Rachel Dyer

by John Neal

It was accomplished. A shadow fell upon the earth at noon-day. The waters grew dark as midnight. Every thing alive was quiet with fear—the trees, the birds, the cattle, the very hearts of men who were gathered together in the houses of the Lord, every where, throughout all the land, for worship and for mutual succor. It was indeed a “Dark Day”—a day never to be thought of by those who were alive at the time, nor by their children’s children, without fear. The shadow of the grave was abroad, with a voice like the voice of the grave. Earthquake, fire, and a furious bright storm followed; inundation, war and strife in the church. Stars fell in a shower, heavy cannon were heard in the deep of the wilderness, low music from the sea—trumpets, horses, armies, mustering for battle in the deep sea. Apparitions were met in the high way, people whom nobody knew, men of a most unearthly stature; evil spirits going abroad on the sabbath day. The print of huge feet and hoof-marks were continually discovered in the snow, in the white sand of the sea-shore—nay, in the solid rocks and along the steep side of high mountains, where no mortal hoof could go; and sometimes they could be traced from roof to roof on the house-tops, though the buildings were very far apart; and the shape of Elizabeth Hutchinson herself, was said to have appeared to a traveller, on the very spot where she and her large family, after being driven forth out of New-England by the power of the new church, were put to death by the savages. He that saw the shape knew it, and was afraid for the people; for the look of the woman was a look of wrath, and her speech a speech of power.

Elizabeth Hutchinson was one of the most extraordinary women of the age—haughty, ambitious and crafty; and when it was told every where through the Plymouth colony that she had appeared to one of the church that expelled her, they knew that she had come back, to be seen of the judges and elders, according to her oath, and were siezed with a deep fear. They knew that she had been able to draw away from their peculiar mode of worship, a tithe of their whole number when she was alive, and a setter forth, if not of strange gods, at least of strange doctrines: and who should say that her mischievous power had not been fearfully augmented by death?

Meanwhile the men of New Plymouth, and of Massachusetts Bay, had multiplied so that all the neighborhood was tributary to them, and they were able to send forth large bodies of their young men to war, six hundred, seven hundred, and a thousand at a time, year after year, to fight with Philip of Mount Hope, a royal barbarian, who had wit enough to make war as the great men of Europe would make war now, and to persuade the white people that the prophecy of the Quakers related to him. It is true enough that he made war like a savage—and who would not, if he were surrounded as Philip of Mount Hope was, by a foe whose hatred was a part of his religion, a part of his very blood and being? if his territory were ploughed up or laid waste by a superior foe? if the very wilderness about him were fired while it was the burial-place and sanctuary of his mighty fathers? if their form of worship were scouted, and every grave and every secret place of prayer laid open to the light, with all their treasures and all their mysteries? every temple not made with hands, every church built by the Builder of the Skies, invaded by such a foe and polluted with the rites of a new faith, or levelled without mercy—every church and every temple, whether of rock or wood, whether perpetual from the first, or planted as the churches and temples of the solitude are, with leave to perpetuate themselves forever, to renew their strength and beauty every year and to multiply themselves on every side forever and ever, in spite of deluge and fire, storm, strife and earthquake; every church and every temple whether roofed as the skies are, and floored as the mountains are, with great clouds and with huge rocks, or covered in with tree-branches and paved with fresh turf, lighted with stars and purified with high winds? Would not the man of Europe make war now like a savage, and without mercy, if he were beset by a foe—for such was the foe that Philip of Mount Hope had to contend with in the fierce pale men of Massachusetts Bay,—a foe that no weapon of his could reach, a foe coming up out of the sea with irresistible power, and with a new shape? What if armies were to spring up out of the solid earth before the man of Europe—it would not be more wonderful to him than it was to the man of America to see armies issuing from the deep. What if they were to approach in balloons—or in great ships of the air, armed all over as the foe of the poor savage appeared to be, when the ships of the water drew near, charged with thunder and with lightning, and with four-footed creatures, and with sudden death? Would the man of Europe make war in such a case according to what are now called the usages of war?

The struggle with this haughty savage was regarded for a time as the wo without a shape, to which the prophecy referred, the sorrow without a name; for it occupied the whole force of the country, long and long after the bow of the red-chief was broken forever, his people scattered from the face of the earth, and his royalty reduced to a shadow—a shadow it is true, but still the shadow of a king; for up to the last hour of his life, when he died as no king had ever the courage to die, he showed no sign of terror, betrayed no wish to conciliate the foe, and smote all that were near without mercy, whenever they talked of submission; though he had no hope left, no path for escape, and every shot of the enemy was fatal to some one of the few that stood near him. It was a war, which but for the accidental discovery of a league embracing all the chief tribes of the north, before they were able to muster their strength for the meditated blow, would have swept away the white men, literally to the four winds of heaven, and left that earth free which they had set up their dominion over by falsehood and by treachery. By and by however, just when the issue of that war was near, and the fright of the pale men over, just when the hearts of the church had begun to heave with a new hope, and the prophecy of wrath and sorrow was no longer to be heard in the market-place, and by the way-side, or wherever the people were gathered together for business or worship, with a look of awe and a subdued breath—just when it came to be no longer thought of nor cared for by the judges and the elders, to whom week after week and year after year, it had been a familiar proverb of death (if bad news from the war had come over night, or news of trouble to the church, at home or abroad, in Europe or in America) they saw it suddenly and wholly accomplished before their faces—every word of it and every letter.

