America Climbs the Cornstalk 91 



up to twenty shillings the pound, Massachusetts passed a law 

 forbidding the sale of breadstuff's to Indians. The redskins re- 

 plied, "No corn, no beaver," and turned west, over the Mo- 

 hawk Trail to sell their catch at Fort Orange. 



Chiefly to extend opportunities for fur-trading, the English 

 colonists began to plant out frontier posts in western Massa- 

 chusetts and Connecticut. These formed in time a protective 

 cordon around the coast towns, permitting them to give full 

 attention to the sea. The frontier settlements served as forts 

 against the Indians and the Dutch. They took the brunt of 

 the French attacks, as when Deerfield was burned. They were 

 also depots where furs were collected to be picked up later by 

 the pole-boats. These sharp-pointed, flat-bottomed craft, 

 twenty to thirty feet long, and only three to five feet wide, 

 were poled up the shallow, white-water rivers of New Eng- 

 land. The skippers traded salt fish for beaver and otter skins. 



Each of the western outposts belonged to a coast town. The 

 settlers could not remove without permission, under penalty 

 of loss of their lands or of imprisonment, if they were not 

 land-holders. Each was a self-sustaining community. It could 

 expect no supplies from the "mother town." The settlers must 

 hunt, trade, and grow their own food. This, naturally enough, 

 was corn. 



So grew the river valley towns of western New England, 

 each one ringed by its cornfields. The plain wooden houses 

 clustered close together for protection. The women, left alone 

 in those villages, knew that in between the rows of corn in the 

 fields lurked fierce Mohawks, waiting for long-haired, blond 

 scalp-locks, or for captives who might be worth a ransom in 

 gunpowder and muskets. There were girls who went into the 

 fields to hoe, or to gather green roasting-ears, who vanished as 

 swiftly and as silently as did Kilmeny in the ballad. Some of 

 those girls were never heard of again. Of others, traders brought 

 tales of seeing a pale-faced squaw tending the fire in an 

 Iroquois camp who looked at them strangely, but shook her 

 head when they addressed her in English. 



