Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete - Charles M. Skinner
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THE DIVISION OF THE SARANACS
In the middle of the last century a large body of Saranac Indians
occupied the forests of the Upper Saranac through which ran the Indian
carrying-place, called by them the Eagle Nest Trail. Whenever they raided
the Tahawi on the slopes of Mount Tahawus (Sky-splitter), there was a
pleasing rivalry between two young athletes, called the Wolf and the
Eagle, as to which would carry off the more scalps, and the tribe was
divided in admiration of them. There was one who did not share this
liking: an old sachem, one of the wizards who had escaped when the Great
Spirit locked these workers of evil in the hollow trees that stood beside
the trail. In their struggles to escape the less fortunate ones thrust
their arms through the closing bark, and they are seen there, as withered
trunks and branches, to this day. Oquarah had not been softened by this
exhibition of danger nor the qualification of mercy that allowed him
still to exist. Rather he was more bitter when he saw, as he fancied,
that the tribe thought more of the daring and powerful warriors than it
did of the bent and malignant-minded counsellor.
It was in the moon of green leaves that the two young men set off to hunt
the moose, and on the next day the Wolf returned alone. He explained that
in the hunt they had been separated; he had called for hours for his
friend, and had searched so long that he concluded he must have returned
ahead of him. But he was not at the camp. Up rose the sachem with visage
dark. "I hear a forked tongue," he cried. "The Wolf was jealous of the
Eagle and his teeth have cut into his heart."
"The Wolf cannot lie," answered the young man.
"Where is the Eagle?" angrily shouted the sachem, clutching his hatchet.
"The Wolf has said," replied the other.
The old sachem advanced upon him, but as he raised his axe to strike, the
wife of the Wolf threw herself before her husband, and the steel sank
into her brain. The sachem fell an instant later with the Wolf's knife in
his heart, and instantly the camp was in turmoil. Before the day had
passed it had been broken up, and the people were divided into factions,
for it was no longer possible to hold it together in peace. The Wolf,
with half of the people, went down the Sounding River to new
hunting-grounds, and the earth that separated the families was reddened
whenever one side met the other.
Years had passed when, one morning, the upper tribe saw a canoe advancing
across the Lake of the Silver Sky. An old man stepped from it: he was the
Eagle. After the Wolf had left him he had fallen into a cleft in a rock,
and had lain helpless until found by hunters who were on their way to
Canada. He had joined the British against the French, had married a
northern squaw, but had returned to die among the people of his early
love. Deep was his sorrow that his friend should have been accused of
doing him an injury, and that the once happy tribe should have been
divided by that allegation. The warriors and sachems of both branches
were summoned to a council, and in his presence they swore a peace, so
that in the fulness of time he was able to die content. That peace was
always kept.
AN EVENT IN INDIAN PARK
It was during the years when the Saranacs were divided that Howling Wind,
one of the young men of Indian Carry, saw and fell in love with a girl of
the family on Tupper Lake. He quickly found a way to tell his liking, and
the couple met often in the woods and on the shore. He made bold to row
her around the quieter bays, and one moonlight evening he took her to
Devil's Rock, or Devil's Pulpit, where he told her the story of the
place. This was to the effect that the fiend had paddled, on timbers, by
means of his tail, to that rock, and had assembled fish and game about
him in large numbers by telling them that he was going to preach to them,
instead of which moral procedure he pounced upon and ate all that were
within his grasp.
As so often happened in Indian history, the return of these lovers was
seen by a disappointed rival, who had hurried back to camp and secured
the aid of half a dozen men to arrest the favored one as soon as he
should land. The capture was made after a struggle, and Howling Wind was
dragged to the chief's tent for sentence. That sentence was death, and
with a refinement of cruelty that was rare even among the Indians, the
girl was ordered to execute it. She begged and wept to no avail. An axe
was put into her hands, and she was ordered to despatch the prisoner. She
took the weapon; her face grew stern and the tears dried on her cheeks;
her lover, bound to a tree, gazed at her in amazement; his rival watched,
almost in glee. Slowly the girl crossed the open space to her lover. She
raised the tomahawk and at a blow severed the thongs that held him, then,
like a flash, she leaped upon his rival, who had sprung forward to
interfere, and clove his skull with a single stroke. The lovers fled as
only those can fly who run for life. Happily for them, they met a party
from the Carry coming to rescue Howling Wind from the danger to which his
courtship had exposed him, and it was even said that this party entered
the village and by presenting knives and arrows at the breast of the
chief obtained his now superfluous consent to the union of the fugitives.
