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

SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886. 15
friend, dated Roxbury, July 4, 1636: ''As for using ould traders
to trade for you, it is not the best way for your gaiue : for they
know how to save themselves ; but a trusty man that never was
a trader Avill quickly fiud the way of trading, & bring you best
profitt, & so the God of peace be with you ever." Mr. Pynchon
said, in the same letter :—
I received a parsell of course wampam from you, but I could not trade
auy of it, because others were furnished plenty of better : Init if you will
send me a parsell of 100 or 200 fathom of fine white warapan I shall ac-
cept it as bever. If you sell not this cloth, keepe it in good condition & I
will take it again.
It would thus appear that Pynchon and Winthrop both were
concerned, at first, in tradiug operations upon a small scale.
Mr. Pynchon probably had his house far enough advanced by the
closing in of winter, 1636, to afford not only his immediate famil}^
shelter, but possibly others. The pine forests on the great plain
east and north of the new village were substantially free of under-
brush, owing to the annual autumn burnings which the Indians re-
sorted to, possibly to facilitate their movements. The oak and
chestnut groves were carefully protected from fire, however. The
Indian summer of two hundred and fifty years ago, with its wild
fire climbing from tree to tree up the mountain sides, driving the
game before it, or licking up the brush on river banks, and flushing
the birds on the plain and in jungles, resembled only remotely that
placid haze, under an exaggerated suu, so seductive to young poets
of our day.
The company of frontier settlers was unable to secure a minister
the first year, and Mr. Pynchon gathered the little fiock together,
probably at his house, and conducted divine service. He wrote his
sermons, and his young son, John, often took abstracts of them.
The Agawam Indians, in their fort on Long hill, were pleased to
see the English settling in their immediate vicinity. It gave them a