First English Settlement There

These Dutchmen and initial "Yankees" were now playing a sharp game in diplomacy, with soft words. The Yankees outwitted the Dutchmen, and the Plymouth people outgeneraled those at Boston at first. At Plymouth was a company of "banished Indians"--families driven from the Connecticut Valley, with their chief, by the Pequods. From these the Plymouth settlers purchased a tract of land above Fort Good Hope. They prepared a house of wood, which they stowed in pieces on board of a bark commanded by Captain William Holmes. In this bark sailed the fugitive savages and some Englishmen, and went up the Connecticut River. When they approached Fort Good Hope, the commander of the fort hailed the little craft and demanded of Captain Holmes whither he was going, and for what purpose. "Up the river to trade!" answered the skipper. This little fib did not satisfy the suspicious Dutchmen, who rightly supposed that the intruders had orders to settle rather than to trade. "Heave to!" shouted the commander of the garrison standing by the side of a heavy gun, "or I'll shoot." "I must obey my commands," said the intrepid Holmes, and sailed by. The Dutchmen blustered, but did not shoot. The English landed above; hastily erected the house they had brought with them, and took possession of the country. They sent the bark back, palisaded their house, and prepared to maintain their position. This house was built on the site of Windsor, in Connecticut. So was begun the first English settlement in that region in the autumn of 1633.

When Van Twiller heard of this impertinent intrusion, he sent to Van Curler, at Good Hope, a protest to be delivered to Holmes, and a peremptory order for the latter to "depart forthwith with all his people and houses"--from that Dutch domain. "I am here," replied Holmes, "in the name of the King of England, whose servant I am, and here I will remain." Van Twiller stormed at this defiance, but prudently referred the matter to his superiors at Amsterdam. Before an answer could arrive, the subject became mixed with another of a serious nature. A Captain Stone had been on a trading voyage from Massachusetts to Virginia, and on his return ran into and up the Connecticut River to traffic with the Dutch garrison at Good Hope. He and his companions were treacherously seized and murdered by Pequods on the banks of the stream. This crime was soon followed by the massacre of some Indians friendly to the Dutch. Then Van Curler seized a guilty old sachem and some of his followers, and hanged them. This exasperated the Pequods. They flew to arms and declared war against the Dutch. They sought the friendship of the English, and for this purpose they sent four or five ambassadors to Boston to negotiate a treaty. These ambassadors appeared before the governor in all the barbaric splendor of paint and rich skins, gorgeous feathers and rude ornaments. A treaty was made which provided that the Pequods, in consideration of the passive friendship of the English, were to surrender to the latter the Connecticut Valley and the remaining two murderers of Captain Stone's party, and pay a large tribute of wampum and beaver-skins. So Winthrop gained a great advantage over Bradford in the accession of territory, and both parties won powerful allies, as they supposed, in the work of expelling the Dutch from the Connecticut Valley. At the same time, the position and security of the settlers at Windsor were strengthened.

At about this time, Van Twiller received instructions from Amsterdam, to maintain possession of the Connecticut at all hazards. He sent seventy men with arquebuses, swords, trumpets, and banners to dislodge the settlers at Windsor. The latter made a bold stand. After much blustering and a great deal of noise, there was a parley, when the Dutch withdrew and friendly relations were established. The region was opened for an influx of immigrants from Massachusetts Bay. Permission for such immigration was given by the authorities there, without any territorial restraints. The question to whom does the Valley of the Connecticut belong--to the Dutch, the Pilgrims at Plymouth, the Puritans at Boston, or to the savages? was not considered; and in the autumn of 1635, sixty men, women, and children from the Puritan settlements journeyed westward through the forests to join the colony planted by Holmes at Windsor. During the previous summer, a few pioneers had explored the country. They went from Dorchester and Watertown to the beautiful valley, and their report stimulated emigration.

The exodus from Massachusetts Bay began late in October, when frost and snow-flurries were prophesying of an early coming of winter. With oxen for tillage and beasts of burden, and cows for the production of food, these emigrants made their way on foot through the pathless woods a hundred miles or more, sometimes wading miry swamps, sometimes climbing rugged hills or fording swift streams, the men carrying the smaller children, and the larger ones with their mothers trudging after. At the end of a wearisome journey of a month's duration, they descended into the Connecticut Valley, then white with snow, and found the river so hard frozen that a vessel which had been sent with supplies could not ascend it. It never tried to navigate that stream, for it was wrecked on the rocks near Point Judith in a gale.