Hallucinations, Magic Crows, and Witches: Random Thoughts While Making Bread

The other day I made some brown bread. Many of you might be familiar with this delicious loaf, but if you're not here's the scoop. It's a bread made with rye flour, wheat flour, and cornmeal that is usually sweetened with molasses. You usually find it at clambakes these days, but in the past it was just an everyday bread. 

Some people make brown bread by steaming it in cans, but although that results in a very moist loaf it is not really necessary. You can bake it in a regular pan. I was feeling a little bit Goth, so I baked mine in a skull-shaped Halloween pan I have. 

Brown bread has its roots deep in New England's culinary history. It's had different names in the past, like "rye and Indian," which refers to the rye flour and the cornmeal, which was once called Indian meal since it originated with the local indigenous people. Sometimes brown bread was also called "thirds" because the recipe called for one third each of wheat, rye, and cornmeal. Wheat does not grow well in New England and was very expensive here in the 17th and 18th centuries, so the English colonists made their bread by mixing this precious commodity with the other two grains, both of which grow better in this climate.

I oiled and floured my skull-shaped ban so the bread came out looking like this!

As I made my brown bread, interesting stories about rye and cornmeal came to mind, one about the Salem witch trials and one from local Algonquin lore. 

Here is the Salem story. Most historians think the Salem witch hunt was caused by social and psychological factors. But what if there was a simple biological cause? In 1976 Linnda Caporael, a biology grad student at the University of California Santa Barbara, suggested that ergot, a fungus found on grain, might be responsible for the witch trials.

The English colonists grew a lot of rye, and during warm wet weather, ergot grows on rye. Ergot contains a compound similar to the hallucinogen LSD. People who consume rye ergot-infected with ergot can suffer from hallucinations, auditory disturbances, convulsions, strange skin sensations, vomiting, and psychosis. These symptoms sound like the symptoms suffered by the allegedly bewitched Salem girls. Carporeal argued that the spectral visions and strange fits these girls experienced were caused by the fungus.

This theory received a lot of publicity when it was published, even meriting a front-page article in The New York Times. A critique was published a few years later by Nicholas Spanos and Jack Gottlieb, two psychologists from Carleton University. They argued there was not strong evidence connecting ergotism to the Salem witch trials.

Convulsive ergotism, they claim, is only found in people with a Vitamin A deficiency. Someone with sufficient Vitamin A in their body suffers instead from gangrenous ergotism, a different variety of the disease which causes gangrene and rotting flesh. (Yikes.) The farmers in Salem Village consumed lots of dairy products, and the residents of Salem Town ate plenty of fish, both foods rich in Vitamin A. If ergot was present they should have suffered from gangrene, which they didn’t. 

Spanos and Gottlieb also point out that some symptoms of convulsive ergotism weren’t present in Salem, like vomiting and diarrhea. Most importantly, though, the afflicted girls only experienced their torments at specific times, usually in the courtroom when accused witches were brought in. Outside of the courtroom they were usually symptom-free. This strongly suggests their symptoms were not caused by ergotism. Many people who testified during the trials also said they only testified because they feared imprisonment or execution. It would be nice if the witch trials had been caused by something as simple as a fungus, but regrettably it seems that human ignorance and malevolence were more likely to blame.

That's kind of a weird and unpleasant thing to consider while making bread, but the other story is happier. It's connected to cornmeal. Corn was one of the staple foods for the local Algonquin tribes, and many tribes told stories about how it was brought to Earth from heaven by a crow. 

Here's one version of that story from Kitt Little Turtle (1940 - 2004), a Nipmuck medicine man from Webster, Massachusetts. It appears in the book Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing From New England (2014), edited by Siobhan Senier.

Many generations in the past, the Nipmuck lived only by hunting and gathering. They depended entirely on wild game and other food they could forage. Because of this they were always on the move and never settled in one place. 

One year food was very scarce and the Nipmuck were close to starvation. During this time a crow appeared in a vision to a young man. The crow told the man about a wonderful plant that would prevent the Nipmuck from starving. 

The man wanted to go find this plant, but the crow told him it was too far for him to ever find. The crow would bring it to him. The crow also told him that the crows would follow the Nipmuck forever if they grew this special plant. It was, after all, the crows' favorite food. 

