Legends and Tales of the American West

by Richard Erdoes

  There stands a monument at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, bearing the inscription COLONEL PATRICK JACK, AN OFFICER OF THE COLONIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY WARS—DIED JANUARY 25TH, 1821, AGED NINETY-ONE YRS. Could this be Captain Jack, the Wild Hunter of the Juniata? No one seems to know.

  The Consequences of Not Letting

  a Man Have His Drink

  There once was a man called Hintze. He was a gunsmith and married to a mean wife. Hintze was not a very good gunsmith because he drank too much. You got to have a very steady hand to rifle a barrel or to fashion a fine flintlock. You have to be reasonably sober to do that. Hintze was, however, good enough to repair rifles or reset triggers, cobble together a new part, do some filing here and a little hammering there. A man can be in his cups and still do that kind of work.

  Hintze figured that if he could get far enough from the other gunsmiths, way out into the wilderness where only the most daring would go, he could still earn a living while going on hitting the bottle to his heart’s delight, because the backwoodsmen would come to him rather than travel nearly a hundred miles to York or Lancaster to have their long rifles fixed. So he settled down in the farthest settlement, called Dinwiddie Town to honor Virginia’s governor, but named Deadmensburg by the locals for very good reasons, on account of the woods beyond the last dwelling being full of ferocious creatures, both two-legged and four-legged. This godforsaken place had some twenty log cabins, a forge, and a tavern called the Stag’s Head. There was also a blockhouse. If things got rough, men, women, children, together with their livestock hastened to seek safety behind its stout walls, and the devil take the hindmost.

  Hintze took up a few acres, put together a ramshackle abode, and set up shop. Thus he tippled and worked, worked and tippled, his wife taking proper care of the kitchen garden, three razor-backed pigs, and a few scrawny chickens. Now the old woman was always quick to get her hands on whatever money came in from gun repairing in order to prevent Hintze from drinking it up. In this matter man and wife were forever at war trying to outwit each other. As far as Hintze was concerned, it was a losing battle because the woman had an easy time emptying Hintze’s pockets whenever he was drunk, which was most of the time.

  One day Hintze told the woman: “Goodwife, you have picked my purse again, leaving me nothing. Let me have two bits. I feel like going to the Stag’s Head for a dram.”

  “You low dog,” screamed the woman, “you sorry tosspot, you bumbling fuddler. You shall have nothing from me. Go to the devil for it!”

  “Well then, goodwife, I have a mind to swap the suckling pig for a keg of tipple.”

  He went into the pigsty, grabbing a piglet by its forelegs. His wife got hold of the hind legs and they started pulling in opposite directions while the piglet squealed loud enough to make a man deaf. The woman was strong and won that tug-of-war.

  “I shall take my gun and go out and shoot a deer,” said Hintze. “I’ll swap the meat for a barrel of rye.”

  There were deer enough in the nearby woods, but years of imbibing the good creature had made Hintze’s hands tremble, his aim shaky, and his eyes rheumy. He fired off many bullets but hit nothing.

  “Der Teufel soll es holen!” cried Hintze in frustration. “The devil take it. I’d sell my soul to the Teufel for a guinea.”

  On the way home from his fruitless hunt, crossing a bridge over the stream that flowed on the hamlet’s outskirts, Hintze met a stranger, a wee manikin, very hairy, with a black pointed goatee and unkempt mane, tufts of hair protruding from ears and nostrils. The little man wore a small funny hat and wooden clogs much too large for his feet. His face was pockmarked and his skin as dark as that of a chimney sweep. The wee fellow’s eyes were like buttons, moving all the time, darting here and there, missing nothing.

  “A good day to you, sir,” said the stranger, dropping a shiny guinea into the palm of the very surprised Hintze. “A very good day and a most pleasant evening,” the words turning into loud cackling, not unlike the screeching of a bird. With that the odd fellow doffed his hat, bowed, and vanished in the twinkling of an eye.

  It had happened so fast Hintze thought for a moment that it had all been a dream, but the coin in his palm was proof that the encounter had been real. So Hintze whistled up a merry tune, went to the Stag’s Head, and was soon so besotted that he barely managed to find his way home.

