The Chronicles of Patrick Gwaltney, My Purely Fictitious Ancestor.
Pocosin--One of many Algonquian words that became part of the settler's lingo was used by the settlers to describe any swamp or meandering water. Patrick knew that about 40 miles to the Southeast there was a pocosin so big that entire people's inhabited it. Slaves and those on indenture or apprenticeship who ran off from their masters often headed into the darkness of that great swamp.
Patrick thought it to be a sad choice to have to choose between being property or being victuals, both of the small bugs and the roaring beasts of the night. Though he often thought of running off from his indenture he could not continence the thought of life in the Dismal pocosin.
The stories of the Dismal pocosin were not without interest to him. To the Indians it was a filled with horrid demons, much like the eternal punishment for the damned, a place of briers and screeching old hags. To the Africans it was a place of potential freedom--a place where one who may never go home could endeavor to create a renewed home.
The only thing that drew him to the Dismal pocosin was the stories of the horses of that dank swamp. Small, hairy and wild as the deer, they were of the same blood of those brought to King James, His Town, who were purchased by ship's captains from the Spanish Islands hundreds of miles to the south.
Of course his mind was drawn to those horses--wild horses who were free for the taking. While others dreamed only of riches, Patrick dreamed of riding. The shoe print in the dust of the worn paths through Virginia were the trademarks of poverty and low standing. Patrick hated to see his foot prints trail behind him as he trudged through the twisting paths from plantation to port.
Those born of the better sort left no such tracks. They were well mounted. The tracks they left were the width of a beer mug. Though not born of the better sort, Patrick dreamed of riding as they did.
But no man on his indenture, and nearly none who had completed theirs for several years, could afford the cost of a horse. Not far from his scrabble horses sold for five hundred pounds of tobacco, twice the cost of a young milk cow.
Horses took to the tropical heat of Virginia better than did the settlers who were born in a land of cold winters and damp, dark falls. Nearly twenty years before Patrick arrived in the colony, escaped horses had grown in such number around the Middle Plantation that the planters petitioned the Assembly to take action against these wild bands that destroyed crops with the same rapacity of the hogs that had been released in the marshes around each habitation.
But not here in Warrosquoyake. Even over by Lawne's Town, no horses roamed free. Every horse in Warrosquoyak labored under its indenture as just as Patrick had for nearly decade.
But over in the Dismal pocosin the horses ran wild. They ran wild, but not alone. As every Ancient settler and planter knew, the Dismal pocosin was a savage land inhabited by demons and witches.
And not just mere witches, great Witches of such Dark power that some were said to be even greater than the great savage Witch, Nemattenew, who had spilled so much English blood.
But some days as he looked at his foot prints in the dust Patrick thought that for the ownership of a team of spirited Spanish horses he would gladly tangle with the Spirit of even that great Witch.
1 comment:
A historian must often be a dreamer. It is difficult if not impossible for many people to picture what life was really like in days gone by. Wake up in the middle of the night, and something is getting in your livestock? No problem..flip on the light and shoot something..fall and break a leg? Pick up the phone and dial 911. Simple. Our friend patrick (Paidraig in the old language..) here would have lived in a world almost alien to our own..He would have spoken English, but you would have had a very hard time understanding him, even the language has changed over the centuries.
My own g-g-g-g-g-g-great grandfather was granted a 200 acre farm in what is modern day Isle of Wight County, Given by Patent, that Royal Grant still exists in the first Virginia Patent book, Page 672 if I recall correctly. It is almost impossible to read, and pretty much not possible to find the actual plot of ground, although I would like very much to do so, simply to stand on his farm 350 odd years later. All we know is that it was on the Pagan Creek just west of Smithfield. I presume it to be up around waterworks.
I will, in idle moments think of what life must have been like for him, he was essentially landed gentry, he divided his time between Isle of Wight and Charles City County, eventually moving on up towards the Shenandoah valley, His great, or great great grandson was one of the richest men in Misouri, making his fortune raising cattle, fine driving horses and good timothy hay, he was an original land grantor at Columbia University. None of these people would have the slightest inkling of how to get along today.
It is interesting to consider the very real and very stark contrast between the lives of Patrick Gwaltney, and Gabriel George, even their two worlds were almost alien to one another. Then we consider the contrast between these two, and Albert Caroll Jones, the man who founded Chippokes Plantation a few years later, and even loftier world, and a wholly different outlook. Some are always more equal it seems.
Patrick would have been kicking around about the same time as grandpa George, although it would have been a stiff mornings's walk from farm to farm, maybe a couple hours by horseback unless there was a clear road that way. I wonder how they would have interacted.
I hope Patrick finds himself a team, We would never have carved this country out of the jungle without them. -Lloyd
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