Stone above my head[]
This story begins with a gravestone. It is situated in the old cemetery on my family land in northern Vermont. The cemetery is typical, an old crippled maple tree in the Southeast corner has roots that seem to push the skeletons to the surface. The granite stones mark the deaths of farmers and tradesmen and their wives and their children. Revolutionary War veterans who got to see the first couple decades of a new country, born out of their sweat and blood.
In this cemetery are the families of Massachusetts and Connecticut who left behind the civilization of Plymouth and Boston and Salem and New Haven and moved north, running against the current of the southbound rivers created in the last ice age, settling in the valleys and forests, where winters were long and conditions harsh.
It was here that this story begins. My family can point to generations in the cemetery, and my curiosity on this particular day was spurred on by nothing more than the need to take my St. Bernard for a walk. As she chased a chipmunk across a split rail fence, I let my eyes wander over the old granite stones.
I stopped to consider John Stanton. My mothers name was Stanton, and while there is no doubt of their relationship, I had never spent time following the intricate lines of marriage and life and birth and death. That would change.
This is what I read:
John Stanton
beloved husband of Ruth
born July 1, 1768
died March 13, 1822
This Stone above my head is not the First
But just another milestone in the Curse
And generations hence both foe and friend
Can not evade God's justice in the end.
It was a bitter epitaph, written in the first person, but certainly someone else caused it to be placed on the stone. And the mention of a curse, ongoing from the past and carrying forth into the future, seemed to suggest something more than a simple "rest in peace".
As the dog played hunter along the edges of the graveyard, I found myself caught up in the possibilities of a mystery never solved.
Nibii[]
"The teacher will appear when the pupil is ready." - Elie Joubert
Did the “curse" of John Stanton arise from the collision of two worlds? There was a people known to Europeans as the Hammonassetts, a name that they never adopted themselves. To the colonists, the Hammonassetts were known as a “weak” tribe that existed in the midst of other more war-like tribes.
The Hammonassetts lived in a part of what is now Connecticut, with the major population center on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. They pulled salmon from their rivers and grew crops on the narrow margins of the rivers between the green hills. Legend has it that each Fall they harvested the local berries and in a ritual of the last warm days after the first frost, they brewed a fermented drink which they stored in pots and used to ward off the winter chill.
The Hammonassetts were never well known to the Englishmen who settled the coast of New England. When the town of Homonoscitt was founded on land that had been the last home of the Hammonassetts, most of the tribe had already moved on. According to other tribes in the area, the Hammonassetts were boat builders and Spirit Tenders. One legend has it that the last sachem of the Hammonassetts decided that the tribe would take to sea in their fleet of fishing boats and try to find a new home. They were last seen moving into a fog bank in the Sound.
Another legend holds that among the few sick and aged Hammonassetts who stayed in their ancestral home, was an old Spirit Tender and that she handed down her craft to a few more dwindling generations who lived among the Europeans. The last remnants of the tribe did not finally fade away until the early 1800s. The part of the lands of the Hammonassetts where the last Spirit Tenders lived became known as Killingworth. The story of how I came to learn of the connection between the ancient Hamonassetts and John Stanton is long and complicated.
Leaving out the details of my many years of wondering, research, inactivity, disinterest, rediscovery and, ultimately, revelation, I can provide an account of what I believe to be the key facts of the story. The legend and curse of John Stanton has roots that started before the recorded history.
After the Ice Age, when the great ice sheet retreated from Long Island, the naked and raw land of New England emerged into the light of day. Humans soon followed, hunting the seals who made the virgin shores their breeding grounds.
As the rivers of New England filled with salmon, the first permanent human settlements came into being at the mouths of the rivers. After the seals were gone, the so-called Salmon River Culture arose with dozens of tribes, each claiming its own river. Great mounds of shells still mark the ancient centers of habitation along the coast of New England. The tribe that was to be called the Hammonassetts dominated the Connecticut river valley. The river is a key geographical axis of the life of John Stanton.
