128 And must give up their murmuring breath, Then boast no more your mighty deeds; Upon death's purple altar now See where the victor victim bleeds: To the cold tomb, Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust. SELECTED FROM CONDER'S POEMS. HOME. THAT is not home, where day by day A home in which the heart can live- HISTORICAL. HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF WORCESTER. HISTORY CONTINUED. Ar this period, (1643)* the race of men from whom the present inhabitants are descended, commenced the first planting of this County. The people of Watertown, straitened for room, commenced a plantation at Nashua, some 15 miles N. W. from Sudbury. A tract was purchased of the natives, restricted by a due regard to their wants, and the cultivation of the land commenced, But the inhabitants did not permanently reside there. In two years not three houses were built. In 1653 nine families were established in the place, which was then incorporated by the name of Lancaster. The beautiful intervals of the Nashua at that time clothed with grass of a most luxuriant growth, and shaded only by lofty trees scattered at graceful distances, offered to the planter the most pleasing invitations. Here and there, groves of the oak and the shagbark walnut covered the retreat of the timid tenants of the wilderness. But the lofty elm, with its drooping, wide spread branches, was the most common shade of these silent regions. Tradition informs us that these intervals were not disfigured by low shrub or underwood, and that many of the cattle found subsistence through the winter without the aid of man. Until this period, if we except some portions of interval and meadow, together with small patches cleared by the Indians, the whole of our territory presented one vast forest, that never yet had resounded to the woodman's axe. The solitude of the desert was indeed sometimes interrupted by the howlings of the bear and the wolf, and sometimes by the shouts of the savage, wandering in pursuit of his scanty food, and sometimes by the war whoop and the death cry of barbarian ferocity. With a scattered population of less than one to a square mile, the petty sovereigns of the native tribes, held con *Winthrop's Journal 321, Hartford edition-Holmes' Annals I. 330, on the same authority. I commence the date of our annals this year, notwithstanding Hubbard, 543, places it in 1647. The critical reader will have but little hesitation in deciding between Winthrop and Hubbard, after examining the notes of the intelligent Editor of the recent edition of the work first named. Our own historian, Mr. Whitney, places the date of the first purchase of the Nashua from the Indian Sagamore in 1645. It is agreed that the purchase was made before possession was taken. Mr. Whitney relied on the venerable authority of Mr. Harrington, Century Sermon, 1753-Mr. Harrington probably received it from tradition. Gov. Winthrop on the other hand comes to us in no questionable shape; his work is in the form of a Journal, and in the nature of "a book of original entries." trol over these fair domains. By the sunny margins of some of our waters, they planted their miserable habitations; and the occasional smoke from their wigwams afforded some relief to the dreariness of the landscape. Instead of ministering to the wants of a glad creation, these fertile fields seemed doomed to perpetual sterility. The purposes of utility, to which our water power is now applied, were prohibited by the wanderer of the forest. The moral state of the few scattered inhabitants, spread a death-like desolation over a region, where laws and letters are now enjoyed; and instead of an hundred altars surrounded by hosts of the worshippers of the true God, the "incense of idolatrous sacrifice" ascended from the foulest rites of Paganism. The causes that effected this wonderful revolution were slow and gradual in their progress. From the state of affairs in England and in the Colonies here, the increase of population was very limited. The less rugged lands on the Connecticut, were not yet wholly occupied, and those were the Ohio of the emigrants of that day. But in 1660, Brookfield began to be settled by people from Ipswich.* In 1667, planters from Roxbury commenced the settlement of Mendon.t Worcester township was granted by the Government in 1668, but the settlement did not commence until 1685. Such was the state of our infant plantations at the breaking out of the Indian war in 1675. It would, perhaps, be interesting to take a brief review of the state of the Indian tribes, upon our territory at that period. Unfortunately our annalists have left but scanty materials, to enable us to form a distinct and correct conclusion as to the situation of that ill-fated race, as they then existed here. True it is, that in the fall of 1674, the heroic and persevering Gookin, visited the tribes in the south and east parts of the County, in company with the venerable Missionary and Indian Apostle Elliot, but he has recorded but little information, excepting of those, who were converted to christianity and inhabited the praying towns. The Indians of New England were then divided into five great tribes, all of whom probably extended their governments into this County. The smaller tribes, that traversed these regions were under the government of various Sachems or Sagamores, but they were all tributary to the sovereign Princes of the larger tribes. * Holmes Annals I. 377. Hist. Col. I. 258. Hubbard 591. 