Читать книгу The Life and Times of Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks - Ellen H. Walworth - Страница 10

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TEKAKWITHA'S UNCLE AND FORT ORANGE; OR THE BEGINNINGS OF ALBANY.

CHOLENEC, the more concise of the two contemporary biographers of Kateri Tekakwitha, in speaking of her early life says: "She found herself an orphan under the care of her aunts, and in the power of an uncle who was the leading man in the settlement." This brief expression gives us an intimation both of the character and the rank of Tekakwitha's formidable Mohawk uncle. He was stern, unbending, fierce; and like many another chief reared in the Long House, was proudly tenacious of the customs of his race. He was often on the worst of terms with the French blackgowns because they interfered with the beliefs and manners of his people; but always on the best of terms with the Dutch traders, who, in exchange for the rich furs brought in so plentifully to Fort Orange, supplied the Mohawks of Gandawague (or, as the Dutch wrote it, Kaghnuwage) with muskets, iron tomahawks, pipes, tobacco, copper kettles, scissors, duffels, strouds for blankets, and more than all, the keenly relished, comforting "fire water."

The influx of liquor to the Iroquois castles led to reckless debauches, fast following in the track of the small-pox, which stalked with unchecked violence through the Long House in 1660. During the course of the following year an important transaction took place between the white settlers on the Hudson and the Indians along the Mohawk, or Maquaas Kill. "A certain parcel of land," to use the words of the old deed, "called in Dutch the Groote Vlachte (Great Flatt), lying behind Fort Orange, between the same and the Mohawk country," was sold by Mohawk chiefs—Cantuquo (whose mark was a Bear); Aiadane, a Turtle; Sonareetsie, a Wolf; and Sodachdrasse—to Sieur Arent van Corlaer, July 27, 1661. "A grant under the provincial seal was issued in the following year, but the land was not surveyed or divided until 1664." The Indian name of the Great Flatt was Schonowe, and the new village of white settlers which soon sprang up on the south bank of the Mohawk was called Schenectady by the Dutch and English; though the French, who did not for some time learn of its existence, first knew this little outpost of Fort Orange by the name of Corlaer,[19] the earliest settler.

This founding of Schenectady was an event of deep interest to the Mohawks of Gandawague. It brought the dwellings of the white race closer than ever before to their own stronghold, almost in fact to the very door of the Kanonsionni, or People of the Long House. The settlers began at once to rear their wonderful wooden palaces, for such they must have seemed to the simple children of the forest. The wild banks of the Maquaas Kill had hitherto shown no prouder architecture than the long bark houses of the Mohawks, which nevertheless were much in advance of the wigwams or tents of the roving Algonquin tribes. The Indians of Gandawague must have hastened down in their canoes to watch the building of Schenectady, and listened with interest and curiosity to the strange buzz of the newly erected sawmill. These were already familiar sights and sounds, however, to Tekakwitha's uncle, for he had long been in the habit of trading with the Dutch and knew their ways. He often journeyed as far as their trading-house at Fort Orange. Let us follow in the footsteps of this Mohawk chief as he starts once again on the trail that leads eastward from Gandawague with furs he has been hoarding for some new purchase. Let us pass hurriedly on beyond the new abode of his friend Corlaer, and we shall then see the sights that greet him as he approaches the homes of the traders who dwell beside the Hudson,—or Cahotatea, as the chief of the Turtle Castle would call the great North River in his own language. He has other Indians of his nation with him. These Mohawks, says the first Dutch dominie, in the account he gives of them, have good features, with black hair and eyes, and they are well proportioned; they go naked in summer, and in winter they hang loosely about them a deer's, bear's, or panther's skin, or else they sew small skins together into a square piece, or buy two and a half ells of duffels from the Dutchmen. Some of them wear shoes and stockings of deer's skins; others of plaited corn-leaves. Their hair is left growing on one side of the head only, or else worn like a cock's comb or hog's bristles standing up in a streak from forehead to neck; some of them leave queer little locks growing here and there. Their faces are painted red and blue, so that they "look like the devil himself," continues the worthy Megapolensis. They carry a basket of bear's grease with which they smear their heads, and in travelling they take with them a maize-kettle and a wooden spoon and bowl. When it is meal-time they get fire very quickly by rubbing pieces of wood together; and they cook and devour their fish and venison without the preliminary cleaning and preparing considered necessary among civilized folks. When they feel pain they say, "Ugh! the devil bites," and when they wish to compliment their own nation they say, "Really the Mohawks are very cunning devils." They make no offerings to their good genius or national god, Tharonyawagon; but they worship the demon Otkon or Aireskoi, praying in this way, "Forgive us for not eating our enemies!" and in hot weather, "I thank thee, Devil, I thank thee, Oomke, for the cool breeze." They laugh at the Dutch prayers, the dominie tells us, and also at the sermon. They call the Christians of Fort Orange cloth-makers (assyreoni) and iron-workers (charistooni).

