4 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



One fall day in the late 1720's a man in northwestern Mas' 

 sachusetts climbed a tree to get his bearings. To the east he 

 saw the camel's hump of Mt. Wachusett. To the west was the 

 dim outline of Greylock, the low rim of the Berkshires. The 

 dark trough of the Connecticut Valley ran north and south 

 where the ridges were spread widest. This man may have been 

 John Bennett, or Jonas Houghton, or Jeremiah Perley, or Moses 

 Hazen, or any one of the forty others who were out with Cap' 

 tain Lovell hunting Indians. 



He didn't see any signs of Indians. But he did see great 

 stretches of virgin pine, oak, spruce, chestnut, maple, hickory, 

 hemlock, cherry covering a series of sharp valleys which rolled 

 westward in a succession of green waves. 



What the man said to his companions when he climbed down 

 from the tree, or what they said to him of the fine timber they 

 saw on the ground is not very important. Whatever it may 

 have been, they promptly went on about their business of 

 hunting Indians. A few days later, at the head of the Salmon 

 River in New Hampshire, they came upon a sleeping band of 

 ten Pequawkets on a hunting expedition. With their guns to 

 their shoulders and dogs unleashed ready to pull down the first 

 few Indians who tried to flee, the sixty colonists made short 

 work of their game. They killed all but three in the first volley. 

 For their ten scalps, Captain Lovell and his men received one 

 thousand pounds from the Colonial government upon their 

 return to Boston. 



It was not long afterwards that John Bennett, Jeremiah 

 Perley, and a large part of the remainder of this group sent a 

 petition "To His Excellency Jonathan Belcher Esq r Captain 

 General & Governour in Chief In & Over His Majestis Province 

 of the Massachusetts Bay, the Hon ble the Council # Repre 

 sentatives in Gen 1 Court assembled at Boston." In this petition 

 was set forth "the Hardship & Difficult marches they vnder- 

 went as volunteers under the Comand of the Late Cap te 



