University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
THE EXECUTION.

The morning of the Execution, like that of the Resurrection,
brought out “both small and great, a multitude which
no man could number.” They came “from the East and
the West, the North and the South.” They came from
distances of eight, twenty, and even forty miles. Hawkers
of ballads, a “Lion from Barbary,” Obed peddling his
nostrums, gaming tables, offered attractions to the crowd.

At an early hour Margaret left the Deacon's, where
whatever might have been her inclinations she could hardly
have found accommodation, since the house was filled with
strangers from the fourth to the fourteenth shade of relationship,
including half a score of infants. Taking what
on the whole seemed to be the most feasible route whereby
to escape the annoyance of the multitude and horrors of
the day, she hid herself in the deep bed and under the
decayed foliage of Mill Brook. Slowly sauntering up the
stream, she found herself on the open road, and close by
the premises of Anthony Wharfield. “Am I too late for
the hanging?” said a man, stopping to take breath. “I
hav'nt missed of one these thirty year, and I would'nt any
more than Sunday.” “Thee had better go and see,” was
the laconic reply of Ruth, who seeing Margaret, hastened
to meet her. “Aristophanes, my son! Holdup, knave,
you graze the limbs of my dear daughter,” was the hurried
language of Mr. Adolphus Hadlock. “I have been to

cousin Sukeyanna's to bring down the children. Are we
in time? Socrates, your sister is slipping from the pillion.
I would not have you fail of this opportunity on any
account. Triandaphelda Ada, you will be belated. Your
mother, dear, is waiting for us; she says seeing a man
hanged is the most interesting sight she ever beheld.” “I
can't endure this,” said Margaret. “Well, then, come
into the house,” said the woman. “Anthony will succor
thee; he is sorely troubled for thee.”

Leaving Margaret at the Quaker's, let us follow up the
current of general attraction. The bell tolled, and the
condemned one was duly escorted to the meeting-house.
Parson Welles preached a discourse, a printed copy of
which, with its broad black margin and vignette representing
the gallows, now lies before us. The following passage
occurs, which illustrates the style of the parson's ordinary
pulpit exercises, and also indicates his sentiments on the
present occasion:—

“Let the improvement be lastly to the wretched man
who is now before us. God says, `Whoso sheddeth man's
blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' The just laws
of man and the holy law of Jehovah call aloud for the
destruction of your mortal life. Alas, miserable youth,
you know by sad, by woful experience, the living truth of
our text, that the wages of sin is death. As we have
shown under our third proposition, by man's disobedience
many were made sinners; and under our fourth, mankind
are already under sentence of condemnation. But there is
a door of hope. As God demanded a perfect obedience of
the first Adam, the second fulfilled it. Jesus Christ made
a propitiation. He endured on the cross the vengeance
of a broken law; he was punished by an insulted Divinity.
We can do nothing of ourselves. But take the Lord Jesus

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by faith; trust to his merits, repent, O repent. Lay hold
of the hope set before you. This is the last day of mercy
to your poor soul. But if you refuse these offers of grace,
your departed soul must take up its lodgings in sorrow,
woe and misery. You must be cast into the lake that
burneth with fire and brimstone, where deformed devils
dwell, and the damned ghosts of Adam's race.”

The religious ceremonies being concluded, the procession
was formed for the place of the end of Chilion—a
sandy plain in the North part of the town. Bristling
bayonets, funeral music, a dismal retinue of twenty thousand
people, are some of the items of the showy route.

Margaret, unable to contain herself within doors, anxious
if possible to find her own family, plunged again into the
woods. She went by an obscure and devious way towards
the Pond. Night was approaching; but an untimely glare
of light while it quickened her senses appalled her heart.
Over Mons Christi rolled up dark, cold clouds, but in the
North-east the heavens were distinctly illuminated. She
saw smoke rising and occasioned tongues of flame. Astounded
and forlorn, as she came near her old home, a giant
form stood before her. It was the Indian and his granddaughter.
Seizing her arm, this fearful patriarch of the
forest silently and unresistingly led her forwards. He
took her by an old and familiar path up the Head. What

had been a streak of light in the horizon, they now beheld
a boiling angry river of flame. The woods on the North
of the Village, an extensive range of old forest, were on
fire. The Indian, without speaking, slowly raised his arm,
and pointed steadily at the scene of the conflagration.

