the Sackett Companion (1992) (6 page)

Travel was travail; one did not enjoy, one endured.

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THE WARRIORS PATH

First publication: Bantam Books paperback, July 1980 Narrator: Kin-Ring Sackett Time Period: c. 1620s
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In which Kin-Ring and Yance respond to a call for help from Anna Penney, mother of Temperance, who is Yance's wife. Carrie Penney, Temperance's younger sister, has disappeared in company with Diana Macklin, the beautiful daughter of Robert Macklin, who is suspected of being a witch. Supposedly the two were taken by Indians while gathering herbs in the forest. A search by local people has been abandoned, and Joseph Pittingel, a merchant, fosters the belief that they have been taken by Pequots.

Despite warnings and obstruction, Kin-Ring and Yance set out to find the missing girls, and the tracks they find are not those of Indians.

Angered by what they discover, Kin-Ring and Yance set out to find not only the missing girls but what has happened to other girls who have been lost over the past few years. Their suspicions lead them to Pittingel himself and to those employed by him. The trail leads them to Jamaica, even to Port Royal, hang-out and resort for pirates and slave traders.

TENACO: A friendly Indian who brought Anna Penney's call for help to Yance, and who was wounded by a musket ball. Did the Pequots have muskets? Who did not want a message taken?

PEQUOTS: A fierce Indian tribe, probably never numbering more than twenty-five hundred people.

The Indian population of North America has been estimated at 650,000 to 1,000,000 before the coming of the white man, which is approximately the size of the Indian population today.

Other estimates have been made, suggesting far larger populations, but these, I believe, have not considered the ability of the Indian, with his primitive methods of farming (when he farmed at all), to feed himself. It is generally agreed that a hunting and food-gathering people require one square mile per person to subsist, so the number of Pequots mentioned above would require twenty-five hundred square miles of land, far more than was actually available, due to other tribes living in the vicinity, making demands upon much of the same land.

Moreover, the one constant in the Indian subsistence pattern was the near starvation period at the close of winter when food supplies began to fail and new plant growth had not begun. A long winter almost invariably led to famine.

The pursuit of agriculture varied considerably from area to area, however, and the Natchez in Louisiana harvested a wide variety of crops, living in a climate well suited to planting.

CARRIE PENNEY: A pretty young girl of ten years, learning about plants from Diana Macklin. Supposedly kidnapped by Indians along with Diana. She was the younger sister of Yance's wife, Temperance.

DIANA MACKLIN: Daughter of Robert Macklin; a quiet, self-contained girl of considerable intellect. She sewed well, spun well, and performed all domestic activities with assurance and finesse, but she also read much, and had ideas. These last were considered a very doubtful quality by many of the men of the colony. Several of the young men offered themselves as suitors but Diana manifested no interest. These suitors included Joseph Pittingel, an older man known to be well-off, one of the leaders in the community.

She knew much of herbs and their medicinal values and often went into the woods to collect herbs. Because of this and because she was not afraid of the night she was suspected of witchcraft. Pittingel, it seems, was the first to hint at such a thing. Anna Penney scoffed at this but her husband was uneasy. He was a respecter of authority and unwilling to voice opinions contrary to those of the men in power. Anna Penney, for one, recalled that no such suspicions were voiced by Pittingel until after his suit had been refused. Tom Penney liked Diana but was uneasy in the presence of a girl not afraid to speak her mind.

TOM PENNEY: A hard-working man trained as a stonemason, but skilled with tools and any kind of construction. He also has done quite well as a farmer.

Here it might be added that few of the Puritans had previous experience as farmers. A large number had been craftsmen or artisans of some kind and only a few had experience with planting, cultivating, or harvesting crops.

Another factor not always considered when reviewing the hard times the early colonists had was that they had little or no experience as hunters. In England the game belonged to the King or to the great lords, and their gamekeepers kept careful lookout for poachers.

The would-be colonists landed in a country with much game but no experience at hunting or dressing captured game. This they had to learn from the Indians, who were astonished by the white man's ignorance of something so basic.

ANNA PENNEY: Wife to Tom, mother to Temperance and Carrie, and friend to Diana, but like her husband inclined to be subservient to authority. It was only her great love for her lost child that led her to send a friendly Indian in search of Yance Sackett, who was a woodsman. Within herself she was doubtful of Pittingel's wisdom, although not suspicious of his motives. In any event, nothing more was being done and her feelings demanded the search be pursued.

