 | CHAPTER VII. The chainbearer, or, The Littlepage manuscripts |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
With yon red hunter of the deer?
Of gentle mien and shape, she seems
For civil halls design'd;
Yet with the stately savage walks,
As she were of his kind.”
Pinckney.
I made little stay in Albany, but, giving the direction to
the Patent to the axe-men, left it the very day of our arrival.
There were very few public conveyances in that early day,
and I was obliged to hire a wagon to transport Jaap and
myself, with our effects, to Ravensnest. A sort of dull calm
had come over the country, after the struggles of the late
war; but one interest in it appearing to be alive and very
active. That interest, fortunately for me, appeared to be
the business of “land-hunting” and “settling.” Of this, I
had sufficient proof in Albany itself; it being difficult to
enter the principal street of that town, and not find in it
more or less of these adventurers, the emblems of whose
pursuit were the pack and the axe. Nine out of ten came
from the eastern or New England States; then the most
peopled, while they were not very fortunate in either soil or
climate.
We were two days in reaching Ravensnest, a property
which I had owned for several years, but which I now saw
for the first time. My grandfather had left a sort of an agent
on the spot, a person of the name of Jason Newcome, who
was of my father, the general's age, and who had once been
a schoolmaster in the neighbourhood of Satanstoe. This
agent had leased extensively himself, and was said to be the
occupant of the only mills, of any moment, on the property.
With him a correspondence had been maintained; and once
or twice during the war my father had managed to have an
interview with this representative of his and my interests.
As for myself, I was now to see him for the first time. We
in the agency had induced me to give Mr. Newcome notice
that it was my intention to make a change in the management
of the property.
Any one who is familiar with the aspect of things in what
is called a “new country” in America, must be well aware
it is not very inviting. The lovers of the picturesque can
have little satisfaction in looking at even the finest natural
scenery at such moments; the labour that has been effected
usually having done so much to mar the beauties of nature,
without having yet had time to supply the deficiencies by
those of art. Piles of charred or half-burned logs; fields
covered with stumps, or ragged with stubs; fences of the
rudest sorts, and filled with brambles; buildings of the
meanest character; deserted clearings; and all the other
signs of a state of things in which there is a manifest and
constant struggle between immediate necessity and future
expediency, are not calculated to satisfy either the hopes or
the tastes. Occasionally a different state of things, however,
under circumstances peculiarly favourable, does exist;
and it may be well to allude to it, lest the reader form but a
single picture of this transition state of American life. When
the commerce of the country is active, and there is a demand
for the products of the new lands, a settlement often
presents a scene of activity in which the elements of a
thriving prosperity make themselves apparent amid the
smoke of fallows, and the rudeness of border life. Neither,
however, was the case at Ravensnest, when I first visited
the place; though the last was, to a certain extent, its condition
two or three years later, or after the great European
war brought its wheat and ashes into active demand.
I found but few more signs of cultivation between the
point where I left the great northern road and the bounds
of the patent, than had been found by my father, as he has
described them to me in his first visit, which took place a
quarter of a century earlier than this of mine. There was
one log tavern, it is true, in the space mentioned; but it
afforded nothing to drink but rum, and nothing to eat but
salted pork and potatoes, the day I stopped there to dine.
But there were times and seasons when, by means of venison,
wild fowl and fish, a luxurious board might have been
nevertheless, was apparent from the remarks she made
while I was at table.
“You are lucky, major Littlepage,” she said, “in not
having come among us in one of what I call our `starving
times' — and awful times they be, if a body may say what
she thinks on 'em.”
“Starvation is a serious matter at any time,” I answered,
“though I did not know you ever were reduced to such
difficulties in a country as rich and abundant as this.”
“Of what use is riches and abundance if a man will do
nothing but fish and shoot? I've seen the day when there
wasn't a mouthful to eat, in this very house, but a dozen or
two of squabs, a string of brook-trout, and maybe a deer,
or a salmon from one of the lakes.”
“A little bread would have been a welcome addition to
such a meal.”