Each moment the effect increased, and the fire driven by
a brisk wind seemed to be making rapid progress towards
the Green. Sheets of sluggish smoke were pierced and
dispersed by the nimble flames which leaped to the tops of
the tallest trees, assaulted the clouds, and threw themselves
upon the solid ranks of the forest as in exterminating
battle. Beyond the fire, and up in the extreme heavens,
was a pitchy overshadowing blackness; the faces of the
three shone in a blood-red glare; behind them gathered
clouds and darkness; below, the water, the house, the
Mowing, the road, were immersed in impenetrable shade.
Margaret gazed with a mixed expression of anguish,
surprise and uncertainty. The Indian stood majestically
erect, his mantle folded over his breast, his countenance
glowing with other than the fire of the woods, his pursed
and wrinkled features dilating and filling with some great
internal emotion. The girl looked quietly aud smilingly
on. The wind shook the tall white feather in the old man's
head, threw Margaret's bonnet back from her face, and
quivered in the long black locks of the girl.

“Daughter!” said the Indian to Margaret, almost the
first words she ever heard him utter, as the flames seized
and crunched the gnarled top of an old dead tree, “behold
Pakanawket, grandson of Pometacom, great-grandson of
Massassoit, the last of the Wampanoags! Ninety winters
have passed over him, he has stood the thunder gust and
the storm-shock—see, the fire consumes him!

“Daughter, hear! The great Pometacom, called in your

tongue King Philip, who rose to be the liberator of his
country, was hacked in pieces by your people, his head
exposed twenty summers in one of your towns to the
insults of men and the laughter of women. His wife,
Wootonekanuske, and his son, my father, were sold for
slaves. My grandmother pounded corn for the whites, she
bore on her breast the brand of her master; but she
whispered in Pakanawket's ear the purpose of his grandsire,
she charmed him with the spell of the Great Spirit.
My father, escaping from slavery, and my mother, perished
with the Neridgewoks. Swift as a deer, still as the flight
of an owl, I have gone from the Kennebec to the Mississippi;
I have visited our people on the Great Lakes; I
have fought against French, English and Americans.
Pakanawket gave a belt to no tribes of the whites, he sat
at no council-fire but those of his own countrymen. His
wife was murdered by the French, his children scalped by
the English. His old arm grew weak, the strength of his
people had perished. The Snow-heron came and built his
lonely nest in the green Cedars of Umkiddin; there he has
dwelt with the little Wootonekanuske, in your tongue
Dove's Eye. I have put my ear to the ground, I hear the
tramping of horses and noise of battle; he whose eye never
sleeps is on the trail of the red man; Wyandot, Seneca,
Delaware, Shaware, all have fallen. The white man
throws his arm about the Great Lake, he gathers into his
bosom the Father of Waters. The red man drags his
canoe across the graves of his Fathers; the feet of his
children are sore with travelling in the long wilderness.

“Daughter, listen! I saw your song-brother struggling in
death; pleasant has been his viol to me, pleasant the sound
of his voice. My heart wept for him, memories gushed
forth. Where are the brothers, fathers, sons, friends of

Pakanawket? Massassoit, the generous, the noble, died
as the caged Eagle dies. Jyanough, the fair and gentle,
wasted in swamps where your violence had driven him.
iantunnimoh was cast as a bear to appease the wolf you
had enraged. Mononottot Nanunteenoo, Paugus, Chocorus,
Logan, Hendrick, Pontiac, Thayendanaga, where are they?
Burnt, beheaded, hung, tortured, enslaved, exiled!

