Pioneer Valley Dissidence. Odd phrase. The latter term being as byzantine as it is, we will first focus on defining the former.
What we refer to as the Pioneer Valley is a small slice of an already miniscule state, comprised of three counties (Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden) in the western portion of Massachusetts. This is a rough map of the area, with the largest town, Springfield, highlighted in red (parts of northern CT that constitute the Springfield Metro are also included).
The irredentist in me would dispute these borders, but we will open that can of worms at a later date. Springfield, the first major Euro settlement in the area founded way back when in 1636, is 91 miles from Boston, 83 miles from Albany, and a hop-skip-and-jump from Hartford at a mere 26-mile distance. Although the area is home to other urban centers, namely Greenfield (outer area of which is marked in orange above) and Holyoke (unmarked), Springfield now reigns supreme as it escaped the worst of the post-industrial fallout and white flight of the 70s. From these three population centers rings of sub- and exurb communities emanate, making up the greater Pioneer Valley Metro. Contemporary Major Imports: everything. Contemporary Major Exports: education and marijuana. The valley is a glacial carving through which the Connecticut River runs, tending to abnormally fertile soil and relatively sheltered weather conditions. This is an opaque geographical overview of the area, as delving into more detail here would be sisyphean; one could simply link Wikipedia articles to the same effect. More important to the specific critiques this blog puts forth is the cultural geography and history, something that requires nuance and, dare I say it, a dash of [revisionism].
Founded in 1636 by [proto-anarchocapitalist and native sympathizer] William Pynchon, what would become Springfield (incorporated originally as Agawam, named for the tribe living there at the time) was the latest in a northward landgrab along the Connecticut River between the competing Dutch and English colonists. Pynchon's group of settlers and scouts, despite him personally being well-connected to the Massachusetts Bay Colony back east (Pynchon was treasurer of the Charlestown settlement, cofounder of Roxbury, owned a wharf in Boston, and was positioned on a colonial tribunal that granted licenses and moderated the official diplomacy between the Colony and Kingdom), were sponsored financially by the Connecticut Colony in this endeavor. Pynchon led the negotiations and sale of the area from the natives, at the [totally 100% fair and equitable] price of "18 hoes, 18 fathoms of wampum, 18 coats, 18 hatchets, and 18 knives."
Pynchon's responsibilities were that of local administrator and liaison between the natives and the new northern settlement. This came to a head four years later, in the spring of 1640, when the other Connecticut Colony settlements requested that Pynchon negotiate a trade deal of corn with the Agawam as their food stocks had depleted over the winter [being raided and attacked by Pequots for the past 4 years probably didn't help, either]. Pynchon, for all his [evil capitalist] sensibilities, was unable to broker the deal at a rate he considered 'fair'. This made the hungry Connecticut residents very angry, so they sent [the extremely based] John ['The Pequot Punisher'] Mason to get the natives to reconsider. [Legend has it that John Mason approached the Agawam with a fat stack of cash in one hand, and a sword in the other.] He got the deal he wanted. Before leaving for the south again, [chad] Mason publicly lambasted [relative virgin] Pynchon over his reconciliatory attitudes toward the Agawam. [Seething,] Pynchon used his considerable influence as founder to get the nascent Springfield to vote and join the Massachusetts Bay Colony [he had a lot of rich friends over there, as we recall]. This angered the Connecticut colonists, who in response imposed a tax on Springfield ships accessing their portion of the river to the Atlantic. Pynchon complained to [his wealthy buddies in] Boston about this, and thus ratified the Springfield colonists' vote to make them part of Massachusetts.
[Was this what the Pynchon Master Plan was all along? Purely speculation of course, but the guy settled Springfield just because Roxbury wasn't working out. He still had all of those connections in Boston, and now he had the source of fur he had been looking for. Would have been much easier than cutting Connecticut and New Haven in on the action. Additionally, Pynchon was more a part of Massachusetts Colony Governor John Winthrop's clique than an ally of the dissenting Thomas Hooker, the man who had struck out and founded the Connecticut Colony. Mason Green, the author that literally wrote the book on Springfield's history, tells us Pynchon had accidentally plotted out land north of the Massachusetts/Connecticut dividing line, but our anti-Pynchon bias is matched only by his pro-Pynchon slant, so the truth likely lies somewhere in between, in that it could have been accidental, but was later used to his advantage.]
[Time would show us this was Where it All Went Wrong, as Mason (war hero, father of 8 children, total badass) refused to be recalled to Britain and lived out the rest of his days in Connecticut, while Pynchon took the money he made from the fur trading venture and shlepped back across the Atlantic to enjoy his fortune after a religious treatise he wrote was poorly received (his son John and son-in-law Elizur Holyoke would stay and go on to found more towns further north). Furthermore, the Agawam, a tribe so peaceful that Mason's threat of military force was considered wholly unconscionable, would end up playing double agent and joining forces with the Nonotucks further north and burned 45 out of 60 standing buildings in Springfield to the ground in 1675 in one of the bloodiest events of King Philip's War. [Quoth William Pynchon, posthumously: "Oops, didn't see that one coming lol."]
That is the cultural history of the earliest foundation of what would become the Pioneer Valley, the themes of which (naivete, financial submission to Bostonian cronyism) will be ever-present in subsequent dissections of the area. Future entries will be roughly in this vein. I intend to cover more history and some of the area's heroes, before we really roll our sleeves up and start hacking heads off the hydra of issues that stalks the Valley in contemporary times.
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