JOSEPH PITTINGEL: A wealthy merchant and owner of ships; a trader with interests in the West Indies. A highly respected man and one of the officials of the community, which was unaware that he was also a slave trader, and a ruthless man to whom money and position were all-important. Contemptuous of his fellow settlers, whom he considered lesser men, he hated all who opposed or contradicted him. Success had hardened his resolves and made him even more sure of himself.

ROBERT MACKLIN: Father of Diana; a good man, a sincere man, but not one to throw his weight about unless necessary. A
strong man in his own way and quite well-off, he knew nothing of Indians or their ways, nor did he know the forest. Although he distrusted Pittingel he had nothing upon which to base his distrust. A studious man, happiest when with his books, he came to the new country with some knowledge of farming as well as a small, steady income from the old country. Yet he had his own fears and worries, and had come to America to escape the scandal surrounding his wife, Diana's mother.

MAX BAUER: A slave trader; a ruthless, brutal man of great ability in his own way. Although second to Pittingel he was a stronger man in every way. A skilled tracker and hunter, a good seaman, he was all Pittingel was, only more so, but without the money. A man to be feared.

HENRY: A slave of Ashanti background. His people have always been warriors and slave traders in Africa, raiding other tribes and selling them as slaves to the Arab, Portuguese, and other traders who operated off the African coast. Enslaved himself, he had been quietly submissive, making himself useful while biding his time. He helped the girls to escape and escaped with them. His hope was, by helping them, to find a place for himself among their people. This was, at least, the story he gave himself. He was actually a kindly man, respectful of them, and aware of the life awaiting them for which they were in no way equipped to survive. A cool, self-contained man of considerable ability, and a great man in his own land where his father was a king among the Ashanti, a warrior people.

VERN, FEEBRO, AND LASHAN: Henchmen of Bauer, and hence, to some extent, of Pittingel.

JUBLAIN: Former soldier, adventurer, a friend and associate of the Sacketts. Gone to Moslem lands to seek his fortune.

PETER TALLIS: Also in SACKETTS LAND, and TO THE FAR BLUE MOUNTAINS. Had a booth in St. Paul's Walk, a man of many parts and varied interests. Originally a man skilled in
cutting not quite legal corners, he had become the agent for the Sacketts and the produce they sent for sale in England or the Low Countries. He handled such business for others as well, led into the field by the Sacketts.

DAMARISCOVE: In the Maine Islands, but rarely mentioned among the early settlements in America. Vessels had been coming to this island for generations. The first authentic date so far is 1603, four years before the Jamestown settlement and seventeen years before the Pilgrims landed. The Mayflower, as a fishing vessel, had visited Damariscove before its famous voyage with the Pilgrims. No longer inhabited, it was a port of call for many ships along the Atlantic coast prior to British settlement on the mainland.

SHAWMUT: Where Boston now stands. First settled by Samuel Maverick and the Reverend Blaxton. There were several springs on the site. Winthrop moved most of his colony there after the original site proved unhealthy.

SAMUEL MAVERICK: He had come over the Atlantic with Gorges, who established a colony in Maine. Maverick retained property in Maine but settled at Shawmut and built a strongly fortified trading station there. An able, interested man, he owned several trading vessels and later wrote a book called A Brief Description of New England And Several Towns Therein.

He was an ancestor to the Maverick for whom the un-branded Texas cattle were named, and of Maury Maverick, a Congressman from Texas in the New Deal Era.

THE REVEREND WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, OR BLAXTON: Born in Salisbury, England in 1595. Graduated from Cambridge. Came to America in 1623. As he had religious differences with the colonists he eventually left Boston for Rhode Island. He has been credited with planting the first orchards in Massachusetts. Reputed to be a reserved and studious man content to be left alone to pursue his own interests, both intellectual and agricultural.

