The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 28, February, 1860

He looked up once again, with the same bright, assured smile. That smile never faded from the dead face; it was the last look which they who loved him bore forever in their memory.

And so passed our Visionary from that which we call Life.

THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA

1675Raze these long blocks of brick and stone,These huge mill-monsters overgrown;Blot out the humbler piles as well,Where, moved like living shuttles, dwellThe weaving genii of the bell;Tear from the wild Cocheco's trackThe dams that hold its torrents back;And let the loud-rejoicing fallPlunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;And let the Indian's paddle playOn the unbridged Piscataqua!Wide over hill and valley spreadOnce more the forest, dusk and dread,With here and there a clearing cutFrom the walled shadows round it shut;Each with its farm-house builded rude,By English yeoman squared and hewed,And the grim, flankered blockhouse, boundWith bristling palisades around.So, haply, shall before thine eyesThe dusty veil of centuries rise,The old, strange scenery overlayThe tamer pictures of to-day,While, like the actors in a play,Pass in their ancient guise alongThe figures of my border song:What time beside Cocheco's floodThe white man and the red man stood,With words of peace and brotherhood;When passed the sacred calumetFrom lip to lip with fire-draught wet,And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smokeThrough the gray beard of Waldron broke,And Squando's voice, in suppliant pleaFor mercy, struck the haughty keyOf one who held in any fateHis native pride inviolate!     *     *     *     *"Let your ears be opened wide!He who speaks has never lied.Waldron of Piscataqua,Hear what Squando has to say!"Squando shuts his eyes and sees,Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees.In his wigwam, still as stone,Sits a woman all alone,"Wampum beads and birchen strandsDropping from her careless hands,Listening ever for the fleetPatter of a dead child's feet!"When the moon a year agoTold the flowers the time to blow,In that lonely wigwam smiledMenewee, our little child."Ere that moon grew thin and old,He was lying still and cold;Sent before us, weak and small,When the Master did not call!"On his little grave I lay;Three times went and came the day;Thrice above me blazed the noon,Thrice upon me wept the moon."In the third night-watch I heard,Far and low, a spirit-bird;Very mournful, very wild,Sang the totem of my child."'Menewee, poor Menewee,Walks a path he cannot see:Let the white man's wigwam lightWith its blaze his steps aright."'All-uncalled, he dares not showEmpty hands to Manito:Better gifts he cannot bearThan the scalps his slayers wear.'"All the while the totem sang,Lightning blazed and thunder rang;And a black cloud, reaching high,Pulled the white moon from the sky."I, the medicine-man, whose earAll that spirits hear can hear,—I, whose eyes are wide to seeAll the things that are to be,—"Well I knew the dreadful signsIn the whispers of the pines,In the river roaring loud,In the mutter of the cloud."At the breaking of the day,From the grave I passed away;Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad,But my heart was hot and mad."There is rust on Squando's knifeFrom the warm red springs of life;On the funeral hemlock-treesMany a scalp the totem sees."Blood for blood! But evermoreSquando's heart is sad and sore;And his poor squaw waits at homeFor the feet that never come!"Waldron of Cocheco, hear!Squando speaks, who laughs at fear:Take the captives he has ta'en;Let the land have peace again!"As the words died on his tongue,Wide apart his warriors swung;Parted, at the sign he gave,Right and left, like Egypt's wave.And, like Israel passing freeThrough the prophet-charmèd sea,Captive mother, wife, and childThrough the dusky terror filed.One alone, a little maid,Middleway her steps delayed,Glancing, with quick, troubled sight,Round about from red to white.Then his hand the Indian laidOn the little maiden's head,Lightly from her forehead fairSmoothing back her yellow hair."Gift or favor ask I none;What I have is all my own:Never yet the birds have sung,'Squando hath a beggar's tongue.'"Yet, for her who waits at homeFor the dead who cannot come,Let the little Gold-hair beIn the place of Menewee!"Mishanock, my little star!Come to Saco's pines afar!Where the sad one waits at home,Wequashim, my moonlight, come!""What!" quoth Waldron, "leave a childChristian-born to heathens wild?As God lives, from Satan's handI will pluck her as a brand!""Hear me, white man!" Squando cried,"Let the little one decide.Wequashim, my moonlight, say,Wilt thou go with me, or stay?"Slowly, sadly, half-afraid,Half-regretfully, the maidOwned the ties of blood and race,Turned from Squando's pleading face.Not a word the Indian spoke,But his wampum chain he broke,And the beaded wonder hungOn that neck so fair and young.Silence-shod, as phantoms seemIn the marches of a dream,Single-filed, the grim arrayThrough the pine-trees wound away.Doubting, trembling, sore amazed,Through her tears the young child gazed."God preserve her!" Waldron said;"Satan hath bewitched the maid!"     *     *     *     *Years went and came. At close of daySinging came a child from play,Tossing from her loose-locked headGold in sunshine, brown in shade.Pride was in the mother's look,But her head she gravely shook,And with lips that fondly smiledFeigned to chide her truant child.Unabashed the maid began:"Up and down the brook I ran,Where, beneath the bank so steep,Lie the spotted trout asleep."'Chip!' went squirrel on the wall,After me I heard him call,And the cat-bird on the treeTried his best to mimic me."Where the hemlocks grew so dark,That I stopped to look and hark,On a log, with feather-hat,By the path, an Indian sat."Then I cried, and ran away;But he called and bade me stay;And his voice was good and mildAs my mother's to her child."And he took my wampum chain,Looked and looked it o'er again;Gave me berries, and, beside,On my neck a plaything tied."Straight the mother stooped to seeWhat the Indian's gift might be.On the braid of wampum hung,Lo! a cross of silver swung.Well she knew its graven sign,Squando's bird and totem pine;And, a mirage of the brain,Flowed her childhood back again.Flashed the roof the sunshine through,Into space the walls outgrew,On the Indian's wigwam matBlossom-crowned again she sat.Cool she felt the west wind blow,In her ear the pines sang low,And, like links from out a chain,Dropped the years of care and pain.From the outward toil and din,From the griefs that gnaw within,To the freedom of the woodsCalled the birds and winds and floods.Well, O painful minister,Watch thy flock, but blame not her,If her ear grew sharp to hearAll their voices whispering near.Blame her not, as to her soulAll the desert's glamour stole,That a tear for childhood's lossDropped upon the Indian's cross.When, that night, the Book was read,And she bowed her widowed head,And a prayer for each loved nameRose like incense from a flame,To the listening ear of Heaven,Lo! another name was given:"Father! give the Indian rest!Bless him! for his love has blest!"

THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA

The Maroons! it was a word of peril once; and terror spread along the skirts of the blue mountains of Jamaica, when some fresh foray of those unconquered guerrillas swept down upon the outlying plantations, startled the Assembly from its order, General Williamson from his billiards, and Lord Balcarres from his diplomatic ease,—endangering, according to the official statement, "public credit," "civil rights," and "the prosperity, if not the very existence of the country," until they were "persuaded to make peace" at last. They were the Circassians of the New World; but they were black, instead of white; and as the Circassians refused to be transferred from the Sultan to the Czar, so the Maroons refused to be transferred from Spanish dominion to English, and thus their revolt began. The difference is, that, while the white mountaineers numbered four hundred thousand, and only defied Nicholas, the black mountaineers numbered less than two thousand, and defied Cromwell; and while the Circassians, after thirty years of revolt, seem now at last subdued, the Maroons, on the other hand, who rebelled in 1655, were never conquered, but only made a compromise of allegiance, and exist as a separate race to-day.

When Admirals Penn and Venables landed in Jamaica, in 1655, there was not a remnant left of the sixty thousand natives whom the Spaniards had found there a century and a half before. Their pitiful tale is told only by those caves, still known among the mountains, where thousands of human skeletons strew the ground. In their place dwelt two foreign races,—an effeminate, ignorant, indolent white community of fifteen hundred, with a black slave population quite as large and infinitely more hardy and energetic. The Spaniards were readily subdued by the English,—the negroes remained unsubdued; the slaveholders were banished from the island,—the slaves only banished themselves to the mountains: thence the English could not dislodge them, nor the buccaneers, whom the English employed. And when Jamaica subsided into a British colony, and peace was made with Spain, and the children of Cromwell's Puritan soldiers were beginning to grow rich by importing slaves for Roman Catholic Spaniards, the Maroons still held their own wild empire in the mountains, and, being sturdy heathens every one, practised Obeah rites in approved pagan fashion.

The word Maroon is derived, according to one etymology, from the Spanish word Marrano, a wild-boar,—these fugitives being all boar-hunters,—according to another, from Marony, a river separating French and Dutch Guiana, where a colony of them dwelt and still dwells; and by another still, from Cimarron, a word meaning untamable, and used alike for apes and runaway slaves. But whether these rebel-marauders were regarded as monkeys or men, they made themselves equally formidable. As early as 1663, the Governor and Council of Jamaica offered to each Maroon, who should surrender, his freedom and twenty acres of land; but not one accepted the terms. During forty years, forty-four acts of Assembly were passed in respect to them, and at least a quarter of a million pounds sterling were expended in the warfare against them. In 1733, the force employed against them consisted of two regiments of regular troops and the whole militia of the island, and the Assembly said that "the Maroons had within a few years greatly increased, notwithstanding all the measures that had been concerted for their suppression," "to the great terror of his Majesty's subjects," and "to the manifest weakening and preventing the further increase of the strength and inhabitants of the island."

The special affair in progress, at the time of these statements, was called Cudjoe's War. Cudjoe was a gentleman of extreme brevity and blackness, whose full-length portrait can hardly be said to adorn Dallas's History; but he was as formidable a guerrilla as Marion. Under his leadership, the various bodies of fugitives were consolidated into one force and thoroughly organized. Cudjoe, like Schamyl, was religious as well as military head of his people; by Obeah influence he established a thorough freemasonry among both slaves and insurgents; no party could be sent forth by the government but he knew it in time to lay an ambush, or descend with fire and sword on the region left unprotected. He was thus always supplied with arms and ammunition; and as his men were perfect marksmen, never wasted a shot and never risked a battle, his forces naturally increased while those of his opponents were decimated. His men were never captured, and never took a prisoner; it was impossible to tell when they were defeated; in dealing with them, as Pelissier said of the Arabs, "peace was not purchased by victory"; and the only men who could obtain the slightest advantage against them were the imported Mosquito Indians, or the "Black Shot," a company of government negroes. For nine full years this particular war continued unchecked, General Williamson ruling Jamaica by day and Cudjoe by night.

The rebels had every topographical advantage, for they held possession of the "Cockpits." Those highlands are furrowed through and through, as by an earthquake, with a series of gaps or ravines, resembling the California cañons, or those similar fissures in various parts of the Atlantic States, known to local fame either poetically as ice-glens, or symbolically as purgatories. These chasms vary from two hundred yards to a mile in length; the rocky walls are fifty or a hundred feet high, and often absolutely inaccessible, while the passes at each end admit but one man at a time. They are thickly wooded, wherever trees can grow; water flows within them; and they often communicate with one another, forming a series of traps for an invading force. Tired and thirsty with climbing, the weary soldiers toil on, in single file, without seeing or hearing an enemy; up the steep and winding path they traverse one "cockpit," then enter another. Suddenly a shot is fired from the dense and sloping forest on the right, then another and another, each dropping its man; the startled troops face hastily in that direction, when a more murderous volley is poured from the other side; the heights above flash with musketry, while the precipitous path by which they came seems to close in fire behind them. By the time the troops have formed in some attempt at military order, the woods around them are empty, and their agile and noiseless foes have settled themselves into ambush again, farther up the defile, ready for a second attack, if needed. But one is usually sufficient;—disordered, exhausted, bearing their wounded with them, the soldiers retreat in panic, if permitted to escape at all, and carry fresh dismay to the barracks, the plantations, and the Government House.

It is not strange, then, that high military authorities, at that period, should have pronounced the subjugation of the Maroons a thing more difficult than to obtain a victory over any army in Europe. Moreover, these people were fighting for their liberty, with which aim no form of warfare could be unjustifiable; and the description given by Lafayette of the American Revolution was true of this one,—"the grandest of causes, won by contests of sentinels and outposts." The utmost hope of a British officer, ordered against the Maroons, was to lay waste a provision-ground or cut them off from water. But there was little satisfaction in this; the wild pine-leaves and the grapevine-withes supplied the rebels with water, and their plantation-grounds were the wild pine-apple and the plantain groves, and the forests, where the wild-boars harbored and the ringdoves were as easily shot as if they were militia-men. Nothing but sheer weariness of fighting seems to have brought about a truce at last, and then a treaty, between those high contracting parties, Cudjoe and General Williamson.

