WABAN.
Tommy Trembly was a tinker. “Tommy Tinker” he might have been called, for, like his English craftsman of the same trade name, he was accustomed to roam
the country around,
Crying, “Old brass to mend.”
The old New England tinkers were useful folk in their day, but they are as dead to customs of the present time as poor Christopher Sly, whom the curious ballad of “The Tinker’s Good Fortune” put for a time in a duke’s place, and whom Shakespeare so happily celebrates in the Induction to the comedy of the “Taming of the Shrew.”
Our New England tinker, Tommy Trembly, did not experience any such good fortune as Christopher’s. But he resembled Sly in his alehouse habits, and like him, hoped for the accidents of fortune.
He did not chance to fall into the kindly hands of the good Duke of Burgundy, but he did fall into the pastoral court of Old Waban, the famous Indian judge. This did not bring him the fortune that he expected; and it is of Tommy Trembly’s ill-luck and misfortune as a witness in court that I have a somewhat curious provincial story to tell.
Old Waban’s name meant the wind. To the Indians of Natick he was the wind. His mind, it was believed, swept the sky, wandered free over the forests and streams, and comprehended all things. When the wind uttered his voice the truth was thought to have been spoken, and nothing more needed saying. The Wind was the oracle.
Waban’s name still lives. The beautifully shaded lake under the green hills about Wellesley College, over which the girl students often row in good weather, will always recall the name of the famous chief which it bears; and a pretty suburban village near Boston is also called Waban. The name is worth perpetuating, for Waban was a noble chief and an upright judge.
He was a judge more than a chief; and Natick, and other old towns on the winding Charles River, used to be full of anecdotes of his odd but wise edicts.
One of his writs against an evil-doer who bore the name of Jeremiah Offscow was long preserved.
It ran: “You, you big constable guide, you catch um Jeremiah Offscow, strong you hold um, safe you bring um afore me. Waban, justice of the peace.” He had a love of fine-sounding and rhythmic language, as the writ shows.
Waban’s principal residence was at Natick, but that name once comprehended the whole region along the Charles River occupied by the Natick Indians. The great tree at Brighton, under which he used to pray and preach, was for public safety recently cut down. It was the largest tree ever known in the New England Colonies.
Old Waban’s judgments at court were often severe. A young Indian justice of the peace came to him one day, and said:—
“What would you do in case where a whole company of Indians were found to have become drunk and quarrelsome?”
“I first tie them all up.”
“And then?”
“I would whip um plaintiff.”
“Yes?”
“And then I whip um ’fendant!”
The young Indian looked surprised.
“What I do with the witnesses in such a case? Listen.”
But I will not tell here what old Judge Waban would have done with a witness in such a situation, for it would anticipate my story.
Tommy Trembly, the tinker, roamed up and down the provincial towns, with a soldering iron and pail of solder in a loose bag on his back, crying lustily, as he passed a house, “Old brass to mend? Old brass to mend?” by which he meant: “Have you any kitchen utensils that need repairing?”
Much of the cooking and laundrying was done at this period in immense brass kettles, which after long use became thin and leaky, and the leaks were commonly mended by the wandering tinker during his visits.
Tommy Trembly was a pioneer of his craft. He used to wander from Boston up and down the towns on the Charles River, and into the Indian towns of Natick, Punkapoag and Magunkaquog, or “the place of great trees,” as Hopkinton was once called. Other tinkers wandered up the valley of the Merrimac.
Nearly every village had an “ordinary,” or eating-house. This place was sometimes more a drinking-house than an eating-house. Most of the disorderly conduct of those generally well-conducted days began in the mugs of these old taverns.
There were some twelve hundred Praying Indians, as the Christian Indians were called, in the villages near Boston at this time. These had been converted to Christianity through the efforts of John Eliot, the Indian apostle, who translated the Bible into the Indian tongue. The principal seat of the Praying Indians was at Natick, and Waban was their principal leader, governor, counsellor, and judge.
There was an ordinary near the borders of Lake Cochituate, not far from the Indian village, kept by one “Indian Pendergast” and his wife, which acquired a bad reputation from the brawls that had occurred there over the drinking-cups. Squaw Pendergast, as the hostess was called, was a sharp-eyed, money-loving Indian woman, who could speak English well; and it was her passion to secure as many pence and shillings as possible from every guest who came.
“’Tis the bar that makes the money, I tell you; ’tis the bar that makes the money. Slap!” she used to say, striking her hand on her long, jingling jacket.
