FORTY YEARS OF FRONTIER LIFE IN THE POCOMTUCK VALLEY.
BY HON. GEORGE SHELDON.
One result of John Eliot's attempt to civilize the Massachusetts Indians was, that in 1663 the General Court granted to the town of Dedham eight thousand acres of wilderness, as compensation for the territory taken by the apostle for his settlement at Natick. After an examination of various localities, Dedham selected a tract upon the far away lands of the Pocomtucks, bought out the rights of the Indians who claimed it, and in 1665 laid out the grant there. This land was divided into five hundred and twenty-three shares, or rights, called "cow-commons," and held by each freeholder of Dedham, according to his interest in the undivided land in the old township; and it was paid for by a general town tax. Fractions of a cow-common were called sheep-commons, five of which equalled a cow-common. These shares were offered for sale to such men as Dedham should approve. The required standard of character does not appear, but this regulation was no dead letter, as the town records testify; and picked men only were allowed a foothold on this new possession. We may therefore suppose that it was a goodly body of men which gathered, about 1671-5, on the virgin soil in the lower valley of the Pocomtuck River. Here were the headquarters of the Pocomtuck Indians, whose chieftains were at the head of the confederate clans in the Connecticut valley. In 1663, the date of the grant, the Pocomtucks were engaged in a successful campaign against the powerful Mohawks; but, before the compass and chain of the surveyor had been called into requisition to lay out the bounds of the grant, the majority of this tribe had been swept off by a retaliatory invasion of their western enemies. This was doubtless considered a special interposition of Providence in behalf the projected settlement, and a manifestation of Divine indignation against the heathen, who were popularly considered subjects of the devil, seeking to establish his kingdom "in these uttermost parts of the earth." However this may be, the first English settlers here found the power of native rule broken, and a remnant of the Pocomtucks gathered for protection near the centre of a triangle formed by the settlements at Hadley, Hatfield, and Northampton.
The early comers had no fear of the natives, and danger there was none. They were welcomed by the crushed tribe as another bulwark against the Mohawks. There is no hint of any hostile feeling on the part of the red men, or of any anticipation of it on the part of the whites, until the breaking out of Philip's War. The primal cause of this outbreak is not far to seek. Whenever and wherever, on our shifting frontier, our so-called civilization has come in contact with the barbarism of the aborigines, similar results have followed. And nowhere was this effect more certain than when our Puritan ancestors, with their inflexible ideas of duty, confronted the New England savage in his native wilds.
It should have been early apparent to our rulers that these two races, essentially so different, could not live side by side in fellowship and harmony, and subject to the same rules and regulations. Eliot realized this, and planned the isolated community at Natick, which, as we have seen, resulted in the English settlement at Pocomtuck.
The policy of the whites was, by fair means or foul, to induce the natives, as soon as possible, to acknowledge allegiance to the English; this being accomplished, the laws of the Puritans were strictly enforced upon these free children of the forest, and their violation punished by fine, imprisonment, and stripes. It does not appear that any particular effort was made in the Connecticut Valley to teach the savages the precepts of Christ, but they were held accountable to the laws of Moses, as interpreted by the rulers, even to being punished for travelling on Sunday.
Such oppressive acts by narrow-minded good men were supplemented by the knavery of unscrupulous bad men. The Indian trader, in accordance with the teachings of the times, not only looked upon the savages as the offspring of Satan, but also as fair objects of spoil; consequently, the simplicity, moral honesty, and ignorance if these Canaanites and Amalekites were made the most of financially. Ignorant of the benefits of wise restraint, and unused to such wiles as were practised upon them by the traders, the unsophisticated natives had a hard time indeed between the two.
Demoralized by the white man's fire-water, they were cheated while under its influence. Though the sale of rum to the Indians was forbidden by law, and illicit traders were prosecuted, "conviction in liquor cases" was no easier then than now. The word of a heathen had small weight against the oath of a Christian, and fear of the traders often prevented the victims from pressing their complaints.
Before the advent of the whites the natives seem to have been thrifty and provident, laying up stores for contingencies. With English implements and weapons, their facilities for planting and hunting were greatly increased, and their products should have been correspondingly larger. The unlimited demand for furs should have stimulated the chase, and their sale should have added to their comforts in food and shelter. By their contact with the whites, their lives should have been changed for the better. Was this the effect? The contrary is notoriously true. The increased income was squandered in liquors. Like thousands to-day, they would give their most costly possessions to gratify their appetite for strong drink. When the corn crop was short, and gave out in the spring, or had been squandered for rum, they borrowed of the traders, paying two hundred per cent for it at harvest. They became poor, shiftless, and dependent. They even pledged their children as security, to be held as slaves in default of contract. They knew they were debased, and despised by the superior race, and felt their degradation. To this condition had come the remnant of the Pocomtucks; a power which within a generation had humbled the fierce Mohawks, and scattered in battle the armies of Uncas the Mohegan.