“Oh! as for bread, I count that for nothin'. We always
have bread and potatoes enough; but I hold a family to be
in a desperate way, when the mother can see the bottom of
the pork-barrel. Give me children that's raised on good
sound pork, afore all the game in the country. Game's
good as a relish, and so's bread; but pork is the staff of
life! To have good pork, a body must have good corn;
and good corn needs hoeing; and a hoe isn't a fish-pole, or
a gun. No, my children I calkerlate to bring up on pork,
with just as much bread and butter as they may want!”
This was American poverty as it existed in 1784. Bread,
butter and potatoes, ad libitum; but little pork, and no tea.
Game in abundance in its season; but the poor man who
lived on game was supposed to be keeping just as poor an
establishment as the epicure in town who gives a dinner to
his brethren, and is compelled to apologize for there being
no game in the market. Curious to learn more from this
woman, I pursued the discourse.
“There are countries, I have read,” I continued, “in
which the poor do not taste meat of any sort, not even game,
from the beginning of the year to its end; and, sometimes,
not even bread.”
“Well, I'm no great hand for bread, as I said afore,
and should eat no great matter of it, so long as I could get
had said; “but, I shouldn't like to be without it altogether;
and the children, especially, do love to have it with their
butter. Living on potatoes alone must be a wild animal
sort of life!”
“Very tame animals do it, and that from dire necessity.”
“Is there any law ag'in their using bread and meat?”
“No other law than the one which forbids their using
that which is the property of another.”
“Good land!” This is a very common American expression
among the women—“Good land! Why don't they
go to work and get in crops, so they might live a little?”
“Simply because they have no land to till. The land
belongs to others, too.”
“I should think they might hire, if they couldn't buy.
It's about as good to hire as it is to buy—some folks (folk)
think it's better. Why don't they take land on shares, and
live?”
“Because land, itself, is not to be had. With us, land is
abundant; we have more of it than is necessary, or than
will be necessary, for ages to come; perhaps it would be
better for our civilization were there less of it; but, in the
countries of which I speak, there are more people than there
is land.”
“Well, land is a good thing, I admit, and it's right there
should be an owner to it; yet, there are folks who would
rather squat than buy or hire, any day. Squatting comes
nat'ral to 'em.”
“Are there many squatters in this part of the country?”
The woman looked a little confused, and she did not answer
me, until she had taken time to reflect on what she
should say.
“Some folks call us squatters, I s'pose,” was the reluctant
answer, “but I do not. We have bought the betterments
of a man who hadn't much of a title, I think likely; but, as
we bought his betterments fairly, Mr. Tinkum,”—that was
the husband's name, —“is of opinion that we live under
title, as it is called. What do you say to it, major Littlepage?”
“I can only say that nought will produce nought; nothing,
nothing. If the man of whom you purchased owned
his, were not his; and in purchasing them, you purchased
what he did not own.”
“Well, it's no great shakes, if he had'nt any right, sin'
Tinkum only gi'n an old saddle, that warn't worth two dollars,
and part of a set of single harness, that I'd defy a
conjurer to make fit any mule, for the whull right. One
year's rent of this house is worth all put together, and that
twice over, if the truth must be said; and we've been in it,
now, seven years. My four youngest were all born under
this blessed roof, such as it is!”
“In that case, you will not have much reason to complain,
when the real owner of the soil appears to claim it.
The betterments came cheap, and they will go as cheap.”
“That's just it; though I don't call ourselves much of
squatters, a'ter all, seein' we have paid suthin' for the betterments.
They say an old nail, paid in due form, will make
a sort of title in the highest court of the State. I'm sure
the laws should be considerate of the poor.”
“Not more so than of the rich. The laws should be equal
and just; and the poor are the last people who ought to
wish them otherwise, since they are certain to be the losers
when any other principle governs. Rely on it, my good
woman, the man who is for ever preaching the rights of the
poor is at bottom a rogue, and means to make that cry a
stalking-horse for his own benefit; since nothing can serve
the poor but severe justice. No class suffers so much by a
departure from the rule, as the rich have a thousand other
means of attaining their ends, when the way is left clear to
them, by setting up any other master than the right.”
