“St. Patrick,” I interjected.
“That’s right, and he returns to Ireland and converts the better part of the island to Christianity. For the next five or six hundred years the Irish live rather peaceably and practice their own brand of Catholicism with a dash of Irish mythology. However, just after the new millennium, the pope, who happened to be English at the time, is not really happy that Jesus has to share center stage with wood nymphs, so he decrees that England will have lordship over Ireland. This of course gives England the papal right to invade and subjugate the wayward Irish, which starts almost 900 years of oppression, starvation, and war.
“The potato arrived in Ireland from America in the eighteenth century and immediately improved the diet and lives of most of the Irish peasantry, but it brought with it a high degree of dependence, and when in the 1840s the crop was hit by the blight, a cycle of mass starvation and emigration began. In a decade, the population of Ireland had been reduced by a third.”
Oranmore is a small town just south of Galway city on Ireland’s west coast that exists even today. In the mid-seventeenth century it was little more than a fishing village with a big castle that people had been fighting over for centuries. In Father Liam’s time it was being rebuilt and fortified by the English after Irish patriots burned it down in 1667, an act which prompted a brutal reprisal from the British and was likely directly responsible for Father Liam’s assignment.
The reconstruction project created the unfortunate consequence of placing English soldiers and Irish peasants in close proximity, a fact that made no one happy. The English soldiers did not want to be in Ireland, and the Irish certainly did not want the English soldiers in Ireland. That’s about all they had in common. Unfortunately for the Irish, the English were the ones with all the weapons.
Brian Liam was born in 1644. His birth place is listed as Oranmore, but it is likely that Oranmore was simply the closest town to whatever unnamed hamlet witnessed his birth. He was ordained a priest at the tender age of nineteen in Dublin. History loses track of him until he took over the Sacred Heart parish in Oranmore in 1669, and was made a bishop in 1698. He lived only five more years.
He wrote extensively about his early experiences as pastor of Sacred Heart after he moved to Galway as a bishop (possibly because the diocese provided him with a scribe). He describes being in a quandary. He was fiercely patriotic and describes the British as being worse than the weather.
However, Father Liam was a sensible man and he knew that any organized resistance, or any attempt to expel or hinder the English would only add to the hardship his flock already bore. An English warship sat in Oranmore’s small harbor, which meant they controlled the sea and when and if the Irish could fish. An English regiment lived outside the castle and routinely patrolled the town and farms in a none-too-subtle hint that they also controlled the land.
In the 29 years Father Liam served as pastor, Oranmore prospered. Whether Adis’s story is true and the gold pieces are responsible for the improved living conditions I leave for you to decide. Personally, I think that Father Liam’s practical approach to the British occupation led to a relative calm that allowed for both sides to live as best as they could.
Jedidiah Woodman and Kioawa—A Long Short-Story
I recount this story as Adis told it, which includes my commentary as well.
“Jedidiah Woodman lived about three hundred and fifty years ago. Which just happens to be about the time I came to the New World. It was so long ago, in fact, that New Hampshire wasn’t even New Hampshire, it was just an extension of Massachusetts.” Adis pushed back from the table, crossed his legs, and reclined into his chair. Actually, I owned the chair, but at that moment everything seemed to belong to Adis.
“Colonial America,” I said.
Adis nodded his head. “Yes, colonial America, but it wasn’t the colonial America you see on TV, where everyone wears funny hats and eats turkey and mashed potatoes with friendly Indians. The reality was that life was harsh, ugly, and hard, even for the gentry. There was nothing simple or romantic about it. For many, death came early and suddenly, and for most it was a blessing. I remember those days, and though time has softened my memory I can safely say that I would have preferred to skip them. Except for one thing.” Adis raised one finger.
“What was that?” I didn’t hesitate a moment, and asked the question on his cue. I had slipped about halfway down Adis’s rabbit hole.
