USA > Massachusetts > The story of western Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 16
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WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
being so open that they could readily make their way from landmark to landmark. Because it was of utmost importance that their bow strings be kept dry, they avoided the swimming of rivers, but forded them wherever there was shallow water below a fall. Hence, there came to be certain points where their ways converged, and such meet- ing places are pictured by romanticists as the locale of native coun- cil fires and similar balderdash. One such crossing was at Sconunga- nuck, now Chicopee Falls. Another was below the rapids of the Connecticut where Willimansett now is. The convenience of such ford- ways was so apparent to the English that their roads were laid out to take advantage of them. Only to that extent did the settlers take over from the Indians.
The spit of land that became the site of Springfield had nothing of value or interest to the natives and there was most certainly no reason why they should provide a trail to it.
The word "trail" is not found in seventeenth century New Eng- land records, but the worth "path" appears frequently. At Spring- field was the Bay Path from Springfield to Boston; the Pequot Path to New London; the Mohegan Path to Norwich; and the New Eng- land Path from Albany to Springfield. All of these were developed by the English and each was a bridle path suitable for the traveler on horseback, as well as for transporting baggage and freight by pack horse. Such a path was developed in 1658 for the sole purpose of transporting graphite by pack horse from the Winthrop mine at Sturbridge to the waterside at Windsor.
Charles Knowles Bolton, in Terra Nova (1933, page 144), said that "America was a spider's web of Indian trails. The footway was not much over twelve inches wide and worn to a depth of five or ten inches". Bolton cited as his authority, Development of Early Emi- grant Trails (1933), by Marcus W. Lewis, who said that "for genera- tions untold before the settlements at Plymouth and Boston, the Indians followed certain trails which were later adopted by the white men for their early roads. Many predecessors of Massasoit and King Philip had led their tribes along these trails on warlike expeditions or on annual trips to lakes and ocean to secure their supplies of fish and game, and consequently such paths, worn by the feet of countless braves and their Indian ponies, were well defined, often being depressed a foot or two below the adjoining ground. Many may be followed today, sometimes in comfort by automobile, but more often with jolting and shaking over country roads".
It should be noted that though Bolton limited the depth of the trails to "five or ten inches", his authority is more generous, allowing "a foot or two".
Though Lewis makes no reference to his source and uses no quo- tation marks, his was a verbatim extract from The Turnpikes of New England (1919, page 24). Mr. Lewis also cited Archer B. Hulbert, who, on pages 15-17 of The Paths of Inland Commerce (1920), said that "upon the valleys of the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers, con-
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THE BAY PATH MYTH
verged the two deeply worn pathways, the Bay Path and the Con- necticut Path. By way of Westfield River, which joins the Connecti- cut at Springfield, the Bay Path surmounted the Berkshires and united Massachusetts to the upper Hudson Valley near Fort Orange, now Albany. Upon Fort Orange, converged the score of land and water pathways of the fur trade of our North. These Indian trade routes were slowly widened into colonial roads. But from the day when the canoe and the keel boat floated their bulky cargoes of pelts or the heavy laden pony trudged the trail, the routes of trade have been little or nothing altered".
Thus, we are asked to believe that over New England was a network of ditches, little more than a foot wide and up to two feet deep, which is more than knee deep. We are told that these were 1630 1930 "depressed a foot or more below THE BAY PATH the adjoining ground" and that such depression was made "by the AN INDIAN TRAIL BEFORE 1630 LEFT THE ROAD HERE TO GO OVER STEERAGE ROCK MOUNTAIN. feet of countless braves and their Indian ponies". Yet any intelli- gent literate person must be aware MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY that, prior to the arrival of the TERCENTENARY COMMISSION Pilgrims and the Puritans, no New England Indian ever saw a horse, for horses were not indige- nous to America and were un- known here until they were intro- duced from Spain. Yet a scholarly historian of Mr. Bolton's attain- ments, and an engineer capable of (Photo by Harry A. Wright, 1936) such precise work as Major Wood did on his Turnpikes allow themselves to be led astray by fantastic tales of the impossible.
