The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-01-20
EARLY PINCHOTS OF CONNECTICUT
 BURNED FORESTS
WATERBURY MAN TELLS HOW THE INDIANS PURGED THE
 LAND,
Vast Territory Swept By Fire An nua1y to Clean Out UnderbruSh and Preserve Big Trees.

American.)
 President Tafts removal of Forester | Pinchot, a cloud of portent in the l political sky, calls attention to Uncle San's conservation policy and brings to mind the red mans forest preserve | in this vicinity.
 | The region west of the Connecticut 1 River to the Hudson Valley was the preserve of the Mohawks, one of the six nations in York State where the i Mohawk River preserves their mem ory. The Mohawk overlordship of this region was mercless and autocratic A local Indian who gave offense in 1 the neighborhood of the infant set tlement at Fairfield was chased into the home of one of the settlers there by a Mohawk and killed on the spot. At an earlier day, the Paugussetts, whose fort stood at the junction of the Housatonic and Naugatuck Rivers, in what is now the city of Derby, failed in their duty as vassels. band of Mohawk warriors donned their war paint and feathers and marched down the valley of the Housatonic. A few miles above the Paugusset fort, the Mohawks took to the river to hide their tre cks, wading until opposite the fort Here they hid in the trees for
 
 were at ease and sent out a party of hunters, when the Mohawks stole into the fort, burning it to the ground, with massacre or captivity for its in mates. The Pequots were in such ter TOT of the Mohawks at a still earlier day that they left their original home west of the Connecticut for a new one hard by the powerful Narrangansetts, in what is now Rhode Island, where Capt. Mason treated them in much the same fashion in the early days of the Connecticut colony, as the MohaWks had treated the Paugussetts.
 Our present policy of forest con- servation wisely provides guardians, sometimes a detail of the regular army, to prevent theft of timber and forest fires. Trees were too plenty and in too little demand to be stolen from this Mohawk preserve and, in stead of preventing fires, this whole region was burned over annually by the Indians. What a sight it would have been to see the fire burning on unhindered day and night, with the flames kindling from hilltop to valley while in frantic haste fled the deer, the bear, the panther, the wolf, the myriad pigeons and all the plentiful wild life of that primitive day! Nor must we think Of such a fire as leaV- ing the desolate waste Of a forest fire today, for, occurring so frequent
 
 aow left by the choppers, nor such un- derbrush for it to feed upon as our timbered patches sport. A dead tree here and there, a patch of pine or hemlock ( the removal of whose breath of balm increases our cases Of tuber- curative effects in North Carolina or Maine) was burned up, of course, but what one tree, or thousand for that matter, to Mohawk!
 The timber was left like one great park and the writer was informed by an elderly citizen of South Britain that in his youth there was an aged colored man in his fathers employ, relic of Connecticut's brief day of slavery, who told him that when he, the ex- slave, was a boy it was possible to drive yoke of cattle from the Hous- atomic River to Woodbury anywhere through the woods.
 This Mohawk treatment of their preserve left the hilltops, now bare, we'll timbered, but made meadows, rank with luxuriant native grass, of the brook and river valleys, where | the flame was too fierce for the young saplings to survive it's fury. The first settlers used these meadows and such a meadow in Newtown, once shared | by the first corners there as val ubale possession, is now covered With a tall growth of timber. The Man
 
 yet wholly disappeared north of West Main street and it was to be nearer these meadows partly that led to leav- ing Town Plot for the eastern bank of the river in the early days of Mat tatuck ct was an evil day when so beautiful and distinctive name was abandoned for Anglo-Saxon Water bury. The major reason, of course, for deserting the first layout was so as not to be cut off by river floods from the parent town of Pennington, but the river avenged itself by be- coming choked in some unusual fresh ct and pouring a flood through the Green and Exchange Place that near Iy ruined the struggling frontier set tlenent
 It required stringent laws and long effort to put an end to the forest fires referred to and when embryo Water bury enclosed it's little community of farmers with a common fence, follow ing (the general lines of Union and Brands streets, Meadow and Willow Grove, Cherry and Mill streets in part, the first care was to clear the trees from each side of the common fence for some distance that 1t be not destroyed by fire.
 We think of forest fires as a men, ace and danger, but think you that those Indian fires did no good? It would be a shrewd elm tree beetle that could hide it's larva to escape their swath and the pest that now threatens our useful and beautiful chestnuts, as well as the maple in other sections, to say nothing of flies, mosquitoes and other insect pests, could hardly survive the ordeal of fire The Pinchot policy of forest conservation is all right, but the Red Man was not altogether the fool that the novelists make him out.
 PNEUMONIA FOLLOWS A COLD but never follows the use of Foley's Honey and Tar, which stops the cough heals the lungs and expels the cold from your system. F. B. Brill, and The Curtis Pharmacy, local agents