“Yes,” once answered a grave old Indian deacon; “and it is the bar that loses the money at last, and good name and soul and all, as you will see, Squaw Pendergast. Ale money um heap poor!”
One early autumn day Tommy Trembly wandered away from Boston along the Charles River, through little settlements and past the farms, crying, when he saw a habitation, “Old brass to mend? Old brass to mend?”
The next afternoon found him at Natick. He had mended many pots and kettles by the way. The heats of early autumn were cooling now; the apples were reddening on the trees. There were thistle-downs on the roads and byways, and the graceful leaves of the sassafras were turning yellow.
Approaching Natick, Tommy ceased to cry, “Old brass to mend?” He had earned much money by the way, and his only thought now was of the ordinary, and of Squaw Pendergast’s hard cider and foaming mugs of ale. Here and there a farmer called to him to stop, but he did not heed.
“Here, stop, stop! Kettles, kettles!” shouted one goodwife; but Tommy did not even turn his head in response.
“Stop that wild tinker; kettles, kettles!” she cried to her hired man. “Kettles, kettles!” shouted the man, swinging his corn-knife; but on flew Tommy, unheeding.
“Are you flying to-day?” asked black-eyed Squaw Pendergast, as his dusty figure moved athwart the cool trunks of the trees.
“Ay, Squaw Pendergast, and it’s good money I’ve made to-day,” said Tommy, striking on a pocket in his leather breeches.
“It’s a lively supper that I have for you,” said the squaw. Tommy threw down his bag of tools and fanned himself with his hat, looking away to the sunset sky.
A “lively” supper Tommy made, but his pocket did not chink so lively after it was over. Some idling cattle-drovers came, and he took another supper with them; and after his two suppers were over his leather pocket did not chink at all. But the chink might have been heard in Squaw Pendergast’s long woollen pocket.
During the evening a quarrel arose between the half-intoxicated drovers and Pendergast, the keeper of the ordinary, who was an ale-drinking, indolent, disorderly Indian. The men disputed; the Indian interfered, and struck one of them to the floor, where he lay for a time insensible.
The squaw took her husband’s side in the quarrel, and threw firewood at the drovers; and amid it all the alarmed neighbors came to the place and demanded the keeping of the peace.
The idlers at the ordinary went away through fear of arrest, and with them disappeared Tommy Trembly’s bag of tinker’s tools, solder, and soldering irons.
The man recovered, but the next morning came an order from Judge Waban for the arrest of the Indian Pendergast and his squaw, and also a demand that Tommy Trembly should appear as witness.
The court day was appointed. Tommy was greatly frightened, for the eccentric punishments of Old Waban’s courts were famous; and the affair presented Tommy in no favorable light among the grave Puritan Indians.
“I am only a witness,” he said to the people who stared at him on the way, “only the witness, you know.”
“You don’t know what you will find yourself when you get into the court of Old Waban,” said a farmer. “If you weren’t a white man I would not like to stand in your place.”
The court was held on the brown fields near where Wellesley College now stands. The slopes were cooled by great oak shadows, and overlooked the lovely pond now called Lake Waban. All the people, Indians and white, gathered from skeleton villages around to witness the trial.
It was a hot autumn day. The locusts sang in the great oaks, and the ospreys whirled in the sky. The grasses rustled; the ferns were turning yellow, and blue gentians filled the dry beds of the summer weirs under the hills.
Here and there wild grasses hung from the trees, and everywhere the always curious bluejays floated and scolded, as if to ask what meant all this gathering of the people.
Old Waban sat under a patriarchal oak, grave and stately. A blanket trimmed with shells was thrown over him. He wore leather breeches, and herons’ plumes covered his head. He was an old man, but his hair was black and long. His hands were hard and brawny as copper, and as he sat down on a shelf of rock under the oak, he rested his chin on a staff.
Among the Indians who gathered around him were several who claimed to be nearly one hundred years old. Peambow, or Peam Boohan, the ruling elder of Hassanamesit (Groton), was there, and Pennahannit, or Captain Josiah, the governor-general of the Praying Indian towns. Several sagamores came in blankets and feathers, and some twenty or more white people were present.
Finally came Joshua Mayhew, Esq., on horseback, as the representative justice of the General Court of Massachusetts to the rustic court of the Christian Indian community. It was high noon, and old Judge Waban slowly rose, and stood with lifted hand. “Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the voice of the Wind.” He looked a forest patriarch, as he stood in the shadow of the sun-crowned oak.
“The peace has been broken. A white man is the witness of it. Let the prisoners be brought, and Thomas Trembly, who is the witness. Sit down!”
