University of Virginia Library

THE HUMAN SACRIFICE.

The township of East-Haddam was originally the
possession of a ferocious tribe of Indians, distinguished
by the name of Matchit-Moodus—a powerful and war-like
tribe, essentially distinct from their neighbors,
and remarkable for their idolatries and pagan rites.
It is a general remark that the aborigines of New-England
paid little reverence to religious rites of any
kind whatever. They indeed spoke of the Great
Spirit with awe, when his loud thunder was bursting
above them—but they knelt not in worship at the
rising and the going down of the sun—they built up
no rude altars, and made no important sacrifices to the
unknown Deity—Yet, with the tribe of Matchit-Moodus,
the rites of the Pawwaw and the strange
worship of good and bad spirits were observed and
reverenced, as religiously as the Mahometan ablutions
—the pagoda-worship of the Brahmin—or the oblations
to the fiery altars of the Gheber.

The first settlement of the white men upon the territory

of the Indians of Matchit-Moodus occasioned
no inconsiderable alarm to the jealous chiefs of the
tribe. Indeed, at the period to which this story relates,
in all parts of New-England the white men were
viewed with distrust, even in their feeblest settlements.

In many places hostilities were carried on with
fierceness on both sides; and every where the implacable
hate of the Red-man was brooding like a thunder-cloud
over the encroaching advance of the English.
And even where a temporary forbearance was
manifested on the part of the savages, it proved too
often, like the couch of the panther or the coil of the
roused rattlesnake, but the preparation for a sudden
and deadly blow

It was a day of Autumn in 1670. The first heavy
frosts had fallen upon the beautiful forests which then
overhung the whole extent of the majestic Connecticut,
and a wild change had followed their blighting visitation.
The vast and unshorn foliage, whose trunks
had as yet bowed only to the presence of the storm or
the weight of accumulated centuries, was colored
with dyes deeper and richer than any which Claude
or Poussin ever mingled—varied and magnificent, as
if the rainbow of a summer shower had fallen upon it
and blended with its green luxuriance.

At the foot of one of those ragged hills which frown
over the quiet waters of the Connecticut on its western
side, a large band of Indian warriors, painted and
adorned for the performance of their dark rites of
worship, were assembled. In their midst, a young and
interesting female was seated, whose pale, fair
countenance and plain and modest garb, distinguished
her as the daughter of one of the white settlers. She
was young—apparently not more than fifteen years of
age—and, though agitated at times with terror, her
features were regular and beautiful, and her eye, although
filled with tears, shone brightly through the
profusion of rich, light curls, which partially over-shadowed
her fine countenance.

The Indians drew themselves into a circle around
her, and knelt down, smiting slowly and solemnly on
the ground, and humming between their closed teeth
a wild and unnatural air. An old, fierce-looking chief
now came forward, into the centre of the ring, by the
side of the white prisoner. Placing himself in the attitude
of a priest at the sacrifice, he addressed his red
brethren. The strange hum died away, and every
one leaned eagerly forward as he spoke:

“Brothers! The little white snake came to the
den of the big snake of the rocks. And the big
snake bade him lie down with him and eat of his

food, for the little snake was hungry and very cold.
And the little white snake eat of the food and lay by
the side of the big snake. But when the big snake
was asleep the white snake sucked his blood, and
when the big snake awoke he was very weak, and the
little white snake had grown big as himself.

“Brothers!—The white man is the little snake and
the red man is the big snake. The white snake has
been sucking his blood. He has grown very big.

“Brothers!—The wicked spirits are with the white
men. Their powwahs are stronger than ours, and
the bad spirits obey them. The red man cannot call
them.

“Brothers!—Let us make an offering to the bad
spirits, that they may love us and obey us. The
daughter of the white man is before us. Let us make
the dark spirits glad. They will smell the blood.
Hobamocko loves the blood of the pale-face.”

A hum of assent passed round the kneeling circle.
The chief muttered some strange words of invocation,
and drawing his long knife from his belt, he grasped
the fair hair of his victim.

The unfortunate girl had resigned herself to her
seemingly inevitable fate—and, falling on her knees,
she clasped her hands over her eyes, and murmured a
few broken and inarticulate words of prayer.

“She is talking with the Englishman's God,” said
the Powwah.

At that moment, a low, rumbling sound burst from
the bosom of the hill. The dwarfish trees and stinted
bushes trembled around, as if an imprisoned earthquake
were shaking off its rocky chains and struggling
upward. The Indians fell on their faces to the
ground.

“It is the voice of the Great Spirit!” said the
Powwah, in the thick and husky tones of terror, as he
unloosed his grasp upon the hair of his prisoner.

Again the strange sound was heard—an inward
rumbling—a shaking of the hill, as if some gigantic
creature of life were bursting through its prison walls
of everlasting rock.

The Powwah uttered a yell of terror, and darted
from the spot, with the arrow-like speed peculiar to
his race. The yell was repeated by his companions,
who fled in every direction, like deer before the
hunters.

The fair-haired daughter of the white man returned
to tell the miraculous story of her escape from the
grim worshippers of Moodus. The Indians ever after
avoided the mysterious hill, as the chosen dwelling-place
of the Great Spirit of the Yengeese.

Note.—

The early settlers of the valley of the Connecticut were under the
firm belief that the Indians of Matchit-Moodus, offered human sacrifices to
their evil spirit, or Hobamocko. The legend of the “Moodus noises” is one
of the most singular which has ever reached our knowledge. It is said that
these noises, which growled occasionally from a hill or mountain in East-Haddam,
created much alarm among the early settlers of the country. There
is a story prevalent in the neighborhood that a man from England, a kind
of astrologer or necromancer, undertook to rid the place of the troublesome
noises. He told them that the sound proceeded from a carbuncle—a precious
gem, growing in the bowels of the rock. He hired an old blacksmith's
shop, and worked for some time with closed doors, and at night. All at once
the necromancer departed, and the strange noises ceased. It was supposed
he had found the precious gem, and had fled with it to his native land. The
following is an extract from a poem written upon this singular legend by the
lamented Brainard: