England was ever the birthplace and abiding-place of ghosts. Thoroughly respectable most of these old residents were, their manifestations being stereotyped with all the conventionalities of the spirit world. When the colonists came to the new world the friendly and familiar spectres did not desert their old companions, but emigrated also, and “sett down satysfyed” in enlarged log cabins, and houses built of American pine, just as the planters did; and in these humbler domiciles both classes of inhabitants were soon as much at home as they had been in oaken manor houses and stone castles in the “ould countrie.”
In New England the tavern was often the chosen place of abode and of visitation of spirits; like other travellers on life’s weary round, these travellers on the round of the dead found their warmest welcome at an inn. Naturally new conditions developed new phenomena; the spirits of unhappy peasants, of cruel barons, of hated heirs at law, of lovelorn ladies, found novel companions, among whom the manitous and wraiths of the red men cut the strangest figure. The ghosts of pirates, too, were prime favorites in America, especially in seaboard towns, but were never such frequent visitors, nor on the whole such picturesque visitors, as were the spirits of Indians:—
“The ghosts that come to haunt us
From the kingdom of Ponemah,
From the land of the Hereafter.”
Sign-board of
Dewey Tavern.
I have known a good many tavern ghosts of Indians—though their deeds as recounted are often far from being original or aboriginal. Reuben Jencks owned a tavern that had a very good Indian ghost. This ghost was not one of the inconsiderate kind that comes when you are awake, and half scares you to death; this noble red man stole in silently by night, so silently that the sleeper never awakened, and hence was never frightened, for nothing seems overstrange, uncanny, or impossible in a dream. Even when the Indian brandished his tomahawk and seized the visited one by the hair of the head, it never seemed to be anything more than might be expected, nor did he ever appear overfierce in his threats and gestures. Nevertheless in course of time his appearances gave a name to the apartment he visited; it came to be known as the Indian Chamber. And travelling chapmen, pedlers, or traders who had been over the route frequently, and had heard the tale at every trip, sometimes objected to sleeping in the room—not that they were afraid—but it was somewhat of a nuisance.
It was not known that any Indian ever had received aught of injury at the hands of any at the Black Horse Tavern, save the derivative injury from too frequent and liberal draughts of hard cider, which was freely dealt out to every sorry brave who wandered there. There were some simpletons who said that the Indian’s visits were to resent the injury done to another old inn, a rival down the road, named The Pine Tree, but which bore the figure of an Indian on its sign-board, and was oftener known as The Indian Tavern. This was nonsense. The Pine Tree had no visitors because it did not deserve them, had a vile table and a worse stable, while the Black Horse Tavern gave the best of the earth to its guests.
Reuben Jencks had not been born in this tavern. He inherited it from an uncle, and he was already married and had a family of small children when the tavern came to him. Another baby was born soon after, and as the Indian Chamber was the largest in the house, Mrs. Jencks quietly disposed of the objections of timid and superstitious chapmen and pedlers by taking the room for her own sleeping apartment.
It would seem to be a brave warrior, albeit a savage and a ghost, who would enter a room as densely populated as that of Mr. and Mrs. Jencks. There was for the repose of landlord and landlady a vast four-post bedstead with curtains, valance, and tester of white dimity; and under this high bed was thrust by day a low trundle bed. At night it was drawn out, and upon it slept the three little daughters of the Jencks family. Upon an old high-backed settle set on rockers slept Reuben Jencks, Jr., the deposed king of the family. Adjustable bars slipped in the front of this settle made it a safe crib. This stood on one side of the fireplace, and the new baby reposed, when he slept at all, in a deeply hooded mahogany cradle. There was a great fire ever and cheerfully burning in the fireplace—and yet to this chamber of infantile innocence and comfort came the saturnine form of the Indian ghost.
