USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume I > Part 5
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The Nipmuck Indians welcomed the whites, if for no other reason because their presence would serve them as protection. Naturally they looked upon the English as superior beings. Such has always been the attitude of the savages toward the white man. To quote a writer of the last century : "Savage man instinctively holds civilized man in reverence, as a higher order of intelligence and power. The records of all original explorations and dis- coveries prove this. Suitable clothing is a moral force; good tools and weapons are a moral force ; habits of industry are a moral force; ownership of a horse or ox is a moral force; a fixed home is a moral force; they indi- cate prescience and providence, and they imply dominion, as a consequent of intelligence, and thus directly, as well as by contrast, awaken awe in the untutored child of nature." It should be added that the savage probably respected above everything the white man's firearms and his brand of courage which urged him to stand up to an enemy in open fight, and never to yield until he was overwhelmed.
Of course European goods meant much to the Indians of that day, par- ticularly guns and powder and ball, and for many of them, the fire water with which they had become acquainted for the first time after the landing of the Pilgrims and the coming of the Puritans. This is a surprising fact, for the southern Indians, ethnologists tell us, had been manufacturing intoxicating drink for centuries before Columbus discovered America.
As to the relations of the English and Indians in the new settlements, the following is probably an accurate description :
"The Indian men bartered their furs and venison, for guns and hatchets ; and the women exchanged their baskets, brooms, and mats, for trinkets and kettles. The tidy housewife tolerated the dirty squaw in her kitchen, from womanly pity for her hard lot; and the farmer made friends with the dusky trapper who tramped his meadows, as a matter of policy, to save complaints about his roving cattle trespassing on the unfenced native cornfields-though it must be said, he could not always resist the temptation to sell the said trapper when very thirsty a mug of beer for two fathoms of wampum (equal to five shillings in money) ; and the thrifty trader would accept the offer of a
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THE EARLY SETTLEMENT
good beaver-skin for four quarts of rum. But the public frowned upon such practices. The squaws sometimes hired the English to plow their cornfields, so that better crops were raised with less labor. And it was not uncommon for them to take English fields to plant on shares; allowing the owner one- half the crop, divided on the ground."
The tenderfoot settlers owed to the Indians much more than is commonly understood. From them the English learned how to farm wild land, how to cure deerskin and make moccasins, how to fashion snowshoes without which they would have been helpless prisoners when deep snows fell upon the wil- derness. From the squaws the white women learned how the sugar maple is tapped and its sap collected and boiled down to syrup or sugar. Indian cook- ing was important, too, particularly ways of preparing corn, a grain with which Europeans had never had acquaintance. The English woman gleaned from the Indians all they had that was good.
The settlers depended upon wild game for an important part of their food supply. After the first few years they had their cattle and sheep and swine, but these did not by any manner of means supply the demand for meat. The English could hardly have found a better game country. Deer were plentiful and there were moose, and when the men could not spare the time for hunting the Indians were generally able to supply the families with venison for some trifle which they needed or coveted. Small game must have been extraordinarily abundant, though the annual burning of the forests and meadow lands may have had some unfavorable local effects.
In the days before the country was well populated many waterfowl bred on the shore and islands of the ponds and rivers, among them several species of ducks and the Canada goose. The wild turkey was common, and doubt- less much less wary and difficult to approach than its sophisticated twentieth century survivors. The site of the city of Fitchburg had so many of these noble and toothsome birds that in the days before its settlement it was known as Turkey Hill, and another county hill still bears the name.
In the migration seasons the forests were simply filled with passenger pigeons which could be killed by the hundred with no other weapon than a net, and even a stick was sufficient to secure enough to fill the wants of a family. Ruffed grouse and quail, woodcock and snipe and plover found a place upon the rude table of the settlers. In the coastal region the heath hen, the very last of whose family has just died on Martha's Vineyard, was very common, and possibly, though a creature of the open country, it may have been found occasionally in the Nipmuck lands, as it was along the coast and in the Connecticut Valley.
As for fish, the angler of today can realize what the brooks and rivers and ponds must have had waiting for the English-almost virgin waters which nature had stocked with brook trout, and salmon and shad in their season, bass and pickerel and the common small fish.
