Children's Stories in American History

by Henrietta Christian Wright

The Puritans, looking for a good place for settlement, chose the peninsula of Shawmut, or Tri-mountain, which they found to be a place of "sweet and pleasant springs, and good land affording rich corn-fields and fruitful gardens," and here, in September, 1630, were laid the foundations of the City of Boston.

For many years the colonists could not raise any cattle on account of the wolves which roamed day and night through the forests. The Indians were sometimes friendly and would bring them corn, which the settlers would pay for in clothing, knives, etc.; it is said that once one of the Indians gave a settler a peck of corn in exchange for a little puppy-dog. Whenever food was scarce they all shared alike, so that no one had more than another, and after a time, as they began to raise more crops and as the forests became cleared, they got along very nicely and lived as happily in their log-houses as if they had been marble palaces.

To-day New England is famous for its beautiful villages, with their broad streets shaded with elms and their wide pleasant lawns and comfortable houses; but if you could have seen a New England village two hundred and fifty years ago, it would have been a very different thing.

If you had lived in those days your home would have been a log-house on the edge of a great deep forest. Imagine these little English boys and girls going to bed in a room where the snow could drift in through the cracks, and where they could hear the wolves howling in the forests. How afraid they must have been, and how they must have snuggled under the covers and covered up their faces.

Imagine going to a little church built of logs and having a flag waving from it, and cannon in front of it to protect it from the Indians. Sometimes the people were called to church by the beating of a drum, and every man carried his musket with him, as no one knew when the Indians might come. In these queer little churches, families did not sit together as they do now, but the men sat in one place, the women in another, and the children in another. There was always a man to keep the children in order, and well he did it too. No child dared smile in church, or he might be rapped on the knuckles for it. Every one had to go to church, whether he wanted to or not; if any one was absent the "tithing man" was sent after him, and for many years after this custom was given up, the New England mothers used to frighten their children by telling them that the "tidy man" was coming when they were naughty.

These children used to go to school in queer little log school-houses, and school was not the pleasant place to them that it is to you. Everybody had to be as solemn there as possible, and all the pupils used to sit up stiffly and primly, and look as grave as little owls, for the schoolmaster was feared and respected next to the minister, and no New England child in that age would have thought of even smiling if the minister were present. The fathers and mothers were very solemn people too—life was such a serious thing to them, they thought it wicked to waste time amusing children. They did not even keep Christmas for many years, and the Puritan children did not know as much about Santa Claus as you do about the man in the moon.

You must not think, however, that they were unhappy; children always find some means of having a good time, even if fathers and mothers are stern and sober people; and the Puritan fathers and mothers loved their children just as much as the Dutch fathers and mothers in New York loved theirs, only they showed their love in a different way, that is all. And, after all, these little log school-houses were not such bad places—they were always sure to be near the woods, where were great shady trees, and if the children did not sing pretty songs in school as you do, they could at least hear the birds singing all day long; if they had not bright pictures on the walls of the school-room, they had sweet, dainty wild flowers just outside, and the wind and trees and blossoms whispered their secrets to them; and that is one reason perhaps why they grew up so good and true and brave. Thanksgiving Day was the one day in the year on which the Pilgrims did not think it wrong to be merry. Early in the day they went to church, which was held partly as a service of thanks for the harvest, and partly in grateful remembrance for the relief that came to them from England when they were suffering from famine. When church was over the fun began. All the members of a family from near and far were brought together on this day, and what gay times the children had with their small cousins and nieces and nephews. What games and romps, and what interesting talk around the fire as to who had gathered the most nuts, who had built the strongest and swiftest sled, and who had been bravest when the Indians came prowling around.

For of all the troubles which the settlers of New England had to bear, the trouble with the Indians was the worst.

At first they seemed to get along quite peaceably with them; the chiefs of some of the tribes were very friendly and were kind to the colonists; but as time went on the Indians grew more and more unfriendly, and the settlers lived in constant fear of them.

Sometimes they would come in the night to a house where a mother was alone with her children, and kill them all and then set fire to the house. Sometimes a man would be working at a distance from his home, and go back there only to find that the Indians had been there before him, and had taken his wife and children away with them to make slaves of them.