Abenaki wigwam
The Hammonassetts descended from Native Americans of the Northeastern part of North America who are often described as the "Abenaki”. When the European colonists came to New England, the Abenaki tribes had long suffered from a bitter rivalry with Iroquoians. The Abenaki were themselves distant descendants of the original Salmon River Culture. The Hammonassetts were viewed as a mysterious and deeply spiritual people by the other tribes who interacted with them. The spiritual anchor of the Hammonassetts was their “Path of Life”.
It was only after many years of research into my family history that Dr. Nibii Greene of Amherst College introduced me to the true significance of the Path of Life of the Hammonassetts. Dr. Greene, may her soul soon be appeased, was herself half native American. Her research had revealed that the spiritual world of the Hammonassetts was centered on the Connecticut river and its salmon. Their Path of Life started at the mouth of the Connecticut river, followed the river valley to the location of present day Springfield Vermont, then climbed to the summit of what we know as Killington Peak and continued north to Mt. Mansfield and on past Newport into modern day Quebec. When Dr. Greene died, she was still trying to trace a rumored eastern return leg of the Path of Life along the eastern margin of the Connecticut river water shed.
This Path of Life was meant to be walked by every member of the tribe before they died, although only the most earnest pilgrims made the entire journey. For most, the goal was to carry a sack of pebbles from the Atlantic coast to Killington Peak. The significance of the pebbles was related to the central role of the Connecticut river’s salmon in the lives of the people. The pebbles were deposited in the streams of the eastern slope of Killington Peak, preferably where the salmon were spawning.
Killington Peak is the most southerly mountain of New England that rises above 4,000 feet. Dr. Greene speculated that when the Path of Life was first delineated, the slopes around the summit of Killington Peak were probably alpine meadows. The High Ridge Trail from Killington Peak to Mt. Mansfield was literally the high point of the Path of Life.
It still astounds me that my apparently ordinary search into my family roots led to our joint discovery and revealed that the mystery of John Stanton’s “curse” is a burden that now rests with me. It is fitting that I tell this story in detail from the day that I first met Nibii.
Next Chapter "Nothing, from the slightest little thing to the universe itself, was ever taken for granted by Native Americans. Life was in all things, and they respected that life. There’s a huge field that has never been written about, and I call it spiritual archaeology." -David Wagner
My Nephew, Ryan, was graduating from Amherst, with a degree in history and a passion for prehistoric New England. We had spent a brief time in the Pratt Museum on campus and he had shown me a collection of artifacts found along the Connecticut River, collected over a two hundred mile stretch from New Haven, Connecticut to Maidstone, Vermont.
Ryan described what he called the Path of Life, a spiritual migration of the Abenakis that encompassed what is now the Long Trail, running the crest of the Green Mountains, from Killington to Mt Mansfield to Jay Peak and into Canada. He explained that the return trip went the length of Lake Memphremagog, down the Nulhegan river, and eventually followed the Connecticut River back to the ocean.
It was an interesting story, made moreso by its passing within miles of my home just two miles north of the Clyde River, a certain part of the trail. It was a story that sounded romantic, and belied the tragedy that I would later learn -- the conflict of a spiritual Path of Life going south along the river, and a migration of white families going north along the same route into Vermont.
Although I had read the gravestone of John Stanton, I did not put these stories together. Nor would I for some time come to learn that the fate of my family was intricately tied to the Path of Life and the conflict that erupted between the Hamonassetts and the Europeans.
After the main commencement ceremony, there was a reception for the family and friends of history majors. Dr. Greene’s primary appointment was in the Anthropology department, so she arrived late for the history reception. She had served on the Ryan’s senior research thesis committee. Ryan had previously mentioned my interest in the history of New England to Dr. Greene. When he introduced me to her, she said, “Ryan told me that you have been tracing your family tree.”
Ryan was immediately distracted by a classmate who wanted to introduce Ryan to her family. As Ryan was pulled away, I tried to accommodate the woman in front of me with what Ryan had told me about Dr. Greene.
Abenaki traditional garb
I was intrigued by her head wear. Rather than the traditional commencement cap, she wore a tight-fitting scull cap decorated with feathers. Protruding from the top were two triangular tufts that seemed to quiver as she moved. She noticed my inspection of her cap and said, “It is an Owl Hood.”