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The natives did not improve in character by intercourse with the whites. English beer and cider and rum induced drunkenness, and its train of evils. The possession of guns rendered hunting more sure of success than his bow and arrows and yank-ups and deer-pits. The easing off of the necessity for protracted toil by improved means of cultivation, and the possibility of beg- ging, induced habits of laziness and shiftlessness among the squaws. And continued contact was demoralizing to the English. The white boys-and some of the men-learned to hunt and trap, and imitated the shiftless ways of the Indians.
The Wilderness Trails-As to the highways open to the settlers, the inland trail in Massachusetts, of which we have the earliest account, is what was known as the Old Connecticut Path. It ran from Cambridge, up the northerly bank of Charles River to Waltham Centre, thence to the north end of Cochituate Pond in Framingham, thence southwesterly through South Framingham, Hopkinton, Grafton, Dudley, Woodstock (Connecticut), and so on to Hartford.
This trail first comes into notice in this wise: In the fall of 1630, Gover- nor Winthrop's colony fell short of provisions. The hillsides of Woodstock were famous for their bountiful crops of Indian corn, and the old chief of the Wabbaquassets, hearing that the English at the Bay were in great want, and would pay a good price for corn, filled large sacks from his full gran- aries, and, with his son and other Indians, carried the heavy burdens on their backs to Boston, "when there was but one cellar in the place, and that near the Common." Their route was the Inland Trail. Their trading expedition brought the path to the knowledge of the whites, who made it their way of travel to the Connecticut Valley. John Oldham followed this trail in 1633, "lodging at Indian towns all the way."
It was over this rough path, in June, 1636, that the Rev. Thomas Hooker traveled from Cambridge with his company of a hundred men, women and children to become the actual founder of Hartford, in Connecticut. To them the destination was "the West." It was a long and fatiguing journey, for most of them were afoot and they drove ahead of them a hundred and sixty head of cattle, besides their hogs. Mrs. Hooker, tradition says, was carried in a horse litter. Two weeks were required to cross this hundred miles of wilderness.
A well-defined trail from Mount Hope and the Naragansett country, known as the Providence Path, struck the Old Connecticut Path in or near Woodstock. Another trail, known as the Nipmuck Path, came from Nor- wich to the same point. From here, a branch trail struck off to the northwest through Southbridge into Sturbridge, where it parted. One track went west- erly past the lead mines to Springfield. The other kept a northwesterly course,
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THE EARLY SETTLEMENT
and crossing the Quinebaug River near Fiskdale, into Brimfield, to the south- erly slope of Indian hill, over the southerly slope of Hubbard's Hill, and passing just north of Steerage Rock to the bend in Quaboag River near the mouth of Elbow Brook, and so on to "the Falls" in Connecticut River, now Holyoke. This northerly branch continued to be a well-known Indian trail till the time of King Philip's War, and was the white man's bridle-path and cartway till after the settlement of Brimfield in 1701.
Another early through trail is named by Winthrop in his Journal in 1648: "This year a new way was found out to Connecticut by Nashaway which avoided much of the hill way." This road left the Old Connecticut Path in the town of Weston, and ran through Sudbury Centre and Stow to Lan- caster, thence through Princeton, the south of Barre, the north part of New Braintree, to Wekebaug Pond in West Brookfield. Thence it crossed Qua- baug River, passed through the south central part of Warren, entering Brim- field just north of Hubbard's Hill, and struck the southern trail, east of Steerage Rock, and so continued to Springfield.
A branch of this path ran from Lancaster through Holden to Quaboag Pond in East Brookfield. From Weston to Lancaster, this soon became an English thoroughfare; but westerly from Lancaster it evidently followed old Indian trails. This continued to be an important line of travel, till the Bay Path was laid out in 1673.
The laying-out of this new path-which so quickly became an important factor in our local history-is thus recorded : "At a county court holden at Charlestown, Dec. 23, 1673, John Stone, Sen., of Sudbury, John Woods of Marlborough, and Thomas Eams, of Framingham, . were appointed and impowered to lay out an highway for the use of the country leading from the house of John Livermore in Watertown, to a Horse Bridge near the house of Daniel Stone, Jun., and thence the nearest and best way to Marl- borough, and thence to Quabaug." This new path left the Old Connecticut Path at "Happy Hollow" in Wayland, and ran through North Framingham, Marlborough, Worcester to Brookfield, where it parted, one branch following the old trail through Warren to Springfield, and the other leading through Ware and Belchertown to Hadley.
