Indian Trails About Springfield, sheet 1 of Early Maps of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts (Harry Andrew Wright, 1911)
Harry Andrew Wright’s map of the Indian trails about Springfield, sheet 1 of his Early Maps of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts (1911): the paths of the Agawam people at Springfield and the Woronoco at Westfield, where the Chicopee and the Agawam (Westfield) meet the Connecticut (Quonne-tuk), traced from early deeds and records — the Bay Path from the east to the Palisaded Fort and over the river toward Woronoko, the path south to Windsor, Pynchon’s “Pequit path that goes to Moheag” — with the Native names of meadows, falls and brooks.
Source
| Map | Early maps of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts |
|---|---|
| Author | Harry Andrew Wright, 1911 |
| Archive | Internet Archive |
| Rights | Public domain. Published 1911 — before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 3 km (RMS 0.1 km at 30 control points). Placed by hand in a map-queue session and approved by a person. If something sits in the wrong place, members can fix it with Fix placement on the map. |
| Method | Placed by hand: a first-order polynomial (affine) fit to 30 places read from the scan — mouths and forks of brooks, bends of the Agawam (Westfield) and Chicopee, and Horse Pond — matched to their positions today. Wright drew the rivers and brooks from a modern survey, so they lie close to today’s streams: leave-one-out error 0.16 km RMS, half the places within 0.12 km, the worst 0.46 km (the mouth of Schneelock Brook). The trails are Wright’s own reconstruction from deeds, records and the streets that replaced them, so a path may sit farther from where it ran than the streams do. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-10-15 |
| Covers | Massachusetts |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (0.5 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (2646 × 1556; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (0.5 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (2.7 MB)
Project Homeland
This map’s trails are traced into Project Homeland, one map of the trail network melded from every traced source, where they are compared with the other maps’ lines. Members can trace more of them: Trace a trail on the map.
Changelog
- 1.0.0 (2026-10-15): First release: placed by hand at 30 places. From the Native Routes sources register; sheet 1 of Wright’s Early Maps of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts (1911), Internet Archive (Cornell University Library copy).
Credits
- From the Native Routes sources register; sheet 1 of Wright’s Early Maps of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts (1911), Internet Archive (Cornell University Library copy)
- Georeferencing: Native Routes
- Scan: Internet Archive
Control points
The full list of control points with residuals is in control-points.geojson. Historic names indexed for search: names.geojson.
Something on this map sits in the wrong place? Members can show where with Fix placement on the map — confirmed fixes are tested against the map’s other control points each night and credited here. For anything else, report a problem.
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