Imagine a ditch one hundred miles long, a foot wide and knee deep, connecting Boston Bay with the Connecticut Valley. Should such a cutting be made today, contending with great boulders and glacial detritus scattered over and under ground, it would be an engineering feat feasible only with the employment of high powered machines and the free use of explosives. Are we to conclude that the depression actually was made by the weight of the body, or that the dirt, stones and roots were thrown out by the bare feet? For it would have been literally by the bare feet, as moccasins were unknown to the Indians until they fashioned them in imitation of English shoes.
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The modern historian simply cannot comprehend the Indian who is pictured as a fantastic biped, with the combined skill of an acrobat, a contortionist and a Houdini. How, otherwise, could he have negotiated such a trail? His knees would have scraped on both sides of the foot-wide ditch. He would have tripped over his own feet as well as roots growing into the ditch, which in the spring would have been filled with water, in the autumn with dead leaves and in winter with snow and ice.
If such a network of trails ever existed, would not some evidence of them still remain? It can hardly be thought that some kind Providence filled in these thousands of miles of ditches, leaving not a trace. And surely, mere man could never have done it.
A welcome breath of sanity is to be found in Natural History of October, 1943. Donald Culross Peattie, writing of the buffalo, said that "by 1810 the bison was pushed over the Mississippi and there was no trace of them in the eastern forests except the trails they made walking in single file. Daniel Boone's wilderness road followed in part a buffalo path from Tennessee to the salt licks of Kentucky. Many a city stands where it is today because the bison beat an ancient roadway there".
One who has ever frequented the great north woods finds this very suggestive, bringing memories of deer-runs from lily-padded ponds to the deep forest. French-Canadian guides, half-breeds and novices find them of great convenience in getting from point to point. They fail to measure up to the dimensions of the Indian trails described here, being but a few inches deep and seldom a foot wide, but stories grow with the telling. A gullible neophyte, the butt of a camp joke, might be readily convinced that such trails of deer and moose were made by the Indians. Many an initiate has shivered with terror when told on a dark and dismal night, that the eerie call of the loon was that of a wildcat. Undoubtedly the present con- fusion emanated from some similar incident. Such is the only sen- sible conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence.
It is of record, that there was at one time a road known as the Bay Path connecting Springfield and Boston, but there is no evidence that it was known or used by the English at the time of the exodus to the Connecticut Valley in 1635-36. The way in common use at that period was the "Connecticut Path" which, in part, is well shown on the Woodward and Saffery map of 1642.
Leaving Boston, via Cambridge, this way followed the north bank of the Charles River to Cochituate Pond, South Framingham, Hopkin- ton, Grafton and Dudley to Woodstock, Connecticut, which on the 1642 map is the point near the Monoways River designated as "4 wigwams".
From that point it went west to the Connecticut River as shown on the map, to the crossing, where as Woodward and Saffery noted was "the house of the widow Gibbs on the east side, and that of John Bissell on the west".
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THE BAY PATH MYTH
This is the path over which the Windsor people migrated in the autumn of 1635, and the route of Thomas Hooker's company to Hartford in June, 1636. It was the road of which Governor Win- throp spoke, in August, 1637, when he said,-"Mr. Hooker and Mr. Stone, came with Mr. Wilson, from Connecticut, by Providence, and the same day, Mr. Ludlow, Mr. Pincheon and about twelve more came the ordinary way (i. e., the usual way) by land". Winthrop's phrase is significant. So customary was it to travel between Boston and the Connecticut Valley by water, that when he thus spoke of the "usual route", it was necessary for him to qualify his statement by explain- ing that he referred to an overland route.
The 1642 map clearly shows the route referred to by Winthrop, and this is not the only instance when he used this qualifying phrase. In October, 1635, he noted that "about sixty men, women and little children went by land toward the Connecticut". In January, 1636,, he said,-"This month one went by land to Connecticut and returned safe".