“I don't know but it may be so; but I don't call ourselves
squatters. There is dreadful squatters about here,
though, and on your lands too, by the tell.”
“On my lands! I am sorry to hear it, for I shall feel it
a duty to get rid of them. I very well know that the great
abundance of land that we have in the country, its little
comparative value, and the distance at which the owners
generally reside from their estates, have united to render the
people careless of the rights of those who possess real property;
and I am prepared to view things as they are among
I shall not tolerate squatters.”
“Well, by all I hear, I think you'll call old Andries, the
Chainbearer, a squatter of the first class. They tell me the
old chap has come back from the army as fierce as a catamount,
and that there is no speaking to him, as one used to
could, in old times.”
“You are, then, an old acquaintance of the Chainbearer?”
“I should think I was! Tinkum and I have lived about,
a good deal, in our day; and old Andries is a desp'ate
hand for the woods. He surveyed out for us, once, or half-surveyed,
another betterment; but he proved to be a spiteful
rogue afore he got through with the business; and we have
not set much store by him ever sin' that time.”
“The Chainbearer a rogue! Andries Coejemans anything
but an honest man! You are the first person, Mrs.
Tinkum, I have ever heard call in question his sterling integrity.”
“Sterling money doesn't pass now, I conclude, sin' it's
revolution times. We all know which side your family was
on in the war, major Littlepage; so it's no offence to you.
A proper sharp look-out they had of it here, when you quit
college; for some said old Herman Mordaunt had ordered
in his will that you should uphold the king; and then, most
of the tenants concluded they would get the lands altogether.
It is a sweet thing, major, for a tenant to get his farm without
paying for it, as you may judge! Some folks was desp'ate
sorry when they heern tell that the Littlepages went
with the colonies.”
“I hope there are few such knaves on the Ravensnest
estate as to wish anything of the sort. But, let me hear an
explanation of your charge against the Chainbearer. I
have no great concern for my own rights in the patent that
I claim.”
The woman had the audacity, or the frankness, to draw
a long, regretful sigh, as it might be, in my very face. That
sigh expressed her regrets that I had not taken part with the
crown in the last struggle; in which case, I do suppose she
and Tinkum would have contrived to squat on one of the
did not disdain to answer.
“As for the Chainbearer, the simple truth is this,” she
said. “Tinkum hired him to run a line between some
betterments we had bought, and some that had been bought
by a neighbour of our'n. This was long afore the war, and
when titles were scarcer than they're gettin' to be now;
some of the landlords living across the water. Well, what
do you think the old fellow did, major? He first asked for
our deeds, and we showed them to him; as good and lawful
warrantees as was ever printed, and filled up by a 'squire.
He then set to work, all by himself, jobbing the whull survey,
as it might be, and a prettier line was never run, as far
as he went, which was about half-way. I thought it would
make etarnel peace atween us and our neighbour, for it had
been etarnel war afore that, for three whull years; sometimes
with clubs, and sometimes with axes, and once with
scythes. But, somehow—I never know'd how—but somehow,
old Andries found out that the man who deed to us had
no deed to himself, or no mortal right to the land, any more
than that sucking pig you see at the door there; when he
gi'n right up, refusing to carry out another link, or p'int
another needle, he did! Warn't that being cross-grained
and wilful! No, there's no dependence to be put on the
Chainbearer.”
“Wilful in the cause of right, as glorious old Andries
always is! I love and honour him all the better for it.”
“La! — Do you love and honour sich a one as him!
Well, I should have expected suthin' else from sich a
gentleman as you! I'd no idee major Littlepage could
honour an old, worn-out Chainbearer, and he a man that
couldn't get up in the world, too, when he had hands and
feet, all on 'em together, on some of the very best rounds
of the ladder! Why, I judge that even Tinkum would have
gone ahead, if he had been born with sich a chance.”
“Andries has been a captain in my own regiment, it is
true, and was once my superior officer; but he served for
his country's sake, and not for his own. Have you seen
him lately?”