All sat down on the ground. The two prisoners were brought, with their hands tied behind them. After them came Tommy Trembly.
“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the voice of the Wind,” said Old Waban, rising, with lifted hand. “Thomas Trembly, tell us the story of the fight which you saw at Pendergast’s.”
Tommy told his story,—the quarrel, and how he was robbed.
“It was a bad place?” said Waban, shaking his head.
“It was an orful bad place,—an orful place,” said Tommy.
“The people were all drinking there?”
“All drinking. Yes, it was orful.”
“Did you drink?”
“I took a warm supper. I had been travelling and tinkering.”
Squaw Pendergast bent her black eyes angrily upon him.
“And I was robbed,” said Tommy, with a martyr-like air. “The squaw she first got away from me all my money for—my supper. Then I was frightened, and then I was robbed. I have lost almost a week’s work.”
“Ugh!” said Old Waban; “hard times you’ve had. Ugh!”
“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the voice of the Wind,” he presently said. “What shall be done with the Indian Pendergast?”
There was a council of the leading Indians.
“Let him be tied to a hornbeam, and given fifty lashes on his bare back,” said Waban.
A small hornbeam-tree stood near. Indian Pendergast was tied to it, his clothing was partly removed, and he was whipped, amid the silence of the assembly.
“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the voice of the Wind,” said Old Waban. “What shall be done with the squaw?”
Another council, as before.
“Twenty-five lashes on her shoulders,” pronounced Old Waban.
She was led away to the hornbeam, and received the lashes in perfect silence, as though she had been an image.
“You got paid well,” said Tommy, as she was led by him after the chastisement.
“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the voice of the Wind!” said Old Waban to the drovers. “Go, take your cattle and drive them away, and never do you come again to the honest Indian towns. If you come, you shall go to the hornbeam-tree, too. Go!”
He lifted his brown arm and pointed to the north. He stood like a statue. The drovers did not reply; they knew his right to order them away from the towns. The cattle were grazing in the meadowy pastures under the hills, among the tall swamp-grass and spearmint beds and fir-trees. The drovers hurried them away.
There was something grand in the old Indian as he stood there with lifted arm, the very picture of Justice and Truth. Here was a forest prophet who, under the Christian teaching of Eliot, had put the nature of the savage animal, to which he had been born, under his will, and was governed by his faith in God and moral sense.
He was called “The New Chief” because he had developed a new nature and become a new man. Odd his decisions in court often were, but there was moral sense in them, and he believed that when Waban the Wind spoke, he uttered the will of the Higher Power.
The people watched the drovers as they cracked their whips and disappeared among the blazed trees of the oaklands. Waban at length broke the silence.
“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! for the last time. Listen to the voice of the Wind. What shall be done with Thomas Trembly?”
“Done?” said Tommy, starting; “done with me? I haven’t done nothing. I’m white; you can’t touch me. I’m only a witness.”
“Ugh!” said Old Waban.
“I ought to be paid for my tinker’s tools,” said Tommy.
“Ugh!” said Old Waban, “you lost them there.”
“Yes, that was the very place where I lost them; and I’ll lose a week’s time beside.”
“And that because you were there?”
“Yes; and by good rights I ought to be paid the cost of my tools, and the money I lost at the inn after being so shamefully used there,” said Tommy.
“Ugh! Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Listen to the Wind. What shall be done with Thomas Trembly, the tinker?”
“Give him the ordinary,” said a white man. “Fine the Pendergasts by giving the tinker the ordinary.”
The chief again lifted his hand.
“Take him,” said Waban, “to the hornbeam-tree, and give him as many sound lashes as you gave the squaw.”
“What! You can’t! I am a white man!”
“But the white brother here,” said Waban, turning to Justice Mayhew, “approves my sentence. Take him to the hornbeam.”
“What for? what for?” screamed the tinker.
“What for?” said Waban. “What for? For being found in bad company. You shouldn’t have been there!”
Tommy received the chastisement in a very frantic manner, uttering the loudest protestations. When the lashes had been given he crept away, hardly lifting his eyes.
The people of Natick were slow to forget the old chief’s methods with witnesses who were found in bad company, and who “shouldn’t have been there.”
LEGEND OF NORTHMEN’S ROCK.[5]
(Thorfin, 1007.)
Have you heard it—the Northmen’s Rune of the Rose
In the climes of the sunbeams pale?
’Twas—Far from the night of the six months’ snows
Went the barque of the silver sail.
’Twas—Far from the lands of the frozen fens
Lay the lands of the sunshine clear,
And Thorfin followed the osprey’s pens,