A surveying error in 1642 resulted in the Suffield region being part of Massachusetts colony. Originally called Southfield, the area was settled as a township of Massachusetts in 1670 but later found to lie within the boundaries of the Connecticut Charter and was subsequently annexed in 1749. Settlement started in 1670, after Major John Pynchon, a fur merchant from Springfield, paid the Natives Americans thirty pounds for a six-mile tract of land known as Stony Brooke Plantation. The region consisted of a thickly wooded area with a narrow meadow which provided a land route connecting Springfield and Windsor. This route was called the Hampton Path (usually thought to include Hill Street, Remington Street, South Street, and possibly other roads). One source claims the local Native Americans used this land primarily as a hunting ground and preferred camping by the Congamond Lake and Manatuck Mountain areas to the west Source. In 1930 Mathais Spiess, an amateur historian, compiled a map of where he determined Native American villages and trails existed in Connecticut as of 1625. While we are not sure how accurate it is, it does show several tribal villages in Suffield, namely the Mayawaugs east of Suffield mountain in West Suffield and the Agawaums in northeast Suffield Source. According to the Documentary History of Suffield in the Colony and Province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England, 1660-1749 by Hezekiah Spencer Sheldon published in 1879, before the town was settled there was 500 acres of meadow and "Upon some small open fields, or plains, were a few Indian families, as relics often found there indicate." The book also speaks of a road being used by 1643 that connected Windsor, CT to Northampton, MA where today is Hill Street, Remington Street, and South Street.