Across an intervening ridge beyond the "Bowl" is the village of
Stockbridge. The wayward Housatonic encircles Lee, and flows athwart
the valley towards the west, thus making a meadow on which this
pleasant settlement stands. In the autumn, turkeys strut about, and
pumpkins lie profusely in the fields, preparing for the annual New
England feast of roast turkey and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving Day--the
great Puritan holiday that has spread over the country. Monument
Mountain and Bear Mountain to the southward guard the smaller glen
into which the highway leads, with Stockbridge scattered through it
upon the winding river banks. This region was settled earlier than
Lenox, the first colonists from the Connecticut Valley venturing out
upon the Indian trail across the Hoosac range in 1725 to take up a
grant in the Southern Berkshires. They found here, on the river bank,
the Mohican Indian village of Housatonnuc, and established relations
of the greatest friendliness. Field's Hill overlooks the town, where
Cyrus W. Field, of Atlantic cable memory, and his brothers were born.
Stockbridge has been described as one of "the delicious surprises of
Berkshire," quiet and seemingly almost asleep beneath its embowering
meadow elms under the rim of the hills upon the river-bordered plain.
Upon the wide green street stands a solid square stone tower, with a
clock and chimes, bearing the inscription, "This memorial marks the
spot where stood the little church in which John Sergeant preached to
the Indians in 1739." This handsome tower, standing in front of the
Congregational Church, was the gift of David Dudley Field to his
birthplace.
These Indians called themselves the Muhhekanews, or "the people of the
great moving waters," and Sergeant was sent as a missionary among
them, laboring fifteen years. They were afterwards called the
Stockbridge Indians. Jonathan Edwards, the renowned metaphysician, who
had differences with the church at Northampton, succeeded Sergeant,
and came out into the Berkshire wilderness, living among these Indians
and preaching by the aid of interpreters. This great pastor lived
happily at Stockbridge for six years on an annual salary of $35, with
$10 extra paid in fuel, and in one of the oldest houses of the village
wrote his celebrated work on _The Freedom of the Will_. He left
Stockbridge to become President of Princeton College in New Jersey.
The Stockbridge Indians had a wonderful tradition. They said that a
great people crossed deep waters from a far-distant continent in the
northwest, and by many pilgrimages marched to the seashore and the
valley of the Hudson. Here they built cities and lived until a famine
scattered them, and many died. Wandering afterwards for years in quest
of a precarious living, they lost their arts and manners, and part of
them settled in the village on the Housatonic, where the Puritans
found them. They gladly received Sergeant's ministry, and he baptized
over a hundred of them, translating the New Testament and part of the
Old into their language. When Edwards came, in 1751, there were one
hundred and fifty Indian families, and but six English families. Many
were in the Continental army in the Revolution, and a company of these
Indians won distinction in the battle of White Plains, near New York.
They were dispersed in later days, some going to Western New York and
others to the far West; but on the slope of a hill adjoining the river
remains their old graveyard, a rugged weather-worn shaft surmounting a
stone pile to mark it.
[Illustration: _Monument to Jonathan Edwards, Stockbridge, Mass._]
Upon the green village main street is Edwards' little old wooden
house, having three small windows above the ponderous door. It is now
called "Edwards Hall," and a granite obelisk out in front, erected by
his descendants in 1871, preserves the memory of the great divine.
Over opposite is the venerable Sedgwick Mansion, the home of the
famous Sedgwick family. Farther up the street is the Cemetery, where
the most interesting feature is the enclosure set apart for their
tombs, the graves being arranged in circles around the central tomb of
Judge Theodore Sedgwick, the founder. He was a native of Hartford,
born in 1746, migrated to Sheffield in Berkshire, and finally settled
at Stockbridge after the Revolution, becoming one of the leading
statesmen of New England, prominent in the old Federal party, Member
of Congress and Senator from Massachusetts, and Speaker of the House.
He was subsequently made Judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court,
dying in office in 1813. His children and descendants surround his
grave, among them his daughter, the distinguished authoress, Catherine
Maria Sedgwick, born at Stockbridge in 1789, who died in 1867.
A few miles to the southeast is Monument Mountain, the Indian
"Fisher's Nest," one of the most curious and attractive of the
Berkshire hills on account of its position and form, although the
summit is not very high, less than thirteen hundred feet. Its rock
formations are fine, being of white quartz, and on the eastern side is
a detached cliff with a huge pinnacle nearly a hundred feet high,
known as the "Pulpit." Hawthorne greatly admired this mountain, at
which he looked from his boudoir window across the lake, and in its
autumn hues he said it appeared like "a headless sphinx wrapped in a
rich Persian shawl," seen across a valley that was "a vast basin
filled with sunshine as with wine." The mountain received its modern
name from a cairn found on the summit, the tradition telling of a
mythical Indian maiden who got crossed in love, and as a consequence
jumped off the topmost cliff, being dashed to pieces. Her tribe, when
they passed that way, each added a stone to the pile, thus building
the cairn. There are many stones thrown all around this peculiarly
rugged mountain, which is piled up with white marble crags in a region
where abrupt peaks are seen almost everywhere. In among these cliffs
is the Ice Glen, a cold and narrow cleft where ice may be found in
midsummer, it is so secluded from sunshine. The appearance of Monument
Mountain made a strong impression on William Cullen Bryant, who thus
described it:
"To the north, a path
Conducts you up the narrow battlements.
Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild,
With many trees and pinnacles of flint,
And many a haughty crag. But to the east
Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs,
Huge pillars that in middle heaven uprear
Their weather-beaten capitals--here dark
With the thick moss of centuries, and there
Of chalky whiteness, where the thunderbolt
Hath smitten them."