A few days later the man was wandering through the woods when a crow appeared. It was the same one he saw in his vision. The crow gave the man three seeds: corn, squash, and beans. These are the Three Sisters which grow well together in the same field. The crow told the man how to cultivate and harvest these crops. 

Ever since that time, the crows visit whenever the corn is harvested to get the share that is due them. 

There you have it. Two stories, one delicious loaf of bread!

Two Encounters with Pukwudgies in Lawrence, Massachusetts

One of the nice things about writing this blog is that sometimes people share strange stories with me. Last week someone I'll call Miss S. wrote and told me about some unusual things that happened to her family thirty years ago. She said I could share them so here they are.

The first incident happened to Miss S.'s brother Bob. He was just a child at the time (maybe seven or eight years old) and was watching TV with some cousins at his grandparent's house in Lawrence, Massachusetts. They were sitting on the couch, which faced the TV but had its back towards a doorway into another room.

As they sat there watching TV Bob felt someone pull on the back of his hair. He thought it was his cousin Sandra and he told her to stop. Sandra denied pulling his hair. A few seconds later he felt it again. Again he yelled at his cousin, who still said she didn't do it. A few more seconds passed and Bob once again felt someone tug on his air.

He turned around angrily, expecting to see one his cousins hiding behind the couch. But his anger turned to surprise when he saw who was there. Instead of a cousin, he saw a little old lady with long white hair. And when I write little, I mean quite small - she was only two or three feet tall. When she saw Bob looking at her she quickly started to run towards the front door of the house. She disappeared into thin air before she reached it.

Bob was understandably surprised by this, but when he blurted out what he had seen his grandmother told him not to worry about it. "Don't worry," she said. "They're friendly.'

The second incident occurred one day when Bob's mother took him and his cousins, including Sandra, out to the movies. After the movie was over they returned to their grandparents' house. The door was locked. No one was supposed to be home so they were surprised to see through the window that a lamp was on in the living room. Sandra peered through the window to see if she could see her grandparents. She jumped back from the window and screamed "I am getting the f***k out of here!"

Bob's mother stepped up to the window and looked inside. She saw a very short old man with long white hair run out of the living room. She gathered the kids together and they quickly left.

Miss S. says that her brother and mother still talk about these two incidents. They say that in retrospect they should have known something odd was happening in the grandparents' home. They would sometimes find the tin of coffee opened and spilled onto the floor, and bottles of Coke stored in the attic opened and half drunk. When asked about these things the grandparents would just shrug and say they had rats, but can rats take the metal caps off glass bottles?

In her email Miss S. wrote that she thought these were encounters with pukwudgies, the magical little people from local Native American lore. The beings her family members saw were short, fast and had very long hair, which certainly matches some of the descriptions from local Algonquin lore. That lore also describes them as being mischievous but shy, which matches these two encounters.

It's important to note that historically Native American lore from New England includes a wide variety of little people known by many names. It was only in the late 20th and early 21st century that pukwudgie, a word of Ojibwa origin, has become widely used to describe them. I use it because it is a convenient term that people are familiar with.

I think it's also important to point out that Miss S.'s grandparents, mother, and brother are of Mi'kmaq heritage. The Mi'kmaq are a Native American group originally from Canada's Maritime provinces and parts of Maine. Mi'kmaq legends tell of small beings called the wiklatmuj or pukulatmuj. They enjoy playing tricks, including tying knots in people's hair. Was this what the old woman was trying to do to  Bob? 

It seems possible that since the grandparents were Mi'kmaq they weren't worried about having the little people in their house. They understood that they were just part of life. A family of European descent unfamiliar with these beings would probably have called an exorcist!

Most local Native American groups tried to foster good relationships with the pukwudgies. Like any neighbor, they could be malicious when treated poorly and helpful when treated right. Miss S. says she has never seen the little people herself, but when she moves to a new house she always does something her mother taught her. She leaves a small spice cake on the back steps the first night she moves in. She says her house is peaceful and her garden very productive.

It may seem strange that pukwudgies would appear in someone's house since they are usually associated with woods and forests. The grandparents' house was in an urban part of Lawrence, so it was definitely not a rural environment. However, I have found at least two other cases where a small, fairy-type being has appeared in someone's home. In one case, a house in Somerville was allegedly haunted by a troll. I've also read about a house in Weymouth that might have been inhabited by a mischievous pukwudgie. Are some accounts of haunted houses actually caused by pukwudgies instead of ghosts? That's probably an unanswerable question.

