three sides of agiochook

Front matter

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THE ons LONG House oF THE SIX wat La

Dedication

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TO THE CONNECTICUT RIVER

ConTENTS

PROLOGUE: THE FEUD

CHAPTER

FIRE OVER ST. FRANCIS

Prologue

ll WAS in dim and distant days, obscure and far away amidst the shadow of dead years, that there arose between the Wobanaki and the Kanienga whom they knew as Maguaks a bitter and enduring feud. As yet no white men had come to fell the stately pines of the forest to make clearings and to erect log cabins, and the peaks of Agiochook and Kta-Aden rose sheer and craggy above the thickly wooded lands.

Men spoke in poetry in those days. To each moon they assigned a name, and to each season they set a symbol. Men also had symbols by which they and their families were known, figures of animals which they emblazoned upon wigwams and shields, and tattooed upon their bodies. The swift of foot had for his emblem the deer, the mighty killer was the wolf, the wise man was the serpent, and the man of lofty thought and purpose was the eagle.

I

Now among the Wobanaki, in course of time, that clan which bore the Tortoise became the most famous, while among the Kanienga the warriors of greatest renown were of the family which made the figure of the Wolf their emblem and escutcheon.

Near the close of a warm day of midsummer there emerged from the unbroken forest the figure of a man who stood for a moment poised upon the green sward that marked the eastern bank of the Kweni-tek, or Long River, that ran its course between the lands of the Wobanaki and the lands of the Maguaks. He was brown of body, bare to the waist, his lower limbs encased in deerskin deftly cut and shaped. Upon his feet he wore soft moccasins that might not betray his presence in the forest; the head was bare, save where at the top was a cluster of dark locks wound into a braid, through which was thrust the feather of an eagle. Upon his bare chest was tattooed the emblem of his house, the proud heraldry of the clan of the Tortoise; and he was armed in such fashion as to uphold his claim to dignity and power, the long sharp stone knife in his belt, the bow and quiver of arrows across his back, in his hand the tmahigan, or axe, consisting of a heavy, edged stone bound to a stout stick with thongs of deerhide.

Noiselessly he had come, noiselessly he moved about, sweeping with his keen gaze the banks of the stream north and south. Suddenly the figure straightened, became rigid, its attention fixed on a little thicket across the river.

The Feud 3

With moistened fingers he tested the direction of the wind; found it favorable for stalking, and then, keeping always a clump of green between himself and his prey, he slipped down into the water and cautiously made his way through the shallows until he came to the depths. Hesitating only to raise the bow until its string was above the current, he pushed himself into the flood and swam vigorously though quietly until his feet touched bottom again on the other side. He then shook himself free of water and released the bowstring from his shoulders. To this he fitted an arrow, drew the hide taut, and then began to move forward like a snake in the direction of the thicket. Luck was with him for his prey had not fled, nor did it suspect the presence of an enemy.

The prey was a magnificent northland moose. It had come down the valley out of its usual haunts in order to find untouched patches of grass and edible shrub leafage. Following along the meadows by the water’s edge, it had taken refuge in the slight thickets whenever danger threatened. But now that danger, unsuspected and unseen, had come upon it. The hunter’s bow twanged. In an instant, rising magnificently upon its haunches, the animal dashed through the trees and made for the river by way of the small meadow upon its brink, the feathered tip of the arrow protruding from a wound that lay close to the noble heart. Near the river’s edge the moose suddenly hesitated and tottered.

But before the hunter had time to string a second dart there leaped out from a clump of bushes on the farther side of the open space another warrior also with a bow in his hands. He came speeding along so fast that the first man scarcely saw him until both stood over the great quivering form. Their gaze, hitherto riveted upon the game, now in a flash leaped upon each other; the moment for the kill had come, and each saw the image of death in the other’s eye.