It was not until November, 1646, that the Bay Path was men- tioned in the Springfield town records, and it was in February 1647 that it was recorded that among "the special works to be attended to this year are a horse way over the meadow to the Bay Path". However, owing to difficulties in crossing the marsh east of the Town Street, the road was not actually built until the autumn of 1648, or the spring of 1649, when one of corduroy construction was built by various individuals who were allowed to operate it as a toll road. The old foundation was so efficiently installed that remnants of it are there today. It consisted of large logs, trunks of huge trees' laid crosswise; successive layers providing a foundation which is five or six feet below the present pavement. Until this "horse way" (now State Street) was constructed, it would have been impossible for a conveyance of any kind to get from the Bay Path to the town plot.
Woodward and Saffery made their map in connection with the running of the boundry line between Massachusetts and Connecticut. The latitude of the eastern end they knew. They followed the Con- necticut Path to the Connecticut River and then went up the river until they were in the same latitude as at their starting point. They then continued on up the river to Springfield, in order to determine its latitude, so as to designate its proper position on the map, in relation to the boundry line. From Springfield, they went back to Boston by compass line, the position of Boston being well established and known to them, and the way which they marked out roughly resembled the course of the Bay Path of a later date.
This way, however, did not become of immediate use. It was not until 1646 that Winthrop's Journal noted, that a new way had been found which left the Connecticut Path at Weston and ran through the present Sudbury, West Brookfield and Warren to Springfield; although in 1645, John Winthrop, Jr., came over some such route to Springfield, an account of which he recorded in a Latin journal.
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Yet it was even then such a blind path that he lost his way, and it was only with the help of passing Indians that he finally reached Springfield.
There is ample evidence that William Pynchon went from Rox- bury to Springfield by water. It is a recorded fact that he shipped forty tons of freight,-the utensils, materials and furniture of him- self and his associates,-by sea-going vessels to the Connecticut and that he brought this freight up the river in shallops which he had provided for that purpose. There exists a document in Pynchon's handwriting which shows that his three daughters, with their maid and his son-in-law, Henry Smith, went by water and that John Winthrop, Jr., received ten shillings each for their passage.
It is inconceivable that the Springfield pioneers should have emigrated in any other way. The Winthrop base at Saybrook was well established at that time, and Pynchon had there a warehouse with a store of trading goods, under charge of Stephen Winthrop. Adequate barques made frequent journeys between Boston and Say- brook, and up the river, at least to Wethersfield. At Springfield, Pynchon's scouts, John Cable and John Woodcock, were well estab- lished in their house on the Agawam meadows, where they had available two light-draft sailing vessels.
It is true that the Windsor and Hartford settlers went by land in 1635 and 1636, but this was probably because of their live stock, as well as from motives of economy. The Windsor party comprised sixty people,-the Hartford settlers were a hundred or more. On the other hand, Pynchon had with him less than ten percent of that number, all well-to-do men. Yet they paid for the freight of their goods, eighty-two pounds; over four hundred dollars. Small wonder that a party ten times the size of his would attempt the journey rather than incur a freight charge of ten times that sum; which would have been over four thousand dollars, exclusive of their live stock.
The statement of Roger Williams, so often quoted in connection with the Bay Path, is perfectly true,-"Springfield, overland from the Bay layeth eighty or ninety miles southwest, and is the road way to all the towns upon this river and those that lie more southward." But that statement was made in 1650, fourteen years after Hooker and Pynchon went to the Connecticut. During that interval the Bay Path was established and became the common road from Boston to the west.
In the Colonial History of Hartford, William DeLoss Love, rely- ing solely on the unsupported findings of an unqualified antiquarian, expressed the opinion that Hooker's journey from Boston to Hartford was via Springfield, the route from Springfield to Hartford coinciding with that of another Indian trail, but his arguments do not take the facts into consideration.
On January 8, 1645-46, Thomas Merrick and Joseph Parsons were delegated to "make a way from the Mill river to the Longmeadow", the settlement of which was then just beginning. Prior to that time,
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THE BAY PATH MYTH
the river was the common highway from Springfield to the Long- meadow, the early settlement being on the meadows by the river, and not on the hill where the present town is. That road, however, ended at Longmeadow and it was only gradually extended to Enfield as that section became settled and a road became necessary. In 1650 Spring- field expended ten pounds to further extend the "cartway to the foot of the falls" at Warehouse Point, so as to avoid the bringing up of freight by water, over the rapids and shoals.
