USA > New York > New York City > In olde New York; sketches of old times and places in both the state and the city > Part 12
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"This beach is the real treasure island, don't you know," he said, one day as he sat on the shore and waved his hand out to the shining stretch of sand. "Not only has it received the wrecks of the great fleets, entering the bay of the Western metropolis for nearly three hundred years, but it was Captain Kidd's great bank of deposit, as well as that of his illustrious com- peers. Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearls, inestimable stones and pretty much everything else poor Clarence saw are here if only one knew where to look. If I have not dug and handled some of Kidd's treasure myself I have seen and handled the gross integument which once incased it; and as my previous tales have been legendary - although having
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the stamp of truth - in this case I can produce the ancient record itself. I was rummaging in a south side garret recently and there found an iron pot of peculiar shape, more 'pot bellied,' if you will excuse the term, and much heavier than those now in use, covered with a deep coat of rust.
"'Ah,' said my hostess, when I reported the find, 'that is the Captain Kidd pot. It was dug up yonder by my grandfather over a hundred years ago. Here is a paper,' she added, 'that will tell you all about it.'
"It was a very old paper, indeed, yellow with time, and almost ready to fall to pieces, dated 'New London, Connecticut, June 28, 1790,' but the name had been torn or had fallen off, to my vexation. However, she pointed to a letter from a correspondent in Southamp- ton which read as follows: 'Yesterday a young man in this place dug up a stone and a pot under it full of dollars. He called in his neighbors and digging deeper they found another and much larger pot. The stone and inscription I have seen. It appears to be a ballast stone. The engraving on it is much blurred. We think it was buried by Kidd. It was dug up within a quarter of a mile of our south shore, on a flat piece of land. The engraver must have been illiterate and the inscription cannot be imitated by printed types.'
"My hostess did not remember how many dollars were in the pot, but thought the sum a comfortable one. Not long afterward, in a garret in Easthampton,
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I discovered Captain Kidd's old treasure chest, a heavy oaken box with great brass clasps and locks, that bore great store of precious stones, silver bars and cloth of gold when it was dug up on Gardiner's Island by order of the commissioners sent there by the royal governor for this special purpose. Kidd was on trial in Boston at the time for his crimes and told where he had buried several chests of treasure on Gardiner's Island in the hope of purchasing pardon. He was sent to England, however, tried and hanged in chains at Newgate. The woman who owned the chest was a descendant of the Gardiners of Gardiner's Island, and vouched for its genuineness as the treasure chest of Captain Kidd.
"But really, the greatest find ever made on this beach was that of my young friend and relative, Jack Belyea. Jack didn't say much about it for obvious reasons. He was here five summers ago. A shy, sensitive fellow naturally, but his great trouble that summer rendered him more so. You see, he wanted to marry Bertha, and Bertha confided to me that she was awfully in love with Jack, but unfortunately his bank account wasn't at all satisfactory to her parents and they forbade the union. So Jack had but a sorry summer of it, paced the sands revolving plans for in- creasing his worldly gear, and was often tempted to end it all by one plunge into the breakers. In one of these evil moments his foot struck a little ball of yarn,
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as he thought, and sent it spinning along the beach before him. Then, because he felt a spite against everything animate and inanimate, I suppose, he began kicking it on before him like a football. Pres- ently he saw something strange about it and picked it up to examine it more closely. It was woven instead of wound, in a very curious and intricate way. Jack said this aroused his curiosity and, taking out his knife, he cut one by one the strands of strong Indian hemp of which it was composed. The last layer dis- closed one of those horribly ugly and grotesque Indian idols, with which travelers to the Orient are familiar. One feature of it struck Jack as very unusual - its stomach was very large and protruded in an unnatural way. A few strokes of his knife opened it when, lo, out fell six of the largest and most beautiful diamonds ever seen outside of kings' regalia.
"How they rolled and sparkled on the hard sand! Jack stood dazed for a moment, then scrambled to pick them up and hide them in his pocket. After this he peered farther into the cavity whence they came and found there a coiled ribbon of rice paper on which was written in Hindustan:
The gems have been my curse, therefore commit I them to the sea. Whosoever thou be that findest, keep not, but sell; if rich, give to the poor: if poor, enjoy thy wealth and give Allah thanks.'