The second hunter was of greater stature than his rival. His face was round and full, and his thick masses of black hair were bound together and knotted on his head. He was much more richly clad than the Wobanaki, for his deerskin garments were fringed and ornamented with bead and shell, as were his moccasins. Nor was he naked to the waist but was wrapped closely in a finely woven blanket cloth, colored blue with the juice of berries. His weapons were better also, his bow stouter, and his arrows longer.

After a time he spoke, and by now the great moose had ceased struggling and lay still. “Brother, why do you hunt in our lands?”

Though the language he used was but slightly familiar, the Wobanaki read the signs he made correctly.

“He came from our forests.” He pointed across the river. “I swam after him.” The other understood him in the same fashion.

“He lies upon our land, and he is ours.”

“By our law we have it that a man may have that game which he starts upon his own land. And besides, are not both banks of the river ours? Here our fathers

The Feud 5 kindled a fire and made this a hunting ground forever.”

“You are Wobanaki?”

“Of the Penabscot tribe.”

“And I a Kanienga of the race of the Wolf.” He threw off the upper covering and there upon his chest was the outline of a wolf.

“Maguak!” exclaimed the other. “That is the tongue you speak! . . . Iam of the clan of Plawinno the Tortoise. Yet, brother, the kill is mine. For many days have I pursued him; for days I followed the Soko through the great cleft in the hills below Agiochook. Now I will summon my brothers and we will take the carcass away. But did not our fathers once fight side by side against the Talligewi, those who built rude mounds? Shall we not smoke, in peace, together?”

“What our fathers have done, they have done,” replied the Maguak, suddenly. “No smoke shall rise. The moose is mine. It lies upon my hunting ground. I shall take off the hide for moccasins and clothing, and cut apart the quarters for food for the Long House, and there will be rejoicing.”

At once the Plawinno let slip the bow from his fingers and seized the handle of his tmahigan; that one who called himself Molsem also slipped the bow and heavy quiver aside and seized the axe with its metal blade. In an instant they were upon each other, circling, striking, fending off blows and leaping forward to attack, or back out of danger’s way. He who bore the Tortoise was the lighter and quicker, he could deal two blows to the other’s one, yet he feared to step in and strike with all his force lest the Maguak land a blow; for the Maguak had weight and power on his side and the metal of his weapon gave him much advantage.

But before they had closed in for the first exchange of blows, both combatants had drawn their knives from their belts and stood ready to deal out death with either hand. And whirling and twisting and swaying back and forth, they soon found a mark for their knives, and the blood began to flow.

Thus they fought silently while the river ran its course close beside them. Behind them and across the gravel bars, the long lines of forest shut out the world from their sight. Sweet was the air with the fragrance that the pines wafted abroad, bright were the colors of the flowers that grew along the fringes of the forest, and lovely were the songs of birds that floated down from overhead.

Now it seemed as if the Wobanaki had broken away and was about to land a blow; now the Maguak had overpowered him with his greater strength, and drove at him with the heavy axe and buried it in his shoulder. Yet tearing himself away with indomitable courage the Wobanaki crouched for a moment to quell his agony and regain strength of heart to continue the attack. This attained, he leaped forward with axe upraised, desperate, regardless of what might come to him, and pressed hard upon his opponent who stood coolly waiting. There was already a smile of triumph upon the Maguak’s lips; he needed but to ward off the blow so slowly coming, for the Wobanaki’s blood was now red-

The Feud 7 dening the earth, and then with knife or tmahigan he would end the affray and begin to take the hide from the moose. The cry of victory was already in his heart; the other lurching forward, the Tortoise gleaming amidst the sweat and blood like a living thing, put all his remaining strength into the last desperate blow. It must fall short—that, anyone could see—and the Maguak was about to close in for the finish, when suddenly the stone head of the Wobanaki’s tmahigan slipped from its tether, where the thongs of deerhide had become weakened by the copper weapon of his opponent. The Maguak saw what was coming, and prepared to dodge, the shout of victory already on his lips changing to a shriek of dismay; the sharp stone hurtled through the air with the speed of an arrow. It caught him fairly upon the temple with a force that tore the flesh and broke the bone; and as he fell, the Wobanaki leaped upon him with his knife to finish the work which the axe-head had so effectively begun. The Maguak, seeing in the hate-maddened eyes of the other the shadow of his own doom, exclaimed:

“You have won, Wobanaki; but Matsi Niwasku, the God of Evil, has come to your aid. I die, but my sons shall avenge me. As long as there is a war chief in the - Long House, as long as the sons of the Kanienga dwell by the rivers, so long shall there be blood upon your house. The curse of our tribe of the Wolf is upon the tribe of the Tortoise. So shall it be tomorrow, and so shall it be forever!”

But scarce heeding all this, and flushed with the victory that had come so unexpectedly, the Wobanaki drove home his blue flint knife into the enemy’s heart. And thereupon the river and the forest and the distant hills rang with the wild cry of the killer.

Chapter One

Pinoy Lhe ol ehRANCIS lls THAT fateful fall of 1759, the Wobanaki scout and interpreter Ayonba, whose family was the Moz or moose, came hurrying down the forest trail from the cities, into the Wilderness about the great lake where the Alsigontek or St. Francis River meets the Ousogenaisibo, which the white men call the St. Lawrence. He was a young man, this Ayonba, of the purest Wobanaki blood; yet since his adoption by a French family and his studies at the Jesuit schools, he had become familiar with much of the culture and language of the white man, and on his coming of age had been of great service to his brothers in the Wilderness, about whom was swiftly closing in the destructive civilization of the European.

Ayonba was garbed for Wilderness travel, and although the nights were already full of chills he carried 9 only a single blanket over his deerskin garments. His moccasins made no noise as he sped swiftly along.

Upon his face there was a strained, troubled expression. It was quite evident that he bore news of considerable import, its tenor being threatening or bad.

Dusk came upon him suddenly, for the nights were lengthening now in these northern forests, and the slight wind that rustled through the red and yellow leaves told of the approach of winter and snow. Yet had there been time to contemplate the scenes about him before darkness fell, and feast his forest eyes upon the rich hues and ripened fruits of the autumn, he might have felt that sudden uplifting of heart that comes to the observer amid the symbols that betoken the death of the year; for in this season the earth seems to pause and offer its beauties to man. For such things, however, Ayonba had no time nor could he dismiss the urgency of his mission.

“Shall I be too late?” he wondered to himself as he sped along. “With N’Kebak and Molian infested by Anglak and Bostoniak, will not their troops already have come hither to destroy Odanak which they call St. Francis? Would that I might have come by canoe.”

The canoe trails, however, were closed and the river was forbidden since that General Wolfe had moved his fleet along the shores. Everywhere the Wobanaki were fired upon, did they but show themselves upon the banks, and it would be suicide to attempt a trip by water even cautiously and at night, for there were allied

Fire Over St. Francis II

Maguaks, or Mohawks, with the English who would spy out the movements of their Indian brothers.

It was dark now, yet the speeding feet kept to the familiar path. “May it be that the rumors I heard were false,” his musings continued. “Yet the authority is too good to be doubted. Spies said that a large body was already upon the way, and my people in their camps little realize what peril lies over them. It is for me alone to save them if I can. I might have done so had I but eight hours’ start.” His silent jog-jog-jog went on steadily; the golden stars looked down over the pinetree tops and here and there in the forest could be heard the occasional howling of some wild animal that had smelt out the human intruder or had sensed the almost imperceptible beating of his soft moccasins on the pine-needle-strewn path.

It was close to midnight when in a clearing that bordered upon a wide river his sharp eyes caught the suggestion of a red glow in the sky. Coming to an immediate stop he gazed with anxiety upon the phenomenon for several minutes, then quickening his pace he descended the stream a little way until he came to the place where the trail met a ford. The water was low, and he skipped across from sandbar to sandbar with such casual attention to his footing that one might know that every inch of the journey was familiar to him. His senses were not upon the ground beneath him, they were riveted upon that glow in the sky.

