A Mohegan Witch Story from 1904

Here's a nice witch story from the Mohegans of Connecticut that anthropologist Frank Speck published in 1904. The English settlers weren't the only ones who believed in witches, and the local Indian groups maintained their own witch folklore well after the area was thoroughly colonized by the British.The story goes something like this.

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Many years ago an old Mohegan woman set out to walk all the way to New London to sell some brooms she had made. Making brooms was a common way for Indian women to make money at the time, and there was a bigger market for them in the city that out in the country.

However before the woman reached New London the sun began to set, and soon it was very dark. She grew concerned and wondered where she was going to spend the night.

Luckily she came upon a house with light shining from the windows and smoke coming from the chimney. It looked very inviting, so she knocked on the door.

A white woman answered the door, and invited the elderly Mohegan lady to come in. The Mohegan woman said, "Thank you! I am walking all the way to New London and need a place to stay. Could I please stay here tonight?"

The white woman smiled and said, "Of course. You will be my guest tonight. But you must tell no one that you saw me here."

The Mohegan woman thought this was an odd request, but agreed to it anyway. The white woman then brought out some bread and cheese and offered it to the elderly woman.

The Mohegan woman accepted the food, but said, "Thank you, but I'm not hungry right now. I will eat this tomorrow before I finish my journey." She then lay down near the fire and went to sleep.

When she awoke in the morning, she was amazed to find herself lying outside in the woods. Nearby her was a giant boulder which was the same size as the house she had seen the night before. When she reached in her pocket for the bread and cheese she was horrified to find they had been turned into a hard piece of cow dung and old white bone.

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I like this story quite a bit. Apparently the "house turning into a rock" theme appears in stories from other Algonquin tribes, and the white woman whose hospitality is a lie certainly makes sense as a comment on the Mohegan's political situation. I can also see connections to European fairy lore, where the gifts given by the fairies often turn out to be worthless in the daylight and the fairies swear those who see them to secrecy. I don't know if those similarities are the result of recent historical enculturation or come from a much older historical or psychological strata.

Frank Speck himself is an interesting character. He was born in Brooklyn, but was as a sickly child and was sent to live with a family friend in the healthier, more rural environment of Connecticut. The family friend was a Mohegan woman named Fidelia Fielding, and under her tutelage young Frank developed an enthusiasm for Indian culture, eventually becoming one of the preeminent anthropologists who studied the Indian cultures of the Northeast. 

If you like this story, I'd suggest reading William Simmons's Spirit of the New England Tribes, which is full of them. A truly great book!

Looking for love, but finding Satan!

Love magic has a long history in New England. For example, the girls who started the Salem witch trials made a Venus glass, which was supposed to predict their future husbands. As we all know, once they started dabbling in magic they got more than they asked for.

Love magic continued for centuries here, and I found this story in Westerly (Rhode Island) and Its Witnesses by Frederic Denison, published in 1878. Once again young women are involved, and once again things get out of hand.

In the 1700s, two young ladies named Hannah Maxson and Comfort Cottrell were staying at the Westerly home of one Esquire Clark. One afternoon, while Mr. Clark was out on business and his wife was ill in bed, Hannah and Comfort became bored and decided to try some love magic. What could possibly go wrong?


They took a ball of yarn to the well, and repeatedly tossed it down and pulled it up, all the while reciting Biblical psalms backwards. According to popular belief at the time, these magical actions should make their future husbands appear.

As the sun went down, Hannah and Comfort went to the front of the house to wait for their beaus to manifest. Their thoughts turned to rich, handsome men.

Soon, they saw a figure walking towards them. Was it a future husband?

As the figure got closer, they noticed he was taller than the average man. In fact, he was between 8 and 10 feet tall. His height wasn't the only thing strange. His face was hideous - his eyes were the size of saucers, and flames spouted from his mouth.

Clearly, this was not what they expected.