" When Jack took his bank book to Bertha's father
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a month later, the old gentleman was vastly surprised but could not gainsay the figures. He could only murmur a blessing. So Jack and Bertha were married."
Another day when we had gathered round the little old man at the base of Sand Hill Crane dune, he told this strange story of Captain Topping:
"I stood here last Michaelmas toward sunset watch- ing the top hamper of a big East Indiaman sink beneath the waves, when suddenly a shadow enveloped me, cool, like a cloud, and looking up I beheld an odd figure a few yards off - a man of giant frame, leaning on an eel spear and regarding me not unkindly. His cos- tume, sou'wester, pea jacket and heavy sea boots, be- spoke the seafaring man of an earlier day, and his skin was so tanned and wrinkled by time and exposure that it hung in folds about his shrewd face and twink- ling black eyes.
"As I looked up he turned his head in a listening attitude and then cried with startling energy: 'Fourth squadron, ahoy! ahoy!' There was no response, how- ever, and after peering up and down the sands he turned to me.
"'Methought I heard our old cry - the weft! the weft! But I see it not. Old eyes are dim and old ears dull I find.'
"The weft; ah, yes, I remembered; the fisher's coat waved from a staff on the dunes, the signal to the
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whaling crews two hundred years ago that a whale was off shore - and then looking more closely I per- ceived that it was not an eel spear but a harpoon, that my strange visitor leaned upon.
"'And this is -? ' I queried.
"'Cap'n Thomas Topping at your service,' he replied with dignity.
"The name startled me. I had been nosing through the old records in the town clerk's office and recognized the name as that of one of the leading spirits in the settlement of the town, a famous Indian fighter and captain of the whaling crew, withal an ancestor of mine several generations back. I could only stare at him in wide mouthed wonder.
"'I've come back,' he continued in a thin, cracked, quavering voice, 'to see what these moderns are a doin', an' I confess I don't altogether admire the goin's on, I vow I can't fathom 'em. The place is far prettier than in my day. Oceans o' money must have been spent on the houses, lawns an' gardens, to say nothin' of the houses, kerridges and sich, but, fer all that, life ain't as well worth livin' here as it was in my day leastways not ter me.
"'Fust place I visited was my old windmill on Fortune Hill that Cap'n Eben Parsons leased of me an' run for nigh fifty year. Ef you had all the grain Cap'n Eben has seen run through them hoppers o' his, you'd be richer than you are, or like to be. Well,
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the old mill was there just the same outwardly to appearance, but inside - why, I found on openin' the door and walkin' in that two likely lookin' wimmen from Boston, or up that way, had bought it an' turned it into a dwellin' hus. Think of livin' in a windmill; an' they had fitted it up inside with all sort o' city knicknacks an' furnishens, an' I must say had every- thin' as snug an' cozy as could be.
"'I introduced myself as Cap'n Eben, who was runnin' the mill when their fathers and mothers was children, an' they appeared real glad to see me, asked me to stay to tea. Naturally we fell to talkin' 'bout their takin' up with an old mill fer a house. I tole 'em that when Cap'n Eben an' Sabella Hand that was a sparkin', arter they was promised, Cap'n Eben wanted to be jined to onct, an' go to housekeepin' on the ground floor o' his old mill, not bein' forehanded enough to provide a house; but Sabella turned up her nose at the idee; she said she guessed she wan't goin' to be married to live in a mill; an' she waited six years afore Cap'n Eben could provide a house to her notion. The women marveled at Sabella's conduct, said they didn't admire it a bit; for their part they delighted to live in the old mill; and they asked me a heap o' ques- tions - how I ground corn and wheat, and if the rats and mice was so bold an' numerous then, and if the wind moaned so ghost like through the vans o' nights when a storm was brewin'.
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""'I next went a lookin' fer the old meetin' house where Parson Hunting preached the pure gospel for goin' on fifty years; but dear me, there was a billiard room and bowling alley on the site; an' out where the horse sheds stood there was a space rolled smooth and young men and women in parti-colored raiment was a batting balls agin a net in the center. There was a woman on the stoop of a fine new house across the way watchin' em, an' I made bold to ask her where the meetin' 'us was moved to.
