Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 30.

[p. 29] brook well above (south of) its junction with Sudbury river, at the point where the Rev. John Eliot selected, on the ‘old Connecticut path,’ as he called it, a location for the establishment of his seventh ‘village of praying Indians.’

Still bearing southwestward, to Hopkinton, the track there swung round the north end of Whitehall pond and through southern Westboro into Grafton, crossing the Nipnet (Blackstone) river at a ford now within the village of Millbury. Dropping still more sharply southward, the path descended Federal hill into Oxford, and thence ran westward into Charlton, and by a rather circuitous way over Fisk hill into Sturbridge. There it led through what has been called Tantaskwee pass, exactly where the Worcester-Southbridge-Springfield trolley line passes to Fiskdale.

Between Fiskdale and Brimfield (being still in Sturbridge) it touches the southern edge of the thousand acre tract which John Eliot had from the Indians in 1655. In Brimfield the path passed Quabaug Old Fort, of which I shall speak again. Thence westward into Monson, the path strikes just south of the Chicopee river at the town line, and follows the river to Palmer, the summit of the path reaching an altitude of eleven hundred feet in crossing the divide between the Quinnebaug and the Quabaug, or Chicopee, watersheds. West from Palmer the way led around the north end of Wilbraham mountains to North Wilbraham village, whence it passed southwestward into Springfield, opening from the brow of the hill on which now stands the Arsenal.

Springfield was a junction of many Indian trails. From the Arsenal one trail led down to the river, through what is now Forest park, to a point opposite the lower mouth of the Agawam or Westfield river, where the highway now crosses, and at which point was an Indian stronghold or fort. At that time (before the Agawam cut through its upper mouth, a century ago) an extensive shoal stretched out from the west shore and the river