These uncouth travellers from Gandawague, among whom is the uncle of Tekakwitha, are fast nearing the homes of these same cloth-makers and iron-workers. Let us hasten to overtake them, and find our way with them into the settlement of Rensselaerwyck. You who dwell in New York State and you who travel through it, come with us now to visit old Fort Orange and the little town of Beverwyck! You above all who love to trace your lineage to the staid old Dutchmen of New Netherlands, come! Let us see the homes of these grandsires whose names appear so often in the record and ancient annals of our oldest chartered city. Come, too, you sons of English colonists, and see the flag of England float strangely in the Hudson River breezes while they are still loaded with the cumbrous sounds of the Low Dutch language! We will stay and see the laws of England put an end to queer old wordy wars between the stately Dutch patroon Van Rensselaer and Peter Stuyvesant, the doughty old Director-general, last and greatest of the four Dutch governors,—the one called "Wooden Leg" by Indians, and "Hard-headed Pete" by Dutchmen; though the poets say he had a silver leg, and the artists love to paint him with a gallant flourish as he stumped it down the street beside some pretty, quaintly dressed colonial belle. His were the days of knee-breeches and gigantic silver buckles, of ruffles and queues, of broad, short petticoats bedecked with mighty pockets, and of scissors and keys that hung from the belt,—the days of demure tea-parties and hilarious coasting-parties, of negro slaves and of sugar-loaf hats. As for weapons of war, the muskets they carried were strange and clumsy arms, with long, portable rests and "two fathoms of match," which the soldier must needs have with him, besides the heavy armor and the queer tackle for ammunition. No wonder that the wearers of such gear dreaded wars with the nimble savages!

Rip Van Winkle, after sleeping twenty years, awoke to painful changes; he was sadly out of date. It would surely then be cruel, even if we had the power, to wake old Peter Stuyvesant and the people of his day from full two hundred years of slumber in our graveyards just to criticise their dress and talk. Let us rather go to sleep ourselves and dream about them. Take a good strong dose of unassorted, crude, colonial history interspersed with annals, and the necessary drowsiness will surely follow. Have you tried it? Are you sure the spell is not upon you now, having stopped to look at Stuyvesant, and heard the dominie describe the Mohawks? The smoke of pipes and chimneys is at hand, for here we are at old Fort Orange in the times of Tekakwitha. Let us look about, before the power to do it fails us out of very sleepiness. We find ourselves within a wall of stockadoes. The chief and his friends from Kaghnuwage are undoing their packs of furs near the northern gate of the town. We stand in Albany, at the corner of Broadway and State Street,—but no! those names are not yet in vogue. We are in Beverwyck, at the point where the long, rambling Handelaer Street, running parallel with Hudson's River, crosses the broad, short Joncaer Street, which climbs some little distance up the hill. Before us is the old Dutch church. It stands by itself, at the intersection of the two streets, fronting south. It is a low, square, plain stone building, with a four-sided roof rising to a central summit surmounted by a small cupola or belfry containing the famous little bell just sent over from Holland by the Dutch West India Company; on this belfry is upreared a saucy little weathercock. The south porch or vestibule is approached by a large stone step before the principal door. If the church were not locked, we might take a look inside at the carved oaken pulpit with its queer little bracket for the dominie's hourglass. The burghers subscribed twenty-five beaver-skins to buy that pulpit, and a splendid one it was. It soon came sailing over the sea in a plump Dutch ship. The patrons of the colony finding the beaver-skins much damaged when the package was opened at Amsterdam had added seventy-five guilders themselves towards the purchase, besides presenting the bell outright. When Dominie Megapolensis first arrived in the colony, "nine benches" were enough to seat the whole congregation; but that was a generation ago. Now it has increased; and the church, which was then a wooden structure near the old fort by the river, has been rebuilt. The Van Rensselaers, the Wendels, the Schuylers and the Van der Blaas have the leading pews; they have already sent to Europe for stained glass windows blazoned with their family arms. Having seen the church, let us walk up Joncaer (State) Street to the dominie's. We pass through the market-place, which is out in the middle of the open, grassy space, on a line with the church. We stop a moment to look at the house of Anneke Janse, the heiress, and then move on to Parrell (Pearl) Street. There, on the northeast corner of Parrell and Joncaer Streets, gable end foremost, stands the comfortable abode of Dominie Schaats, which is the pride and envy of the town. Every part of this, the first brick house in the New World, is said to have been imported from Holland,—bricks, woodwork, tiles, and also the ornamental irons with which it is profusely adorned,—all expressly for the use of the Rev. Gideon Schaets (or Schaats), who came over in 1652. The materials of the house arrived simultaneously with the bell and pulpit in 1657.[20]

From Schaats' house we see, instead of a solitary "old elm-tree" on the opposite corner, many trees of different kinds, one in front of each of the straggling houses on either side of Joncaer Street; and by the age of the tree one can tell pretty well the order in which the different settlers arrived and began to domesticate themselves. This was no sooner done than the inevitable shade-tree was planted to overshadow the dwelling, and beneath this tree they bring the cow each evening to be milked. Around every house is a garden with a well; and the stoop at the front door is supplied with wooden seats or benches. There old and young gather in the evening when the day's work is over.

The upper half of the front door remains open all day in summer, while the lower half bars out the stray chickens and dogs. It is opened now and then, however, to let the children in and out, and once in a while a buxom vrouw leans out to chat with a passer-by, or perhaps to scold the little ones or to bid them beware of straying near the trading-house for fear of encountering a tipsy Indian. This trading-house is outside the wall of stockadoes, or upright posts, encircling the town. The traders of Beverwyck are all obliged "to ride their stockadoes,"—that is to say, to furnish the pine posts, thirteen feet long and one foot in diameter, for repairing the wooden wall. This duty falls alike on every inhabitant, at the command of the burgomasters and schepens. They are furthermore bound to take turns in drawing firewood to the trading-house for the use of the Indians when they come there from the Maquaas country loaded with packs of furs.