  For a short while Hintze remained sober, but soon the old story repeated itself. “Goodwife,” Hintze said to his old woman, “you got again into my pockets. Let me have a shilling. Things have not been too good lately. I want to go to the Stag’s Head and drown my sorrows.”

  “You good-for-nothing boozer, you rascally knave!” his wife screamed at him. “Not a farthing shall you get from me!”

  “In that case I shall swap a chicken for a brimmer,” said he. “Yes, a fowl for a fuddle, that’s it!”

  But already the woman stood in front of the henhouse threatening her husband with a pitchfork: “You sot, you rum-hound, you swill-all! The devil take you!”

  “I shall shoot a rabbit,” said Hintze, taking up his gun. “Yes, I shall load this with Pulver and Blei. A rabbit for a toddy!”

  But again his aim was poor, and his hand unsteady, as he used up great amounts of powder and lead without hitting anything. “Donner und Blitz!” he cursed, “I’d give my soul for a guinea.”

  And once more, at the bridge, waited for him the hirsute manikin, saying “At your service, friend,” dropping a freshly minted coin into Hintze’s palm. And, as before, Hintze whistled a merry tune, went to the Stag’s Head, and drank the tavern dry.

  His little spree was followed by a month of sobriety until the urge came upon him again as he told his old woman: “Goodwife, you have filched my money. Let me have a shilling, not for liquor, just for a little ’baccer.”

  “I know you, you wine-bibbing low-down rogue, you guzzling, villainous toper. A clout on your red-glowing nose I’ll give ye. Go to the devil!”

  This time Hintze did not say anything in return but tiptoed to the stable, got the calf by the halter, and tried sneaking off to swap it for a barrel of brandy. Naturally, his wife was on to his tricks, knocked him flat with the blunt end of an ax, and led the calf back into the stable.

  “There’s not a penny’s worth of pity in you, you miserly old hag,” said Hintze when he came to. He then staggered off in the direction of the tavern, mumbling to himself: “They’ll let me have a dram for old times’ sake. Der Teufel soll mich holen for a mug of hot, buttered rum!”

  “Over here, over here, by the bridge,” a cackling voice called out to him. It was the pint-sized stranger who once more handed Hintze his coin. “This is the last time,” said the hairy little fellow. “Repayment will be in order shortly.”

  Hintze was happy. He tossed off a large mug of hot buttered rum, followed by a tumbler of Barbados rum. He treated all his friends to round after round. He zigzagged home and collapsed on his bed with a happy smile.

  A few months later, at the witching hour, with a pale moon shining and a storm brewing, with the dog howling pitifully and the wind rattling the windowpanes, Hintze and his wife were awakened by a loud thunderclap. A mighty gust of wind blew the door open, and amid swirling clouds of dust the wee stranger made his appearance. The unexpected visit instantly sobered the befuddled gunsmith. His teeth were chattering, his limbs trembling. Even his old woman, usually afraid of nothing, broke out in goose pimples.

  “What do you want, good friend,” stammered Hintze. “This is no time to come visiting.”

  “Come, come, sir, you know very well what I’ve come for,” said the stranger, who, quick as lightning, thrust his thin hairy arm into Hintze’s throat, deep, deep down, coming up in his fist with something resembling a fluttering moth emitting an insectlike wail—the drunkard’s soul.

  “Now you owe me nothing, sir, I am well paid,” said the wee manikin as, with a triumphant screech, the fluttering soul in his pocket, he made his exit via the chimney.

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nbsp; “Consider, wife, what comes from not letting a man have his drink,” said Hintze. Then he fell back on his pillow and was dead.

  “Good riddance!” was his goodwife’s only comment.

  The Laughing Head

  There was a young lad, lately come to the country of the benighted heathen, to the edge of the world wherein Christians worshiped in churches, slept in beds as was proper, tilled the soil, and lived as the Good Book commanded.

  Young Tom, for that was his name, took up land, built himself a home, with much toil cleared a few acres, rooting up tree stumps and rolling away boulders. He then put in his first crop. Thus he prospered. Only one thing was missing—a wife. There was a great dearth of white, godly women because such desirable creatures would not come willingly to the wilderness.

  But a wife young Tom must have. So he took his rifle and powder horn and also a sackful of baubles, such as were wont to bedazzle the heathen Indians, and betook himself to a Shawnee village where he espied a comely maid who smiled at him because he was young and good-looking. He went to her father’s wigwam and spread out his gifts—sharp axes and knives, sparkling Bohemian beads, vermilion cloth, looking glasses, and many such-like trinkets. These he swapped for the girl whose father was a sorcerer and conjurer of the kind one finds in every heathen village. This witchman let Tom and his intended jointly hold up a sacred pipe, placed a large bear robe around their shoulders, and, with many magic incantations and strange rituals, indicated that the happy couple were now man and wife after the custom of his tribe.

  Tom took his newly won bride, whose name was Mahotsee, back to his settlement, where he changed her name to Maud and wedded her for a second time in the proper Christian manner. And just as he had not comprehended any of his savage father-in-law’s spells and invocations, so the dusky Maud did not understand a word of what the minister said, finding the doings in church exceedingly strange.

  At first, Tom and Maud communicated with signs and gestures, but he soon taught her to speak English tolerably well, made her exchange buckskin for shift and petticoat, and instructed her in the use of soap and water instead of greasing her satin skin with bear fat. In this fashion they lived happily.

  Now Tom had taken a fancy to his wife’s folks and to their strange but fascinating ways. Now and then he would travel to their village to smoke the calumet with their sachems and watch his father-in-law do his conjurations. Always he brought gifts, and always he came home laden with venison and curiously fashioned objects. He even learned a little Shawnee, though he never used it when conversing with his wife, as he did not wish her to go back to her former heathen ways. The settlement’s parson, Peter Peabody, took a dim view of young Tom’s frequent visits to the Shawnee village: “Let me warn thee, Thomas, it is not meet for a Christian to have such truck with these godless folks, especially with your wife’s father, a foul necromancer and practitioner of the black arts, as I am told. I tell thee, Thomas, your immortal soul is in peril. There are ghosts there, and demons, enchantments, and bewitchments. Danger lurks, Thomas. I fear for thee.”

  “I neither believe in ghosts, nor am I afraid of demons,” said Tom, and went on visiting Maud’s folks.

  Once, sitting by his father-in-law’s campfire, he said, offhandedly, “Our parson thinks that you are a magician who can do what is eerie, untoward, and unhuman. But I don’t believe this. You are just a good fellow like myself who can do some sleight-of-hand tricks like our mountebanks at the fair.”

  Instantly, the old Shawnee twisted off his head, placing it at Tom’s feet. Looking up at Tom, the head winked at him with a big grin, saying, “Tricks like this, my son?”

  Tom was thunderstruck. He screamed with fear and ran, ran, ran away as fast as his legs would carry him. Wild-eyed, disheveled, and trembling like a leaf, he arrived home.

  “Why, what is the matter with thee, Tom?” asked his wife. “Has something frightened thee?”

  “Wife, I saw something terrible, fearful, diabolic, so utterly terrifying that I cannot tell thee.”

  Instantly, Maud twisted off her head, placing it in Tom’s hands. And her head looked up at him, and her lips were smiling as she said, “Is it this that frightened thee, Tom?”

  CHAPTER 2

  The Long Hunters

  There was no end to the land in the West and no end to the men who wanted it. During the second half of the eighteenth century, tales of a wonderful country called Kentucky set minds aflame in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. “Kaintuck,” so it was said, was swarming with game, and a man with a rifle need never go hungry. A Dr. Walker who, in 1750, ventured beyond what was then the western edge of the British Colonies, reported that, within a comparatively short time, his party had bagged 13 buffaloes, 8 elks, 53 bears, 20 deer, 4 wild geese, and 150 turkeys.

  In 1752 another early explorer described the land beyond in glowing terms: “This is a good country, ideal for settlement. It is fine, rich, level land, well timbered, with large walnut, ash, sugar maple, and cherry trees; well watered with a great number of little streams and rivulets; full of beautiful natural meadows with wild rye, blue grass, and clover.”

  The first white men to venture into this New Eden were the “Long Hunters,” so called because they ranged over long distances over long periods of time, staying away from home in the wilderness for many months or even a full year. Some never returned. These were the Indians’ hunting grounds and many a long hunter left his bones moldering there, a victim of tomahawk and scalping knife. For this reason some dubbed this New Eden that “Dark and Bloody Ground.”

  Long hunters went into the wilderness for furs and deerskins, which they cached in some place of concealment until it was time to go home. Often Indians found these hiding places and helped themselves to the hunters’ peltry. One leader of a hunting party, finding their cached goods gone, disgustedly carved on a tree: “2300 DEERSKINS GONE. RUINATION BY GOD!”

  Long hunters were just about the most self-sufficient men that ever lived. They penetrated the wilderness for long periods of time with nothing more than their long rifle, powder and lead, strike-a-light, hatchet, knife, some tobacco, and a little salt. If their hunting shirts or moccasins wore out, they made themselves new ones out of deerhides. If they were wounded, or fell sick, they doctored themselves. They adopted the lifestyle of the Indian and were away from home so long that their own children hardly recognized them when they came back. They were Anglo-Saxons, with a tiny sprinkling of Pennsylvania Dutchmen, and of the same bodily type—lean and bony, but lithe, with sharp, pinched noses, prominent cheekbones, pugnacious chins, eyes hard, keen and deep set, the mouth just a thin slash across the face, the hair long and unkempt. They were watchful, wary, and impatient of all restraint. They talked little and did much. They were the pathfinders who blazed trails for the earliest settlers. Sometimes they turned settlers themselves. Such a one was Pennsylvania-born Daniel Boone, the most famous long hunter, who started as a teamster and blacksmith in General Braddock’s ill-fated army and then turned pathfinder, hunter, Indian fighter, scout, and, finally, wilderness farmer and founder of settlements.

  Tarzan Boone

  Daniel Boone was born a most unusual Quaker, who did not quake at the sight of blood and battle. He owned a rifle called Tick-licker and a dog called Cuff. In his old age he kept tame beaver and otter cubs. He never slept in a bed if he could help it, preferring to take his rest on a bearskin or wolfskin before the chimney fire. He was thin-lipped, which was why the Indians named him Sheltowee, meaning “Wide Mouth.” He believed in dreams. His sense of humor, whatever he had of it, was exceedingly dry. He once came upon an Indian fishing in a stream and described the incident as follows: “As I was looking at the fellow, he tumbled into the river and I saw him no more,” meaning that Boone had shot him from ambush.

  Daniel wanted elbow room—lots of it. He wanted no neighbor within ten miles of his home and used to say that if you could see chimney smoke other than your own, it was time to move on. He was no
t one of those turn-the-other-cheek Quakers but an eye-for-an-eye Old Testamentarian. When, as a small boy, he had fallen asleep beneath a tree, two frolicsome young girls played a trick on him by emptying a pail of rotten fish guts over his head. He did not see any fun in this and gave each of them a black eye, a fat lip, and a bloody nose.

  His mother was not a shining example of Quaker meekness either. When the little girls’ mamas came to complain she told them, “If thee have not brought up your daughters to better behavior, it is high time they were taught good manners.”

  Boone was the very epitome of the far-roaming long hunter. Once, alone in the woods, he found himself pursued by four Indians. Trying, unsuccessfully, to get them off his tracks, he grabbed a loose grapevine, climbed up on it until he had gained sufficient height, and, trusting in his luck, swung himself—an early American Tarzan—across a wide ravine. The Indians thus lost his trail, concluding that Sheltowee was a wizard who could fly through the air like a bird.

  Boone always maintained that a man needed four things to succeed—a good rifle, a good horse, a good dog, and a good wife, in that order. The first three articles he already possessed. He wanted the fourth. One night he went out “fire hunting,” that is, he fastened a lighted torch to the bow of his birchbark canoe, paddling it slowly and silently along a sluggish stream. Deer are nocturnal creatures seeking out water to drink during the dark hours. They are also curious and attracted by light. The trick was to fire at the light reflected in their eyes. Boone caught a gleam of eyes peering at him from the forest, raised his rifle, and fired—or rather tried to, because the powder had got wet and there was only the click of the hammer. Boone screamed in frustration “like a cougar,” as he heard the deer escaping through the underbrush. The deer turned out to be a girl named Rebecca Bryan, who came flying home to her parents’ log cabin, crying that she had been pursued by a “painter.”