The Ride from West River--A Fellow Passenger--Parallels of History--One
Hundred Romances--Baron de Castine--His Character--Made Chief of the
Abenaquis--Duke of York's Charter--Encroachments of the Puritans--Church's
Indian Wars--False Reports--Reflections.
It would make a curious collection of pictures if I had obtained
photographs of all the coaches I travelled in, and upon, during my brief
sojourn in the province; some high, some low, some red, some green, or
yellow as it chanced, with horses few or many, often superior
animals--stylish, fast, and sound; and again, the most diminutive of
ponies, such as Monsieur the Clown drives into the ring of his canvass
coliseum when he utters the pleasant salute of "Here I am, with all my
little family?" This morning we have the old, familiar stage-coach of
Yankee land--red, picked out with yellow; high, narrow, iron steps; broad
thoroughbraces; wide seats; all jingle, tip, tilt, and rock, from one end
of the road to the other. My fellow traveller on the box is a little man
with a big hat; soft spoken, sweet voiced, and excessively shy and
modest. But this was a most pleasing change from the experiences of the
last few hours, let me tell you; and, if you ever travel by West River,
you will find any change pleasant--no matter what.
My companion was shy, but not taciturn; on the contrary, he could talk
well enough after the ice was broken, and long enough, too, for that
matter. I found that he was a Church of England clergyman by profession,
and a Welshman by birth. He was well versed in the earlier history of the
colony--that portion of it which is by far the most interesting--I mean
its French or Acadian period. "There are in the traditions and scattered
fragments of history that yet survive in this once unhappy land," he said,
in a peculiarly low and mellifluous voice, "much that deserves to be
embalmed in story and in poetry. Your Longfellow has already preserved one
of the most touching of its incidents; but I think I am safe in asserting
that there yet remain the materials of one hundred romances. Take the
whole history of Acadia during the seventeenth century--the almost
patriarchal simplicity of its society, the kindness, the innocence, the
virtues of its people; the universal toleration which prevailed among
them, in spite of the interference of the home government; look," said
he, "at the perfect and abiding faith which existed between them and the
Indians! Does the world-renowned story of William Penn alone merit our
encomiums, except that we have forgotten this earlier but not less
beautiful example? And with the true spirit of Christianity, when they
refused to take up arms in their own defence, preferring rather to die by
their faith than shed the blood of other men; to what parallel in history
can we turn, if not to the martyred Hussites, for whom humanity has not
yet dried all its tears?"
As he said this, a little flush passed over his face, and he appeared for
a moment as if surprised at his own enthusiasm; then shrinking under his
big hat again, he relapsed into silence.
We rode on for some time without a word on either side, until I ventured
to remark that I coincided with him in the belief that Acadia was the
romantic ground of early discovery in America; and that even the fluent
pen of Hawthorne had failed to lend a charm to the harsh, repulsive,
acrimonious features of New England's colonial history.
"I have read but one book of Hawthorne's," said he--"'The Scarlet Letter.'
I do not coincide with you; I think that to be a remarkable instance of
the triumph of genius over difficulties. By the way," said he, "speaking
of authors, what an exquisite poem Tom Moore would have written, had he
visited Chapel Island, which you have seen no doubt? (here he gave a
little nod with the big hat) and what a rich volume would have dropped
from the arabesque pen of your own Irving (another nod), had he written
the life of the Baron de St. Castine, chief of the Abenaquis, as he did
that of Philip of Pokanoket."
"Do you know the particulars of that history?" said I.
"I do not know the particulars," he replied, "only the outlines derived
from chronicle and tradition. Imagination," he added, with a faint smile,
"can supply the rest, just as an engineer pacing a bastion can draw from
it the proportions of the rest of the fortress."
And then, from under the shelter of the big hat, there came low and sad
tones of music, like a requiem over a bier, upon which are laid funeral
flowers, and sword, and plume; a melancholy voice almost intoning the
history of a Christian hero, who had been the chief of that powerful
nation--the rightful owners of the fair lands around us. Even if memory
could now supply the words, it would fail to reproduce the effect conveyed
by the tones of _that voice_. And of the story itself I can but furnish
the faint outlines:
FAINT OUTLINES.