The pair reached the Carry in safety and lived a long and happy life
together.
THE INDIAN PLUME
Brightest flower that grows beside the brooks is the scarlet blossom of
the Indian plume: the blood of Lenawee. Hundreds of years ago she lived
happily among her brother and sister Saranacs beside Stony Creek, the
Stream of the Snake, and was soon to marry the comely youth who, for the
speed of his foot, was called the Arrow. But one summer the Quick Death
came on the people, and as the viewless devil stalked through the village
young and old fell before him. The Arrow was the first to die. In vain
the Prophet smoked the Great Calumet: its smoke ascending took no shape
that he could read. In vain was the white dog killed to take aloft the
people's sins. But at last the Great Spirit himself came down to the
mountain called the Storm Darer, splendid in lightning, awful in his
thunder voice and robe of cloud. "My wrath is against you for your sins,"
he cried, "and naught but human blood will appease it."
In the morning the Prophet told his message, and all sat silent for a
time. Then Lenawee entered the circle. "Lenawee is a blighted flower,"
she sobbed. "Let her blood flow for her people." And catching a knife
from the Prophet's belt, she ran with it to the stream on which she and
the Arrow had so often floated in their canoe. In another moment her
blood had bedewed the earth. "Lay me with the Arrow," she murmured, and,
smiling in their sad faces, breathed her last. The demon of the quick
death shrank from the spot, and the Great Spirit smiled once more on the
tribe that could produce such heroism. Lenawee's body was placed beside
her lover's, and next morning, where her blood had spilt, the ground was
pure, and on it grew in slender spires a new flower,--the Indian plume:
the transformed blood of sacrifice. The people loved that flower in all
years after. They decked their hair and dresses with it and made a feast
in its honor. When parents taught their children the beauty of
unselfishness they used as its emblem a stalk of Indian plume.
BIRTH OF THE WATER-LILY
Back from his war against the Tahawi comes the Sun, chief of the Lower
Saranacs,--back to the Lake of the Clustered Stars, afterward called, by
dullards, Tupper's Lake. Tall and invincible he comes among his people,
boasting of his victories, Indian fashion, and stirring the scalps that
hang at his breast. "The Eagle screams," he cries. "He greets the chief,
the Blazing Sun. Wayotah has made the Tahawi tremble. They fly from him.
Hooh, hooh! He is the chief." Standing apart with wistful glance stands
Oseetah, the Bird. She loves the strong young chief, but she knows that
another has his promise, and she dares not hope; yet the chief loves her,
and when the feasting is over he follows her footprints to the shore,
where he sees her canoe turning the point of an island. He silently
pursues and comes upon her as she sits waving and moaning. He tries to
embrace her, but she draws apart. He asks her to sing to him; she bids
him begone.
He takes a more imperious tone and orders her to listen to her chief. She
moves away. He darts toward her. Turning on him a face of sorrow, she
runs to the edge of a steep rock and waves him back. He hastens after.
Then she springs and disappears in the deep water. The Sun plunges after
her and swims with mad strength here and there. He calls. There is no
answer. Slowly he returns to the village and tells the people what has
happened. The Bird's parents are stricken and the Sun moans in his sleep.
At noon a hunter comes in with strange tidings: flowers are growing on
the water! The people go to their canoes and row to the Island of Elms.
There, in a cove, the still water is enamelled with flowers, some as
white as snow, filling the air with perfume, others strong and yellow,
like the lake at sunset.
"Explain to us," they cry, turning to the old Medicine of his tribe, "for
this was not so yesterday."
"It is our daughter," he answered. "These flowers are the form she
takes. The white is her purity, the yellow her love. You shall see that
her heart will close when the sun sets, and will reopen at his coming."
And the young chief went apart and bowed his head.