“That have we! He passed here about a twelvemonth
ago, with his whull party, on their way to squat on your
himself, two helpers, Dus and young Malbone.”
“Young who?” I asked, with an interest that induced the
woman to turn her keen, sunken, but sharp grey eyes, intently
on me.
“Young Malbone, I said; Dus' brother, and the youngster
who does all old Andries' 'rithmetic. I suppose you
know as well as I do, that the Chainbearer can't calkerlate
any more than a wild goose, and not half as well as a crow.
For that matter, I've known crows that, in plantin' time,
would measure a field in half the number of minutes that
the State surveyor would be hours at.”
“This young Malbone, then, is the Chainbearer's nephew?—And
he it is who does the surveying?”
“He does the 'rithmetic part, and he is a brother of old
Andries' niece. I know'd the Coejemans when I was a gal,
and I've known the Malbones longer than I want to know
them.”
“Have you any fault to find with the family, that you
speak thus of them?”
“Nothin' but their desperate pride, which makes them
think themselves so much better than everybody else; yet,
they tell me, Dus and all on 'em are just as poor as I am
myself.”
“Perhaps you mistake their feeling, good woman; a
thing I think the more probable, as you seem to fancy money
the source of their pride, at the very moment you deny
their having any. Money is a thing on which few persons
of cultivated minds pride themselves. The purse-proud are,
almost invariably, the vulgar and ignorant.”
No doubt this was a moral thrown away with such an
auditor; but I was provoked; and when a man is provoked,
he is not always wise. The answer showed the effect it had
produced.
“I don't pretend to know how that is; but, if it isn't
pride, what is it that makes Dus Malbone so different from
my da'ters? She 'd no more think of being like one on 'em,
scouring about the lots, riding bare-backed, and scampering
through the neighbourhood, than you 'd think of cooking
my dinner—that she wouldn't.”
Poor Mrs. Tinkum — or, as she would have been apt to
commonest weaknesses of human nature, in thus imputing
pride to the Chainbearer's niece because the latter behaved
differently from her and her's. How many persons in this
good republic of ours judge their neighbours on precisely
the same principle; inferring something unsuitable, because
it seems to reflect on their own behaviour! But, by this
time, I had got to hear the name of Dus with some interest,
and I felt disposed to push the subject further.
“Miss Malbone, then,” I said, “does not ride bare-backed?”
“La! major, what in natur' puts it into your head to call
the gal Miss Malbone! — There's no Miss Malbone living
sin' her own mother died.”
“Well, Dus Malbone, I mean; she is above riding bare-backed?”
“That she is; even a pillion would be hardly grand
enough for her, allowing her own brother to use the
saddle.”
“Her own brother? — This young surveyor, then, is
Dus's brother?”
“Sort o', and sort o' not, like. They had the same father,
but different mothers.”
“That explains it; I never heard the Chainbearer speak
of any nephew, and it seems the young man is not related
to him at all—he is the half-brother of his niece.”
“Why can't that niece behave like other young women?
that's the question I ask. My gals hasn't as much pride as
would be good for 'em, not they! If a body wants to borrow
an article over at the Nest, and that's seven miles off,
the whull way in the woods, just name it to Poll, and she'd
jump on an ox, if there warn't a hoss, and away she'd go
a'ter it, with no more bit of a saddle, and maybe nothin' but
a halter, like a deer! Give me Poll, afore all the gals I
know, for ar'nds!”
By this time, disrelish for vulgarity was getting the better
of curiosity; and my dinner of fried pork being done, I was
willing to drop the discourse. I had learned enough of Andries
and his party to satisfy my curiosity, and Jaap was
patiently waiting to succeed me at table. Throwing down
the amount of the bill, I took a fowling-piece with which we
ordered the black and the wagoner to follow with the team
as soon as ready, and went on towards my own property
on foot.
In a very few minutes I was quite beyond the Tinkum
betterments, and fairly in the forest again. It happened that
the title to a large tract of land adjoining Ravensnest was in
dispute, and no attempt at a serious settlement had ever been
made on it. Some one had “squatted” at this spot, to enjoy
the advantage of selling rum to those who went and came
between my own people and the inner country; and the
place had changed hands half a dozen times, by fraudulent,
or at least by worthless sales, from one squatter to another.