Fairies, Lost Children, and Cannibalism in 1830s Maine

Last year I did a lot of research into New England fairy folklore for an upcoming project. I found a some strange and wonderful things, including an article called "The Water-Fairies" by Harley Stamp in the July - September 1915 issue of The Journal of American Folklore.

The article is an allegedly true account of an encounter four Penobscot hunters had with some supernatural creatures in Maine in 1835. I say "allegedly true" only because the narrative doesn't match the current normative culture's standards for reality, but standards (and perhaps reality itself) may have been different two hundred years ago.

The story starts off with the Penosbscot hunters traveling into the wilderness to find game. They canoe up the Kenduskeag (an offshoot of the Penobscot River) and make camp near what is now the town of Kenduskeag. As they eat their evening meal they are besieged by strange noises:

Suddenly, while we were eating, we heard a noise or rumbling, like water rushing down from the mountains which surrounded us. We all stopped eating to listen. The noises continued, and then at intervals of about two minutes we heard what seemed to be millers driving their dogs into the logs and throwing their bars across them, then the filing of saws. We heard the sails of vessels flapping, the blowing of horns and drums... then from the south we came a rolling noise like thunder, and also one like a whistle heard through a tunnel; besides these, many strange sounds (forty-two every two minutes); and it seemed as if each one was louder and more distinct than the others. 

One of the hunters thinks the noises are coming from witches on the mountains, while another thinks they are being produced by devils. They consult the oldest and wisest member of their party, a man named Neptune. He thinks the sounds are coming from a nearby lake, which he has been told is inhabited - but he doesn't say by what. (Suspense!)

The next morning the hunters hike up into the nearby mountains, where they find a large wigwam made of whale bones. No one is inside, but a big pot is boiling on the cooking fire. When they open it they find the arm, foot, and head of a child. Yikes! They also notice large forks and spoons (each about six feet long) resting against the wigwam's walls. They run back to their camp in terror, and that night they again hear the same sounds.

If I can interject here, I will just say that this is a very creepy set-up. Hunters alone in the wilderness, strange nocturnal noises, and a pot full of child body parts. At this point I would turn around and head home, but the hunters don't do this. They need to catch some game to feed their families, so the next morning they canoe further up the river.

The banks of the river are wide and sandy, and they see what at first look like multiple otter tracks in the sand. But on closer inspection they discover the tracks are actually tiny human footprints. Weird, but things get even weirder as they go further up the river. They come upon a miniature village made entirely of clay. It contains houses, stables, horses, and even people, but all child-sized, inanimate and sculpted of river clay. As they look through the village, Neptune tells them that it was made by water-fairies, or warnungmeksooark in Penobscot. He had heard they lived nearby and had always hoped to see them because they can foretell the future. They are known to create sculptures from clay.

The Kenduskeag, from Wikipedia.

They return to their canoe and plan to continue up the river, but when they turn a bend they come across a huge crowd of water fairies running in many directions along the bank. The hunters don't really get a good idea of what they look like though, because the fairies see the hunters and dive into the water.

Again, I would probably turn around and head home at this point, but one of the hunters, Sauk Ketch, decides to capture a warnungmeksooark. His friends bury him in the sand and then hide in the bushes. When the water-fairies finally emerge from the river and he rises up from the sand and grabs two of them. The rest disappear into the river.

The hunters are shocked when they see what a water fairy looks like:

... he had the most beautiful fine long hair; but his face was narrow, with so long a chin that it rested on his breast. His nose was so big and broad that you could see it on each side of his head when his back was toward you. His eyes were very narrow up and down; and his mouth was the shape of a sharp A, the point running up under his nose. He wore no clothing...

The hunters are even more shocked when the water fairies eventually lead them to see the king of their tribe, who is sleeping nearby.

... we saw before us, on the rock, a huge man. His gray hair was long and in ringlets. His neck was as large as a barrel. His feet were large, and he had on a strange sort of dress. On his feet were black shining moccasins with silver clasps. He had close-fitting leggings. His coat was olive-green outside, and bright blue and red inside... As his mouth was open, I saw he had two large teeth only, on his upper jaw, one of which was broken off. 

The water fairies explain that their race is divided into twelve tribes, each ruled over by a king. The kings are able to travel through the air, and can live in water or on land. The kings catch children who fall into lakes or rivers and bring them to someplace safe.

That sounds nice, but what finally happens to the children that they save? Well, once a year the twelve kings gather together, kill the children, and eat them. Apparently the pot the hunters found contained the remains (or the beginnings) of their feast.

At this point I would definitely leave. And you know what? The hunters leave and head back home. That's the end of the story.

There are a lot of interesting things about this article. Water-dwelling fairies are found in the folklore of many northern New England Algonquin tribes, and they are generally benevolent. Even in this story the warnungmeksooark themselves seem pretty nice, but their kings are another matter entirely. Algonquin folklore also often describes malevolent beings who lure children to their doom, and the water-fairy kings seem to be a variant of this.

The sleeping king, particularly with his shiny buckled shoes, curly hair, and his brightly colored coat, seems to resemble someone of European descent. Maybe it could be a little bit of political commentary?

I really like the narrative arc of this story. The hunters slowly learn more as they travel further into the wilderness, and the strange noises and gruesome wigwam set a creepy mood. Neptune has always wanted to meet the water-fairies because they can tell the future. They do tell him they can do this, but he never gets to ask them any questions. My expectations for the story were foiled!

People do still see fairies in New England, but not quite like the warnungmeksooark. However, the frantic running of the water fairies does remind me of the these tiny high-speed cavemen seen on the Connecticut River. Perhaps they are the same entities? If so, let's just hope their kings aren't anywhere nearby.

A Visit to the Upton Chamber

New England is home to hundreds of mysterious stone structures, including cairns, stone circles, and underground stone chambers. Often hidden away on private land or buried deep in woods already filled with boulders and rocks, these structures go unnoticed by most people unless they are really looking for them.

Some of the most famous stone structures can be found at New Hampshire's Mystery Hill (aka America's Stonehenge), or at Connecticut's Gungywamp complex. There is also an amazing underground chamber in Upton, Massachusetts, and the town of Upton recently created a park to showcase it. Tony and I went with our friends Danny and Onix to pay a visit.

Danny, Onix and Tony at the entrance to the park.

What exactly are the New England stone chambers? There are three main theories:

1. Colonial root cellars. Farmers built the chambers underground and out of stone to keep potatoes and other root crops cold through the year. In the 19th century there was a mass exodus of farmers from New England to more fertile (and less rocky) land in New York and the Midwest. Their abandoned farms reverted back to forest, which is why these chambers are now hidden in the woods.

2.  Native American ceremonial structures. Although the Algonquin tribes living in New England at the time of European contact didn't build with stone, it's quite possible that their ancestors in this area did. New England has been inhabited by humans for more than 10,000 years, so it's not unreasonable to think some past Native American society made these structures. Native American groups in other parts of North and South America made cities and ceremonial centers with stone, so the technology could have easily made it to this part of the continent.

3. Ancient European ceremonial structures. According to this theory, ancient Druids, Norsemen, Irish monks, Phoenician sailors, and others made their way to New England before Columbus and built the chambers. Some chambers (but not all) align with the summer and winter solstices, much like ancient Celtic structures, and some (but not all) appear similar to megalithic European sites like Newgrange, although on a much smaller scale.

I think theory number 2 is my favorite, but this New York Times article makes a good case for theory number 1. You can find plenty of information about theory number 3 by poking around the web.

Entrance to the Upton Chamber. I really like how the tree roots frame the entrance.

To me it doesn't matter what theory is correct, because these chambers are amazing. Their creators, whoever they are, put incredible amounts of time and manpower into building them, and they merge beautifully with our stony landscape. The Upton chamber really was quite magical, like something out of a Tolkien novel.

The Upton Heritage Park is located on Elm Street. We parked at the nearby VFW parking lot and walked there. Once you enter the park and walk past the sign, take a right if you want to go the chamber. It's very close to the road. We accidentally took a left after the sign and spent a while wandering around in the woods looking for the chamber. It was a nice day, though, so we enjoyed some fresh air!

Me taking pictures in the woods. Where is that darn chamber?!?

The entrance to the chamber is about 4 1/2 feet high, and opens into a 14 foot long tunnel of similar height. Remember to bring a flashlight!

Tony peers into the entrance.

We had to crouch to walk down the tunnel.