ROGERS'S SLIDE
The shores of Lakes George and Champlain were ravaged by war. Up and down
those lovely waters swept the barges of French and English, and the green
hills rang to the shrill of bugles, the boom of cannon, and the yell of
savages. Fiction and history have been weft across the woods and the
memory of deeds still echoes among the heights. It was at Glen's Falls,
in the cave on the rock in the middle of the river, that the brave Uncas
held the watch with Hawkeye. Bloody Defile and Bloody Pond, between there
and Lake George, take their names from the "Bloody morning scout" sent
out by Sir William Johnson on a September day in 1755 to check Dieskau
until Fort William Henry could be completed. In the action that ensued,
Colonel Williams, founder of Williams College, and Captain Grant, of the
Connecticut line, great-grandfather of the President who bore that name,
were killed. The victims, dead and wounded alike, having been flung into
Bloody Pond, it was thick and red for days, and tradition said that in
after years it resumed its hue of crimson at sunset and held it until
dawn. The captured, who were delivered to the Indians, had little to
hope, for their white allies could not stay their savagery. Blind Rock
was so called because the Indians brought a white man there, and tearing
his eyes out, flung them into embers at the foot of the stone. Captives
were habitually tortured, blazing splinters of pine being thrust into
their flesh, their nails torn out, and their bodies slashed with knives
before they went to the stake. An English prisoner was allowed to run the
gauntlet here. They had already begun to strike at him as he sped between
the lines, when he seized a pappoose, flung it on a fire, and, in the
instant of confusion that followed, snatched an axe, cut the bonds of a
comrade who had been doomed to die, and both escaped.
But the best-known history of this region is that of Rogers's Rock, or
Rogers's Slide, a lofty precipice at the lower end of Lake George. Major
Rogers did not toboggan down this rock in leather trousers, but his
escape was no less remarkable than if he had. On March 13, 1758, while
reconnoitring near Ticonderoga with two hundred rangers, he was surprised
by a force of French and Indians. But seventeen of his men escaped death
or capture, and he was pursued nearly to the brink of this cliff. During
a brief delay among the red men, arising from the loss of his trail, he
had time to throw his pack down the slide, reverse his snow-shoes, and go
back over his own track to the head of a ravine before they emerged from
the woods, and, seeing that his shoe-marks led to the rock, while none
pointed back, they concluded that he had flung himself off and committed
suicide to avoid capture. Great was their disappointment when they saw
the major on the frozen surface of the lake beneath going at a lively
rate toward Fort William Henry. He had gained the ice by way of the cleft
in the rocks, but the savages, believing that he had leaped over the
precipice, attributed his preservation to the Great Spirit and forbore to
fire on him. Unconsciously, he had chosen the best possible place to
disappear from, for the Indians held it in superstitious regard,
believing that spirits haunted the wood and hurled bad souls down the
cliff, drowning them in the lake, instead of allowing them to go to the
happy hunting grounds. The major reached his quarters in safety, and
lived to take up arms against the land of his birth when the colonies
revolted, seventeen years later.
THE FALLS AT COHOES
When Occuna, a young Seneca, fell in love with a girl whose cabin was
near the present town of Cohoes, he behaved very much as Americans of a
later date have done. He picked wild flowers for her; he played on the
bone pipe and sang sentimental songs in the twilight; he roamed the hills
with her, gathering the loose quartz crystals that the Indians believed
to be the tears of stricken deer, save on Diamond Rock, in Lansingburgh,
where they are the tears of Moneta, a bereaved mother and wife; and in
fine weather they went boating on the Mohawk above the rapids. They liked
to drift idly on the current, because it gave them time to gaze into each
other's eyes, and to build air castles that they would live in in the
future. They were suddenly called to a realization of danger one evening,
for the stream had been subtly drawing them on and on until it had them
in its power. The stroke of the paddle failed and the air castles fell in
dismal ruin. Sitting erect they began their death-song in this wise:
Occuna: "Daughter of a mighty warrior, the Manitou calls me hence. I hear
the roaring of his voice; I see the lightning of his glance along the
river; he walks in clouds and spray upon the waters."
The Maiden: "Thou art thyself a warrior, O Occuna. Hath not thine axe
been often bathed in blood? Hath the deer ever escaped thine arrow or the
beaver avoided thy chase? Thou wilt not fear to go into the presence of
Manitou."
Occuna: "Manitou, indeed, respects the strong. When I chose thee from the
women of our tribe I promised that we should live and die together. The
Thunderer calls us now. Welcome, O ghost of Oriska, chief of the
invincible Senecas! A warrior and the daughter of a warrior come to join
you in the feast of the blessed!"
The boat leaped over the falls, and Occuna, striking on the rocks below,
was killed at once; but, as by a miracle, the girl fell clear of them and
was whirled on the seething current to shoal water, where she made her
escape. For his strength and his virtues the dead man was canonized. His
tribe raised him above the regions of the moon, whence he looked down on
the scenes of his youth with pleasure, and in times of war gave pleasant
dreams and promises to his friends, while he confused the enemy with evil
omens. Whenever his tribe passed the falls they halted and with brief
ceremonials commemorated the death of Occuna.