Around the house, by this time a decaying pile of logs, time
had done a part of the work of the settler, and aided by that
powerful servant but fearful master, fire, had given to the
small clearing somewhat of the air of civilized cultivation.
The moment these narrow limits were passed, however, the
traveller entered the virgin forest, with no other sign of man
around him than what was offered in the little-worked and
little-travelled road. The highway was not much indebted
to the labours of man for any facilities it afforded the traveller.
The trees had been cut out of it, it is true, but their
roots had not been extracted, and time had done more towards
destroying them than the axe or the pick. Time had
done a good deal, however, and the inequalities were getting
to be smooth under the hoof and the wheel. A tolerably
good bridle-path had long been made, and I found no difficulty
in walking in it, since that answered equally well for
man or beast.
The virgin forest of America is usually no place for the
ordinary sportsman. The birds that are called game are
but rarely found in it, one or two excepted; and it is a well-known
fact, that while the frontier-man is certain death with
a rifle-bullet, knocking the head off a squirrel or a wild-turkey
at his sixty or eighty yards, it is necessary to go into
the older parts of the country, and principally among sportsmen
of the better classes, in order to find those who knock
over the woodcock, snipe, quail, grouse and plover, on the
wing. I was thought a good shot on the “plains,” and over
the heaths or commons of the island of Manhattan, and
up there, where I then was, surrounded by trees that had
stood their centuries. It would certainly have been easy
enough for me to kill a blue-jay, now and then, or a crow,
or even a raven, and perhaps an eagle, had I the proper
shot; but, as for anything that ordinarily is thought to adorn
a game-bag, not a feather could I see. For the want of
something better to do, then, if a young man of three or four-and-twenty
ought thus to express himself, I began to ruminate
on the charms of Pris. Bayard, and on the singularities
of Dus Malbone. In this mood I proceeded, getting over the
grounds at a rapid rate, leaving Miss Tinkum, the clearing
with its betterments, and the wagon, far behind me.
I had walked an hour alone, when the silence of the woods
was suddenly interrupted by the words of a song that came
not from any of the feathered race, though the nightingale
itself could hardly have equalled the sweetness of the notes,
which were those of a female voice. The low notes struck
me as the fullest, richest, and most plaintive I had ever
heard; and I fancied they could not be equalled, until the
strain carried the singer's voice into a higher key, where it
seemed equally at home. I thought I knew the air, but the
words were guttural, and in an unknown tongue. French
and Dutch were the only two foreign languages in which
one usually heard any music in our part of the woods at that
day; and even the first was by no means common. But,
with both these languages I had a little acquaintance, and I
was soon satisfied that the words I heard belonged to neither.
At length, it flashed on my mind that the song was
Indian; not the music, but the words. The music was certainly
Scotch, or that altered Italian that time has attributed
to the Scotch; and there was a moment when I fancied
some Highland girl was singing near me one of the Celtic
songs of the country of her childhood. But, closer attention
satisfied me that the words were really Indian; probably
belonging to the Mohawk, or some other language that I had
often heard spoken.
The reader may be curious to know whence these sounds
proceeded, and why I did not see the being who gave birth
to such delicious harmony. It was owing to the fact that
the song came from out of a thicket of young pines, that
road, and which I supposed contained a hut of some sort or
other. These pines, however, completely concealed all
within them. So long as the song lasted, no tree of the
forest was more stationary than myself; but, when it ended,
I was about to advance towards the thicket, in order to pry
into its mysteries, when I heard a laugh that had scarcely
less of melody in it than the strains of the music itself. It
was not a vulgar, clamorous burst of girlish impulses, nor
was it even loud; but it was light-hearted, mirthful, indicating
humour, if a mere laugh can do so much; and, in a
sense, it was contagious. It arrested my movement, in
order to listen; and, before any new impulse led me forward,
the branches of the pines opened, and a man passed
out of the thicket into the road. A single glance sufficed to
let me know that the stranger was an Indian.
