Henry Tufts: Wizard, Fortune-Teller, and Criminal

Henry Tufts (1748 - 1831) led what might euphemistically be called a colorful life. Tufts was born in Newmarket, New Hampshire and spent many years as a criminal, earning his living as a thief, con-man, gambler, and counterfeiter across New England. He also was a bigamist, marrying a woman named Lydia Bickford around 1770 and then several other women after that without divorcing any of them. This doesn't include the many, many other women he also slept with as he bamboozled his way across the countryside.

At least that's what he claims in his 1807 autobiography, which is titled A Narrative of the Life, Adventures, Travels and Sufferings of Henry Tufts, Now Residing at Lemington, in the District of Maine. In Substance, As Compiled from His Own Mouth. I think any suffering that Tufts endured came mostly from his own sociopathic nature and chronic lying, but that's me. Your opinion may differ. The book was reprinted in 1930 with the shorter and blunter title The Autobiography of A Criminal. 

Woodcut of an 18th century criminal

I'm not sure it's all 100% true, but Tufts's autobiography is a very entertaining read. It's well-written, quite funny, and consists mostly of how he gets himself into (and then out of) bad situations. What's most interesting though, at least to readers of this blog, was that Henry Tufts often made money as a traveling wizard and fortune-teller. Even though Tufts was a scam artist, A Narrative of the Life etc. provides information into how 18th century New Englanders viewed the occult and magic. 

For example, while tarrying briefly in Norwich, Vermont, Tufts let the locals know he could predict the future. Young people visited him to get their fortunes told, while "sometimes, too, did the elderly approach my levee to enquire for lost goods, so that I had business enough, and was generally received with a hearty good welcome, go whither I would. Indeed I found it in no way difficult to cajole my ignorant followers into the belief of whatever idle tale I was pleased to fabricate..."

His services as a fortune teller were much in demand. Even while he was imprisoned in Exeter, New Hampshire (for desertion from the Continental Army) several young women visited him to get their futures told. Tufts would normally be happy to make money off them, but in this case he had just cut a hole in the wall of the jail and was preparing to escape. Rather than indulge the women, he chased them off with "unseemly language, as caused them to scamper down the stairs with more than customary agility." Spoiler alert: he escaped from jail and embarked on more criminal endeavors. 

Engraving of a lobster

It's not always clear what method Tufts used to tell fortunes, but during one period he used a small lobster claw. 

I had picked up, by chance, the small claw of a lobster, which I informed the people as I passed along, was an enchanted horn; by virtue of which I could predict future events; but that, unfortunately, I had lost another horn, its counterpart, to which had been attached the rare property of enabling its possessor to foretell past events. This ridiculous tale was accredited by many; I therefore gained much celebrity, as a conjuror; sometimes my fee amounting to eight shillings in an evening.

Tufts led people to believe he was a "Salem wizard." Being a wizard was no longer a criminal offense in the 1700s, and by that time it seems Salem already had the reputation for being the source of powerful magic, a reputation it maintains to this day. If Tufts had claimed to be a Salem wizard in the 1690s he would have been hanged; in the 1770s it was a way to market his talents. 

Tufts also let people think he worked with the Devil. Again, this would be a dangerous claim to make in the the 1600s but was good marketing in the 1770s, giving Tufts an aura of mystery and danger. 

In respect to myself, it was the concurrent opinion, that I must be an extraordinary wizard, complete master of the black art, and able to employ the agency of the devil, whenever I saw fit. The belief of those things I endeavored to cultivate, well knowing, that reputation is sometimes of more advantage, in our intercourse with the generality of mankind, than are real requirements, because a fool may possess it. 

The Devil was invoked when Tufts found himself once again in Exeter jail, this time for stealing livestock with an accomplice, James Smith. The jailers put Tufts and Smith in adjacent cells. Friends smuggled tools to Tufts which he used to secretly drill a hole through the wall, and not even Smith knew he had made the hole. 

As Tufts prepared to escape, he whispered to Smith through the wall they shared that he was leaving the jail "by the help of the devil, who is now at my beck and call, whenever I need his assistance." Smith already believed that Tufts was a wizard and begged him to free him using his magic. Tufts agreed, saying that first Smith must throw his clothes out the window of his cell, which he did. 

Tufts then told Smith he must repeat the following spell to escape the jail:

Come in old man,
With that black ram,
And carry me out,
As fast as you can

Smith did as he was told. While he repeatedly recited the spell Tufts escaped through the hole he made and put on Smith's clothes, which were lying on the ground outside. Tufts fled into the countryside wearing Smith's clothing while poor gullible Smith was left naked in jail reciting the spell. 

Henry Tufts eventually gave up his life of crime and settled in Lemington, Maine, where he made a living as a physician. He had learned to be a physician from Molly Ockett, an Abenaki woman whose medical skills he required when he was suffering from a knife wound. Tufts lived among the Abenaki for several years and learned how to use local herbs and roots to treat illnesses. 

Indian doctors (as they were called) were in high demand at the time, much like Salem wizards, but happily the practice of medicine involved much less deception. If Tufts is to be believed, he was an honorable doctor who devoted himself to healing the sick. I'm just not sure we can believe anything he wrote...

Pyewacket: A Familiar Spirit with Origins in New England

Matthew Hopkins was a notorious witch-finder who terrorized the East Anglia region of England from 1644 to 1647. His short but infamous career happened during the English Civil War, when there was a lot of social unrest, and Hopkins made money by charging different towns to find the witches who supposedly caused it. It is estimated he was responsible for the deaths of 300 innocent people.

Hopkins died at the age of 27 in 1647 from tuberculosis, but before his death he published an influential witch-finding manual titled The Discovery of Witches (1647). In the book he claims he got started in the witch-finding business because there were several women in his home town of Manningtree who were witches. Here (writing about himself in the third person) he explains what happened:

... In March 1644 he had some seven or eight of that horrible sect of Witches living in the Towne where he lived, a Towne in Essex called Maningtree, with divers other adjacent Witches of other towns, who every six weeks in the night (being alwayes on the Friday night) had their meeting close by his house and had their severall solemne sacrifices there offered to the Devill...

Hopkins goes on to write that he heard one of the witches calling out to her familiar spirits. Familiar spirits were allegedly magical entities that witches commanded to do their bidding. They often appeared in the form of animals, and many people believed they were demons loaned to witches by the Devil and that they nourished themselves by sucking the witches' blood.

An illustration from The Discovery of Witches

Hopkins wrote down the names of the familiar spirits the Manningtree witch called. Those names were Holt (who appeared as a white kitten), Jarmara (a fat legless spaniel), Vinegar Tom (a greyhound with the head of an ox), Sack and Sugar (a black rabbit), and Newes (a polecat or ferret). She summoned other familiar spirits as well: Elemanzer, Peckin the Crown, Grizzel Greedigut and Pyewacket. It's quite a list of names, and in case you suspect Hopkins just made them up he writes that their names were such as "no mortall could invent."

I don't think he's quite right. I think Hopkins or his associates actually did invent most of those names, but he didn't invent the name Pyewacket. That's the name of a Native American tribe that lived in New Hampshire and Maine in the 17th century. Matthew Hopkins never visited New England, but he probably did hear about the explorations of Darby Field.

Darby Field was an Irishman who came to New England in the 1630s and settled in New Hampshire around 1638. Many of the colonists were focused on work, family and God, but Field apparently had a more inquisitive spirit. Although he worked as a ferryman he could also speak the local Alonquin dialects and was interested in exploring the area around him. In 1642 he decided to climb the White Mountains and hired some local Native guides from a village called 'Pigwacket' to help him. Pigwacket was Field's rough English transcription of Pequawket, a name of one of the Abenaki groups that lived in New Hampshire and Maine. 

Field's mountain-climbing expedition was well-known at the time and appears in both Massachusetts governor John Winthrop's journal and in a book by the explorer Ferdinando Gorges. It seems likely that Matthew Hopkins heard the name Pigwacket and incorporated it as "Pyewacket" into The Discovery of Witches. The Puritans erroneously believed that Native Americans worshipped the Devil so it makes that Hopkins would use a Native American word as a demon's name.

The Pequawket sadly no longer exist as a distinct group - they've merged with other Abenaki tribes - but the name Pyewacket continues on long after Hopkins's death. Pyewacket is the name of Kim Novak's cat in the movie Bell, Book and Candle (1958), has appeared as a character in several novels, and is the title of a recent horror film. I searched Tumblr and saw a lot of photos of animals named Pyewacket, while Instagram has over 7,000 posts with the hashtag #pyewacket. The dominant colonial culture's use of the word has outlived the actual indigenous people who inspired it. 

I don't think Pyewacket's origins in New England (and in Puritan xenophobia) is well-known. I just stumbled on it recently in Emerson Baker's excellent book A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and The American Experience (2015). There's always something new to learn about our region's weird history. 

Skunk Cabbage Folklore

Last weekend I was walking through a park near my house and saw that this plant was growing near some streams:

It is of course skunk cabbage. Technically it's eastern skunk cabbage, or symplocarpus foetidus if you like Latin. There's also a western skunk cabbage that grows in the Pacific Northwest. Skunk cabbage gets its name from the pungent odor it releases when its leaves are damaged or when it flowers very early in the spring. I don't know if pungent is strong enough a word - its odor is reminiscent of skunk spray or rotting meat. One of the chemicals that produces its odor is cadaverine, which is also the chemical that makes rotting corpses smell.

When I saw the skunk cabbage I thought, "There must be some interesting folklore about this plant." And there is. Skunk cabbage was used by several local Indian tribes for medicinal purposes.

Before I list those purposes, I just want to say this: DO NOT TRY ANY OF THESE CURES. I am not a  doctor and am not recommending using skunk cabbage to heal anything. I am simply listing this folklore because I find it interesting.

The Micmac claimed that skunk cabbage could be used to stop headaches, while the Mohegan believed that rolling and chewing a raw leaf would prevent convulsions or epileptic fits. The Abenaki used it to reduce swelling, while the Malecite, who live in extreme northern Maine and Canada's Maritime provinces, also used it for unspecified medicinal purposes.

Again, I wouldn't try any of those remedies because parts of the skunk cabbage plant can be poisonous.

 

Those uses for skunk cabbage came from local tribes. Several Indian tribes outside of New England also used the plant medicinally and for magic. For example, the Iroquois would apply skunk cabbage leaves to a dog bite. This was done not just to heal the wound, but also to make the biting dog's teeth fall out. I was bitten by a dog once and understand the impulse behind this practice.

The Iroquois also used skunk cabbage to increase fertility by passing it over a woman's genitals, and also to fight really bad body odor. For the latter, they would dry the leaves into a powder and rub it into their armpits like deodorant.

Much like the Iroquois, the Menominee of Wisconsin also use skunk cabbage to treat wounds. However, they used it also for tattoos:

Tattooing was not employed by the Menomini so much for the design as for the treatment of diseases, being a talisman against their return. The medicines were tattooed in over the seat of the pain. Not all of the herbs used were identified, for the writer did not see them growing. Among them were powdered birchbark, charcoal pigment, skunk root, deer's ear root (Menyanthes trifoliata L.), red top root (Lobelia cardinalis L.?), black root (unknown), and yellow root, probably Oxalis acetosella L. The medicines were moistened and tattooed into the flesh with the teeth of the gar pike, dipped in the medicines. The various colors stay and form a guard against the disease. (Huron Smith, "Ethnobotany of the Meonmini Indians," Bulletin of the Public Museum of Milwaukee, December 10, 1923)

I think it's wonderful that the world is full of such interesting folklore. We are surrounded by amazing things if you just know where to look.

*****

Most of the information for this post came from the Native American Ethnobotany Database.

Swamp Woman and Other Dangerous Spirits

If you are out alone in the woods please be cautious if you hear someone crying and moaning. It could be Swamp Woman trying to to trick you, particularly if you are a man.

Swamp Woman is a spirit found in Penobscot folklore from Maine. In Algonquian her names are  Swaktemus and Pskegdemus, but most people think both names simply refer to the same being. She should be avoided at all costs whatever name you give her.

Swamp Woman lives alone in the forest, and wears only moss. Moss also grows in her hair, which is so long that it covers most of her body. I think that's a pretty distinctive look, so you'll probably know if you encounter her.

Poor Swamp Woman is lonely, and cries out in the woods for men and children to come live with her. She is particularly fond of hunters, but perhaps they are just the men she sees is the most familiar with. Maybe she would like high-tech nerds or Uber drivers just as much if she encountered them more often. Regardless of their profession, anyone who responds to her call is never seen again. Do they die? Do they live with her forever in her swampy forest home? It's not clear, but it's probably not good either way.

Swamp Woman sounds easy to avoid. Just stay out of the woods, right? Unfortunately it's not that simple. If a man sincerely wishes to see Swamp Woman she will come to him wherever he is, and any man who even pities her will never marry a mortal woman. In other words, not only do you have to avoid Swamp Woman, you have to avoid thinking about her. Ugh. I bet you're thinking about her right now, aren't you? She will also snatch children, and they are often warned to behave lest Swamp Woman come and steal them away.

The Penobscot also tell of another, similar creature called Maskiksu, a.k.a. Toad Creature, who appears as a small dwarfish woman clad in moss. She also seduces men and cries out in loneliness for children. Toad Creature likes to nurse human babies, but any child she nurses will fall into an endless sleep. Again, best to be avoided.

Other beings in New England folklore lure men and children to their dooms too. For example, a while ago I wrote about the Abenaki swamp spirit of Vermont, while further south the Wampanoag of Cape Cod tell tales of Granny Squannit. Granny Squannit's long hair covers her face (which is rumored to be strangely ugly), and she sometimes kidnaps men and young boys. Granny Squannit also has a benevolent side, teaching people about healing plants and feeding people who are shipwrecked. Granny Squannit is probably a modern version of the ancient Algonquian women's goddess Squauanit who was mentioned by Roger Williams in 1643.


Are all these beings distinct entities, or are they just different versions of each other? They sound similar in some ways to those seductive fairies who enchant questing knights in Medieval romances, or even to folkloric fairies like the Skogsnuva, or Wood Women, of Sweden. Fairies are not a laughing matter. Some death certificates from 17th century Sweden have been found where the cause of death is listed as "involvement with a Skogsnuva." My mind also drifts to the succubi of Christian demonology, the demoness Lilith from Jewish folklore, and even the seductive ghostly witch who haunts the Freetown State Forest here in Massachusetts. .

There is definitely a pattern here. Maybe there actually is a supernatural force (or forces) behind these different legends, or maybe the stories just reflect a male fear of female sexuality.The forests and swamps are dark and unknowable, making them a perfect blank slate to project one's fears onto. But still, if you see a long-haired woman covered in moss it's probably safest to run in the other direction.