View From Mount Tom
sion or extermination. During the forty years of undisturbed peace and amity between the settlers and these Indians, the two principal Indian villages were one on the west bank of the Agawam river and another, the principal due, on the Pacowsie brook, which rises in eastern Longmeadow and discharges into the Connecticut nearly on the line between that town and Springfield. The Indians raised their crops on lands assigned them by the colonists, and with the latter's consent, for the general safety, the Indians built on Long Hill a palisaded stronghold covering about two acres.
In 1637, the year following the settlement, occurred the great struggle with the Pequot nation, resulting in its utter destruction or dispersion, — to which war Springfield furnished no soldiers, but honored an assessment to defray expenses; and from 1637 until 1675 the colony prospered in peace. In 1675 King Philip's war broke out. Able and hating the English intruders, Philip began preparations for his famous war of extermination against the whites, and no tribe seems to have withstood his threats or entreaties. At length the Springfield Indians were won over to his cause, and, although treated with the utmost kindness by the settlers whom they had invited hither, consented to admit to their stronghold secretly three hundred of Philip's warriors in preparation for a midnight massacre of our sleeping colonists in their homes near by. But this horrible calamity was averted. Sinister signs had not been wholly wanting in the conduct of the Indians, such as a diminished acreage under cultivation, the burning of one or two buildings, stealthy transfer of their property into their stronghold, and a Nonotuck squaw's rumor of impending trouble, none of which, however, moved the colonists to adequate vigilance or preparation. On the night
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