If you have claustrophobia the tunnel may freak you out, but it opens into a beehive shaped domed chamber that is about 10 feet wide and maybe 12 feet high. When we visited the floor was covered in six inches of water, so wear good boots.

Tony and Onix and the chamber. Watch out for spiders!

The chamber's ceiling, which is made from massive stone slabs.

The view from the top of the chamber.

Danny points out a hole in the ground...

... that lets a tiny bit of light through the chamber's ceiling.

The Upton Chamber was definitely worth the trip - I didn't want to leave! But after we finally did, we drove down the road to Red Rock Grill for a really tasty (and inexpensive lunch), and then visited Spaightwood Galleries to see an exhibit of Durer etchings. For a small town Upton definitely has a lot going on.

Me wondering how hard it would be to make a chamber in my backyard. Danny, an architect, said it would be difficult and very expensive.

Goodbye Upton Chamber!

You can read more about the Upton Chamber and the park here, including some information about alignments with other stone structures in Upton. Some interesting sites about other New England stone structures are here and here. Lastly, my friend David Goudsward recently wrote a book in 2006 called Ancient Stone Sites of New England and the Debate Over Early European Exploration.

Glooskap and the Giant Frog

A few weeks ago I borrowed a copy of John Hanson Mitchell's 1984 book Ceremonial Time from the library. It's a fascinating book that tries to tell the history of one square mile of Littleton, Massachusetts over 15,000 years. 

Let's face it, 15,000 years is a long long time. Littleton probably only has about 300 years of written history, so Mitchell turns to some unusual methods to unearth what happened in the past. For example, at one point he encounters what he thinks may be the spirit of an ancient Paleo-Indian shaman in the woods near his house. To help him understand this experience he enlists the help of some local American Indians.

One of them, a woman named Tonupasqua, tells him several stories about Glooskap, the mighty culture hero of the New England Algonquins. I've written about Glooskap before. He's a gigantic, super-strong, ancient magician who helped make the world safe for mankind. Sometimes he's a little bit dim, but in other stories, including this one from Ceremonial Time, he's a trickster.

A state of Glooskap in Nova Scotia.

According to the story, a long long time ago when the world was young a gigantic frog lived in New England. He was quite greedy, and built a huge dam to contain all the water in one enormous lake. This lake flooded the land where the humans lived, but they were powerless against the gigantic frog.

Unfortunately, the frog wasn't the only monster people had to deal with. There was also a giant bear whose favorite meal was human flesh.

The humans asked Glooskap to help them with these monsters. Glooskap tried several times to fight the frog, but whenever he got near it it would hide in the lake.

One day while it was sitting underwater the frog devised a sinister plan. Glooskap lived nearby in a large cave - why not hide at the back of Glooskap's cave and eat him when he came home? So it hopped out of the lake and hid at the back of the dark cave.

Glooskap came home from hunting, but hesitated outside his cave. He could sense something was wrong.

"Cave, are you glad to see me?" he said.

The frog said nothing.

Glooskap said, "Magic cave, are you glad to see me? Every evening when I return home you greet me. If you don't greet me I'll know something's wrong."

This was, of course, a lie. His cave never said anything, but the frog didn't know this. Pretending to be a magic cave, the frog croaked out, "Welcome home Glooskap!"

His suspicions confirmed, Glooskap quickly rolled a giant boulder across the entrance and trapped the frog inside.

At this point, the monstrously huge man-eating bear came strolling along. It said, "What's in the cave, Glooskap?"

Glooskap said, "Sweet, tasty humans who are hiding from you. I'll roll back this boulder so you can go inside and eat them. Sound good?"

The bear thought this did indeed sound good, so Glooskap rolled back the boulder.

The bear stuck his head in the cave, and the frog immediately shot out his giant sticky tongue and pulled the bear into the darkness. As the two giant animals began to fight Glooskap once again rolled the boulder across the entrance.

The bear and the frog fought for a long time. They fought so hard that the earth shook violently, which caused the frog's dam burst, releasing all the trapped waters. Finally, the two giant animals died, each mortally wounded in the battle.

When Glooskap told the humans what had happened they rejoiced, and the land once covered by water became fertile land where they could garden and hunt without fear of the giant bear.

There are several different versions of this myth, but I like this one. It definitely provides a different perspective on our landscape!