The shadow of the destroyer went by ... the type was no more. But lo! in the stead thereof, while every mother was happy, and every father in peace, and every child asleep in security, because the shadow and the type had gone by—lo! the Destroyer himself appeared! The shadow of death gave way for the visage of death—filling every heart with terror, and every house with lamentation. The people cried out for fear, as with one voice. They prayed as with one prayer. They had no hope; for they saw the children of those who had offered outrage to the poor quaker-woman gathered up, on every side, from the rest of the people, and after a few days and a brief inquiry, afflicted in their turn with reproach and outcry, with misery, torture and cruel death;—and when they saw this, they thought of the speech of Elizabeth Hutchinson before the priesthood of the land, the judges and the people, when they drove her out from among them, because of her new faith, and left her to perish for it in the depth of a howling wilderness; her, and her babes, and her beautiful daughter, and her two or three brave disciples, away from hope and afar from succor;—and as they thought of this, they were filled anew with unspeakable dread: for Mary Dyer and Elizabeth Hutchinson, were they not familiar, and very dear friends? were they not sisters in life, and sisters in death? gifted alike with a spirit of sure prophecy, though of a different faith? and martyrs alike to the church?

CHAPTER III.

“A strange infatuation had already begun to produce misery in private families, and disorder throughout the community,” says an old American writer, in allusion to the period of our story, 1691-2. “The imputation of witchcraft was accompanied with a prevalent belief of its reality; and the lives of a considerable number of innocent people were sacrificed to blind zeal and superstitious credulity. The mischief began at Naumkeag, (Salem) but it soon extended into various parts of the colony. The contagion however, was principally within the county of Essex. The æra of English learning, had scarcely commenced. Laws then existed in England against witches; and the authority of Sir Matthew Hale, who was revered in New England, not only for his knowledge in the law, but for his gravity and piety, had doubtless, great influence. The trial of the witches in Suffolk, in England, was published in 1684; and there was so exact a resemblance between the Old England dæmons and the New, that, it can hardly be doubted the arts of the designing were borrowed, and the credulity of the populace augmented from the parent country. * * * * *

“The gloomy state of New England probably facilitated the delusion, for ‘superstition flourishes in times of danger and dismay.’ The distress of the colonist, at this time, was great. The sea-coast was infested with privateers. The inland frontiers, east and west, were continually harassed by the French and Indians. The abortive expedition to Canada, had exposed the country to the resentment of France, the effects of which were perpetually dreaded. The old charter was gone, and what evils would be introduced by the new, which was very reluctantly received by many, time only could determine, but fear might forbode. * * How far these causes operating in a wilderness that was scarcely cleared up, might have contributed toward the infatuation, it is difficult to determine. It were injurious however, to consider New England as peculiar in this culpable credulity, with its sanguinary effects; for more persons have been put to death for witchcraft, in a single county in England, in a short space of time, than have suffered for the same cause, in all New-England, since its first settlement.”

Another American writer who was an eye witness of the facts which are embodied in the following narrative, says, “As to the method which the Salem justices do take in their examinations, it is truly this: A warrant being issued out to apprehend the persons that are charged and complained of by the afflicted children, (Abigail Paris and Bridget Pope) said persons are brought before the justices, the afflicted being present. The justices ask the apprehended why they afflict these poor children; to which the apprehended answer they do not afflict them. The justices order the apprehended to look upon the said children, which accordingly they do; and at the time of that look (I dare not say by that look as, the Salem gentlemen do) the afflicted are cast into a fit. The apprehended are then blinded and ordered to touch the afflicted; and at that touch, though not by the touch (as above) the afflicted do ordinarily come out of their fits. The afflicted persons then declare and affirm that the apprehended have afflicted them; upon which the apprehended persons though of never so good repute are forthwith committed to prison on suspicion of witchcraft.”

At this period, the chief magistrate of the New-Plymouth colony, a shrewd, artful, uneducated man, was not only at the head of those who believed in witchcraft as a familiar thing, but he was a head-ruler in the church. He was a native New-Englander of low birth—so say the records of our country,—where birth is now, and ever will be a matter of inquiry and solicitude, of shame perhaps to the few and of pride to the few, but of inquiry with all, in spite of our ostentatious republicanism. He was the head man over a body of men who may be regarded as the natural growth of a rugged soil in a time of religious warfare; with hearts and with heads like the resolute unforgiving Swiss-protestant of their age, or the Scotch-covenanter of an age that has hardly yet gone by. They were the Maccabees of the seventeenth century, and he was their political chief. They were the fathers of a new church in a new world, where no church had ever been heard of before; and he was ready to buckle a sword upon his thigh and go out against all the earth, at the command of that new church. They were ministers of the gospel, who ministered with fire and sword unto the savages whom they strove to convert; believers, who being persecuted in Europe, hunted out of Europe, and cast away upon the shores of America, set up a new war of persecution here—even here—in the untrodden—almost unapproachable domain of the Great Spirit of the Universe; pursued their brethren to death, scourged, fined, imprisoned, banished, mutilated, and where nothing else would do, hung up their bodies between heaven and earth for the good of their souls; drove mother after mother, and babe after babe, into the woods for not believing as their church taught; made war upon the lords of the soil, the savages who had been their stay and support while they were strangers, and sick and poor, and ready to perish, and whom it was therefore a duty for them—after they had recovered their strength—to make happy with the edge of the sword; such war as the savages would make upon the wild beast—way-laying them by night, and shooting them to death, as they lie asleep with their young, without so much as a declaration of war; destroying whithersoever they went, whatsoever they saw, in the shape of a dark man, as if they had authority from above to unpeople the woods of America; firing village after village, in the dead of the night—in the dead of winter too—and going to prayer in the deep snow, while their hands were smoking with slaughter, and their garments stiffening with blood—the blood, not of warriors overthrown by warriors in battle, but of the decrepit, or sick, or helpless; of the aged man, or the woman or the babe—set fire to in their sleep.—Such were the men of Massachusetts-Bay, at the period of our story, and he was their political chief.