Norman's Kill, enters the Hud- son a few miles farther south.
2 Brodhead's History of New York, pp. 55, 67, 81.
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phrase in their dialect as cumbrous as that which we have just employed in English ; for with them every name was a phrase, and was very likely to be a cumbrous one.
The clumsy appellation which we have supposed must have been extremely inconvenient for the busy fur-traders, who, instead of the more common practice of curtailing its undue proportions, succeeded in persuading the natives to adopt in its stead the simpler Westenhok; which was the name of a tract of land that lay between the Housatonic in Sheffield, and its large tributary, now known as Salmon Creek, which rises on the west of the Taconics, and joins the main stream at South Canaan in Connecti- cut. The river thus received its name in the upper part of its course from the district which it there washed, as, in the lower, it took that of the town which stood at its mouth, - Stratford. When it first began to be so called is uncertain. In the grant of the lands of Westenhook 1 in 1705, they are described as thus known; and both they and the river may have been so for a cen- tury before inquiry began to be made into the origin and meaning of the word "Housatonic." In the mean while, there was abun- dant time for it to suffer stranger changes than it actually under- went, in its transmission through four or five rasping generations of Algonquin throats. It may be added, in further explanation of the obscurity which hangs over this subject, that, if the truth con- cerning it ever became known to any Massachusetts investigator during the period when the New-York boundary was in dispute, he would have been almost sure to suppress it, as tending to support the Dutch claim to priority of occupation ; and, for the same rea- son, he may have shrewdly favored that orthography which most effectually concealed the European features of Westenhook under an aboriginal mask.
The boundary disputes were not settled until the year previous to the breaking-out of the Revolution; and the jealousies which they engendered still linger in the more old-fashioned nooks of both New York and Berkshire : so that truths which are incon- sistent with prejudice on either side are apt to be pushed out of sight.
1 Westenhook, the more correct spelling of the word, is the least frequent upon the old maps of the river.
PART II.
PITTSFIELD.
General Description. - Adjoining Towns. - Lakes, Streams, Mountains. - Fish. - Manufactories. - Outlying Villages. - Central Village. - The Old Elm. - Maplewood. - Springside. - Churches. - Banks and Insurance Offices. - Railroads. - County Buildings. - Population and Valuation.
A CORRECT general idea of the position which the territory whose history we are about to narrate occupies in the geo- graphical and physical system of Berkshire has, we trust, been con- veyed by the preceding chapter. And to most readers the name of Pittsfield is familiar as that of one of the most charming country towns in New England, a favorite resort of the traveller in search of health or pleasure, a seat of thriving manufactories and flourish- ing institutions of learning, and as, from time to time, the home of men of note. A somewhat more minute description of some of its physical characteristics will, however, facilitate a comprehension of its story.
Pittsfield is fortunate in its neighboring towns, scarce one of which but possesses some attraction for the visitor peculiar to itself : while many are widely celebrated for rural loveliness and exquisite scenery ; for literary, historical, and religious associa- tions ; for connection with gigantic physical enterprises ; for mineral wealth, or for remarkable manufactures.
Of the towns which adjoin it, Lanesborough, its next northern neighbor, rivals in its natural scenery the most famous localities of Berkshire ; is of fine agricultural capacity ; has boarding-schools of much repute ; possesses superior beds of brown hematite ore, and of granular quartz, with costly furnaces for their conversion respec-
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tively into crude iron and cylinder glass ; and contains also many good quarries of marble and compact limestone.
Dalton - of paper-making fame, and containing more than one beautiful and wealthy village - lies upon the east. Mountainous and picturesque Washington encloses its south-eastern angle. Lenox, the favorite and famous summer resort, bounds it partially upon the south; on which side it is also joined by Richmond, a noble agricultural town, and rich also in iron mines and marble. On the west, the long and narrow town of Hancock - with its fertile and beautiful valley, its romantic hills, and its neat Shaker village, " the city of peace " - interposes a strip barely two miles wide between Pittsfield and New Lebanon, the seat of the popular mineral springs and the capital of the Shaker Church.
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