Baron de St. Castine, chief of the Abenaquis, was a Frenchman, born in the
little village of Oberon, in the province of Bearn, about the middle of
the seventeenth century. Three great influences conspired to make him
unhappy--first, education, which at that time was held to be a reputable
part of the discipline of the scions of noble families; next, a delicate
and impressible mind, and lastly, he was born under the shadow of the
Pyrenees, and within sight of the Atlantic. He had also served in the wars
of Louis XIV. as colonel of the Carrignan, Cavignon, or Corignon regiment;
therefore, from his military education, was formed to endure, or to think
lightly of hardships. Although not by profession a Protestant, yet he was
a liberal Catholic. The doctrines of Calvin had been spread throughout the
province during his youth, and John la Placette, a native of Bearn, was
then one of the leaders of the free churches of Copenhagen, in Denmark,
and of Utrecht, in Holland.
But, whatever his religious prejudices may have been, they do not intrude
themselves in any part of his career; we know him only as a pure
Christian, an upright man, and a faithful friend of humanity. Like many
other Frenchmen of birth and education in those days, the Baron de St.
Castine had been attracted by descriptions of newly discovered countries
in the western hemisphere, and fascinated by the ideal life of the
children of nature. To a mind at once susceptible and heroic, impulsive by
temperament, and disciplined to endure, such promptings have a charm that
is irresistible. As the chronicler relates, he preferred the forests of
Acadia, to the Pyrenian mountains that compassed the place of his
nativity, and taking up his abode with the savages, on the first year
behaved himself so among them as to draw from them their inexpressible
esteem. He married a woman of the nation, and repudiating their example,
did not change his wife, by which he taught his wild neighbors that God
did not love inconstancy. By this woman, his first and only wife, he had
one son and two daughters, the latter were afterwards married, "very
handsomely, to Frenchmen, and had good dowries." Of the son there is
preserved a single touching incident. In person the baron was strikingly
handsome, a fine form, a well featured face, with a noble expression of
candor, firmness and benevolence. Possessed of an ample fortune, he used
it to enlarge the comforts of the people of his adoption; these making him
a recompense in beaver skins and other rich furs, from which he drew a
still larger revenue, to be in turn again devoted to the objects of his
benevolence. It was said of him, "that he can draw from his coffers two or
three hundred thousand crowns of good dry gold; but all the use he makes
of it is to buy presents for his _fellow savages_, who, upon their return
from hunting, present him with skins to treble the value."
Is it then surprising that this man, so wise, so good, so faithful to his
_fellow savages_, should, after twenty years, rise to the most eminent
station in that unsophisticated nation? That indeed these simple Indians,
who knew no arts except those of peace and war, should have looked up to
him as their tutular god? By the treaty of Breda, the lands from the
Penobscots to Nova Scotia had been ceded to France, in exchange for the
island of St. Christopher. Upon these lands the Baron de St. Castine had
peacefully resided for many years, until a new patent was granted to the
Duke of York, the boundaries of which extended beyond the limits of the
lands ceded by the treaty. Oh, those patents! those patents! What wrongs
were perpetrated by those remorseless instruments; what evil councils
prevailed when they were hatched; what corrupt, what base, what knavish
hands formed them; what vile, what ignoble, what ponderous lies has
history assumed to maintain, or to excuse them, and the acts committed
under them?
The first English aggression after the treaty, was but a trifling one in
respect to immediate effects. A quantity of wine having been landed by a
French vessel upon the lands covered by the patent, was seized by the Duke
of York's agents. This, upon a proper representation by the French
ambassador at the court of Charles II., was restored to the rightful
owners. But thereupon a new boundary line was run, _and the whole of
Castine's plantations included within it_. Immediately after this, the
Rose frigate, under the command of Captain Andross, sailed up the
Penobscot, plundered and destroyed Castine's house and fort, and sailed
away with all his arms and goods. Not only this, intruders from other
quarters invaded the lands of the Indians, took possession of the rivers,
and spoiled the fisheries with seines, turned their cattle in to devour
the standing corn of the Abenaquis, and committed other depredations,
which, although complained of, were neither inquired into nor redressed.
