Springfield 1636-1886, History of Town and City, by Mason A. Green ...

148 SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886.
charter of the Massachusetts Ba}' colony imposed upon the incorpo-
rators the duty of extinguishing the Indian title and making the
native a convert to the gospel. The general sense of the early set-
tlers was that the Indians should receive fair treatment ; and in a de-
gree they did. At the same time we see in the Puritans from the
start an insidious element working against the native. The Puritans
did not flee from sin ; the}' hated, pursued, and fought it ; the heathen
were children of sin, and the Indians, heathen. This is the simple
chain of unconscious logic that prevailed in New England.
The inevitable tendency of a strong race to make headway against
an inferior one was apparent right here in Springfield. William
Pynchon soon found, in dealing with the Indians, that they were lazy,
unreliable, and quick to take offence. Their vengeful disposition,
coupled with their secretive ways and their long memory of slights,
soon caused Pynchon to avoid employing them as much as possible.
He even refused to use them as messengers and scouts, when white
troopers were within call. Indians would loiter b}' the way, and
were not above breaking their word. Nor did they come up to the
English standard of personal tidiness ; if they had not been probed
by the sharp rod of the white man's law, they would have been con-
tent to stroll about these streets and live off alms at the back doors
of this plantation. Our Agawams and our Woronocos, like all the
Algonquin tribes, were accustomed to subjugation. They gave tribute
to the Six Nations, and no doubt looked upon the whites as a relief,
and they preferred to pay out their wampum to a race more worthy of
it. The Agawams were numerically inferior to the Pocomtucks at
Deerfield,*who were the leaders of the local tribes.
The English regard for the Indian, therefore, was the regard of the
strong for the Aveak, the shiftless, and the unreliable. The red man
of the forest, in whose richly bronzed bosom beat all the nobility
Giod ever breathed into a hero, did not reside in Springfield, at least
in the seventeenth century.
We have seen in the deeds executed and signed by Indians and in