Beyond the stream the trail wound its way through a dense thicket, and then high trees, and finally emerged

I2 Three Sides of Agiochook on the slope of a hill. Thence it ran straight as an arrow up to the top. Ayonba scarcely slackened his pace on the upgrade but seemed to fly with long striding steps until he stood upon a flat rock that marked the top. Once here he stopped again and looked ahead.

The glow in the sky had not diminished. But the cause of it now seemed revealed. Little tongues of flame and up-rising sparks now gave the clue to location and possibly to origin. It was this latter that perplexed Ayonba for a moment.

That stoicism which has been attributed to the brown or often mistakenly called “red” race, grew out of the exhibition of heroic coolness, and brave indifference to pain or death which were part of the philosophy of the native American; yet in many respects the Indian was one of the most emotional beings on earth. He was easily swayed by music, by rhythm, by worship, by love, by friendship; and in this instance instead of displaying the statue-like indifference with which his race has been characterized by many writers, Ayonba was visibly swept by emotions; at first apprehension, almost terror, then by anxiety, then by doubt, and finally by curiosity. For, if, as at first he had suspected, his native village had been surprised and burnt, then the flames would be arising from a much larger area, and the reflection on the sky would be greater. As it was, the flames rose to a single peak, the volume of fire neither increased nor diminished. The expression on the Indian’s face changed again from curiosity to certainty, and then to something of disfavor bordering upon disgust.

Fire Over St. Francis 13

“Dancing!” he exclaimed, “and death lies close upon them. If I can but get there in time!” And he hurried ahead again.

What Ayonba had perceived was the light of a fire about which the whole tribe was dancing. It might have been the celebration of a wedding, it might have been the rejoicing at a bountiful return from the Harvest, it might have been the arrival of young men from war, or older men from the hunt with supplies of game. The sight caused him some relief, after all, since it proved beyond a doubt that no disaster had befallen his brethren. Yet it irked him to find men rejoicing foolishly and in ignorance of events when death and disaster lay so close about them.

And although he had been able to see these flames from a distance and in his nature craft ascertain what manner of fire they betokened, the distance ahead was considerable, and the trail wound in and out for many miles, tacking, as in the manner of a ship, along streams and swamps that had few fords, and circling hills that lay directly in his path.

Thus the light of dawn was growing upon the world when he mounted the last hill of his journey and looked down directly upon the village.

And then suddenly it became the most cruel dawn that his eyes were ever to look upon. For out of the forest there emerged, in the garb of those deerskinclad Rangers, a band of men armed with rifle, sword, knife, and hatchet. On the run they dashed into the village, where with heaviness holding down their eyelids the warriors slept in their wigwams, where the dying embers of the night’s triumphant fire sent a wraith of smoke twisting into the air in a slender graywhite column. There was no need to call to the men of the Wobanaki nation, the air was at once filled with the fearful howling of their opponents.

Foremost was that scourge of the frontier, that redoubtable Ranger, Robert Rogers, who had led his men hither through wilderness and forest from the battlements of Ticonderoga. Shouting for the others to follow, he leaped upon the first Indian, who staggered sleepily out of his wigwam, and cut him down with a blow of the tomahawk. In a moment the whole company of Rangers was upon the enemy, active, alert, vengeful, savage; but the Indians were lethargic and drugged with sleep, and their heads were heavy and stupid with dreams of last night’s victory dance. Shots now rang out, and the clash of steel and the shouts of the triumphant and the groans of the dying were to be heard on every side.

Ayonba sat crouched behind a stone watching the massacre which he had come too late to prevent. Unarmed and helpless, his presence would have done the inhabitants no good. Those who were to awake were all on their feet by this time, and those who were not to awake lay sweltering in their blood in the village street or were hidden by the flap or door of wigwam or hovel.