Besides these long through paths, there were numerous cross-trails and by-ways, which served the various exigencies of savage society, and inter- tribal wants and wars. For these early trails held the same relation to the native villages, as our established lines of travel do to our towns.
CHAPTER IV.
Apostle Eliot and His Praying Indians
John Eliot, Apostle of the Indians, was very closely associated with the Nipmuck Country in the first period of its English settlement. Hassaname- sit, in Grafton, or Hassanamisco, as it is also called, was third to be established of the original Praying Towns, and its Indian church was the second to be conducted by the Indians themselves. Marlboro, whose lands extended well into the county, was another of the original seven, and so, too, was Nashobah, whose sphere of influence included the Indians of Harvard and perhaps Bolton.
In 1673-75, on the eve of the opening hostilities of King Philip's War, Eliot and his friend and co-worker, Daniel Gookin, Colonial superintendent of the Praying Towns, established another seven of these villages, all of them in what then was the territory which we now know as Worcester County. They were: Manchaug, in Oxford; Chaubungungamaug, on the lake of the name, in Dudley; Pakachoag, on the hill between Worcester and Auburn; Waruntug, in Uxbridge, and Manexit, Quantisset and Wabquasset, in Woodstock.
"Hassanamesit is the third town of the Praying Indians," wrote Daniel Gookin. "The name signifieth a place of small stones. This place lyeth about thirty-eight miles from Boston, and is about two miles to the eastward of Nip- muck River" (the Blackstone), "and near unto the old roadway to Connecti- cut. It hath about twelve families, and so, according to our commutation, about sixty souls ; but is capable to receive some hundreds, as generally the other villages are, if it shall please God to multiply them.
"The dimension of the town is four miles square, and so about eight thou- sand acres of land. This village is not inferior with any of the Indian planta- tions for rich land and plenty of meadow, being well tempered and watered. It produceth plenty of corn, grain and fruit; and there are several good orchards in this place. It is an apt place for keeping cattle and swine, in which respect this people are the best stored of any Indian town of their size.
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"Their ruler is Anaweakin; a sober and discreet man. Their teacher's name is Tackuppawillin, his brother; a pious and able man, and apt to teach. Their aged father, whose name I remember not, is a grave and sober Christian, and deacon of that church. They have a brother that lives in the town, called James,* that was bred among the English, and employed as a press man in the printing of the Indian Bible; who can read well, and, as I take it, write also. The father, mother, brothers and their wives are all reputed pious persons.
"Here they have a meeting house for the worship of God after the English fashion of building, and two or three other houses after the same mode; but they fancy not greatly to live in them. Their way of living is by husbandry, and keeping cattle and swine; wherein they do as well, or rather better than the other Indians, but yet are very short of the English in diligence and providence.
"In this town is the second Indian church gathered about three years since in summer, 1671. The pastor of this church is Tackuppawillin; the ruling elder, Plainbow; the deacon father of the pastor. There are in full com- munion in this church, and living in the town, about sixteen men and women, and about thirty baptized persons; but there are several others, members of this church, that live in other places."
All of the old Praying Towns had a semblance to English villages, with frame buildings, apple orchards, fields of corn and English grains, cattle, swine and poultry. The Apostle visited them all from time to time, and many a sermon he preached and many a catechism conducted in the open air or in the rude church.
The influence of Nashobah is felt even to the present day. The plantation was located on Magog Pond, between Acton and Littleton, a few miles over the county border. There the orchards did prodigiously well, and it was soon recognized that the soil of the hillsides was peculiarly well adapted to the growth of the apple. The name survives as that of a district containing a number of towns famous for their apples, and for their peaches, as well.
