Frontiers

As the 18th century began Massachusetts began to a period period of economic growth. This growth led colonists in to the Connecticut valley and western Massachusetts. Land in New England was scarce and colonists looked westward to the virgin forests and pasture lands of western Massachusetts. Colonist set up large farms in the western regions of Massachusetts. Unlike the eastern Massachusetts, the frontier regions of western Massachusetts offered ample land to farm and raise livestock. many of these farms were large enough to require a source of labor that exhausted the available indentures and led the use of slave labor. Since the early colonial period, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had hoped to control and protect colonists that braved the wilderness and settled on Massachusetts' frontier. "In 1690, a committee of the General Court of Massachusetts recommended the Court to order what shall be the frontier and to maintain a committee to settle garrisons on the frontier with forty soldiers to each frontier town as a main guard." Frontier settlers on the outskirts of Puritan civilization took up the task of bearing the brunt of attack and pushing forward the line of advance which year after year carried American settlements into the wilderness. Settlers in Western Massachusetts came into conflict with Iroquois Indians and others as their western migration progressed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

References:

Brown, Richard D. and Jack Tager. Massachusetts: A Concise History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.