PORT ROYAL, JAMAICA: Variously called the City of Gold and the Babylon of the West, Port Royal was a buccaneers' port. There was much legitimate trade, of course, but it was predominantly a port for pirates, privateers, slave traders, and those who dealt with them. Bronzed seamen with gold rings in their ears swaggered along the quays and lingered in the waterfront dives, of which there were a-plenty. The loot from many a sunken or captured ship was brought to Port Royal and it was there the riffraff of the seas spent their bloodstained gold. Brawls and dagger thrusts were an everyday matter and a man was supposed to take care of himself. Most of them were well-fitted to do so.

Dining, drinking, and wenching, the buccaneers spent fortunes because there was no need to save. The seas were a rich hunting ground for the men of the Black Flag. This continued until one sweltering morning in June, 1692, when an earthquake struck. Three rapid shocks, close together, and in three minutes or less Port Royal was destroyed as efficiently as Sodom and Gomorrah. The city slid off to the bottom of the sea, taking most of its population along with it. One moment the wild, roistering town was booming at its best and in the next there was nothing but a turmoil in the water, floating wreckage, and here and there a body the earth did not swallow.

It was to this port, still in its heyday, that Kin-Ring came on his quest for the slave traders.

THE MAROONS: Escaped slaves who took refuge in the Cockpit country of Jamaica. There were Maroons elsewhere but those in Jamaica were the best known and won themselves a position unequaled by any others.

From the Cockpit country they fiercely resisted all efforts to recapture them and finally won independent status. It is likely that many of them were of Ashanti blood. One detachment that was captured was shipped off to Nova Scotia and later to Sierra Leone, where they fell back into their old way of life. Most of those remaining in Jamaica are now Seventh-Day Adventists.

Their capital is at Accompong, and but few trails lead into the Cockpit country, so-called because of a series of pits or inverted cones in the rock. The pits are from one hundred to five hundred feet in depth, in diameter from ten to one hundred yards, many of them overgrown with brush and trees. From this hide-out of more than two hundred square miles they fought the Spanish, from whom they escaped, and later the British, until a treaty was negotiated that left the Maroons in a very favorable position.

AUGUSTUS JAYNE: A tailor in Port Royal, but he was much else besides. A man known to Peter Tallis, with whom he had dealings. A man with an ear to the ground and aware of all that was happening around him, as well as elsewhere.

RAFE BOGARDUS: A fine swordsman and a professional killer in a town where every man had done his share of killing and was prepared to do more. Kin defeated but did not kill him, so no doubt he will appear again in his own good time.

CLAIBORNE: An historical character who had a trading station on Kent Island in Chesapeake Bay.

ADELE LEGARE: A feisty young lady of unusual intelligence who matured very quickly when necessity demanded; who adapted herself to the situations in which she found herself and became a person of quality and decision. Kidnapped and sold as a slave, she did not despair, nor did she forget those responsible. From the crowd at the slave auction she selected a quiet young man and lured him into buying her, then persuaded him that she'd make a better wife than a slave. She not only became his wife, and one of whom he could be proud, but she assisted him in his business affairs. Most important, she did not forget the men who had kidnapped her.

LEGARE: The planter who became Adele's husband; a plantation owner and dabbler in government affairs who found in Adele the woman he needed, and who needed him. Kin suggested his brother Brian as London agent for Legare.

DEAL WEBSTER: A trader on Kent Island.

CAPE ANN: A granite peninsula into the Atlantic now largely occupied by Gloucester and Rockport. A place familiar to seafaring men from the first days of sail along the Atlantic coast.

GALLEON BAY: Located on the northeastern side of Goat Island, a shallow but excellent shelter for small craft; not far from Port Royal and Kingston, Jamaica.

Jamaica was for many years the most important of the West Indian Islands to the colonists, and one of the many causes leading to the Revolutionary War was the restriction put upon direct trade to and from that island. England insisted that all trade with the West Indies be routed through English ports. Traders found it much easier to sail directly from the West Indies to North American ports and so avoid two crossings of the stormy Atlantic.

Rum, the most popular drink in early America, came from the West Indies and most of it from Jamaica. The trade with the American colonies was extremely profitable, while the two crossings of the Atlantic that England demanded removed a large portion of the profit.

THE WARRIOR'S PATH: An old war trail that led from the vicinity of Chattanooga to Boston, with many branches and offshoots. A trail long used by warring Indians on their raids, north and south, but particularly the Seneca war parties attacking the Catawba and the Cherokee. It had been in use for several hundred years before the coming of the white man.

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