GLIMPSE THE FIRST.
About two hundred and forty years ago, towards the close of Cromwell’s life, and thirty-four years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, the Boston and Plymouth Settlement found itself vigorous enough to send out offshoots; and having heard from the Dutch settlers of New York of this rich and well-watered valley discovered by them in 1614, the General Court appointed John Pynchon, Elizur Holyoke, and Samuel Chapin of Springfield, settled seventeen years before, to negotiate with the Indians for that tract of land called Nonotuck, where now stand six small towns and villages, chief and first built of which was Northampton. The price paid was a hundred fathoms of wampum (equal to about £20), ten coats, some small gifts, and the ploughing up of sixteen acres on the east side of the river. Wampum (Indian for white) consisted of strings of beads made of white shells and suckauhock black or blue money, of black or purple shells. Both were used for more purposes than trading with the Indians, coin being scarce. Eight white and four black beads were worth a penny; and a man as often took out a string of beads as a purse to pay an innkeeper or a ferryman, or to balance a trading account.
But Nonotuck was paid for with a good deal besides the wampum and the ploughing. For a hundred and twenty-four years there was almost incessant warfare with the Indians. Treacherous ambuscades lay in wait for the trader on his journey, stealthy dark-skinned assassins for the solitary husbandman, and not a few of these fertile fields were watered by the blood of its first tillers. He carried his weapons with him to his work and to the meeting-house, and expressed his gratitude for hair-breadth escapes, Puritan fashion, by the pious names he gave his children. Preserved Clapp, Submit Grout, Comfort Domo, Thankful Medad, are names that figure in the records of this and the neighboring villages; where we read also that one Praise-Ever Turner, and his servant Uzackaby Shakspeare, were killed by the Indians. Within sight of Northampton it was, just over the river, in the sister settlement of Hadley,—that beautiful old village, with street eighteen rods wide, set with a double avenue of superb elms, greensward in the middle and a road on either side, looking more like the entrance to a fine park than a village street,—here it was that a “deliverance” occurred, long believed by the people to have been miraculous. One Sunday, when nearly the whole scant population was gathered for worship in the meeting-house, a large body of Indians fell upon them, and, what with the panic and the want of a leader, all seemed lost, when a majestic, venerable figure, dressed in a strange rich garb, fully armed, appeared suddenly in their midst, assumed the command, rallied their scattered numbers, and led them on to victory; then vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, no man knew where or whence.[61] No man but one—Mr. Russell, the minister. This venerable apparition was Goffe, once a general in Cromwell’s army, and, like Whalley his companion in exile, one of the judges who condemned Charles to death, now forced, even in that far land, to hide for his life, since an active quest was maintained, in obedience to the Home Government for both Goffe and Whalley. For twelve years did good Mr. Russell shelter them, unknown to all but his own family. Whalley died in his house; but Goffe subsequently disappeared, and the rest of his career is unknown.
Altogether the hardy band found ample scope for carrying into practice the noble maxim of the Pilgrim Fathers rehearsed at Leyden: “All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courages.” In order to secure protection from Indians and wolves, the little community built its dwellings, not each isolated on its own farm-lands, but side by side, so as to form at once the main street; each house having its “home lot” or strip of “interval,” as the rich meadow-land stretching down to the river was called, and its “wood-lot” on the hillside. Having chosen her “select men to direct all the fundamental affairs of the town, to prevent anything which they judge shall be of damage, and to order anything which shall be for the good of the town; to hear complaints, arbitrate controversies, lay out highways, see to the scouring of ditches, the killing of wolves, and the training of children,” Northampton proceeded at once to build herself a meeting-house “of sawen timber 26 feet long and 18 feet wide,” for the sum of £14 sterling, to be paid in work or corn. There was no clock in the settlement; so the worshippers were called together, sometimes by a large cow-bell, sometimes by drum, and finally by trumpet, for the blowing of which Jedediah Strong had a salary of eighteen shillings a year. There was no minister for some years; and more finding in themselves a vocation for preaching than for listening, or at any rate for criticising than for meekly imbibing, disputes arose, the General Court was appealed to, and its decision enforced that the service should consist, besides praying and singing, of “the reading aloud of known godly and orthodox books;” and for those who failed to obey with seemly decorum the summons of Mr. Jedediah Strong’s trumpet, severe was the chastisement. Joe Leonard and Sam Harmon, for instance, “who were seen to whip and whisk one another with a stick before the meeting-house door,” were fined five shillings; and Daniel, “for idle watching about and not coming to the ordinances of the Lord,” was adjudged worthy of stripes to the number “of five, well laid on.” In 1672 the town voted that there be some sticks set up in the “meeting-house, with fit persons placed near, to use them as occasion shall require, to keep the youth from disorder.” Which staves were fitted with a hare’s foot at one end and his tail at the other; the former to give a hard rap to misbehaving boys, the latter a gentle reminder to sleeping women.
Something besides repression was done, however, for the benefit of the youth of Northampton. The first school was started in 1663,—the master to receive £6 a year and his charges for tuition. Bridges were built and roads made by calling out every man to labor according to his estate; and those who did not labor paid in grain at the rate of half-a-crown a-day for exemption. For more than sixty years Northampton had no doctor, only a “bone-setter”: on the whole, a lucky circumstance, perhaps, considering what were the remedies then chiefly in vogue. Sylvester Judd, from whose “History of Hadley,” and also from Dr. Holland’s “History of Western Massachusetts,” the foregoing details have been gathered, gives a curious list, taken from medical prescriptions of the time:—the fat of a wild cat, blood of a goat, of an ass, of a white pigeon taken from under the wing, the tongue and lungs of a fox, liver of an eel and of a wolf, horns of a bug (beetle), teeth of a sea-horse, bone from the heart of a stag, the left foot of a tortoise, &c.
After the Indian and the French and Indian wars were over, there was but a short interval of rest before the War of Independence began. The long rugged battle with the savage and the wilderness had done its work well in training men for the struggle which was to sunder all bonds, and convert the colony into a new nation, master of its own destiny. Northampton was not the scene of any battles; but bore its part in furnishing some brave and leading men, and money, or money’s worth, to the army. After the war was over, came a time of depression and disorganization in public affairs and in trade, which culminated hereabouts in what is known as Shays’ Rebellion, so named from its leader; but it was soon quelled, and peace and prosperity settled down upon Northampton and upon the whole land.