"'Law,' says she, 'you're a stranger here I guess. They moved it down agin the sand hills yonder, an' made a bran new buildin' of it, an' brought up a sex- tant from New York to take care of it.'
"'I was meandering peacefully down the street in search of the meetin' 'us, when of a suddint some- thin' shot by me with a swish, a cretur like a man balanced on a frame hung between two wheels placed tandem - but what kept the thing up I couldn't see unless it was the power of the evil one. I thought it was one of them winged creturs, or wheels within wheels foretold by the prophet Elijah for the last days, an' I asked a boy if it was, and he said, "It's a bysickle, you old fool."
"'In my day children were taught to respect their elders.
"'The sextant took great pride in his meeting 'us an' showed me all over it. It was a queer, low, mouse-
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like building, with a many towers and ells and angles and no steeple, and was built mostly of wreck timber gathered on the beach - so different from the stately churches of my day with lofty steeples and pillared porticos. I asked the sexton why they changed. "Well," sez he, "they wanted somethin' different. Them old-fashioned meetin' houses with tall steeples an' four pillars in front was so familiar an' common- place, they got to be an eyesore, so our trustees told the architect to git 'em up somethin' novel an' un- heard of. An' he done it."
"'The fact is,' said the old warrior, slightly chang- ing his position, 'I don't understand these mod- erns. They cum here an' build houses, costin' fifty thousan' dollars apiece - that would a bought the hull township in my day, includin' the whalin' out- fit - an' only occupy 'em tew or three months in the year, or not at all. An' then the trumpery! they fill 'em up with spinnin' wheels, hatchets, and old irons, trammels, arm cheers, pots and kittles; what we used they keep for ornaments. I hed ter laugh when I see at one place Deacon 'Siah Howell's ole arm cheer of English oak he bro't with him from Suffolk a standin' on the front stoop, tied all over with blue ribbons.'
"While speaking, my strange visitor had kept his weather eye to seaward and his huge fingers gripped the harpoon staff.
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"Suddenly there came a distant cry: 'The weft! The weft! Weft! Weft!'
""'There she blows! There she blows!' and with a shout of glee my venerable ancestor made off amid the sand hills and I never saw him again."
CHAPTER XXII
THE SHINNECOCKS 1
A MILE and a half from Southampton lie the wide reservation and rude dwellings of the Shinne- cock Indians - with the possible exception of the Mashpees on Cape Cod, the most numerous and re- spectable of existing Eastern tribes. One finds their history and the story of their connection with the whites, as contained in the quaint old Southampton records, exceedingly interesting. When the first settlers of Southampton came here from Massachusetts in 1640, they were, next to the Montaukets, the domi- nant tribe on the island, with a territory extending from Canoe Place on the west to Easthampton on the east, including the whole south shore of Peconic Bay, and their warriors, according to tradition, reaching when arranged in Indian file from "Shinnecock gate to the town" - about two miles - and numbering 2000 men. Southampton was purchased of the Shinnecocks.
1 Written for the Evening Post in 1886. The Shinnecocks still retain their tribal autonomy and reservation and have about held their own in numbers, but it is said there is scarcely a full-blood Shinnecock among them.
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The deed is still preserved in the town records, an in- strument dating back to 1640, and setting forth, in the old terminology, that Pomatuck, Manduck, and seven others, "native Indians and true owners of the eastern part of Long Island, for the consideration of sixteen coats and threescore bushels of corn, and in further consideration that the English should defend the said Indians from the unjust violence of whatever Indians should illegally assail them," conveyed to the whites "the lands commonly known by the name of the place where the Indians bayle over their canoes out of the North Bay (Peconic) to the south side of the island, all the lands lying eastward of that point." The pur- chase also included all the planted land "eastward from the first creek at the westermore end of Shinne- cock plain." For more than sixty years Indian and white continued to dwell in the greatest harmony - the energies of the former, as their hunting privileges grew less, being absorbed in the off-shore whale fishery. Some curious entries in the town records pertaining to this matter are interesting as showing the relations existing between the parties. In 1670 Paquanang and other Indians agreed with a Southampton company "to whale for the next three years the same way as the last three years, and in addition a pot such as John Cooper gives his Indians." By an instrument of 1671 Atingquoin agreed to whale for the next season "for one coat before it commenced, one when the season
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was half over, and a third when it ended," or "for a pot, a pair of shoes and stockings, one-half of a pound of powder, and three pounds of shot." In other cases they were employed in trying out the blubber, for a certain share in the oil. By 1703, however, their hunt- ing lands had nearly all slipped away, and they became restless and dissatisfied, whereupon a grand convention of whites and Indians was held at Southampton and the matter amicably settled, the town giving the Indians a lease of Shinnecock Hills at a nominal rental of one ear of corn, paid annually - the meadows, marshes, grass, herbage, feeding, pasturage, timber, stone, and con- venient highways excepted; the Indians, however, to have the privilege of ploughing and planting certain portions of it. They were also given liberty to cut flags, bulrushes, and such grass as they made their baskets of, and to dig ground-nuts, "mowing lands excepted."