She had said it with the calm of a seasoned teacher who knows that learners must be given time to assimilate novelty. With her dark eyes seeming to drag a reply from me, I guessed, “It has a traditional role in rites of passage?”
She laughed. “My father told me once that his father always wore one when he went hunting. I’ve seen a picture of my grandfather beside a moose he had killed and he was wearing on Owl Hood.”
I could tell by her tone of voice that she was not speaking of any cultural tradition. “And like your grandfather, you just like owls.”
I could tell she was pleased that I could sense her motivation for wearing the Owl Hood. “When I find an owl in a forest it is like finding an old friend. Suddenly I am in the house of the owl and I listen to hear what the owl can tell me. You know, owls can talk.” She had a mischievous glint in her eyes and I could sense a joke brewing.
I chuckled, “I don’t know a hoot about owls.”
She grimaced at my pun. “Owls are like orangutans, their intelligent behavior often escapes notice.”
I sensed that she wanted to say more but she glanced over her shoulder and said nothing. I wondered if she felt inhibited from speaking her mind in front of other academicians. I prompted, “It sounds like you spend a lot of time with owls.”
She nodded. “As much as possible. Unfortunately, it is a long drive to the particular forest I am exploring.”
I remembered what Ryan had told me about the Dr. Greene’s research aimed at tracing the full Path of Life of the- at that moment I could not recall the name of the tribe. I just said, “To find the Path of Life.”
She reminded me, “Each tribe of the River Culture had their own Path of life. The Hammonassetts were the keepers of the oldest and most well known one in New England.”
I tried to remember some of what Ryan had told me from when he had taken an anthropology course with Dr. Greene two years earlier. “I was surprised just how ancient you think the Hammonassetts are.”
She shrugged, “Most of the earliest dates are guesses. When the ice first retreated from New England, the coast line was very different. Still, with the recent advances in underwater archeology, we may yet get proof of exactly when human habitation of New England began.”
I had heard of under water archeological finds in other parts of the world, but not around New England. I was aware of the fact that the southern coast of New England had been radically altered in the post-glacial period. I supposed that people just had not looked in Long Island sound for Native American habitation sites. Ryan rejoined us and Dr. Greene continued, “The main problem is that the earliest inhabitants of the region did not have permanent settlements. They did not practice agriculture and were true nomads, following the changing seasons and sources of food.”
Ryan said, “But I thought the earliest long-term habitation sites were not agricultural communities.”
Dr. Greene nodded. “Humans have often settled near rich sources of marine life; shell fish, salmon, marine mammals. Unfortunately, the earliest such settlements in New England undoubtedly existed on the ancient shoreline which was later submerged.”
It was hard for me to relate such far off ages to my own historical interests which were limited to the colonial time frame. “You think there was cultural continuity from those first Native American inhabitants of New England to the Hammonassetts?”
Dr. Greene seemed to stiffen at my skeptical tone, but her response remained enthusiastic, “I do. Of course, I admit that I am biased by unverified folklore.”
This sounded much more interesting to me than submerged archeological sites. Folklore might reflect events from the colonial period. I guessed, “You are talking about stories from your grandfather.”
She seemed truly surprised that I would guess that. “I never knew my grandfather. He died when I was two. But my father repeated the stories he had heard, although he did not have a knack for story telling. He condensed them to the bare minimum and left out all the details. Still, I always found the stories compelling and believable, no matter how outrageous.” She winked at me and grinned.
Ryan’s parents were hovering and ready to hit the road. Ryan said goodbye to Dr. Greene and thanked her for all she had done for him. She wished him luck. As Ryan and his parents turned to leave, I said to Dr. Greene, “I’d love to hear some of those folktales.”
We started walking towards the door behind Ryan. She said, “Next week I’m going on a scouting trip to Mt. Cabot. Ryan told me you live in upstate Vermont. If you are free I could drop by, either on my way in or on the way back.”
I suggested, “If I wouldn’t slow you down too much, maybe I could go with you to Mt. Cabot.”
