Harper's New Monthly Magazine
November, 1871.

A New England Village.

The Stockbridge Indians did their part, not only by sending their own children to the missionaries, but by offering a portion of their lands to the Mobawks and Oneidas, if they would come and settle with them, and receive the benefits of the school; and at one time there were as many as ninety of these New York Indians resident on the Housatonic. But the outbreak of the war between England and France created great disturbance among the red men, and other causes combined to defeat the plan. The Indians from the other tribes returned to their homes after a while, and left the Stockbridge tribe as the only direct subjects of the missionary work begun in Berkshire.        It is much to be regretted that Sergeant has not left behind him such an account of the Indians as his rare knowledge of them so well fitted him to give. From the brief memoranda he has left, however, we are led to ascribe a high character to the Stockbridge Indians as compared with many others. President Dwight, writing near the close of the last century, speaks of them, also, in a commendatory way, and says that "this tribe was, both by itself and the other tribes, I acknowledged to be the eldest branch of their nation, and as such regularly had the precedency in their councils." Ebenezer, his interpreter, told Sergeant, as they were on their way to attend a religious ceremony of the Indians, that the latter now generally I believed in one supreme invisible being, the maker of all things, though some believed the sun to be God, or, at least, his body. He also gave him one of their beautiful traditions, which was that the seven stars are so many Indians translated to heaven in a dance; that the stars in Charles's Wain are so many men hunting a bear; that they begin the chase in spring, and hold it all summer; by the fall they have wounded it, and that the blood turns the leaves red; by the winter they have killed it, and the snow is made of its fat, which, being melted by the heat of the summer, makes the sap of the trees. A beautiful legend, certainly.        The Stockbridge Indians, as they were eminent for their good morals, were also distinguished for their peaceable character. So far as we know, they never had any hostile encounter with the whites living near them, and when the French war, so called, broke out, they endeavored to prevent the other tribes from engaging in the threatening conflict, urging upon them a position of neutrality. The superior influence of the French prevented the success of their endeavors. But if they did not succeed in holding others apart from the conflict, they became a very great protection to the whites in the region of Western Massachusetts and Connecticut, below them. These people lay directly in the natural pathway of the Indians coming down with the French from Canada; but so great scorns to have been their dread of meeting the Stockbridges, in alliance with the whites among whom they were living, that the hostile tide swept on either side of them, and left the people of this region unharmed. And to the last, through all their history in connection with the whites, whether at Stockbridge or in their subsequent settlements elsewhere, the Housatonic Indians have sustained the most amicable relations with their pale-faced neighbors. Hardly any thing of the traditional character of the savage is found among them.        At the solicitation of the Indians, soon after their settlement on the tract assigned them, the Legislature of the colony appropriated funds for the erection of a church at Stockbridge and a suitable school-house. 820 | Previous Page | Next Page | | Berkshire County Home |