FRANCIS WOOLCOTT'S NIGHT-RIDERS
In Copake, New York, among the Berkshire Hills, less than a century ago,
lived Francis Woolcott, a dark, tall man, with protruding teeth, whose
sinister laugh used to give his neighbors a creep along their spines. He
had no obvious trade or calling, but the farmers feared him so that he
had no trouble in making levies: pork, flour, meal, cider, he could have
what he chose for the asking, for had he not halted horses at the plow so
that neither blows nor commands could move them for two hours? Had he not
set farmer Raught's pigs to walking on their hind legs and trying to
talk? When he shouted "Hup! hup! hup!" to farmer Williams's children, had
they not leaped to the moulding of the parlor wainscot,--a yard above the
floor and only an inch wide,--and walked around it, afterward skipping
like birds from chair-back to chair-back, while the furniture stood as if
nailed to the floor? And was he not the chief of thirteen night-riders,
whose faces no man had seen, nor wanted to see, and whom he sent about
the country on errands of mischief every night when the moon was growing
old? As to moons, had he not found a mystic message from our satellite on
Mount Riga, graven on a meteor?
Horses' tails were tied, hogs foamed at the mouth and walked like men,
cows gave blood for milk. These night-riders met Woolcott in a grove of
ash and chestnut trees, each furnished with a stolen bundle of oat straw,
and these bundles Woolcott changed to black horses when the night had
grown dark enough not to let the way of the change be seen. These horses
could not cross streams of water, and on the stroke of midnight they fell
to pieces and were oaten sheaves once more, but during their time of
action they rushed through woods, bearing their riders safely, and tore
like hurricanes across the fields, leaping bushes, fences, even trees,
without effort. Never could traces be found of them the next day. At last
the devil came to claim his own. Woolcott, who was ninety years old, lay
sick and helpless in his cabin. Clergymen refused to see him, but two or
three of his neighbors stifled their fears and went to the wizard's house
to soothe his dying moments. With the night came storm, and with its
outbreak the old man's face took on such a strange and horrible look that
the watchers fell back in alarm. There was a burst of purple flame at the
window, a frightful peal, a smell of sulphur, and Woolcott was dead. When
the watchers went out the roads were dry, and none in the village had
heard wind, rain, or thunder. It was the coming of the fiend.
POLLY'S LOVER
In about the middle of this century a withered woman of ninety was buried
from a now deserted house in White Plains, New York, Polly Carter the
name of her, but "Crazy Polly" was what the neighbors called her, for she
was eccentric and not fond of company. Among the belongings of her house
was a tall clock, such as relic hunters prize, that ticked solemnly in a
landing on the stairs.
For a time, during the Revolution, the house stood within the British
lines, and as her father was a colonel in Washington's army she was left
almost alone in it. The British officers respected her sex, but they had
an unpleasant way of running in unannounced and demanding entertainment,
in the king's name, which she felt forced to grant. One rainy afternoon
the door was flung open, then locked on the inside, and she found herself
in the arms of a stalwart, handsome lieutenant, who wore the blue. It was
her cousin and fiance. Their glad talk had not been going long when there
came a rousing summons at the door. Three English officers were awaiting
admittance.
Perhaps they had seen Lawrence Carter go into the house, and if caught he
would be killed as a spy. He must be hidden, but in some place where they
would not think of looking. The clock! That was the place. With a laugh
and a kiss the young man submitted to be shut in this narrow quarter, and
throwing his coat and hat behind some furniture the girl admitted the
officers, who were wet and surly and demanded dinner. They tramped about
the best room in their muddy boots, talking loudly, and in order to break
the effect of the chill weather they passed the brandy bottle freely.
Polly served them with a dinner as quickly as possible, for she wanted to
get them out of the house, but they were in no mood to go, and the bottle
passed so often that before the dinner was over they were noisy and tipsy
and were using language that drove Polly from the room.
At last, to her relief, she heard them preparing to leave the house, but
as they were about to go the senior officer, looking up at the landing,
now dim in the paling light, said to one of the others, "See what time it
is." The officer addressed, who happened to be the drunkest of the party,
staggered up the stair and exclaimed, "The d---d thing's stopped." Then,
as if he thought it a good joke, he added, "It'll never go again."
Drawing his sabre he gave the clock a careless cut and ran the blade
through the panel of the door; after this the three passed out. When
their voices had died in distant brawling, Polly ran to release her
lover. Something thick and dark was creeping from beneath the clock-case.
