Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Some o’ the wimmen tried to get somethin’ out o’ Quassy. Lordy massy! you might as well ‘a’ tried to get it out an old tom-turkey, that’ll strut and gobble and quitter, and drag his wings on the ground, and fly at you, but won’t say nothin’. Quassy she screeched her queer sort o’ laugh; and she told ’em that they was a makin’ fools o’ themselves, and that the cap’n’s matters wa’n’t none o’ their bisness; and that was true enough. As to goin’ into Quassia’s room, or into any o’ the store-rooms or closets she kep’ the keys of, you might as well hev gone into a lion’s den. She kep’ all her places locked up tight; and there was no gettin’ at nothin’ in the Cap’n Brown house, else I believe some o’ the wimmen would ‘a’ sent a sarch-warrant.”

  “Well,” said I, “what came of it? Didn’t anybody ever find out?”

  “Wal,” said Sam, “it come to an end sort o’, and didn’t come to an end. It was jest this ‘ere way. You see, along in October, jest in the cider-makin’ time, Abel Flint he was took down with dysentery and died. You ‘member the Flint house: it stood on a little rise o’ ground jest lookin’ over towards the Brown house. Wal, there was Aunt Sally Dickerson and the Widder Bije Smith, they set up with the corpse. He was laid out in the back chamber, you see, over the milk-room and kitchen; but there was cold victuals and sich in the front chamber, where the watchers sot. Wal, now, Aunt Sally she told me that between three and four o’clock she heard wheels a rumblin’, and she went to the winder, and it was clear starlight; and she see a coach come up to the Cap’n Brown house; and she see the cap’n come out bringin’ a woman all wrapped in a cloak, and old Quassy came arter with her arms full o’ bundles; and he put her into the kerridge, and shet her in, and it driv off; and she see old Quassy stand lookin’ over the fence arter it. She tried to wake up the widder, but ’twas towards mornin’, and the widder allers was a hard sleeper; so there wa’n’t no witness but her.’

  “Well, then, it wasn’t a ghost,” said I, “after all, and it was a woman.”

  “Wal, there ’tis, you see. Folks don’t know that ‘are yit, ‘cause there it’s jest as broad as ’tis long. Now, look at it. There’s Cinthy, she’s a good, pious gal: she locks her chamber-doors, both on ‘em, and goes to bed, and wakes up in the night, and there’s a woman there. She jest shets her eyes, and the woman’s gone. She gits up and looks, and both doors is locked jest as she left ‘em. That ‘ere woman wa’n’t flesh and blood now, no way, — not such flesh and blood as we knows on; but then they say Cinthy might hev dreamed it!

  “Wal, now, look at it t’other way. There’s Aunt Sally Dickerson; she’s a good woman and a church-member: wal, she sees a woman in a cloak with all her bundles brought out o’ Cap’n Brown’s house, and put into a kerridge, and driv off, atween three and four o’clock in the mornin’. Wal, that ‘ere shows there must ‘a’ ben a real live woman kep’ there privately, and so what Cinthy saw wasn’t a ghost.

  “Wal, now, Cinthy says Aunt Sally might ‘a’ dreamed it, — that she got her head so full o’ stories about the Cap’n Brown house, and watched it till she got asleep, and hed this ‘ere dream; and, as there didn’t nobody else see it, it might ‘a’ ben, you know. Aunt Sally’s clear she didn’t dream, and then agin Cinthy’s clear she didn’t dream; but which on ’em was awake, or which on ’em was asleep, is what ain’t settled in Oldtown yet.”

  COLONEL EPH’S SHOE-BUCKLES.

  “YES, this ‘ere’s Tekawampait’s grave,” said Sam Lawson, sitting leisurely down on an ancient grass-grown mound, ornamented by a mossy black slate-stone slab, with a rudely-carved cherub head and wings on top.