“The sense of community. Of course, that community became a necessity under the pressures of isolation, depredation, and the struggle to survive in a hostile environment. It’s a fact of human nature that when threatened we pull together, but when life becomes easier we drift apart.” He shook his head sadly. “But I digress.” He brightened again. “Still, it’s a nice segue back to Jedidiah. He was the exception to the rule, the proverbial loner. As I think about it, Jedidiah was an exception to most rules. He grew up as an only child, and instead of becoming overly dependent on his parents, as many only children do, he longed for independence, which more than a few times landed him in trouble. He was a large child that grew into a larger man, more than six feet of solid muscle and bone. By today’s standards that would make him a big man, but by seventeenth-century standards that made him a mountain of a man. Which again landed him in trouble more than a few times. His father was an officer in a British shipping company and a former captain of the royal navy. He was a stern, unforgiving man that had little time for his undisciplined son, and after Jed’s mother died of consumption, Captain Woodman announced that the pair would be leaving Boston and sailing back to England and civilization. Jed was sixteen at the time and responded that he had no desire to leave his adopted country and was quite capable of living independently. The two exchanged words and eventually more than words. In the end, the slightly chastened Captain sailed back to England alone.”
“That’s sad.” Despite myself I was slipping into Adis’s story and for a moment wondered what Jed’s father thought as he sailed away. Did he look back as America dropped below the horizon knowing that he would never see his son again? Did he question whether he made a mistake and suddenly want to jump overboard and swim back? The thought of losing one of my children, either from hard words and stubborn attitudes or from a kidnapping, froze me inside.
Adis nodded. “As I was saying, Jed had always swum against the current, and when he found himself alone he quickly left Boston with nothing more than what he and his horse could carry. For as long as he could remember, he had heard stories of tall mountains, streams choked with fish, and a life full of adventure; stories told by the dark and dangerous men who lived on the fringes of society in the cheap shanties just outside Boston. When he was just a small boy, Jed had accompanied his father to meet such men. The unwashed, unshaven, and unruly lot supplied the furs that Captain Woodman exported back to England, and although he had a number of intermediaries to perform the menial negotiations, the Captain wanted his son to see firsthand what happened when individuals refused to abide by the rules of civilized society. But all Jed saw was freedom and independence. These men respected only themselves and were beholden to no man, including his father and some far-off king. They had the courage to venture inland to find their fortune and forge their own destiny, regardless of the risk. Although at the time Jed didn’t know it, he had just met the first real Americans.
“In short order, he took up with a man named James Magraw. An Irish-Scot, Magraw had fled Ireland for the new world shortly after finding himself indentured to an English lord that held the debt Magraw’s late father had left him. For thirty years he had wandered the wilds of New England, and he was one of the few who had lived to tell the tale. And tell he did, especially to a young, impressionable Jedidiah Woodman, who for years had taken every opportunity to escape his father’s watchful eye and sneak over to Boston’s dark side. Jed found the now-old man in a small lean-to tavern in a settlement without a name ten miles north of Boston and offered his services in return
for all the older man could teach.
“Why would you want such a thing? You have a good life, an easy life. Go back to England, marry some wench, have a dozen little brats, and die a fat old man in front of a warm fire.” Magraw was just as Jed remembered, dirty, with torn clothes and foul breath. He drank something he called frog’s breath, which tasted more like liquid fire. “You won’t survive the first winter,” he said, and he went back to his frog’s breath.
“You did, and I’m bigger, stronger, and smarter than you ever were.” Jed was nearly a foot taller than Magraw.
“So you are.” The old man put down his empty mug and inventoried the younger man from head to toe. “And you dress nicer as well. Can you shoot?” Magraw asked, eyeing Jed’s musket. “Can you ride?” he added, looking over the young man’s shoulder to the beautiful horse tied to a post. Jed nodded to both. “If you get killed, for any reason I keep ’em both. I’m leaving in two days. If you haven’t come to your senses by then, meet me back here before sunup.”
“Your story is starting to sound a little like the Jeremiah Johnson story,” I interjected.