“Daughter, listen! I was taught to read by a French
Panisee; I have read your books, I know what you say.
The Bashaba, whom you call King, that lived in the East,
that great Pirate of the Seas, gave away to his men our
country. He made grants of our land, our fisheries, our
woods, our beasts, our gardens and our villages. You
have called us savages, dogs, heathens, devils, monsters;
we welcomed the strange men to our shores; cold and
hungry, we nourished them by our firesides. When their
children were lost in the woods we found them, when their
poor people wanted corn we gave it them. They stole our
young men away and sold them for slaves in unknown
lands. They built forts upon our grounds, they offered
bounties for our scalps. When our children were burning,
they gave thanksgiving to their God. They slept in our
wigwams and defiled our maidens. They asked us to their
Council Fires, they blinded us with rum. When we
resisted, they declared war upon us. There is no brother
among the Indians; they have turned our hearts against
each other.

“Daughter, look! The fire goeson, the flames are consuming
their church. The Spirit of Wrath scowls above
their village. I saw your elder brother asleep in the
woods his pipe had kindled the leaves; these hands heaped
together the faggots, this mouth blew up the flames. Ha!
Manitou fights with Jehovah, Areouski strikes down their

Holy Ghost! See, the steeple burns. Men shall mourn
to-night, children shall be houseless. But where are the
Pequods, the Narragansetts, the Nipmucks, the Massachusetts?
Prate they of Quaboag, and Wyoming? Where
are the Pakonoket, Mystic, Genessee? Between sea and
sea, there is not a field or a brook we can call our own.
Pakanawket utters his voice, no Indian answers. He
looks over the homes of his fathers, he sees only the faces
of his enemies. Wootonekanuske has no brother, no
country, no home. The eyes of a dove are red with
weeping, she looks towards the stars. Manitou calls, we
go to the Spirit-land. In my belt is a weight of gold, the
bribe that sought for Arnolds among the Indians. Let it
do what it was designed for, finish the last of his race. In
yonder woods Pometacom had sometime his home; on
these waters he sailed with his little son. I have come
hither to die. Daughter of the Beautiful, take this Heron's
Wreath, wear it for Wootonekanuske's sake; she never
forgets a kindness. Take this land, this hill, these woods,
these waters—they are yours. Sometimes in your love,
your happiness, your power, remember the poor Indian!”

The chief, taking his granddaughter in his arms, deliberately
advanced to the edge of the rock, balanced himself
over the abyss, and leaped off into the dark waters, where,
borne down by the weight of his girdle, he sank beyond
recovery. We are told of one being broken on a wheel,
who after the first blow laughed in the face of the executioner,
his nervous sensibility becoming so far extinguished
that subsequent inflictions created no suffering. Our moral
nature has its analogies in the physical; and Margaret,
already stricken by the events of the day, heard the fearful
resolution of the Indian, and witnessed his tragic finale
without discomposure; she looked coolly for a moment at

the fire, saw the tall spire of the church totter and fall, and
guarding carefully the feathered ornament the Indian gave
her, descended the hill. Entering the Via Salutaris, she
met Sibyl Radney. “Is that you, Molly?” said Sibyl.
We have hunted every where for you. Your folks are at
our house; Rose is there too. Rufus Palmer has come
down, and you are all going to the Ledge. There is a
stump, now spring. The fire took in the woods down
back of our house; it went through aunt Dolphy's piece,
and so down to the Horse Sheds; then the meeting-house
caught, and the brands blew from that to the Crown and
Bowl—the Lord knows where it will stop. They are all
drunk as beasts and wild as Bedlamites.”

They traversed the semi-luminous shadows of the wood
till they came to the junction of the Via Salutaris with
the west road from the village. At this point the scene
of devastation was frightfully distinct. The stream of
brightness and ruin extended more than a mile. They
beheld the old church, its huge oaken timbers resisting to
the last extremity, yet presenting a Laocoon-like spectacle
of serpent flames coiled about it and stinging it to death.
The tavern was fast sinking beneath the devouring element,
and the roofs of the buildings beyond were rapidly kindling.
Whatever might be the interest of the scene, it
did not detain them long, and they made the best of their
way to the house of Sibyl. Here Margaret found all her
family, her mother the image of frozen despair, Pluck
trying to laugh, Nimrod trying to whistle, Hash stupidly
intoxicated; she and Rose buried themselves in each other's
embrace. Presently Rufus Palmer came up from the
village. “There were a thousand people there,” said he,
“but three quarters were drunk, and the rest were so
scared they did'nt know what they were about. The