Shinnecock Hills is the beautiful tract of rolling country, comprising pastures only, occupying the narrow neck between Peconic and Shinnecock Bays. It was held by the Indians under the lease of 1703 until 1859, when, by special act of the Legislature, they conveyed their right in it to the proprietors of Southamp- ampton, receiving in return the fee of their present reservation on Shinnecock Neck. The proprietors con- tinued to hold the hills in common until 1861, when they were sold at public auction for $6250, the pur-
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chasers being a company of Southampton farmers, who proposed to hold it for grazing purposes, as had been done for centuries by their ancestors. The tract has recently been purchased by a company of Brooklyn capitalists, who propose, it is said, converting it into a summer resort. Since the exchange the Indians have continued to reside quietly on their reservation of some 600 acres on Shinnecock Neck. The writer's visit to them was in company with Mr. Edward Foster, of Southampton, one of the editors of its records, and a gentleman well versed in the affairs of the Indians. We drove into the country perhaps a mile beyond the last of the straggling village houses, and at the foot of a little depression in the plain crossed a brook just where it fell into an arm of Shinnecock Bay. On the left, curving around the shore of the bay, and bounded on the west by a similar arm, with Shinnecock Hills beyond, lay a wide plain, burdened near us with grow- ing corn and wheat, but showing further in the rear untilled fields covered with weeds and brush, groves of forest trees, and, scattered here and there, a score of brown, mossy, one-story cottages. This was the reservation. We drove through the corn-fields, past the cottages to the south end, and returned along the western shore, making the circuit of the tract.
"Very few of the Indians till their lands," remarked my companion; "they are let out by the trustees to outside parties. The government of the reservation is
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a little peculiar. It is vested entirely in three trustees, members of the community, who are elected annually by the tribe in the room where our town meetings are held. These men, with the consent of three of our justices of the peace, have full power over the land on the reservation. They cannot sell it, for it is held only in fee; but they can lease it for a limited period, not exceeding three years, and then perform the ordinary duties of overseers. The land is excellent, giving good crops of wheat and corn, as good as any in this vicinity, but two thirds of it is gone to waste through the in- dolence of the Indians in not cultivating it. There are some twenty-five houses on the reservation, which, allowing five persons to each house, would give a total of 125 inhabitants; but probably not two thirds of the tribe remain at home, the others leading a roving ex- istence - whaling, fishing, wrecking, and as farm laborers. They have a good school, kept by a colored master, two churches - Congregational and Millerite - but no resident pastor, the office being filled some- times by the Presbyterian minister at Southampton, sometimes by itinerant clergy, and again by members of the Young Men's Christian Association."1
By this time we had passed several cottages, and
1 What was the Congregational Church or body has now been taken under the care of the Long Island Presbytery and a resident minister is supplied by the Presbyterian Church and its friends. The Millerite Church still lacks a resident pastor.
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had arrived at one which bore a neater, more inviting appearance than its neighbors.
"This was the former home of Priest Lee," remarked my friend, "father of a somewhat remarkable family, and a characteristic one. He is dead, but Mrs. Lee is living. Suppose we call."
As we drew up before the open doorway an elderly woman, tall, straight, showing strong traces of Indian blood, came and framed herself in the doorway.
"We wished to ask about your husband," said my companion. "He was a colored man, I think, a native of Maryland ?"
"Yes," she replied.
"And you have had five sons, every one a seaman, and several rising to be masters ?"
"Yes, sir."
