NOTE: To my knowledge there never has been a Kensico, Massachusetts, a town anywhere in New England swallowed whole by a sinkhole, nor any plans by one town to burn another to the ground for the imaginary crime of harboring Native American witches. Nor that said vigilantism was covered up by the powers that be to avoid inter-colonial war. Nor was Timothy Edwards (you'll meet him in a bit), actually a circuit minister (he was a tutor). But let's just pretend for a while that it's all very true!
Once upon a time, there were some good Christian folk who had set up a small settlement on the fringes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Since by definition the only good Christian folk were members of the Separatist Congregation, they were Puritans. Only once had a King James (!!!) version of the Bible been found. That person was publicly chastised and scourged, repented of their misguided adherence to False Gospel and, because it was truly a family heirloom and all there about were sympathetic to the Commandment, ‘Honor thy Father and Mother,” a relatively light sentence of one year’s service in the fields during summer and the woods during winter was deemed sufficient. Of course the Lord forgives; yet the outward signs of penance are a fortification to the penitent and his community.
We had of course heard of the mischief in Salem - the crazed pursuit of one person after another, on the false accusations of a few power-crazed tarts. And there was fear that this madness would spread to our own community.
“Surely not here!” went the cry during one town hall. “We were all good Christian folk here!”
“And were not our brethren in Salem likewise, once the spell of madness lifted?” Deacon Samuel Standish, cousin to the famed member of the Plymouth settlement, said.
“Only less so,” Preacher Adams added. Murmurs of agreement.
“And yet who cannot look past our stockades at the Wild Men of the Woods, with their chanting and cavorting, and NOT see the hand of the Evil One reaching across this benighted land?”
And the discussion continued. Yes, all conceded, the Salem lot had erred greatly, turning on their own good Christian (by definition Puritan) brethren as minions of Satan – just as the Man in Black had bewitched them to do.
“Oh! Then there is evil about!” Went the cry.
“Yes,” Standish said solemnly. “Two evils – the evil of betrayal of the faith – and the evil of turning one’s eye away from where true evil lies hidden.”
And the room fell silent. The flames flickered and the wood crackled, as eyes turned inward thinking of the shadowed evil that surrounded them always.
The Norse, far to the north, the same who had raided the coasts of Britain for many centuries, had ventured to these very shores. This was known, though the exact locations were not. The Separatists had not planned to land so far north, rather being bound for the richer, warmer, kinder soil of Virginia, hundreds of miles away from this rocky, sandy uncooperative land.
And yet, there were so many of the aborigines here. How did they survive? How did they always have food and pipe weed and cloaks to spare? And such a multitude! Was it hard work? Hardly! Surely not! They built stockades, threw together wigwams by the hundreds, foraged in one place for a few years, then abandoned a place for another decade, then on and. Sometimes, they would even re-use old sites – they were so lazy and uncouth! And this peculiar thing they did with the white powder and chanting as they planted. This has been witnessed by trustworthy members of the church - a Devil’s charm for sure!
Witchcraft! Surely, the only way such slothful heathens with no permanent settlements to speak of course possibly survive in such a harsh clime.
So, wise enough to not mistake the example of Salem for wisdom, we turned our mission against evil in its proper direction: Against the most feared natives around, the Narragansett.
“But… there are no more Narragansett since the war twenty years ago!” James Bradford, the schoolteacher, protested.
“Not so!” Jeremiah Mason protested. “I did brickwork in Mystic in Connecticut, where the heathen Pequot were destroyed in my grandfather’s youth! They go by other Algonquin names, but you can see the signs – the sachem lines continue. Their widowed wives raise sons, dressed Christian… but hearts as devoted to Lucifer as before!”
“Son of the Father,” Mildred Dawes dared to swear, “Why Mystic? It is a place of evil ghosts.”
Standish points a finger and nods. “Yea, that is exactly why – so their mediums can channel these spirits and send them out to afflict good Christians to turn against one another…”
“… As they did in Salem!” shrieked Mildred.
“As they did in Salem.” Bradford repeated, unconvinced. The congregation roared angrily over him. Heads nodded and faces turned to sound out their solidarity in wrath.
A hand raised, that of Standish. “We have to ask why the good Christian people of Mystic have abided the presence of such persons for such a long time. This has gone for three generations.”
“They’re not of the Bay Colony,” Bradford noted the obvious.
“No…,” Standish concurred. “They’re not. With all that implies.”
Preacher Adams stood up and moved before the council table. “We should pray on this.” He glances up, notices the schoolteacher’s displeasure.
I, the schoolteacher, depart the hall.
_
Ye, who may not be aware of the events of the long-ago Pequot War, should be apprised: For on May 26, in the Year of Our Lord 1637, Mystic village, then a place of the Pequot, was surrounded and set aflame in retribution for attacks heinous and foul against settlers and their families.
Among the besiegers were the Narragansett, at the time allied with the colonists, later to turn on us – another sign of their villainy, surely.
This was technically not our concern, rather a matter for the folk of the Connecticut colony to sort for themselves. I only offer this news to give you a sense of the wondrous yet terrible events of that day.
For as with Pharaoh in Egypt, the Lord affected the heart of the Pequot sachem, Sassacus, to lead his braves to take the warpath against the settlers, thinking them vulnerable, leaving the village on the Mystic River to the care of the women and children.
Unknown to Sassacus, his earlier killing of the trader, John Oldham, and raiding of his ship and merchandise had enflamed the wrath of John Mason, who raised a militia of 90 men, and 70 Mohegan allies and, later, 200 Narragansett, to make reprisal.
Oblivious to the danger and thinking Hartford open, Sassacus went off with several hundred warriors to do harm to the good Christian community there.
Moving in separate directions by different roads, the two small armies missed each other and by nightfall Mason’s forces arrived at the Pequot village.
Only having to guard two approaches, a defense of mostly women and old men held the settlers and allies off.
This would not do. The Lord saw fit to inspire Mason through the Holy Spirit to set the stockade aflame and shoot any and all who attempted to escape.
None, blessed be His Name, did so. Soon after, Sassacus and his band were surrounded in a swamp and put to rout. The survivors surrendered, the tribe dispersed.
In time, the Narragansett took up the gauntlet of devilry and their own obligation as heathen to serve the greater Glory of God Almighty as defeated foes of His Believers.
Except…that may not have happened at all.
It has long been debated in many a conversation since the Battle of Fort Hill, as it is politely known, that Captains Mason and Underhill have very, very different depictions of every particular of the fight – time of day, number of soldiers, which group joined battle first, whether the battle took place in the town, outside the town – or if there was fighting at all. And yet, hundreds were slain by these brave Christian knights with their muskets. And yet, presumably all present for the victory, the estimated number of slain varies by hundreds between Mason’s account and that of Underhill.
Which leaves a prayerful man to question the trustworthiness of either man’s account, and ask: Where did the Pequot go?
And how did they get away from such a vast well-armed host for that early time in the history of the colonies?
Witchcraft, surely. Tricks that were passed on after the Treaty of Hartford formally ended the Pequot. Tricks that Pequot, secreted amongst the Narragansett, taught their new sachems - tricks that emboldened the Narragansett to star t their own bonfire of defiance and destruction with the colonists.
_
We, the Settlement of Kensico, Massachusetts, are resolved. We are burdened with heavy hearts for, despite our earlier avowal to not take the gun and the sword and the torch to other Christians, that we cannot overlook that the people of Mystic have fallen in league with Satan and his worldly minions. We number five hundred. We intend to go, all of us, down to the last child. For this will be deadly if righteous work - our foes will be as well-armed as we and more numerous. And they will have the power of Satan backing them.
We will have to wait out this determined rain, however. There is talk that perhaps we should evacuate to higher ground that the earthen dam built by our fathers for our mill here may awash and fall.
Surely not. God has given us all a vision. We march with the sun – and His Son – to victory against two proper evils – the one clearly seen, and the one that refuses to see the obvious.
With those admonitions in mind, Mason and I go to check the dam works. While the town foundation is never less than fifty feet above the waterline, one can never be too careful.
_
As is the course, agents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to check on the conduct of Ministers, to ensure that proper Christian education and guidance are provided to the segregate flocks scattered through the valleys and woods of the land. This is coincident with the delivery of notices and the collection of tithes.
In my last circuit of duties for the Colony, I anticipated the pleasure of meeting my longtime friend, Jonathan Adams, after much hiatus. He had gone to the Kensico Settlement seven years past.
I found the proper road, one that led all the way to Dutch communities in the Hudson Valley, where English was yet a foreign tongue. I would not go so far as that, of course.
Here, the hills are prominent and the sense of the wilderness yet very strong. Yet correspondence with Jonathan had indicated things were going well. There was forage for cattle and horse, yet no natural fall only rapid waters over stone. They had build an earthen dam, fortified it properly with the abundance of stone strewn about, and settled with some prudence on elevated works some distance down from the new lake on a rocky rise. Were the worse to happen, surely they would fare well.
They might have thought so. It was not so.
There is now, my Good Sirs, a natural lake, which I plumbed to be at least 100 feet deep, with an immediate drop into the depth like a well. There is no trace of the town save an unused road and almost-obliterated horse and wagon tracks. There is no trace of the former earthen dam at all.
In a matter of years the brush will make this course impassable. Within a decade or two, this will be indistinguishable from the wood.
I stood off and away from my horse, which I set to pasture on a short line far from the lip of the precipice surrounded the sunken lake. There are out-buildings I see now… and traces of moved earth and…ah, yes! The spare cow or horse that has lingered despite the shredded piled stone fence-lines.
I had seen sketches from Jonathan – this was the place, based on distance landmarks. This was the site of Kensico Settlement. Only now the town in its entire was one with the bowels of the Earth.
There had been storms in New England a month before. Towns farther coastward had been swamped. Many lives lost, much loss of livestock and servants and other Property, this damage had spared no community, even – all beheld some personal loss. All, save, if reports were true, the far-off town of Mystic, Connecticut - despite heavy loss to property, not one injury or death in the community there.
I am aware tensions are high with the Neighboring Colonies yet what does it say that this one place is spared when every other receives tears, especially this devout and worthy village in the western wood?
And here, the devastation was truly Biblical.
The valley floor that had shifted suddenly, a great slide of some kind, perhaps a subsidence of the Earth as there are known to be limestone bands and some modest cave formations here.
Where are you, Jonathan?
I will now search for remains, or some Other News of what has happened here.
_
It is late afternoon. News has found me. I have met the acquaintance of James Bradford, recently schoolteacher of the Settlement of Kensico…. and now one with His Father in Heaven. I removed him from the sharp branch on which his wave-swept body was impaled by the side. He was lifted a full twenty feet into the air, above the reach of larger scavengers… but they have made short work of him regardless.
At his feet was a satchel, opened, its contents scattered. The claw marks of a big cat, are on the leather. Leather bound books and a portfolio have been chewed on. The books are ruined. One is Aristotle’s “Politics” in the original Greek – I am not sure if this is condoned reading but I believe it is not banned in Boston. The others… animals and the elements have scattered and ruined their pages.
On investigating the portfolio I was amazed.
Bradford had written an account (I have transcribed it more clearly to the best of my ability and attached following these notes for your review, along with his original writings.), while hanging with a large bough piercing his side.
He must have been in incredible pain. It must have taken him some number of hours to write as he did.
I cannot fathom how he maneuvered to remove his pen and portfolio to write as he did.
I am certain the ochre ink used is in sooth Bradford’s own blood. I tremble at the thought.
I will conclude with the schoolteacher’s words. They haunt me. I am sending this via courier from the town ofNorthampton. I will await instruction, given these dire tidings.
_
I know I am dying. I know there is Punishment – and that God delivers it as He Wills.
We stared directly at evil and refused the caution of Salem. We thought we could divert our wrath to the Savages. No… we have missed the point of Judgment entirely.
We are not the Judges. We are the Judged.
Whatever the course, God in His Wisdom has seen fit to take His Children of Kensico…and take most of them into Hell.
I can see the Pit from here. I was turned backward by the flood, saw the waters first wash up to lap the feet of the Kensico stockade then wash back.
Then the Earth collapse under the weight of so much water where none was before. We knew the lake we made with our dam was vast – it ran a full Mile into the hills, and averaged one-Eighth of a Mile across. So when the dam fell, for some moments all of that water was set to pile in a much smaller space at the foot of the village.
We had overlooked the little potholes and sinkholes in the woods about us. We were glad for the local limestone and the lime to fertilize the crops – the “white powder” disparaged by my brethren as some witches’ trick. Fools. Fools in Hell now.
I will see them very soon, I fear. Or not at all. Why pretend to believe now? The Brethren cannot scourge me!
I will dispense with the forms – no Divine Will struck here! The dam burst! The water piled on weak stone and burst through heretofore secret Caves! My friends are dead for simple Galilean Reasons. They fell like cannon stones from the Tower of Pisa. That and nothing more.
Chance or Providence… a great evil has been spared the people of Mystic and Kensico alike. There would have been terrible bloodshed, had my crazed brethren made it to their destination.
So now only Kensico dies. My hand grows weak. My eyesight fades. My poor mimcry of Christ on the Cross, the Spear in His Side, is done.
I say Fare Well with a warning: Fear this place, from henceforth! And let no one in this New World makes the ill choice of naming their settlement Kensico, for the name is now surely cursed.
_
“That is quite a tale, Timothy,” Solomon Stoddard said, as he sipped cautiously on tea. He eschewed all consumption of drink, even beer, and ran a tight congregation.
“Yes, Reverend” the circuit minister agreed.
“I’m troubled by the Deism – if that – of this schoolteacher, Bradford. It speaks poorly of his credibility. And these aspersions against Captain Mason ..” Stoddard shook his head. “Really, that’s not going to be taken well in Boston or in Hartford.”
“It is so unsettling.. . that people are reacting so after the outrage at Salem…”
Stoddard held up a silencing hard. “Have a care, Edwards…many good Christians are not so inclined.” He points a chin at the sealed envelope under his younger colleagues’ hands. He glances about, forcing several suspicious glares to avert their gazes. Satisfied his will prevails, Stoddard leans forward to discuss the matter further. “In earnest, son – you should consider amending this report.”
“Leaving out Bradford’s words, if I follow…”
“They reflect poorly on his character, that of his entire town, risk enflaming tensions between the Bay Colony and Connecticut.”
“Oh, if only we were just one country…”
“Ah, but we are – loyal subjects of England, all!”
Timothy Edwards mulls this over for a few moments. “I should report what I saw – the physical view…”
“..and leave Bradford’s heretical ravings – and his good Christian reputation – in the tree where you found him.” Stoddard paused. “And consider what similar mischief would occur if word of this ill-conceived vendetta got out.” Stoddard shuddered. "The Lord forbid this madness persist into the Eighteenth Century!"
“Word of what happened to them might defer madness."
“No,” Stoddard sighed. "It is not how the crazed and raving respond to news. Their answer is always more violence."
Timothy persisted, smiling lightly. “Some would treat it as a miracle – it might reawaken the awe of Christ in hearts long dulled by liturgy.”
Stoddard laughs. “If so, if God is rapping on our chamber door, “Awake!”, He will knock again.”
Edwards frowned. “Yet there are Christ’s own Words on this very thing…”
Stoddard grew stern. “As your elder – and father of your intended – “ he smiles brightly but his eyes hold steel in them “leave theology for higher, and higher-ranked, minds.”
Edwards nods. “So, what news of Esther?”
“She’s being willful, as ever. She wants to teach the classics to young men. Scandalous!"
"She got the idea from me, I am afraid..."
"Scandalous! I will of course have to discourage this. YOU will of course, have to do so as well.” Stoddard chuckles. “May the Lord take you in your sleep, if her fire and intelligence breed true!”
Timothy Edwards smiled, and kept his counsel. They were precisely why he had asked for Esther Stoddard’s hand in marriage.
His face grew sad. So, there would be no more talk of the vanished Settlement of Kensico. Bradford, the schoolteacher… his horrible death would go unreported, his news of the mass insanity that gripped over five hundred souls lost to the deep lake which took them. And Jonathan Adams, his friend, among them.
No, Timothy Edwards smiled again suddenly, You, Jonathan, I will remember. The world will, as well.
When the time comes and the Lord Provides, Esther shall bear me a son with your name.
“Jonathan… Jonathan Edwards…” he mused aloud.
“Your pardon, Timothy?” his soon-to-be father-in-law inquired.
“I was thinking of family, that’s all.”