  “And who was Tekawampait?” “I wanter know, now, if your granny hain’t told you who Tekawampait was?” said Sam, pushing back his torn straw hat, and leaning against the old slanting gravestone.

  “No, she never told us.”

  “Wal, ye see, Tekawampait he was the fust Christian Indian minister o’ the gospel there was in Oldtown. He was a full-blooded Indian, but he was as good a Christian as there was goin’; and he was settled here over the church in Oldtown afore Parson Peabody; and Parson Peabody he come afore Parson Lothrop; and a very good minister Tekawampait was too. Folks hes said that there, couldn’t nothin’ be made o’ Indians; that they was nothin’ but sort o’ bears and tigers a walkin’ round on their hind legs, a seekin’ whom they might devour; but Parson Eliot he didn’t think so. ‘Christ died for them as wall as for me,’ says he; ‘and jest give ’em the gospel,’ says he, ‘and the rest’ll come along o’ itself.’ And so he come here to Oldtown, and sot up a sort o’ log-hut right on the spot where the old Cap’n Brown house is now. Them two great elm-trees that’s a grown now each side o’ the front gate was two little switches then, that two Indians brought up over their shoulders, and planted there for friendship trees, as they called ‘em; and now look what trees they be! He used to stand under that ‘are big oak there, and preach to the Indians, long before there was any meetin’-house to speak in here in Oldtown.

  “Wal, now, I tell you, it took putty good courage in Parson Eliot to do that ‘are. I tell you, in them days it took putty consid’able faith to see any thing in an Indian but jest a wild beast. Folks can’t tell by seein’ on ’em now days what they was in the old times when all the settlements was new, and the Indians was stark, starin’ wild, a ravin’ and tarin’ round in the woods, and a fightin’ each other and a fightin’ the white folks. Lordy massy! the stories I’ve heard women tell in their chimbley-corners about the things that used to happen when they was little was enough to scare the very life out o’ ye.”

  “Oh, do, do tell us some of them!” said Henry and I.

  “Lordy massy, boys: why, ye wouldn’t sleep for a week. Why, ye don’t know. Why, the Indians in them days wa’n’t like no critter ye ever did see. They was jest the horridest, paintedest, screechin’est, cussedest critters you ever heard on. They was jest as artful as sarpents, and crueller than any tigers. Good Dr. Cotton Mather calls ’em divils, and he was a meek, good man, Dr. Cotton was; but they cut up so in his days, it’s no wonder he thought they was divils, and not folks. Why, they kep’ the whole country in a broil for years and years. Nobody knowed when they was safe; for they were so sly and cunnin’, and always watchin’ behind fences and bushes, and ready when a body was a least thinkin’ on’t to be down on ‘em. I’ve heard Abiel Jones tell how his father’s house was burnt down at the time the Indians burnt Deerfield. About every house in the settlement was burnt to the ground; and then another time they burnt thirty-two houses in Springfield,-the minister’s house and all, with all his library (and books was sca’ce in them days); but the Indians made a clean sweep on’t. They burnt all the houses in Wendham down to the ground; and they came down in Lancaster, and burnt ever so many houses, and carried off forty or fifty people with ’em into the woods.

  “There was Mr. Rolandson, the minister, they burnt his house, and carried off Mis’ Rolandson and all the children. There was Jerushy Pierce used to work in his family and do washin’ and chores, she’s told me about it. Jerushy she was away to her uncle’s that night, so she wa’n’t took. Ye see, the Lancaster folks had been afeard the Indians’d be down on ‘em, and so Parson Rolandson he’d gone on to Boston to get help for ‘em; and when he come back the mischief was all done. Jerushy said in all her life she never see nothin’ so pitiful as that ‘are poor man’s face when she met him, jest as he come to the place where the house stood. At fust he didn’t say a word, she said, but he looked kind o’ dazed. Then he sort o’ put his hand to his forehead, and says he, ‘My God, my God, help me!’ Then he tried to ask her about it, but he couldn’t but jest speak. ‘Jerushy,’ says he, ‘can’t you tell me,-where be they?’ ‘Wal,’ says Jerushy, ‘they’ve been carried off.’ And with that he fell right down and moaned and groaned. ‘Oh!’ says he, ‘I’d rather heard that they were at peace with the Lord.’ And then he’d wring his hands: ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’

  “Wal, �
�twa’n’t long after this that the Indians was down on Medford, and burnt half the houses in town, and killed fifty or sixty people there. Then they came down on Northampton, but got driv’ back; but then they burnt up five houses, and killed four or five of the folks afore they got the better of ’em there. Then they burnt all the houses in Groton, meetin’-house and all; and the pisen critters they hollared and triumphed over the people, and called out to ‘em, ‘What will you do for a house to pray in now? we’ve burnt your meetin’-house.’ The fightin’ was goin’ on all over the country at the same time. The Indians set Marlborough afire, and it was all blazin’ at once, the same day that some others of ’em was down on Springfield, and the same day Cap’n Pierce, with forty-nine white men and twenty-six Christian Indians, got drawn into an ambush, and every one of ’em killed. Then a few days after this they burnt forty houses at Rehoboth, and a little while after they burnt thirty more at Providence. And then when good Cap’n Wadsworth went with seventy men to help the people in Sudbury, the Indians came pourin’ round ’em in the woods like so many wolves, and killed all but four or five on ‘em; and those poor fellows had better hev been killed, for the cruel critters jest tormented ’em to death, and mocked and jeered at their screeches and screams like so many divils. Then they went and broke loose on Andover; and they was so cruel they couldn’t even let the dumb critters alone. They cut out the tongues of oxen and cows, and left ’em bleedin’, and some they fastened up in barns and burnt alive. There wa’n’t no sort o’ diviltry they wa’n’t up to. Why, it got to be so in them days that folks couldn’t go to bed in peace without startin’ every time they turned over for fear o’ the Indians. Ef they heard a noise in the night, or ef the wind squealed and howled, as the wind will, they’d think sure enough there was that horrid yell a comin’ down chimbley.

  “There was Delily Severence; she says to me, speakin’ about them times, says she, ‘Why, Mr. Lawson, you’ve no idee! Why, that ‘are screech,’ says she, ‘wa’n’t like no other noise in heaven above, or earth beneath, or water under the earth,’ says she. ‘When it started ye out o’ bed between two or three o’clock in the mornin’, and all your children a cryin’, and the Indians a screechin’ and yellin’ and a tossin’ up firebrands, fust at one window and then at another, why,’ says she, ‘Mr. Lawson, it was more like hell upon earth than any thing I ever heard on.’

  “Ye see, they come down on Delily’s house when she was but jest up arter her third baby. That ‘are woman hed a handsome head o’ hair as ever ye see, black as a crow’s wing; and it turned jest as white as a table-cloth, with nothin’ but the fright o’ that night.”

  “What did they do with her?”

  “Oh! they took her and her poor little gal and boy, that wa’n’t no older than you be, and went off with ’em to Canada. The troubles them poor critters went through! Her husband he was away that night; and well he was, else they’d a tied him to a tree and stuck pine slivers into him and sot ’em afire, and cut gret pieces out ‘o his flesh, and filled the places with hot coals and ashes, and all sich kind o’ things they did to them men prisoners, when they catched ‘em. Delily was thankful enough he was away; but they took her and the children off through the ice and snow, jest half clothed and shiverin’; and when her baby cried and worried, as it nat’rally would, the old Indian jest took it by its heels, and dashed its brains out agin a tree, and threw it into the crotch of a tree, and left it dangling there; and then they would mock and laugh at her, and mimic her baby’s crying, and try every way they could to aggravate her. They used to beat and torment her children right before her eyes, and pull their hair out, and make believe that they was goin’ to burn ’em alive, jest for nothin’ but to frighten and worry her.”