In 1664 that entire section of road was established as a county highway, "from the lower end of Springfield to Longmeadow gate, and from the lower end of said meadow into Fresh Water River (Enfield) so called and from thence to Namerick Brook where it will best suit for a bridge and from thence to the dividing line between the colonies".
The only existing piece of evidence that conflicts with the fore- going is an entry of February 21, 1642, in the Windsor town records, which reads as follows:
"The way betwixt Henry Styles and John Egglestones, their homelots, down to the great river, shall be allowed for a public high- way for horse and drove to Agawam and the Bay".
But that was the year of the Woodward and Saffery map, and six years after the coming of Hooker and Pynchon. It is possible, that in those intervening years some rough horse path may have been blazed out from Windsor to Springfield, but there was certainly no "cartway" then, otherwise the town of Springfield would not have expended ten pounds, eight years later, for the building of such a cartway.
The whole proposition is too absurd for serious consideration. In June, 1636, Springfield was an established community. Hooker, formerly of the church of Chelmsford, England, Pynchon's home town, was travelling with a wife in a condition so frail that it was necessary to transport her in a litter. It is inconceivable that Pynchon would not have offered the use of his shallops to convey the party to Hartford, or that such an offer would have been rejected in favor of a path through an unknown wilderness. And it is equally unlikely that, if such a noted and revered personage as Thomas Hooker passed through Springfield in its early days, the fact would not have been mentioned in contemporary letters, so full of minor details as they were.
Probably no person now living has made a more intelligent and comprehensive study of the Bay Path than has William R. Carlton of Springfield. His analysis of the journal of an actual traveler over the route in 1645, follows this chapter.
CHAPTER XVI
An Overland Journey in 1645
A TRAVEL DIARY OF JOHN WINTHROP, JR. By William R. Carlton
G OVERNOR JOHN WINTHROP, JR., of Connecticut, was an exceptional man, a man of great activity, brilliant mind, and commanding personality. In 1631 he followed his father's foot- steps to the New World, and was one of the first settlers at Ipswich. In 1634, upon his return from a trip to England, he was made gov- ernor for a year of the part of Connecticut adjacent to the river of that name, and he helped form the settlement at Saybrook. In 1641- 1643 he was in England again, and upon his return this time estab- lished the iron works at Lynn and Braintree. He kept up a continual search for various other minerals and metals, and even acquired an extensive tract of land in Massachusetts containing graphite, which he hoped to produce profitably. He was a student of medicine and a member of the Royal Society.
In 1640 Winthrop acquired the ownership of Fishers Island, which lies south of Mystic, Connecticut, and about six miles southeast from New London. In the early part of 1645, with the intention of leaving Massachusetts and promoting the Connecticut settlements, he sold a hundred acres of his property at Ipswich, and on August 20 he dis- posed of his remaining possessions there. During the summer Win- throp had spent some time at his island, and by the fall the idea of a settlement on the mainland near by had taken definite shape. The mouth of the Pequot-now the Thames-River offered a fine harbor, and the west shore of the river, known to the Indians as Nameaug and to us as New London, doubtless looked good to the English. At any rate, in November of 1645 Winthrop made a trip overland to survey this locality again. He started from Boston, visited Springfield, Hart- ford, and Saybrook, and then followed the Connecticut shore eastward to Nameaug, where he explored the countryside, and then continued through Providence and Braintree to Boston.
The principal happenings of this journey Winthrop wrote down in a notebook, about three-fourths in Latin. The diary, now in the Yale University Library covers eight pages, written in a clear hand, appar-
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AN OVERLAND JOURNEY IN 1645
ently with several different pens, for the script is in some places light, in others heavy. For many years this little document lay unnoticed in the mass of early Winthrop papers. A transcription of the Latin appeared in Volume VIII of the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Second Series, together with a rough sketch of its story, but no translation accompanied the Latin transcription. At various times certain parts of the diary have been translated, but despite its importance the whole has never been reduced to under- standable English, nor have the events of the journey been related in the light of our present knowledge of the country through which Winthrop passed.