Then came reprisals; and first the savages retaliated by killing the
cattle of their enemies. Then followed those fearful and bloody campaigns,
which, under the name of Church's Indian Wars, disgrace the early annals
of New England. Night surprises, butcheries that spared neither age nor
sex, prisoners taken and sold abroad into slavery, after the glut of
revenge was satiated, these to return and bring with them an
inextinguishable hatred against the English, and desire of revenge. Anon a
conspiracy and the surprisal of Dover, accompanied with all the appalling
features of barbaric warfare--Major Waldron being tied down by the Indians
in his own arm-chair, and each one of them drawing a sharp knife across
his breast, says with the stroke, "Thus I cross out my account;" these,
and other atrocities, on either side, constitute the principal records of
a Christian people, who professed to be only pilgrims and sojourners in a
strange land--the victims of persecution in their own.
Daring all this dark and bloody period, no name is more conspicuous in the
annals than that of the Chief of the Abenaquis. Like a frightful ogre, he
hovers in the background, deadly and ubiquitous--the terror of the
colonies. It was he who had stirred up the Indians to do the work. Then
come reports of a massacre in some town on the frontier, and with it is
coupled a whisper of "Castine!" a fort has been surprised, he is there!
Some of Church's men have fallen in an ambuscade; the baron has planned
it, and furnished the arms and ammunition by which the deed was
consummated! Superstition invests him with imaginary powers; fanaticism
exclaims, 'tis he who had taught the savages to believe that we are the
people who crucified the Saviour.
But in spite of all these stories, the wonderful Bernese is not captured,
nor indeed seen by any, except that sometimes an English prisoner escaping
from the enemy, comes to tell of his clemency and tenderness; he has bound
up the wounds of these, he has saved the lives of those. At last a small
settlement of French and Indians is attacked by Church's men at Penobscot,
every person there being either killed or taken prisoner; among the latter
a daughter of the great baron, with her children, from whom they learn
that her unhappy father, ruined and broken-hearted, had returned to
France, the victim of persecutors, who, under the name of saints,
exhibited a cruelty and rapacity that would have disgraced the reputation
of a Philip or an Alva!
"It is a matter of surprise to the historical student," said the little
man, "that with a people like yours, so conspicuous in many rare examples
of erudition, that the history of Acadia has not merited a closer
attention, throwing as it does so strong a reflective light upon your
own. Such a task doubtless does not present many inviting features,
especially to those who would preserve, at any sacrifice of truth, the
earlier pages of discovery in America, pure, spotless, and unsullied. But
I think this dark, tragic background would set off all the brighter the
characters of those really good men who flourished in that period, of whom
there were no doubt many, although now obscured by the dull, dead
moonshine of indiscriminate forefathers' flattery. I know very well that
in some regards we might copy the example of a few of the first planters
of New England, but for the rest I believe with Adam Clark, that for the
sake of humanity, it were better that such ages should never return."
"We talk much," says he, "of ancient manners, their _simplicity and
ingenuousness_, and say that _the former days were better than these_. But
who says this who is a judge of the times? In those days of celebrated
simplicity, there were not so _many_ crimes as at present, I grant; but
what they wanted in _number_, they made up in _degree_; _deceit_,
_cruelty_, _rapine_, _murder_, and _wrong_ of almost every kind, then
flourished. _We_ are _refined_ in our vices, they were _gross_ and
_barbarous_ in theirs. They had neither so many _ways_ nor so many _means_
of sinning; but the _sum_ of their moral turpitude was greater than ours.
We have a sort of _decency_ and good _breeding_, which lay a certain
restraint on our passions; they were boorish and beastly, and their bad
passions ever in full play. Civilization prevents barbarity and atrocity;
mental cultivation induces decency of manners--those primitive times were
generally without these. Who that knows them would wish such ages to
return?"[A]
[A] Adam Clark's "Commentary on Book of Kings." II. Samuel, chap. iii.