They were dashing into all the houses now and dragging out the inhabitants, men, women and children.

Fire Over St. Francis 15

Here and there torches had been applied to the rough dwellings, and some thirty or forty of them were smouldering or caught in leaping flames. One company had stormed the church, that pride of Brother Auberry, and amidst the smoke and flames now pouring out of sacristy and nave, came black demoniac figures loaded with plunder—the candlesticks from the altar, and that silver image of the Virgin of Chartres, the replica of the wood Madonna in the crypt of the French Cathedral, the image before which the Wobanaki had said their prayers nigh on to a century of years.

Were there occasion for this slaughter, it might have been the ghastly trophies of war that stood about on poles, those scalps taken in battle by the warriors of St. Francis. And yet those wars had never been waged for gain or even revenge. Helpless tools the Indians had been in this struggle between French and English for the possession of the New World. And yet they were the ones who paid the dearest price.

For an hour now, the slaughter and pillage and burning had gone on. The parish church which had housed all the records and chronicles of years was but a heap of ashes. Of all the wigwams that had stood so short a time before, only three had escaped the ravages of the flames. In the woods might be heard the cries of the wounded and dying, and here and there, crashing through the brush, came pursuers and pursued fighting and defending. And if the drops of sweat, wrung by the sight of this hideous madness, that lay upon Ayonba’s brow, could have been seen aright, they would have been seen as drops of living blood.

As the morning came on, the madness seemed to die out of the hearts of the pillagers, and they withdrew a little to survey the work of devastation; and there was not much time for this, for that Mohawk who had led them to the place informed them now that a band of Indians and Frenchmen were close upon them. So, gathering up what they could of plunder and captives, they retreated along by the river’s bank toward the south, leaving the scene of horror and destruction behind, and soon all sounds of their going were lost. But Ayonba springing from his place of concealment dashed into the ruined village to see if there were those whom he could aid. Alas, the conquerors had done their work too well; there seemed to be none left living or breathing or stirring.

Then all at once he heard a cry. He dashed in its direction. A sharper exclamation than any that had gone before now passed his lips. There upon the ground near the door of a wigwam lay an Indian woman, beautiful in face and figure, and in her clasped arms was huddled a child of perhaps some six months of age. It was from the child that the cry had come. The woman was already dead.

Quickly, yet cautiously, as if fearing the return of some of Rogers’ Rangers, he took the child up in his own bare arms. It was a boy child, white, with yellow hair and blue eyes; yet once again scrutinizing in instant surprise the mother’s face, he saw in her the unmistak-

Fire Over St. Francis iy)

able features of the Wobanaki; and then in recognition he muttered to himself the name “Louise Gill.” There was too much of horror abroad to feel twangs of anguish at this new piteous spectacle, the dead mother and the living child, and his thoughts ran at once to the saving of the baby. Wrapping his blanket about it he hastened back into the forest a short distance from the village and deposited the bundle safe within the shelter of some trees. His own people were dead these many years and he thanked God that none of them had lived to see this, therefore he had no special relatives to succor; but there burned within him a desire to protect the body of the dead woman, and as soon as the child was quieted and slept he betook himself cautiously back to the village.

The conquerors had not returned, and the fires still smouldered in the ruins. But when he looked for the woman he had seen, that Louise Gill whom he had known from childhood, he was amazed and thunderstruck when he could find no traces of her. She was dead, of that he had been sure—there was no motion of her heart, and a bullet wound had let the life-blood out. However she was gone! And gone in a village where no man survived, where there was no life. No wild beast would have ventured in among the smoking ruins to carry her off, and there was now no sign of the Rangers. It would have been unlike ranger tactics for any of them to linger behind. And yet the body was gone!