Adis tilted his head and looked momentarily confused. “I once knew a man named Jeremiah Johnson. He lived out west in the 1850s. I met him in St Louis. He was having dinner with a writer named Samuel Clemmons, who you may have heard of. Mr. Johnson was trying to sell old Sam a story about a man who goes up into the mountains to live and ends up fighting wild Indians. I assure you Jedidiah Woodman did no such thing. I will admit that I really didn’t care for Mr. Johnson, and I don’t think Mr. Clemmons was overly fond of him as well.”
“Now you sound like Forrest Gump.” I will admit that I’m not sure I really said that, but I should have.
“Anyway, our friend Jedidiah heads up into the mountains of what we will one day call New Hampshire with James Magraw and begins the life he has longed for. Like most things, it was different from what he imagined. For one thing, he had never really experienced sustained physical discomfort before. He had always been warm when it was cold outside. Always been able to stay dry when it was wet outside. Always been able to eat when he needed to. He had learned to take comfort for granted, and it took more than a year for him to unlearn it, and several more for him to inure himself to the challenges living outside civilized society posed.
“By the time James Magraw died six years later, the two had become close friends and Jed had become one of those dark, dangerous men who lived by their own rules. Magraw had been sick a full year before his death, and Jed had built him a small two-room log cabin at the foot of a mountain the two had taken to calling the Bitterroot, after some form of turnip that grew naturally in the mountain’s high meadows. Jed buried his friend in one of those meadows, and over the next few years he often returned to that spot to think things over. For the most part, Jed was at peace with the world, but since Magraw’s death the isolation had become progressively heavier. One late summer afternoon, Jed was sitting on his usual log, pondering the growing void in his life. The proximity of old Magraw’s bones loosened Jeb’s tongue and he carried on a conversation with himself. He sat and debated whether he should leave the mountains and return to the world when he caught a whiff of the thick musk of what could only be a bear.
“Now remember that Jed was a very large man, but bears are, well, bears. Even the black bears that inhabit the northeast can grow to nearly twice the size of our mountain man, and that’s before we factor in the teeth and claws. Jed jumped to his feet and found the largest black bear he had ever seen crouching between where he stood and his musket. The beast was so large that for a moment Jed wondered if it could be something other than a bear. It whipped its head around and when they fixed eyes it roared loud enough to echo up and down the canyons.
“He silently cursed himself for being so foolish and then slowly backed away. The bear advanced, tossing his head and swatting the dirt in front of him in challenge. Jed retreated further, but the bear continued his advance.
“‘What do you want?’ he screamed. Magraw had told him years earlier that if ever he was cornered by a bear he should make himself as large and threatening as possible. Of course, he also told Jed never to allow himself to be cornered by a bear. Jed remembered asking Magraw if threatening a bear had ever really worked and he simply shrugged, saying that no one ever told him that it didn’t.
“Jed had backed up to the edge of the clearing. One more step would lead to a hundred-foot fall to the rocks and trees below, but the bear didn’t seem to care. Jed began to wave his arms and bellow until his throat ached, and finally the bear paused. He sniffed the air and turned his head, and although it’s not really possible, Jed thought that he saw a slight smile form on the face of the giant bruin.
“His situation was desperate. He couldn’t go forward and he couldn’t go back. He took a step to his left, which as it turned out was the wrong thing to do. His foot slipped on some loose stones covered in grass and moss, and he nearly fell. He flailed his arms wildly and for a moment regained his balance, until the dirt beneath him gave way. He slipped to his knees and then fell forward, holding on to clumps of turf as his legs dangled over the ledge.