For this study, the printed Latin transcription has first been checked with the original text, and then the Latin of the diary itself painstakingly translated. The original abbreviates many words and almost entirely lacks capitals. In this copy the words are given in full and capitals appear where present usage requires them.
The record starts with the year "1645" printed in fairly large figures at the top of the first page. Below, opposite the opening entry, is the month and day :
"November 11. Tuesday. We began our journey at 3 o'clock and reached Sudbury [the present Wayland] within an hour or two after sunset.
"November 12. Wednesday. Early in the morning cloudy and calm. Soon snow fell; it stopped after two hours and the rest of the day was pleasant with a west wind. The snow began to melt. We spent the night about two miles to the east of the large river Nipnet."
On his first afternoon Winthrop covered about fifteen miles, and on the second day about twenty, following the regular southwestward route of early journeys and migrations to the Connecticut valley. The woods through which he traveled throughout his trip were not dense thickets except in the swampy areas, because the Indians burned over most of this territory each year, usually in the latter part of autumn, for the purpose of keeping the woods open, facilitating travel, and making the observation of an approaching enemy easier.
"And whereas it is generally conceived, that the woods grow so thicke, that there is no more cleare ground than is hewed out by the labour of man; is nothing so; in many places divers Acres being cleare, so that one may ride a hunting in most places of the land, if he will venture himself for being lost: there is no underwood saving in swamps and low grounds that are wet, ... for it being the custom of the Indians to burne the woods in November, when the grasse is withered, and leaves dryed, it consumes all the underwood, and rub- bish, which otherwise would overgrow the Country, making it impas- sable. * * * "> William Wood, New England's Prospect-1634.
The Nipnet or Blackstone River does not attain the size of a "large" river until some place below where the various tributaries
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join to form it. In all probability, Winthrop approached it a bit south of the present Farnumsville, Massachusetts. Two miles east of this point on the westward trail now referred to as the Connecticut Path there probably was an Indian town or location known then or later as Hassanamesit, or Hassanimisco, subsequently one of the Reverend John Eliot's praying towns, and said to have been the residence of the chief of the Nipmucks. Stopping for the night at the Hassanamesit location had many advantages. Travelers of this period almost always planned to stop at English or Indian habitations to simplify the food problem of both man and horse. The Indians were very friendly at the time of this journey.
Winthrop crossed the Blackstone on the thirteenth, probably at the ford so clearly marked on the map of Woodward and Saffrey, made in 1642, just south of a decided turn in the river's course, north- west of Farnumsville.
"November 13. Cloudy day, wind N.W., cold. We spent the night in the western part of a field where many trees had recently been blown down before. During the night it froze, but, finding a suitable place and starting a blazing fire, spreading branches and grass for beds and covering ourselves over with nets filled with grass, we slept quite comfortably.
"November 14. Partly cloudy and calm. We crossed over Lake Squabage and, not finding the path by which the soldiers formerly crossed over to Monhegen, we made straight for Agawam [Spring- field], wishing to go via Tantiusques to the graphite mine and thence to Monhegen. We spent the night near a stream where the Indians left us a part of a hut which served us very well against the melting snow, which had fallen during the first part of the night and against the cold. After 3 or 4 hours it stopped snowing and the night was clear and cold. Before nightfall an Indian came up who told us about an Indian hut not far from there. I bought some venison from him. I sent him to the Indians asking that they bring some grain for my horse, which they did without delay. For a small mirror and two ounces of tobacco they gave me about half a peck, which served very well for my horse."
Winthrop does not give his route or stopping place for the thir- teenth, but after digesting his entry for the fourteenth we are able to follow him. The mention of "Lake Squabage" on the fourteenth gives the first real difficulty in pursuing his tracks, for there is no known lake of that name. The thought that he may have meant Quabaug Lake, in the present Brookfield, is obviously wrong, as a glance at the map will show. We must bear in mind that Winthrop probably did not know, or care too much about, the Indian names of the ponds he passed on this trip through land wilder and less known than any part of the United States is today. The only lake anywhere near his whereabouts which could literally have been "crossed over" is Chaubunagungamaug. in the present town of Webster. This lake is made up of three parts, divided by an upper narrows and a lower
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