It was not in any of the smoking ruins; it was not in any of the three standing hovels. It was not upon the river bank, it was not at the forest edge. In earth, sky, and river, there was no sign, and in a moment it came to Ayonba that his duty was to the living and not to the dead. And although he was full of wonder and his heart hungered to know the mystery, he hastened back to the tree where he had left the child, hoping that it had not disappeared as well. No, there it was sleeping sweetly.

Gathering it up, the Indian headed back into the forest and turned along the trail whence he had come. Ahead of him the golden day was striking the distant hills with glorious beams of light, the air was becoming warm, and the beauteous autumn foliage lay before his eyes. In nature all was sweet and clean and full of color; behind him, amidst the work of man, all was pall and misery and desolation and death.

CHAPTER Two (Gaerous golden spring of 1775!

How fiercely through the hearts of men in the Connecticut Valley ran its throbbing impulses of new life and great purpose! With what power it released the passion for freedom and the mad desire for new human rights. Across the New Hampshire Grants there sounded the beating of many drums, the alarm guns broke the stillness of the Wilderness air, and from the Upper Cohos clear to the Massachusetts line, men and boys were on the march, singly or in groups, their flintlocks over their shoulders, their powder-horns and cartridge boxes at their belts. For uniforms they wore the coarsest homespun, or perhaps farmers’ frocks tucked into ragged trousers, or even meal bags cut into

shirts and legs and held together with string. Yet in all the world no men could shoot straighter than these, no men were more accustomed to the hardy fields of hunting and war. Already their brethren at Lexington and Concord had made the first stand and had routed what men said were the finest troops in Europe.

On a bright May afternoon of this year three youths sat talking near the stump of a huge felled pine in the northwest corner of a partly cleared space called “the Green” in the town of Hanover, in the province of New Hampshire. Two of them were of dark complexion, hair, and eyes; the third, light, with yellow hair and blue eyes. All wore clothing of the humblest make, homespun jackets and knickerbockers, with rough wool shirts and stockings, and boots that possessed anything but shape, knocked out of poorly prepared leather by some itinerant cobbler.

The warm rays of the sun fell slantingly upon some curious-looking buildings, opposite to the youths and on the farther side of the Green which must have comprised some seven acres. These buildings, seemingly in a cluster, were roughly hewn and unpainted, yet their size indicated them as something more than dwellinghouses. One of them, the largest, extending north and south and facing east upon the road to Lebanon, the next town down the river, must have contained some twenty rooms. It was two stories high. The second, a little to the north and facing the first building, had the general gaunt air of a bleak meeting house, while a short distance away, on the slope of the hill that rose in the background, was a private, two-story house of not

An Altercation at Dr. Wheelock’s aT unpleasant appearance beneath whose gambrel roof were quarters for students or servants; one might have called this a “manor” house by comparison with the others. It was in fact called a mansion.

There were other rude buildings about the cleared ground; one of them, from the clamor that came forth, announced itself as a blacksmith’s shop. It lay off to the northeast, though still on the Green. South of the open space was a rather neat farmhouse; at the southwest corner was Captain Storr’s Tavern, and on the north a farmhouse and large barn, not far from the spot where the three were seated. There were other small buildings about: farms, houses, and a long low structure near the Tavern, from which the sound of sawing emerged and the smell of freshly cut pine, proclaiming it to be a carpenter’s workshop.

This Green with the buildings upon it and about it, and the sloping hillside that burgeoned high with pine trees for the King’s navy, formed the physical part of Dartmouth College and Moor’s Charity School, moved north some five years before into the Wilderness from its original site in Lebanon, Connecticut. There, as the Indian Charity School, it had served its Indians and white students since that day in 1743 when the Mohegan, Samson Occom, knocked at his master’s door and begged to be allowed to carry on his studies. This large building here was the College, where the students lived and were gathered in classes; the second building was the College Hall, the first dwelling-place of Dr. Wheelock in Hanover and recently enlarged for a