Fanny Campbell, The Female Pirate Captain: A Tale of The Revolution

by Maturin M. Ballou

Jennings was a real specimen of a yankee; tall, muscular, and good looking, with a large degree of intelligence shining from his features.

Like his race, generally, he was up to making money, and the high offer of the British captain in the way of wages had tempted his cupidity so far, as to induce him to ship for what he believed to be a simple trading voyage to the West Indies.

‘Well messmates, you have been talking about the salt sea; I’m going to spin you a yarn about the land, that will be a new wrinkle, so here goes. But let me just tell you at the beginning that it’s no dog story, but a matter of fact.

‘Most of you come from the same parts as myself, but I don’t think you have heard this story, being’s it occurred many miles back to the west end of the town of Boston, and near by where I was born. You see I was born on the Hadley flats in Massachusetts, just by a bend of the Connecticut, though I soon came to the sea-side after I got to be old enough to leave home, and soon took a fancy to the ocean, which I have followed ever since. I wasn’t so young when I left home, but that I remember the only spot in all the earth where I want to lay my hulk after the cruise of life is up, it is the neighborhood of the green meadows, and the curving bends of the Connecticut, which runs smoothly over the very foot of Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke. It was not far from this spot that I was born. Just above us and near to the base of these two highest mountains in the state, there lived a tribe of Indians—friends of the settlers, and with whom they associated like brothers.

‘I have wandered, when a boy, among their lodges—have climbed up the steep paths of the mountains, and strolled among the groves and fields that skirt the banks of the river, and, messmates, I have sometimes wondered in my dreams, if we can be happier in heaven than I was then, and if paradise can be a milder or more desirable place than that.

‘Well, messmates, you see it’s a story about this tribe of Indians that I’m going to tell you about, or rather about one of them. The old Chief of the tribe had two children only, both girls, and as clean-limbed and pretty as a roe-buck from the hills; they were the pride of the old mans heart, and, indeed, of the whole tribe.

‘The oldest one was called Kelmond, which meant, in their dialect, ‘The Mountain Child’ They called her so because she was born in one of their lodges on the side of that eminence, Holyoke, which looks down upon the valley of the Connecticut, as you could, messmates, upon the deck of the brig, when yer up at the top-mast head. Her sister was called Komeoke, which means in their language, ‘The Fair’ They always name their women in this way, with some soft and pretty-like name.

‘Well, the oldest was the prettiest and the gentlest creature you ever saw, and there wasn’t a warrior in the whole tribe who would not have had her for his wife, if he could have got her. But somehow or other, she loved to pass her days in the woods tying wild flowers and lying by the bright clear brooks that spring up in thousands on the hill-sides and in the groves, and she never listened: to any of them wild love songs and tokens of affection.

‘Her sister was a very pretty girl, and if one hadn’t seen the eldest, he truly might have thought the youngest one the prettiest creature he had ever seen, though her sort of beauty was altogether of a different kind. She was all, every inch, Indian, bold, fearless, and more like a man than a female. They loved each other with all the fervor of affection that their girlish hearts could feel, even though their dispositions were so very different.

‘In our village, if I may so call the dozen houses that made up the place; around the block house, there was stopping a young Englishman who had come there with his gun and hounds and a single servant man, for the purpose of hunting for mere sport. He was a fine, handsome looking man, belonging to some great family in England, and was about twenty-two years old. He hadn’t been with us but a few weeks, before, in some of his wanderings he met with Kelmond, the oldest of the chiefs two handsome children. I don’t think there ever was a man who had a better way of making himself agreeable, messmates, a sort of winning way, just like our captain. I mean a sort of faculty of getting everybody’s good graces. Well, he wasn’t long in making himself acquainted with the beautiful Indian girl, and they used often to meet by themselves in the woods, and the Englishman won her heart completely. The way I found it out was by following him one day to see where he could go to so regularly every day, and I soon understood the scent. Well, it was plain that for some reason that he didn’t want any one to knew about the business, so when I hinted about it, do you see, he told me to say nothing about the thing, and gave me a dollar to keep mum, while he still went regularly every day to the place where they met and sat for hours together.