prisoners in the jail yelled like devils in burning hell.
The jail-house was on fire, and we could not get in that
way, and we stove in the fence, ripped out the bars, and
let the poor dogs out through the windows. A drunken
crew got hold of the stocks and threw them into the fire;
then they tore up the whipping-post, pulled down the pillory,
and they followed, and I left them blazing away
among the jail timbers. It hasn't rained for six weeks,
and the buildings were dry as tinder, and burnt like a heap
of shavings. Heaven save me from such another sight!
Rose ran away from our house yesterday. Father sent
me down, and said I must bring her back, and mother
sent word for Margaret and Nimrod to come right up.”

“It is beginning to rain,” said Sibyl, “and you can't
go to-night.”

The storm, which had been threatening through the day
and evening, broke at last; it rained violently, and if this
interrupted the plans of the party, it also served to check
the farther progress of the fire. Regarding the origin of
the last, it appeared, as the Indian intimated, that Hash,
in the course of the afternoon, saturated with liquor, went
with his pipe into the woods. Relapsing into stupor, his
pipe fell from his mouth, and the fire was set. The Indian
crossing the forest from the scene of execution, supplied
materials for its continuance and spread. A long autumnal
drought, a blasted vegetation, a thick coat of new-fallen
leaves, heaps of dry brush and a strong breeze bore forward
the result to the final catastrophe. However the
action either of the Indian or of Hash shall be estimated,
the former was beyond the reach of inquisition; and the
latter, Sibyl had the strength to rescue from personal danger,
and the tact to preserve from detection by consigning the
secret of the affair to her own breast, and that of those
whom she deemed trustworthy to receive it.

They fared the night at Sibyl's as they best could, and
the next day Rufus and Rose, Nimrod and Margaret, rode
to the Ledge, a distance, as we have had occasion to observe,
of six or seven miles. At Mr. Palmer's Margaret
and her friends were received with a liberal hospitality and
unaffected good will. The family remembered the service
she had done for them in former years, and Mistress
Palmer made a deliberate work of endeavoring to divert
her mind by sitting down, with her box of snuff open in
her left hand, and explaining with her right how they had
been able to bring the water directly into the house, and
how Mr. Palmer had made a new marble sink, and Rufus
had carved a marble stem, with a sheep's head, from the
mouth of which a living stream perpetually flowed. Roderick,
her oldest son, had married Bethiah Weeks, joined
the “Dunwich Genessee Company,” and gone to the
West, where also Alexander was about to follow. Rufus,
his mother declared, was a good boy, and said she believed
he had great parts; in proof of which assertion, as well as
for the entertainment of Margaret, he was ordered to show
the toys he had made, consisting of sundry vases, images,
imitations of flowers and trees, done in marble. At the
same time Margaret could not avoid associating and contrasting
that first prosperous adventure of her childhood
with her present mournful condition.

In addition to any claims on their kindness which the
family of Mr. Palmer might have felt disposed to reimburse,
there existed other grounds for the friendliness of
the parties. Nimrod and Rhody, between whom an attachment
and quasi troth-plight had for a long time subsisted,
were expecting to marry; indeed, their nuptials had
been assigned to the present season. In the absence of
his other sons, Mr. Palmer proposed to Nimrod if he

would forswear his errant habits and set himself to steady
labor, he should have a share in his farm, and a home in
his house. He himself was a good deal occupied at the
quarry, and Rufus, he said, was always dropping the
plough and running after the mallet. But in the recent
calamity which had befallen his family, Nimrod said he
had given up all thoughts of marriage for the present, and
avowed a determination to wait at least until Spring; in
addition, for reasons which did not transpire, he declared
that it had become unexpectedly necessary for him to go to
the Bay before that event, and take Margaret with him.