But the Praying Town orchards were not without their evils, as the Puri- tan fathers saw them. Wrote Superintendent Gookin: "The Indians make cider which some of them have not the wisdom and grace to use for their com- fort, but are prone to abuse unto drunkenness." Samuel Eliot Morrison, in his tercentenary book, "Builders of the Bay Colony," 1930, tells us: "The superintendent confesses that he cannot reach the vice common to red men and white, 'for if it were possible, as it is not, to prevent the English selling them strong drink; yet they have a native liberty to plant orchards and sow grain and barley and the like, of which they may and do make strong drink that doth inebriate them: so that nothing can overcome and conquer this
*He signed his name "James Printer" to a document now owned by J. C. Deering.
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exorbitancy, but the sovereign grace of God in Christ.' Poor benighted Gookin! Prohibition never occurred to him."
Eliot and his Indians were exceedingly fortunate in having the help of Daniel Gookin. When the Puritan mission was driven out of Virginia he came to Massachusetts Bay, settled in Cambridge, and became prominent in political and military affairs of the Colony. On the Apostle's recommenda- tion, he was appointed superintendent of Praying Indians, with magisterial powers. It fell to him to appoint petty magistrates from among the Indians, to watch over their local government, to protect them and the whites from one another, and to help youths of promise to become teachers or preachers to their people.
In 1674, he made the rounds of the new Praying Towns with Eliot. On September 28 he held court in Pakachoag. First, under a warrant he had prepared, he exhorted the people "to yield obedience to the gospel of Christ and to those set in order there." He appointed Black James, of Dudley, chief constable for the seven New Towns, and named a magistrate and constable for each village. Their duty was "to suppress disturbances, Sabbath breaking, especially pow-wowing and idolatry ; and after warning given, to apprehend all delinquents, and bring them before authority, to answer for their misdoings ; the smaller faults before Wattascompanum, ruler of the Nipmuck Country, for idolatry and pow-wowing to bring them before me."
Wattascompanum was present at the court, and so was their host, Saga- more John, chief of the village. But the following July we find them both with faces hideous with war paint, rifle in hand and tomahawk in belt, bent upon wiping the English from the face of the earth. Wattascompanum, con- victed as chief instigator of the uprising of the Christian Nipmucks, was later hanged on Boston Common. Sagamore John, guilty as sin though he was, begged for mercy and was pardoned, and then, to gain further favor, asked the privilege of executing a fellow-sachem captive, another Praying Nipmuck, Matoonas, and the boon was granted him. They tied Matoonas to a tree, and John shot him. Matoonas, as it happened, got only what he richly deserved.
"In proof that the obscure natives who once occupied this vicinity were not destitute of all the amenities of life," said the late Frank P. Goulding, eminent Worcester lawyer, in an address delivered in Grafton, many years ago, "when Hassanamesit was a Praying Town there occurred the first seizure of liquor in this county, under process of law, of which I have discovered any record. It appears the Petavit, otherwise called Robin, was one of the magistrates or rulers here at Hassanamesit, and he was, evidently, a magistrate not easily deterred from the performance of his official duty. Major Gookin gives an account of the seizure of the liquor, as follows :
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APOSTLE ELIOT AND HIS PRAYING INDIANS
"'I remember sundry years since, a Sagamore that lived up in the inland country came to Hassanamesit, and brought with him a rundlett of strong liquors, and lodging in his house, Petavit, in the morn, sent for the constable, and ordered him, and according to law, seized the rundlett of liquors. At which act the Sagamore drew a long knife, and stood with his foot on the rundlett, daring any to seize it. But Petavit thereupon rose up and drew his knife, and set his foot also on the rundlett, and commanded the constable to do his office, and the Sagamore
"Here the ancient manuscript breaks off, like a serial novel, in the very crisis of a thrilling scene. We see a sudden flash of long knives in the morn- ing sun, and the curtain falls. We shall never know with certainty what the issue was. But, considering the divinity that does hedge a magistrate, and the dauntless and resolute temper of Mr. Justice Petavit, alias Robin, I hasten to assure you that, in my opinion, the Sagamore from the inland country, after growling out sundry phrases in the Indian dialect, not strictly according to the discipline of the church then established as Hassanamesit, restored his long knife to his belt, removed his moccasin from the rundlett, and yielded to the inevitable."
Work of Conversion Begins-"Our fathers first fell upon their knees and then upon the aborigines," wrote a literary wit. However much of truth there may be in the epigram, taking the long span of years between the land- ing of the Pilgrims and the virtual extermination of the New England tribes, it certainly did not apply in the early years of the Colonies and of the settle- ment of Worcester County. In the beginning of their contacts with the Indians the English were weak and at the mercy of the natives, and naturally were conciliatory. The odds were irresistibly against them. Then, also, the Pilgrims and the early comers at the Bay were sincerely good and pious peo- ple, religious bigots, of course, but in a broad sense charitable to those whom they regarded as benighted heathen. If they had any thought of aggression it was to save souls from the burning. With increasing numbers and consequent military strength, and the mingling into the population of many whose com- ing to the New World lacked in unselfish and self-sacrificing motive, the atti- tude of a great majority of the people toward the natives became that of the traditional English-speaking pioneer, that the only good Indian was a dead Indian.
For all that, the Colonies felt an obligation to carry their religion among the Indians. Morrison says : "The author of New England's First Fruits, 1643, evidently raked the annals of the Colony for instances of Indian conver- sion, but could only furnish his readers with such gleanings as the pious death of Sagamore John, who rebuked an Englishman for falling a tree on the Sab- bath. An occasional gesture was made, as when Kutchamakin, the sagamore of the Massachusetts, the squaw sachem of Nashobah, Masconomo, the saga-
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more of the Agawam, and Sholan and Wasamegin, 'two sachems near the great hill to the west called Wachusett' drifted into the General Court and tendered their allegiance to the Colony. Secretary Rawson, who must have had a sense of humor, records this dialog between the visitors and the 'Solons' of the Bay:
"Members of the General Court: Will you worship the only true God?
"Indians : We do desire to reverence the God of the English, because we see he doth better to the English than other Gods do to others.
"Members: You are not to swear falsely.
"Indians: We know not what swearing is.
"Members: Will you refrain from working on the Sabbath?
"Indians: It is easy to us; we haven't much to do any day, and we can well rest on that day."
Then came John Eliot, a graduate of Cambridge University, who arrived at the Bay in 1632 to be pastor of the church of a village to be established at Roxbury, then called Rocksborough. He was a terrific worker. He con- ducted the affairs of his parish, established a school which has lived for three centuries, now the Roxbury Latin School, and was active in other important matters.
Socially he would not have fitted into twentieth century life. Cotton Mather wrote of him: "He was a man of prayer. When he heard any con- siderable news, his usual and speedy reflection thereupon would be 'Brethren, let us turn all this into prayer!' And he was perpetually jogging the wheel of prayer, both more privately in the meetings, and more publicly in the churches of his neighborhood. When he came to a house that he was inti- mately acquainted with, he would often say, 'Come, let us not have a visit without a prayer ; let us pray down the Blessing of Heaven on your family before we go.' By prayers he bespoke blessings upon almost every person or affair that he was concerned with ; and he carried everything to God with some pertinent Hosannahs and Hallelujahs over it. He was a mighty and an happy man, that had his quivers full of these heavenly arrows." Then Mather, lest he put his praise of Godliness too high, goes on, "He was indeed sufficiently pleasant and witty in company, and he was affable and facetious rather than morose in conversation."
"Eliot mixed with the Indians," says Bancroft. "He spoke to them of God and of the soul, and explained the virtues of self denial. He became their law-giver. He taught the women to spin, the men to dig the ground; he established for them simple forms of government; and in spite of menaces from their priests and chieftains, he instructed them in his own religious faith, and not without success. Groups of Indians used to gather round him as round a father, and, now that their minds were awakened to reflection, often perplexed him with their question.
PUMUGANGWET, HE WHO, SHOOTS AT THE STARS Bronze statue by Philip S. Sears, on estate of Miss Clara Endicott Sears, Harvard
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APOSTLE ELIOT AND HIS PRAYING INDIANS
"'What is a spirit?' said the Indians of Massachusetts to their apostle. 'Can the soul be enclosed in iron so that it cannot escape?' . .. . 'When Christ arose, whence came his soul?' Every clan had some vague conception of immortality. 'Shall I know you in heaven?' said an inquiring red man. 'Our little children have not sinned; when they die, whither do they go?' 'When such as never heard of Christ, where do they go?' . . . . 'Do they in heaven dwell in houses, and what do they do?' . . . . 'Do they know things done on earth ?'
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