But how to execute a treaty between these wild Children of the Mist and respectable diplomatic Englishmen? To establish any official relations without the medium of a preliminary bullet required some ingenuity of manœuvring. Cudjoe was willing, but inconveniently cautious; he would not come half-way to meet any one; nothing would content him but an interview in his own chosen cockpit. So he selected one of the most difficult passes, posting in the forests a series of outlying parties, to signal with their horns, one by one, the approach of the plenipotentiaries, and then to retire on the main body. Through this line of perilous signals, therefore, Colonel Guthrie and his handful of men bravely advanced; horn after horn they heard sounded, but there was no other human noise in the woods, and they had advanced till they saw the smoke of the Maroon huts before they caught a glimpse of a human form.

A conversation was at last opened with the invisible rebels. On their promise of safety, Dr. Russell advanced alone to treat with them, then several Maroons appeared, and finally Cudjoe himself. The formidable chief was not highly military in appearance, being short, fat, humpbacked, dressed in a tattered blue coat without skirts or sleeves, and an old felt hat without a rim. But if he had blazed with regimental scarlet, he could not have been treated with more distinguished consideration; indeed, in that case, "the exchange of hats" with which Dr. Russell finally volunteered, in Maroon fashion, to ratify negotiations, would have been a less severe test of good fellowship. This fine stroke of diplomacy had its effect, therefore; the rebel captains agreed to a formal interview with Colonel Guthrie and Captain Sadler, and a treaty was at last executed with all due solemnity, under a large cotton-tree at the entrance of Guthrie's Defile. This treaty recognized the military rank of Captain Cudjoe, Captain Accompong, and the rest; gave assurance that the Maroons should be "forever hereafter in a perfect state of freedom and liberty"; ceded to them fifteen hundred acres of land; and stipulated only that they should keep the peace, should harbor no fugitive from justice or from slavery, and should allow two white commissioners to remain among them, simply to represent the British government.

During the following year a separate treaty was made with another large body of insurgents, called the Windward Maroons. This was not effected, however, until after an unsuccessful military attempt, in which the mountaineers gained a signal triumph. By artful devices,—a few fires left burning, with old women to watch them,—a few provision-grounds exposed by clearing away the bushes,—they lured the troops far up among the mountains, and then surprised them by an ambush. The militia all fled, and the regulars took refuge under a large cliff in a stream, where they remained four hours up to their waists in water, until finally they forded the river, under full fire, with terrible loss. Three months after this, however, the Maroons consented to an amicable interview, exchanging hostages first. The position of the white hostage, at least, was not the most agreeable; he complained that he was beset by the women and children, with indignant cries of "Buckra, Buckra," while the little boys pointed their fingers at him as if stabbing him, and that with evident relish. However, Captain Quao, like Captain Cudjoe, made a treaty at last, and hats were interchanged instead of hostages.

Independence being thus won and acknowledged, there was a suspension of hostilities for some years. Among the wild mountains of Jamaica, the Maroons dwelt in a savage freedom. So healthful and beautiful was the situation of their chief town, that the English government has erected barracks there of late years, as being the most salubrious situation on the island. They breathed an air ten degrees cooler than that inhaled by the white population below, and they lived on a daintier diet, so that the English epicures used to go up among them for good living. The mountaineers caught the strange land-crabs, plodding in companies of millions their sidelong path from mountain to ocean, and from ocean to mountain again. They hunted the wild-boars, and prepared the flesh by salting and smoking it in layers of aromatic leaves, the delicious "jerked hog" of Buccaneer annals. They reared cattle and poultry, cultivated corn and yams, plantains and cocoas, guavas and papaws and mameys and avocados and all luxurious West Indian fruits; the very weeds of their orchards had tropical luxuriance in their fragrance and in their names; and from the doors of their little thatched huts they looked across these gardens of delight to the magnificent lowland forests, and over those again to the faint line of far-off beach, the fainter ocean-horizon, and the illimitable sky.

