onnecticut
settlers were to have full powers of self-government, and the question
of a governor was left for the moment undecided, Winthrop confining his
jurisdiction to Saybrook, the settlement which he was to promote at the
mouth of the river. This agreement was embodied in a commission which
was drawn up by the Massachusetts General Court and issued in March,
1636, "on behalf of our said members and John Winthrop, Jr.," and was
to last for one year. Who actually wrote this commission we do not know,
but the Connecticut men said afterwards that it arose from the desire of
the people who removed, because they did not want to go away without a
frame of government agreed on beforehand and did not want to recognize
"any claymes of the Massachusetts jurisdiction over them by vertew of
Patent." Apparently the people going to Connecticut wanted to get as far
away from Massachusetts as possible.

Armed with their commission, in the summer of 1636, members of the
Newtown church to the number of about one hundred persons, led by Thomas
Hooker, their pastor, and Samuel Stone, his assistant, made a famous
pilgrimage under summer skies through the woods that lay between
Massachusetts and the Connecticut River. Bearing Mrs. Hooker in a litter
and driving their cattle before them, these courageous pioneers, men,
women, and children, after a fortnight's journeying, reached Hartford,
the site of their future home, already occupied by those who had
foregathered there in number larger even than those who had newly
arrived. At about the same time, William Pynchon and others of Roxbury,
acting from similar motives, took the same course westward, but instead
of continuing down the Connecticut River, as the others had done,
stopped at its banks and made their settlement at Agawam (Springfield),
where they built a warehouse and a wharf for use in trade with the
Indians. The lower settlements, Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor,
became agricultural communities; but Springfield, standing at the
junction of Indian trails and river communication, was destined to
become the center of the beaver trade of the region, shipping furs and
receiving commodities through Boston, either in shallops around the Cape
or on pack-horses overland by the path the emigrants had trod. Pynchon's
settlement was one of the towns named in the commission and, for the
first year after it was founded, joined with the others in maintaining
order in the colony.

The comm