Graham's Magazine, Vol. XIX, No. 5, November 1841

by Various

With the gray dawn of morning, all was bustle and activity in the village of Cohammock. The Indian matrons were early bestirring themselves that nothing might be left undone to mar the festivities of the occasion. Innumerable fires were kindled—the wooden spit and the seething pot, the two indispensable and almost the only culinary implements in use among them, were put in requisition. Whilst the preparations were going slowly on, the men of the tribe as well as their guests were idling listlessly about, their appetites every moment rendered sharper by the odor of the smoking viands that were soon to form their savory meal.

And truly the banquet was not unworthy the occasion. Just as the sun had reached the “middle point in the heavens,” piles upon piles of boiled and roasted flesh were spread under the shade of the tall sycamores that grew undisturbed in all parts of the village. A large bowl of the finest succotash was placed before each guest, and if the quantity eaten be the standard of quality, never was there served up a better dinner than was that day disposed of in the rude village of Cohammock.

At length the repast was finished. Both guests and entertainers, with a prudence truly commendable, ate as if expecting a famine for a month, at least, to come, and nothing remained but to indulge in that supreme of Indian luxuries, tobacco. Pipes were brought, but alas! there was not a particle of the weed to be found. Some miscreant, a fair representative of that variety of our race at the present day—ever ready to engender strife, had stolen and destroyed all that was to be found in the village.

This was a deficiency that could be supplied by no other article. Venison or succotash or any other part of the edible entertainment could have been dispensed with, but the burning propensities of an Indian must be indulged. The Wannamoisetts were as much mortified as their guests were offended at this unfortunate occurrence, but it was with difficulty the Namaskets could be persuaded that it was not an intentional insult; so jealous were the natives of their own honor! Contrary to their previous intention, they left their kinsmen in the early part of the same afternoon, not caring to remain till morning with those who had, in their view, been so parsimonious in their hospitality.

Let us return again to the sea shore at Naumkeag. A month after the feast of Cohammock, a party of the Wannamoisett warriors were present at a grand collation, prepared by Wappacowat, the Namasket chief. Much were they gratified by this expression of his friendship, for they had always regretted the affair at their own village, and feared that an open rupture would be the consequence. They dreaded this, still cherishing some little spark of fraternal affection for those whom they had unmeaningly offended.

During the banquet, so busily were the Wannamoisetts engaged in despatching the shell and other fish which their friends had made ready, that they did not observe that Wappacowat and his followers partook but sparingly, so that by the time they had eaten almost to suffocation, and were illy prepared for the least exertion, the Namaskets had taken only what was just sufficient to stimulate them for any enterprise.

At length Wappacowat gave the signal to his followers to bring the calumet, and as he did so, a close observer might have discovered a gleam of gratified animosity shoot across his iron features and glisten in his snaky eye. Quickly moved his warriors, and the devoted guests half stupified by the vast quantities of food they had taken, saw the pipes well filled with the luxurious plant, but did not discover the tomahawk and the knife which they had concealed under their deer skin robes. They sat not smoking long, for suddenly the Namaskets rose and each one buried his tomahawk into the brain of the Wannamoisett next him. All—all were slain. So well had the treacherous, fratricidal plan been matured, that not a single one was left to carry to the desolate village of Cohammock the tale of blood and guilt. Ah! yes, there was one—Mononchee—the betrothed of Noalwa, who having neglected the feast that he might spend the time apart with the fair one, came into the village just as the last reeking scalp had been torn from the cloven skull. Looking an instant on the appalling spectacle, he uttered a furious yell and sprang like a deer towards the river. A dozen tomahawks flew after him, and as many dark warriors started in pursuit, but in vain, for with a few powerful strokes the brave youth gained the opposite bank, and bounding into the woods, effected his escape.

They were buried on the spot where they fell. Perhaps no shade of remorse passed over the minds of the murderers, but they could not leave the victims there for their flesh to rot and their bones to whiten in the sun. They were buried several feet below the surface, and the gloomy shades of night fell thick around before the last mangled body was hidden from the sight. And as the rising wind swept through the thick-topped pines and tall buttonwoods around, it wailed and sighed mournfully, as if singing a melancholy dirge over the graves of the gallant dead. And by the midnight hour it blew in hoarse and awful tones, and the death shouts and groans of the dead were heard commingling with the blast; and when the night was darkest, and all save the growling of the wind and these unnatural noises, was still, a lurid flame sprang up from the centre of the spot where the feast had been, and cast a sickening light on all things, and the earth opened around, and the bodies of the Wannamoisett warriors, bloody and mangled as they were, arose and danced around it, singing their war songs in unearthly tones, together with their wild requiem for the dead. Ghastly and horrible they looked, and as they danced, the blood flowed from their opening wounds, till it reached the strange fire, which instantly shot up in one lurid column of flame till it attained the blackened clouds, when it disappeared as suddenly as it had burst forth; the spectral revellers sank back again into their fresh graves, and all was dark and silent as before.

But when the morning broke the Namaskets beheld a spectacle scarcely less hideous than that of the preceding night. Their victims had been buried, as their custom was, in a sitting posture, and during the night they had all risen, so that their heads were fully visible above the surface of the ground. The bloody mark of the tomahawk was still there, and every scalp was torn off—and the eyeballs, projecting far from the sockets, were fixed and glassy, but of a burning red,—glowing like living fire. And from them rays of dingy red streamed all over the village,—and wherever one of the murderers went, those rays followed him, and pierced him, and seemed as if they were burning out his heart.

Reckless with fear and rage the murderers tore the bodies up from the ground and dug the graves still deeper and again they placed them in. But at midnight the red flame burst forth and the tempest howled fearfully. The phantom forms sprung up as before, and this time their flesh, from their shoulders downward, dropped off and was consumed by the fire, and a dense smoke arose, and a red cloud slowly gathered in the air, and hovered round and hung over the spot like a minister of vengeance. And in the morning their gory heads and glaring eyes had again struggled up above the surface. And when the fratricides saw them, a deadly terror crept over them and the demon of remorse began to prey upon their souls.