1. Beginning southerly, we find the Pequods, whose principal Sachem lived at New London. They formerly could muster about 4,000 warriors, and held dominion over many petty Sagamores, and particularly over the southern inhabitants of Nipmuc, near Quineboag. They were troublesome neighbors, and became much reduced in their wars with the Narrhagansetts. In 1637, they made war upon the English settlers of Connecticut, and by the aid of the neighboring tribes were conquered and subdued. They were then (1674) not more than 300 fighting men. 2. The Narrhagansetts occupied what was then included in the Colony of Rhode Island. They too were formerly powerful, and could arm 5000 men. They were now reduced to about one fifth of their ancient number. They had tribute from some of the Nipmucs that lived remote from the sea. The seat of their Sachem was near Narrhagansett bay. 3. The Pawkunnawkutts, or Pokanokets, or as they are more frequently called the Wampanoags, inhabited the principal parts of the Old Colony of Plymouth. Philip of Mount Haup near Bristol was their chief. His dominion extended as far south as Nantucket, and the Vineyard Islands. They could once raise 3000 men, but the tribe was principally swept away by a malignant disease, supposed to be the yellow fever, that desolated them three or four years before the landing of our ancestors. They too claimed dominion over some of the Nipmucs. The Quabaog Indians at Brookfield were probably under the jurisdiction of the Pawkunnawkutts. 4. The Massachusetts Indians were the next great people northward, and inhabited from the bay of that name, into the interior, probably as far as the borders of the Mohawk or Maquas country on Connecticut river. The Nashuas in the vicinity of Lancaster, and some of the Nipmucs, were under this tribe. They too, were much reduced by the same pestilence that destroyed their southern neighbors, insomuch that they were reduced from 3000, to one tenth of that number of warriors. 5. The northeastern parts of this State were possessed by the Pawtuckets, who dwelt principally upon the banks of the Merrimac, and its tributary waters. They were formerly as strong as the Massachusetts, but the sickness reduced them so that they did not then exceed 250 fighting men. Their realms extended eastward as far as the sea, and according to Gookin, included Agawam and Naumkeag.* This tribe probably extended over the northerly parts of this County; but we find no certain memorials of the Indians of that territory. The Penicooks resided in the region about Concord, N. H. The Nipmuc country, or as it is sometimes written the Nipmug or Nipnet country, extended over the southerly parts of this County. From the variety of its fishing and hunting grounds, and from the adaptation of much of the soil to the purposes of Indian culture, we may justly presume it formerly contained a comparatively large population. But from some misfortune not recorded, the Nipmucs were politically, at the period under consideration, in a broken state. Most of the neighboring Sachems, severally claimed sovereignty over their citizens. If they ever were an independent people, their nation was now extinct. From scattered fragments of history, we may form some conjectures of the extent of their domains. The Blackstone was called the Nipmuc river. Gookin places Weshakim, alias Nashua, in the Nipmug country, as he does likewise Quabaog,§ Manchaog,|| Chabanakongkomum,** Waeuntug, Hassanemesset‡‡ and Packachaog,§§ as well as three Indian villages now within the limits of Woodstock. It would seem that they formerly extended as far as Connecticut river, although the expression is rather equivocal. Judging from the number of converts, which was about one thousand in this region, we must conclude it was more populous than most other Indian places. The Nashuas or Weshakims had but fifteen or sixteen families. Until the fatal war of 1675, these Indians had lived with the settlers upon the most pacific terms. They were serviceable to them in their planting, their hunting and their trade. That ferocity that so generally predominates in the savage, never discovered itself in the simplicity of the Nipmuc character. Until this period, the Government of the Colony had kept the oversight over the planters, and no purchases of lands were made from the Indians, without the intervention of a judicious Committee of the General Court. In all the various transactions of our settlers, with the Indians of this County, I have been unable to find any charges of injustice or wrong on the one side, or the other. They were mutually feeble and mutually dependent, and until the fatal hostilities, they were constantly interchanging offices of kindness. One * Ipswich and Salem. † Gookin in I. Hist. Col. 1-194. + Sterling and Lancaster. Brookfield. || Oxford. **Dudley. ++ Uxbridge. ‡‡ Grafton. Partly in Worcester and Ward. I See Gookin, ibid. 148. 7 |