Notwithstanding I was apprised of the near vicinity of
others, I was a little started with this sudden apparition.
Not so with him who was approaching: he could not have
known of my being anywhere near him; yet he manifested
no emotion as his cold, undisturbed glance fell on my form.
Steadily advancing, he came to the centre of the road; and,
as I had turned involuntarily to pursue my own way, not
sure it was prudent to remain in that neighbourhood alone,
the red man fell in, with his moccasined foot, at my elbow;
and I found that we were thus strangely pursuing our journey,
in the same direction, side by side.
The Indian and myself walked in this manner, within a
yard of each other, in the midst of that forest, for two or
three minutes without speaking. I forbore to say anything,
because I had heard that an Indian respected those most
who knew best how to repress their curiosity; which habit,
most probably, had its effect on my companion. At length,
the red man uttered, in the deep, guttural manner of his
people, the common conventional salutation of the frontier—
“Sa-a-go?”
This word, which has belonged to some Indian language
once, passes everywhere for Indian with the white man;
and, quite likely for English, with the Indian. A set of such
terms has grown up between the two races, including such
and many others. “Sa-a-go,” means “how d'ye do?”
“Sa-a-go?” — I answered to my neighbour's civil salutation.
After this we walked along for a few minutes more, neither
party speaking. I took this opportunity to examine my
red brother, an employment that was all the easier from the
circumstance that he did not once look at me; the single
glance sufficing to tell him all he wanted to know. In the
first place, I was soon satisfied that my companion did not
drink, a rare merit in a red man who lived near the whites.
This was evident from his countenance, gait, and general
bearing, as I thought, in addition to the fact that he possessed
no bottle, or anything else that would hold liquor. What I
liked the least was the circumstance of his being completely
armed; carrying knife, tomahawk and rifle, and each seemingly
excellent of its kind. He was not painted, however,
and he wore an ordinary calico shirt, as was then the usual
garb of his people, in the warm season. The countenance
had the stern severity that is so common to a red warrior;
and, as this man was turned of fifty, his features began to
show the usual signs of exposure and service. Still, he was
a vigorous, respectable-looking red-man, and one who was
evidently accustomed to live much among civilized men. I
had no serious uneasiness, of course, at meeting such a person,
although we were so completely buried in the forest;
but, as a soldier, I could not help reflecting how inferior
my fowling-piece would necessarily prove to be to his rifle,
should he see fit to turn aside, and pull upon me from behind
a tree, for the sake of plunder. Tradition said such
things had happened; though, on the whole, the red-man
of America has perhaps proved to be the most honest of the
two, as compared with those who have supplanted him.
“How ole chief?” the Indian suddenly asked, without
even raising his eyes from the road.
“Old chief! Do you mean Washington, my friend?”
“Not so — mean ole chief, out here, at Nest. Mean
fader.”
“My father! Do you know general Littlepage?”
“Be sure, know him. You fader — see” — holding up
his two fore-fingers — “just like — dat him; dis you.”
“This is singular enough! And were you told that I
was coming to this place?”
“Hear dat, too. Always talk about chief.”
“Is it long since you saw my father?”
“See him in war-time—nebber hear of ole Sureflint?”
I had heard the officers of our regiment speak of such an
Indian, who had served a good deal with the corps, and
been exceedingly useful, in the two great northern campaigns
especially. He never happened to be with the regiment
after I joined it, though his name and services were a
good deal mixed up with the adventures of 1776 and 1777.
“Certainly,” I answered, shaking the red-man cordially
by the hand. “Certainly, have I heard of you, and something
that is connected with times before the war. Did you
never meet my father before the war?”
“Sartain; meet in ole war. Gin'ral young man, den—
just like son.”
“By what name were you then known, Oneida?”
“No Oneida—Onondago—sober tribe. Hab plenty name.
Sometime one, sometime anoder. Pale face say `Trackless,'
cause he can't find his trail — warrior call him `Susquesus.”'
| CHAPTER VII. The chainbearer, or, The Littlepage manuscripts | |