" My friend would like to hear about the boys, some of their exploits, the ships they sailed in, and the like."
Here the old lady hesitated. Her memory was too poor, she said: "But there is Garrison in the truck patch," she continued, brightening; "he could tell you all about it." Garrison was the youngest son, a stal- wart fellow of over six feet, showing the Indian charac- teristics as plainly as his mother; and leaning on his plough handles, he gave us his family annals modestly, but without hesitation.
"There were five brothers of us," he began - "Milton, Ferdinand, Notely, Robert, and myself,
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William Garrison. Milton went to sea young, followed whaling sixteen or seventeen years, and died. Ferdi- nand rose to be mate, and then captain of the ship Callao, and made a good voyage of four years in her to the South Pacific about 1871. Notely shipped in the Phillip the First, of Sag Harbor, and we have not heard from him in ten years. Report says that he deserted his ship, reached the Kingsmill group of islands in the Pacific, married the chief's daughter, and is now king there. Robert followed the sea eight years, then took to wrecking, and was drowned in the Circassian disaster. As for myself, I shipped at six- teen in the Pioneer, of New London, and made my first voyage of seventeen months to Greenland, being frozen in ten months. My next voyage of eighteen months was to the Arctic, in returning from which we were captured and burned by the pirate Shenan- doah. In 1870 I shipped as mate of the ship Florida, of San Francisco, for the Arctic, and next voyage as mate of the Abbie Bradford, of New Bedford. We left that port in 1880 for Greenland. Eight months out the captain died of consumption, and I took command of the ship, and after completing the voyage brought the vessel into port."
These brothers, I further learned, became accom- plished navigators, with no other education than that afforded by the tribal school. The pretty Congrega- tional chapel Mr. Foster made the basis of some in-
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teresting remarks on the moral and religious status of the tribe.
"Some among them have lived and died in the odor of sanctity," he remarked; "but their general spiritual condition is not encouraging, considering the efforts made for their conversion and enlightenment. Love of firewater, as with their fathers, is still their greatest failing. They are not industrious, despising the tilling of the soil, allowing their fine lands here to go to waste, as you see, but no better surfmen or sailors, especially whalemen, can be found. They are wandering and erratic in their habits, usually not more than half the tribe being on the reservation at any one time. Little attention is paid to preserving the purity of the family, negro and white blood being so inter- mixed that there is not a pure-blood Indian in the tribe."
As before remarked, there are two churches, each with quite a membership, and a school numbering some fifty scholars, the latter being supported by and under the direct control of the State. From the church we drove down to the southern end of the reservation near the sea to a little graveyard, entirely covered with weeds and bushes, where the ten Shinnecocks who perished in the wreck of the Circassian were interred, and regained the highway by a series of paths on the west, seeing there several pretty groves with mossy cottages embowered in them - the former often util-
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ized by the young people of Southampton for picnics. The future of the reservation is an interesting question. Its lands are now quite valuable, adjoining plots sell- ing as high as $200 or $300 per acre, and are each year increasing in value. If the Indians could sell, the land would probably long ago have been sold. They, how- ever, only hold it for themselves and their children, the title being vested in the state for the tribe; if par- titioned the proceeds would be divided among the Indians, as their individual interests might appear; and so long as a Shinnecock remains it would be difficult for a purchaser to secure a good title.
CHAPTER XXIII
PORT JEFFERSON AND THE WHALEBOAT PRIVATEERSMEN 1
P ORT JEFFERSON lies at the head of Setauket Harbor, and, although containing (in 1880) nearly 2000 inhabitants, is so embowered in trees that one coming in from sea would scarcely suspect its existence. Its streets follow primitive cart-paths winding up the hillsides from the hollow in which the business portion of the town lies. Ship-building is the chief, almost the sole industry. As our ship drew up to the dock we heard the clamor of a hundred saws, planes, and hammers, and counted four large brigs on the stocks in process of construction. More than one hundred years ago, we learned, Captain John Wilsie built the first ship here, and the business, although not as good as before the war, is still in a flourishing con- dition. There are three yards in operation, and a vet- eran shipwright of eighty told us that he had known ten vessels on the stocks at once. When asked how they could afford to build ships so remote from market, ne replied that they put in better material, worked on a 1 Written in 1887.
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