When Rose had Margaret alone, she recited her history
from the night of the Husking Bee. She said she and
Nimrod wandered in the woods one or two days, that they
at last went to Mr. Palmer's, where she was taken sick,
and recovered on the eve of Chilion's death, and that only
so far as enabled her to adopt some desperate resolution
for his delivery; that she stole away from the house and
made all haste to town. Borne out from the prison by
Nimrod, she was carried to Sibyl's, where they kept her
till the crisis was over.

Margaret divulged Chilion's last wishes, and was solicitous
for their accomplishment. In the prosecution of this
object, events fell out in a manner she could not have
anticipated. Rufus volunteered to furnish the gravestone;
Mr. Palmer said he would become surety to Mr. Smith for
the liabilities of Pluck until Nimrod returned from his jaunt,
so that the family might again be gathered in their home.
Nimrod was despatched on the other errands. The lady's slipper
he carried to Miss Morgridge; Chilion's boat was bought
by Sibyl Radney, who seemed desirous to have it preserved
for the use of the family. What with the baskets and the
money in the chest, all debts were paid without disposing of

the violin, which was retained as a keepsake. The duty at
Mr. Smith's Margaret found it more difficult to perform;
and what they told her of the state of that family at length
decided her to postpone the task until time should moderate
their grief, or give her sufficientstrength of spirit
to encounter it.

Preparations for their intended journey were now all that
remained to be done, and these the advancing season, not
less than certain concealed motives of Nimrod, admonished
them to accelerate. Rose could not be detached from
Margaret, and she too must go, at whatever rate. But for
this also a means was provided, the nature of which we
will disclose. The Widow Wright, as perhaps is well
known, had long cherished fond expectations of her son
Obed; and not less of her business, and, we might
reasonably add, of Margaret. Whether she aspired to
riches or fame, let those answer who can best judge; but
of this we are certain, she desired to experiment with her
commodities in a larger theatre than Livingston and its
neighborhood afforded; and when she learned the plans
of Margaret and the wishes of Rose, she eagerly sought the
privilege of joining with them Obed and his horse Tim,—
an arrangement that could not but prove satisfactory on all
sides, since it provided a method of conveyance for Rose
without additional cost. Whether any other design crept
into the lady's mind than to make Obed acquainted with the
world, and the world acquainted with her art, one would not
hesitate to guess, when it is related that she gave her son
explicit and repeated instructions to watch with all diligence
and scrupulousness the movements of Margaret.

To the new object Margaret and Rose addressed themselves
with diligence, and we may imagine without reluctance.
They had no wish to remain on the hands of the

Palmers, however generous or well affectioned might be
the disposition of that family. They were glad to escape the
deep, and as it would seem ineffaceable gloom that now not
only shrouded the Pond but penetrated the whole town. In
a fresh atmosphere they could find a breathing-place for
their stifled hearts, and among novel scenes they might be
diverted from those associations that were sapping the
foundations of existence itself.

Note.—We have been chided for carrying the story of Chilion to
so sad a termination. “Shocking!” is the epithet applied to such
management and such results. There is an illusion here. Nine
tenths of executions are equally shocking. The mistake is this, our
readers look at Chilion from the Margaret side, and his home side,
and his own heart's side; as if every man that is hung had not a
Margaret side, a home side, and his own heart side! Chilion was
looked at by those concerned in effecting what befell him from the
world side, the law side, the Deacon Hadlock side, and the side of
public sentiment in general. It was utterly impossible for him to
escape extremest issues. This is the way men are always hung.
There would be no hangings if suspected individuals were to be regarded
in the light in which some tender-hearted persons have allowed
themselves to regard Chilion. Would we create a prejudice against
the law of capital punishment? As faithful chroniclers of character
and events, we do not hold ourselves responsible for every possible
inference that may be drawn from our narrative. We have not been
unjust to the times in which Chilion lived, but, as to the matter in
hand, have rather underdrawn than overdrawn the prevailing manners
and feeling.