They had senses like those of our Indians, tracked each other by the smell of the smoke of fires in the air, and called to each other by horns, using a special note to designate each of their comrades, and distinguishing it beyond the range of ordinary hearing. They spoke English diluted with Spanish and African words, and practised Obeah rites quite undiluted with Christianity. Of course they associated largely with the slaves, without any very precise regard to treaty stipulations; sometimes brought in fugitives, and sometimes concealed them; left their towns and settled on the planters' lands, when they preferred them, but were quite orderly and luxuriously happy. During the formidable insurrection of the Koromantyn slaves, in 1760, they played a dubious part: when left to go on their own way, they did something towards suppressing it,—but when placed under the guns of the troops and ordered to fire on those of their own color, they threw themselves on the ground without discharging a shot. Nevertheless, they gradually came up into rather reputable standing; they grew more and more industrious and steady; and after they had joined very heartily in resisting D'Estaing's threatened invasion of the island in 1779, it became the fashion to speak of "our faithful and affectionate Maroons."

In 1795, their position was as follows:—Their numbers had not materially increased, for many had strayed off and settled on the outskirts of plantations,—nor materially diminished, for many runaway slaves had joined them,—while there were also separate settlements of fugitives, who had maintained their freedom for twenty years. The white superintendents had lived with the Maroons in perfect harmony, without the slightest official authority, but with a great deal of actual influence. But there was an "irrepressible conflict" behind all this apparent peace, and the slightest occasion might at any moment revive all the Old terror. That occasion was close at hand.

Captain Cudjoe and Captain Accompong and the other founders of Maroon independence had passed away, and "Old Montagu" reigned in their stead, in Trelawney Town. Old Montagu had all the pomp and circumstance of Maroon majesty; he wore a laced red coat, and a hat superb with gold-lace and plumes; none but captains could sit in his presence; he was helped first at meals, and no woman could eat beside him; he presided at councils as magnificently as at table, though with less appetite;—and possessed, meanwhile, not an atom of the love or reverence of any human being. The real power lay entirely with Major James, the white superintendent, who had been brought up among the Maroons by his father (and predecessor), and who was the idol of this wild race. In an evil hour, the government removed him, and put a certain unpopular Captain Craskell in his place; and as there happened to be, about the same time, a great excitement concerning a hopeful pair of young Maroons who had been seized and publicly whipped, on a charge of hog-stealing, their kindred refused to allow the new superintendent to remain in the town. A few attempts at negotiation only brought them to a higher pitch of wrath, which ended in their despatching the following remarkable diplomatic note to the Earl of Balcarres:—"The Maroons wishes nothing else from the country but battle, and they desires not to see Mr. Craskell up here at all. So they are waiting every moment for the above on Monday. Mr. David Schaw will see you on Sunday morning for an answer. They will wait till Monday, nine o'clock, and if they don't come up, they will come down themselves." Signed, "Colonel Montagu and all the rest."

It turned out, at last, that only two or three of the Maroons were concerned in this remarkable defiance; but meanwhile it had its effect. Several ambassadors were sent among the insurgents, and were so favorably impressed by their reception as to make up a subscription of money for their hosts, on departing; only the "gallant Colonel Gallimore," a Jamaica Camillus, gave iron instead of gold, by throwing some bullets into the contribution-box. And it was probably in accordance with his view of the subject, that, when the Maroons sent ambassadors in return, they were at once imprisoned, most injudiciously and unjustly; and when Old Montagu himself and thirty-seven others, following, were seized and imprisoned also, it is not strange that the Maroons, joined by many slaves, were soon in open insurrection.

Martial law was instantly proclaimed throughout the island. The fighting-men among the insurgents were not, perhaps, more than five hundred; against whom the government could bring nearly fifteen hundred regular troops and several thousand militia-men. Lord Balcarres himself took the command, and, eager to crush the affair, promptly marched a large force up to Trelawney Town, and was glad to march back again as expeditiously as possible. In his very first attack, he was miserably defeated, and had to fly for his life, amid a perfect panic of the troops, in which some forty or fifty were killed,—including Colonel Sandford, commanding the regulars, and the bullet-loving Colonel Gallimore, in command of the militia,—while not a single Maroon was even wounded, so far as could be ascertained.