“Poor old Jed barely managed to get back to his knees before the big bear lunged. He tried to draw his knife but was bowled over before it cleared its scabbard. The bear’s jaws almost completely encircled Jed’s thigh as its teeth sunk into muscle and bone. He didn’t feel pain so much as shock after being struck by a six-hundred-pound beast. He was tossed in the air like a rag doll, and the bear was on him again. Bites in the neck, shoulder, chest, and arm. They came so fast that Jed was having a hard time even registering them, and then once again he was flying, but this flight was considerably longer. He spun wildly in the air and caught a brief glimpse of a cloud floating through the blue sky, and then the cliff edge rushed passed him. He struck something hard and unyielding, then something else just as hard, and then a final impact took what little breath he had left. The white cloud still floated in the sky, but now it was so much further away.”
“Very dramatic,” I said. Adis had been using his hands to animate poor Jed’s fall down the mountain. His face was just as animated, and I could easily see him telling stories to preschoolers at the library. “Story-time with Adis,” they would call it. “Every Saturday at 1:00 p.m.” Of course, they would have to reschedule if it conflicted with Adis’s day job: cold-blooded killer of terrorists.
“Thank you,” he beamed. “For two days and nights, poor Jedidiah lay on a stony outcrop sixty feet in the air, hovering between life and death. So long that crows had collected around him and begun to peck at his wounds. On the third day it began to rain. Not a nice spring rain, but a real gully washer. Water pounded Jed’s outcrop from the cliff above, which did scare away the crows but also came perilously close to drowning poor Jed. The cold water revived him, and he managed to open his eyes between downpours. His thinking was fuzzy and his body felt fuzzy as well. He tried to get up and realized that he couldn’t move his arms or legs. Water dripped onto his face and he could do nothing about it. His neck was broken and that meant he was going to die on this slab of stone. For the rest of the morning he watched droplets of water fall from high above and then splash around him or on him. He wondered what death would be like, and how long it would take to find him. His silent emotions swung from acceptance to anger. At times he wanted to scream. He was angry with himself for being so monumentally stupid. He was angry at Magraw for dying and leaving him here alone. He was angry with his mother for dying, and his father for being a man devoid of understanding. He tried to scream, but it was hard to breath and all he could manage was a weak moan, which only fueled his anger. His impotent rage finally gave way to exhaustion, and he let it flow through him. It cost too much to be angry. He closed his eyes and slept away the rest of the day.
“Jed woke just before sunset. There was still enough light to see that the sky had cleared, but that was about all Jed could see. The rocks bit into the
back of his head and he tried to move his neck, but a pain so severe that he nearly passed out stopped him short. He would just have to live with the rocks and the limited view. He listened to the song birds in the trees below until a new sound, a rustling, alerted him. The crows had returned. He tried to move his arms without success. Same with his legs. His neck was still broken. Nothing had changed. It was harder to breath now, and Jed was glad that the end was near. The last thing he wanted was to slowly starve as the birds fed on him.
“Something large moved near him, and he heard rocks skitter off his perch (he figured that if he was going to die here and have his bones lie for all eternity on this perch then it rightfully belonged to him). His first thought was that the bear had somehow managed to crawl down the forty or so feet to finish what he had started but then realized that in most situations bears don’t speak English. A leg appeared and Jed could make out a dark and well-toned calf. A leather thong wound up the lower leg and Jed knew a simple shoe of deer hide could be seen if he was able to move his head. Mohawk Indian. Whoever it was, was a little far north, but it was not unusual to find a solitary Mohawk anywhere in the White Mountains. They were great trappers and traded their furs with the Dutch, generally for muskets, hatchets, and anything made of metal. They were allies with the Dutch, and together they pushed the Hurons far back into French Canada. They were also known to be cannibals.
“I asked if you were still alive.” A well-worn brown face appeared. His accent was British and his English was excellent, which perplexed poor Jed, who was now convinced that instead of the crows enjoying his mortal remains it would be the Mohawks. As a rule, the British and Mohawks didn’t get along. That would change later, but in the mid-seventeenth century, in the mountains of what would later be called New Hampshire, the Mohawks were still firmly in the Dutch camp, and a Mohawk using English, and perfect English at that, was indeed a mystery worth exploring.
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