The young ladies ran into the house, shrieking, and threw themselves onto the bed where Mrs. Clark lay ill. The monster, meanwhile, made his way to the front door.

At this point, Mr. Clark returned home. Seeing a large, and possibly demonic, monster in front of his house, the pious man began to pray. The prayers worked! The monster shuffled away, and was seen no more in Westerly.

Hannah and Comfort never used the Bible for magical purposes again, and lived very religious lives from that time on. Unfortunately Mrs. Clark died shortly after that night. The shock of having a monster from Hell on her stoop was too much for her weakened constitution.

It was only decades later that the people of Westerly learned it was not Satan who appeared that evening, but a fellow mortal. A man named Daniel Rogers, who had once been a neighbor of the Clarks, confessed he had really been the monster, and his demonic visage was merely a large jack-o-lantern. He wanted to play a prank on the girls, but had kept quiet for years afterwards out of guilt for causing Mrs. Clark's death.

That's the end of the story. It reminds me of an episode of Scooby Doo. The monster's real - no, wait, it isn't! The part about Daniel Rogers being the monster feels a little tacked on to me. Isn't this story really about the perils of unmarried young women with too much free time? A cautionary tale from a more patriarchal era?

I think so, and a very similar story recorded in 1928 among the Wompanoag of Gay Head proves my point.

Once upon a time, a Wompanoag minister had four daughters. One evening while he was out preaching, his daughters tried a little love magic that involved hanging their underwear in front of the fireplace. Soon a howling wind picked up, and they heard someone (or something?) pounding on the doors and windows of their house. The girls cowered inside, terrified. When the minister came home, he saw a large creature, half human and half animal, clawing at the front door. The monster disappeared into the night, and the minister reprimanded his daughters for raising spirits. (From William Simmons's Spirit of the New England Tribes (1986)).

I definitely like this version better. There's no Scooby Doo ending, just magic, a monster, and some teenage girls causing trouble. It could be the basis for someone's thesis in Women's Studies.

More New England Snake Lore

The timber rattlesnake, crotalus horridus - still found in Massachusetts?

I always associate this time of year with snakes, so here's another post about them. My last snake post was about a piece of European lore found in Massachusetts, but the Algonquians had a lot of snake lore as well.

There are many varieties of snakes in New England, including two poisonous species: the copperhead (agkistrodon contortix) and the timber rattlesnake (crotalus horridus). Snakes are powerful creatures, representing the underworld, the soul, and spiritual warfare. It was believed that snakes have the ability to control the weather.

Rattlesnakes were both revered and feared by many Native American groups. For example, if an Ojibwa encountered a rattlesnake, he would address it as Grandfather, propitiate it with tobacco smoke, and ask for its blessing. Alexander Henry, a fur trader in the Great Lakes in the 1700's, relates how a band of Ojibwa sacrificed a dog to a rattlesnake in an attempt to bring favorable weather. Even those Native Americans who killed rattlesnakes did so with great respect. The Potawatomi of Ohio would sprinkle the body of a dead rattlesnake with tobacco and pray over it to avoid its wrath.

Among the Algonquians of southern New England, the underworld god Hobomock would most often appear to shamans as a snake, and dreaming about a snake was a sign that an individual was destined to become a shaman. Rattlesnakes were one of the guardian spirits (along with hawks and crows) that helped shamans heal their clients - and kill their enemies.

After the New England tribes converted to Christianity, they associated snakes with old pagan practices. For example, the Wampanoag of Cape Cod told how Elisha Naughaught, one of their church deacons, was attacked in the 1700's by a group of black snakes. They were perhaps sent by an enemy pagan shaman, and are clearly indicative of underworld powers.

I got my information from two sources: William Simmons's Spirit of the New England Tribes, and Thomas Palmer's Landscape With Reptile, a fantastic book about the history and lore of rattlesnakes in Massachusetts. Once extremely common in Massachusetts, rattlesnakes are now only found in the Blue Hills south of Boston.