With trembling fingers she pulled open the door, and Lawrence, her lover,
fell heavily forward into her arms, dead. The officer was right: the
clock never went again.
CROSBY, THE PATRIOT SPY
It was at the Jay house, in Westchester, New York, that Enoch Crosby met
Washington and offered his services to the patriot army. Crosby was a
cobbler, and not a very thriving one, but after the outbreak of
hostilities he took a peddler's outfit on his back and, as a
non-combatant, of Tory sympathies, he obtained admission through the
British lines. After his first visit to head quarters it is certain that
he always carried Sir Henry Clinton's passport in the middle of his pack,
and so sure were his neighbors that he was in the service of the British
that they captured him and took him to General Washington, but while his
case was up for debate he managed to slip his handcuffs, which were not
secure, and made off. Clinton, on the other hand, was puzzled by the
unaccountable foresight of the Americans, for every blow that he prepared
to strike was met, and he lost time and chance and temper. As if the
suspicion of both armies and the hatred of his neighbors were not enough
to contend against, Crosby now became an object of interest to the
Skinners and Cowboys, who were convinced that he was making money,
somehow, and resolved to have it.
The Skinners were camp-followers of the American troops and the Cowboys a
band of Tories and renegade British. Both factions were employed,
ostensibly, in foraging for their respective armies, but, in reality, for
themselves, and the farmers and citizens occupying the neutral belt north
of Manhattan Island had reason to curse them both impartially. While
these fellows were daring thieves, they occasionally got the worst of it,
even in the encounters with the farmers, as on the Neperan, near
Tarrytown, where the Cowboys chased a woman to death, but were afterward
cut to pieces by the enraged neighbors. Hers is but one of the many
ghosts that haunt the neutral ground, and the croaking of the birds of
ill luck that nest at Raven rock is blended with the cries of her dim
figure. Still, graceless as these fellows were, they affected a loyalty
to their respective sides, and were usually willing to fight each other
when they met, especially for the plunder that was to be got by fighting.
In October, 1780, Claudius Smith, "king of the Cowboys," and three
scalawag sons came to the conclusion that it was time for Crosby's money
to revert to the crown, and they set off toward his little house one
evening, sure of finding him in, for his father was seriously ill. The
Smiths arrived there to find that the Skinners had preceded them on the
same errand, and they recognized through the windows, in the leader of
the band, a noted brigand on whose head a price was laid. He was
searching every crack and cranny of the room, while Crosby, stripped to
shirt and trousers, stood before the empty fireplace and begged for that
night to be left alone with his dying father.
"To hell with the old man!" roared the Skinner. "Give up your gold, or
we'll put you to the torture," and he significantly whirled the end of a
rope that he carried about his waist. At that moment the faint voice of
the old man was heard calling from another room.
"Take all that I have and let me go!" cried Crosby, and turning up a
brick in the fire-place he disclosed a handful of gold, his life savings.
The leader still tried to oppose his exit, but Crosby flung him to the
floor and rushed away to his father, while the brigand, deeming it well
to delay rising, dug his fingers into the hollow and began to extract the
sovereigns. At that instant four muskets were discharged from without:
there was a crash of glass, a yell of pain, and four of the Skinners
rolled bleeding on the floor; two others ran into the darkness and
escaped; their leader, trying to follow, was met at the threshold by the
Smiths, who clutched the gold out of his hand and pinioned his elbows in
a twinkling.
"I thought ye'd like to know who's got ye," said old Smith, peering into
the face of the astonished and crestfallen robber, "for I've told ye many
a time to keep out of my way, and now ye've got to swing for getting into
it."
Within five minutes of the time that he had got his clutch on Crosby's
money the bandit was choking to death at the end of his own rope, hung
from the limb of an apple-tree, and, having secured the gold, the Cowboys
went their way into the darkness. Crosby soon made his appearance in the
ranks of the Continentals, and, though they looked askant at him for a
time, they soon discovered the truth and hailed him as a hero, for the
information he had carried to Washington from Clinton's camp had often
saved them from disaster. He had survived attack in his own house through
the falling out of rogues, and he survived the work and hazard of war
through luck and a sturdy frame. Congress afterwards gave him a sum of
money larger than had been taken from him, for his chief had commended
him in these lines: "Circumstances of political importance, which
involved the lives and fortunes of many, have hitherto kept secret what
this paper now reveals. Enoch Crosby has for years been a faithful and
unrequited servant of his country. Though man does not, God may reward
him for his conduct. GEORGE WASHINGTON."