If you disregard the dinosaurs who left their tracks 100 million years ago, the Native Americans who occupied the Connecticut River Valley for more than 10,000 years, and just concentrate on the history of Springfield, you still have to add a couple years before Springfield’s birth to understand how it all began.
In 1633, John Oldham, the first white man to explore the upper reaches of the Connecticut River, reported back to his sponsors in Boston that a rich land, populated by friendly Indians who had furs to trade, existed in the western wilds of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Three years later, in May 1636, William Pynchon, of Roxbury, and his band of Puritan followers sailed a ship they borrowed from Governor Winthrop up the river, bypassing existing trading posts in Connecticut, to settle the area now known as Springfield. On the banks of the river, at the head of the fur trade, the new residents began bartering with the Indians traveling in their dugout canoes or along the wooded paths."
Comments