Like most native peoples, they were decimated by smallpox, then their participation in King Philip's War 1675–1676 proved their undoing as victory by colonial forces led to the dispersal of remnants of this tribe west into New York and north into Canada.

Relatively unproductive soils and small fields were not conducive to growing cash crops, so farming was more of a subsistence nature.

The upland farm population peaked around 1800, when more productive farmland opened up beyond the Appalachian Mountains in western New York and the Northwest Territory—today's Great Lakes states.

The cash income gave farmsteads access to manufactured goods and imported food such as cane sugar from the West Indies in lieu of local maple products.

Three villages developed around mills at the cascades, and the easy grades along the valley were utilized for a railroad route across the Berkshires' 1,400 feet (430 m) of relief.

Russell Village was a virtually self-sufficient community as late as the 1950s, with several stores, a barbershop, and several restaurants; then increasing automobile ownership brought the greater commercial offerings in Westfield and other Pioneer Valley cities within reach.

Moses, later co-founder of Junior Achievement, was a visionary social engineer as well as an industrialist who developed Woronoco as a model company town with housing of a notably high standard and buildings accommodating a wide variety of community activities.

Moses also developed a 1,600-acre (6.5 km2) estate around Russell Pond in South Quarter, where he raised both award-winning apples and prized hunting dogs.

On September 11 of every year since 2003 the Mennonite Youth Chorus from Russell has offered songs of remembrance for victims of the terrorist attack at the Ground Zero site of the World Trade Center in New York City.

In 2004 a biomass generating plant[5] was proposed to take advantage of the former Westfield River Paper Co. site along the Westfield River with access to water, the former Boston and Albany Railroad line, and supplies of waste wood as a byproduct of real estate development, logging and forestry work.

Russell is in western Hampden County, bordered by Granville to the south, Blandford to the west, Huntington to the north, Montgomery to the northeast and Westfield to the southeast.

The South Quarter uplands end at an escarpment near the southeastern border of the town, the edge of a rift valley originating in the Mesozoic Era when Europe and North America separated.

Gravel banks large enough to be commercially valuable were deposited in Russell where the river entered the erstwhile lake.

The river has three widely separated cascades within the town, dropping about 90 feet (27 m) in total that figured in the township's industrial development, above.

In the 2020 presidential election, the town provided Libertarian Party nominee Jo Jorgensen with her highest percentage of the vote statewide.