The Devil Tries to Kill A Minister, or Why There Are So Many Rocks in New England

Here in New England we are blessed to live in a landscape filled with rocks. If you like giant house-sized boulders, or even just medium sized rocks, you'll find plenty to love in this part of the country.

But where did all these rocks come from?

Maybe I should rephrase that question as "Where the hell did all these rocks come from?," since folklore lays the blame on the Devil.

Not all of New England is rocky. Although the Cape Cod town of Bourne has lots of large rocks, the outer tip of the Cape - Wellfleet, Truro, Provincetown - has almost no boulders at all. Once again, the Devil is to blame.

Boulders!

The story goes something like this. Way back in the 1600s, an English missionary named Richard Bourne was active on the southern part of Cape Cod, helping to found towns and doing God's work in the New World. Naturally, Richard Bourne drew the ire of the Devil. The Devil lived on Cape Cod and didn't like goodie-goodies anywhere near him.

One night while Bourne was sleeping the Devil crept down from the outer Cape to the missionary's hut. He leapt upon the sleeping minister, planning to crush him with his demonic super-strength. To the Evil One's surprise, Bourne successfully fought him off, even though the minister was not particularly large or strong.

"You won this time, Richard Bourne, but I'll be back," the Devil said. "Just you wait!" He stomped away to regain his strength and scheme.

Several nights later he came back to Bourne's dwelling, and once again the minister fought him off.  Once again the Devil stomped off, vowing to return.

This went on for several years, but the Devil was never able to harm Bourne because God was on his side.

Finally, the Devil realized he had to change his plan. He gathered up all the rocks he could find on the Outer Cape and put them in his big leather apron. Then he set off for Richard Bourne's house. He was going to dump all the rocks on the minister while he slept and crush him.

The Province Lands in Provincetown: a lot of sand, but no boulders...

As the Devil slowly waked down the Cape, carrying hundreds of boulders in his apron, a chickadee flew at him from out of the woods. The swift little bird flew around the Devil, mocking his plan to crush the minister.

"Richard Bourne defeated you before, he will defeat you again!" the smarmy little bird sang.

The Devil swatted at the bird, but chickadees are fast and it flew out of his reach. Then from a distant tree branch it sang it's mocking song again.

The Devil does not have a very good temper, and he was furious that such a tiny little bird would mock such a magnificent demon as himself. With a  howl of fury he ran towards the chickadee.

As he ran he tripped over a tree branch and fell. All the boulders he was carrying in his apron spilled out and rolled across the landscape. This area is now the rocky town of Bourne.

With a big sigh the Devil walked back to the boulder-free Outer Cape, where he's remained ever since. Even a fallen angel knows when he's been beaten.

*****

This story appears in Elizabeth Renard's book The Narrow Land (1934) in a section called "Tales of the Praying Indians." Praying Indian was a term that referred to Native Americans in New England who were early converts to Christianity, and the Christian content of this story is quite strong (if you didn't notice). 

It probably has its origins in earlier pre-Christian Wampanoag legends, though. Many stories have survived telling how the Wampanoag deity Maushop, who was gigantic in size and strength, created rock formations and ocean channels. Some of them are even very similar to the one told in Renard's book. For example, in one Wampanoag tale Maushop is building  a bridge to Cuttyhunk when a crab bites his toe. Maushop drops his rocks and storms off angrily. Those rocks now form a sunken reef.

Me and some rocks in the Blue Hills.

However, anthropologist William Simmons notes in his book Spirit of the New England Tribes that Wampanoags on Cape Cod weren't the only ones telling tales about the Devil dropping rocks from his apron. The Reverend William Chaffin of Easton, Massachusetts claimed that the boulders in that town also fell out of the Devil's apron, and I've read something similar in Clifton Johnson's book What They Say in New England. So it seems like Yankees of English descent were also giving supernatural explanations for the rocks that litter the landscape.

Here in the Boston area, we have a type of stone called puddingstone (aka Roxbury conglomerate) that looks like an old-fashioned lumpy pudding with dried fruit in it. In his 1830 poem "The Dorchester Giant" Oliver Wendell Holmes humorously claims it was formed when a family of giants flung their pudding all across the landscape.

They flung it over to Roxbury hills,
They flung it over the plain,
And all over Milton and Dorchester too
Great lumps of pudding the giants threw;
They tumbled as thick as rain.

Giant and mammoth have passed away,
For ages have floated by;
The suet is hard as a marrow bone,
And every plum is turned to a stone,
But there the puddings lie.

He wasn't serious, but it's interesting that he also proposed a supernatural explanation.

We know now that New England's rocks were deposited by melting glaciers, but the old myths and legends are as much part of the landscape as the boulders themselves.

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.

***

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.

***

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!

The Spirits of Anawan Rock

Someone should write a book called Notable Rocks of New England, because there are just so many of them. For example there's Dungeon Rock, Dighton Rock, and of course Anawan Rock in Rehoboth Mass., where Tony I stopped last weekend on our way to Providence.

An inconspicuous sign on Route 44.

We knew the rock was somewhere on Route 44, but we couldn't quite find it, so we stopped to ask directions. We were hoping to find a grizzled old-timer in a rocking chair who would say "Anawan Rock? Why you be wantin' to go there? Stay away if you know what's good for you..."

Instead, we stopped at a really nice farm, and asked a very pleasant woman if she knew where the rock was. Our hopes for Scooby Doo style mystery rose briefly when she said "Anawan Rock? No one's asked for directions there since that guy on the bike last year..." But they were dashed when her co-worker chimed in, "No, he was looking for some other rock. Anawan Rock's down the street near Uncle Ed's ice cream store!" We followed their directions past the ice cream store (which was not spooky), until we saw the sign for the rock.

Tony clambers up the rock.

Nothing weird or eerie happened on our trip to Anawan Rock, but the rock has a history that is tragic, and there's also a creepy legend attached to it. Why else would we want to visit it?

The tragedy occurred in August of 1676, when the Algonquin sachem Anawan and his men took refuge at the rock as King Philips' War was winding down. Metacom, aka King Philip, had been killed by the English in early August and the tide had clearly turned in favor of the colonists. As one of Metacom's supporters, Anawan knew he was next on the colonists' hit list.

Despite the drought, the rock was still covered with lush moss.

It's not clear why he chose this particularly rock for a last stand, but it could be because it's located near a swamp. The Algonquins often retreated to swampy areas in times of trouble, both for practical defensive reasons and because spirit allies like Hobbomok were more accessible in such places. Whatever the reason he went there, things didn't work out well for Anwan. He was tracked down by Captain Benjamin Church of Plymouth Colony, and surrendered on August 28 after Church promised he would not be executed.

Unfortunately for Anawan, the Pilgrims didn't keep their word. He was beheaded, and his head displayed on a pole at Plymouth for several years.

Another side of Anawan Rock.

With such a tragic history, it's not surprising Anawan Rock is now considered to be haunted. Phantom camp fires have been seen, and voices are sometimes heard in the woods crying out "Iootash!", which means "fight on" in the local Algonquin dialect. Strange screams and shouts can also be heard in the rock's vicinity. And these aren't old ghost stories from the 1700 or 1800s - paranormal researchers claim these phenomena are still happening today.

We didn't see any ghosts, and happily the bug spray kept away mosquitoes and ticks as well.

Tony and I didn't have any weird experiences, but we did have a strange coincidence. We were there on August 28, 2010, 334 years to the day when Anawan surrendered.

I got my information from Thomas D'Agostino's Haunted Massachusetts and Cheri Revai's book, which has the same name. You can also find plenty of information on the Web.