  “I wonder,” said I, “she ever got back alive.”

  “Wal, the wimmen in them times hed a sight o’ wear in ‘em. They was resolute, strong, hard-workin’ wimmen. They could all tackle a hoss, or load and fire a gun. They was brought up hard, and they was used to troubles and dangers. It’s jest as folks gets used to things how they takes ‘em. In them days folks was brought up to spect trouble; they didn’t look for no less. Why, in them days the men allers took their guns into the field when they went to hoe corn, and took their guns with ’em to meetin’ Sundays; and the wimmen they kep’ a gun loaded where they knew where to find it; and when trouble come it was jest what they spected, and they was put even with it. That’s the sort o’ wimmen they was. Wal, Delily and her children was brought safe through at last, but they hed a hard time on’t.”

  “Tell us some more stories about Indians, Sam,” we said, with the usual hungry impatience of boys for a story.

  “Wal, let me see,” said Sam, with his hat pushed back and his eyes fixed dreamily on the top of Eliot’s oak, which was now yellow with the sunset glory,-”let me see. I hain’t never told ye about Col. Eph Miller, hev I?”

  “No, indeed. What about him?”

  “Wal, he was took prisoner by the Indians; and they was goin’ to roast him alive arter their fashion, and he gin ’em the slip.”

  “Do tell us all about it.”

  “Wal, you see, Deliverance Scranton over to Sherburne, she’s Col. Eph’s daughter; and she used to hear her father tell about that, and she’s told me time and agin about it. It was this way,-

  “You see, there hedn’t ben no alarm about Indians for some time, and folks hed got to feelin’ kind o’ easy, as folks will. When there don’t nothin’ happen for a good while, and it keeps a goin’ on so, why, you think finally there won’t nothin’ happen; and so it was with Col. Eph and his wife. She told Deliverance that the day before she reely hed forgot all about that there was any Indians in the country; and she’d been out after spruce and wintergreen and hemlock, and got over her brass kettle to bile for beer; and the child’n they brought in lots o’ wild grapes that they gathered out in the woods; and they said when they came home that they thought they see an Indian a lyin’ all along squirmin’ through the bushes, and peekin’ out at ’em like a snake, but they wa’n’t quite sure. Faith, the oldest gal, she was sure she see him quite plain; but ‘Bijah (he was Col. Eph’s oldest boy) he wa’n’t so sure.

  “Anyway, they didn’t think no more about it; and that night they hed prayers and went off to bed.

  “Arterwards, Col. Eph he said he remembered the passage o’ Scriptur’ he read that night; it was, ‘The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.’ He didn’t notice it much when he read it; but he allers spoke of it arterwards as a remarkable providence that that ‘are passage should have come jest so that night.

  “Wal, atween twelve and one o’clock they was waked up by the most awful screechin’ that ever you heard, as if twenty thousand devils was upon ‘em. Mis’ Miller she was out o’ bed in a minit, all standin’ in’. ‘O husband, husband, the Indians are on us!’ says she; and sure enough they was. The children, ‘Bijah and Faith come a runnin’ in. ‘O father. father! what shall we do?’

  “Col. Eph was a man that allers knew in a minit what to do, and he kep’ quite cool. ‘My dear,’ says he to his wife, ‘you take the children, and jest run with ’em right out the buttery-door through the high corn, and run as fast as you can over to your father Stebbins’, and tell him to rouse the town; and Bije,’ says he to the boy, ‘you jest get into the belfry window, and ring the bell with all your might,’ says he. ‘And I’ll stay and fight ’em off till the folks come.’

  “All this while the Indians was a yellin’ and screechin’ and a wavin’ fire-brands front of the house. Col. Eph he stood a lookin’ through a hole in the shutter and a sightin’ his gun while he was a talkin’. He see that they’d been a pilin’ up a great pile o’ dry wood agin the door. But the fust Indian that came up to put fire to’t was shot right down while he was a speakin’.