We stepped outside and Dr. Greene handed me her business card. “Have you ever camped in snow?”
I replied, “In a tent? No. But as a resident of northern New England, I have no fear of snow.”
She stuck out her hand and we shook hands. She said, “It was nice to meet you. I’d be glad to have you along as long as you are willing to be part of a working field trip. Think about it. Give me a call in a few days. If you don’t chicken out, we’ll make our plans.”
She was giving me a chance to back out, but I knew right then that I would not do so. “Thanks for the invitation. It was nice meeting you.” As I hurried to catch up with Ryan, I was already thinking about a store in St. Johnsbury where I could rent a low temperature sleeping bag.
[]
Continue to the next chapter.
Return to Introduction
"Is the Sky not a lot like God? The Sky is at once a certain something that you can see from anywhere in the Universe and also something you can see right here on Earth. It is eternal, neither born nor able to die, and infinite with no borders to speak of, and then again it is something so close and familiar that we think we know all about it." - Manosij Majumdar
It was late afternoon when I started the drive home. From Amherst, Massachusetts to Derby, Vermont, north along the Connecticut River past the towns of Brattleboro, Springfield, Hanover, to St. Johnsbury, and then away from the river continuing north to within miles of the Quebec border.
The valley carved by the Connecticut is not nearly so grand as the famous gorges of the West, or even the Palisades along the Hudson. But in May, the trees and fields are the freshest of green, and apple and wild cherry blossoms provide perfect accents.
The hills are gentle, dotted with small farms. Fences surround pastures and even from miles away you can see the black and white holsteins standing around munching their hay and the first green grasses. Everywhere I looked was like a Grandma Moses painting, beautiful and primitive.
The oldest villages have houses dated in the late 1700's, but as I go farther north, the dates tell the story of migration. At the end of my road, the oldest houses, and the oldest gravestones will date to the 1820's.
From any point I could see a church steeple, white and directed upward toward the God and heaven these people knew and depended upon for survival and comfort through harsh times. The spirituality of the settlers was visibly displayed in their white churches, but the spirits of the river people were much older and less visible. God, to the European settlers was a loving and forgiving being. Was the God that watched over the Path of Life so loving?
Along the highway I saw panoramic vistas of the River. Occasionally the small hydroelectric dams would hold back the water, creating flat ponds whose mirror-like reflections captured the light clouds and blue sky. Occasionally bridges would stretch across the water. I was traveling against the Path of Life, following the migration of my ancestors, and I couldn't help wonder how much had changed.
Near Thetford, a deer jumped into the road ahead, and then jumped off to the other side, disappearing into the brush. A short-tailed hawk stepped off its perch in the bare branches of a dead elm, soaring and searching. And then an Owl, seldom seen in the daylight, swooped down into a field to snatch an unseen morsel. I found my brain racing, and my history and that of the Hamonassetts, and Dr. Green and John Stanton were all beginning to feel intertwined in some way that I couldn't fathom.
In one week I would have a chance to explore further, working side by side with Dr. Green, and this felt to me very important.
A week later we were on a ridge below the summit of Mt. Cabot when I had my first glimmer of a spiritual awakening. I was looking through the view finder of Dr. Greene’s infrared camera, trying to pick out distinctive features in the landscape. She was hunched over an aerial infrared photograph of the area with a magnifier, describing features, “There should be two roughly parallel rocky ledges about 150 meters apart.” She stood up and the wind tossed her hair into her face. She was sweating and we had kept peeling off layers of clothing as we had climbed the mountain and the warm spring sun had climbed the sky. It was now mid afternoon and the sun slowly tilted to the west. I turned from the camera and the world below us framed Nibii.
There was something intense and primitive in her eyes. I knew she was totally engaged with the technical problem of obtaining the last photographic image of the day. She made an arresting sight, standing there on the edge of the world in a sweaty tee-shirt and hiking shorts. I suddenly felt like I had never seen her before and my mind did a double take. Who was this creature?
I’m not going to say that I had a vision. What I experienced was more like some kind of suddenly recovered memory. It was not like déjà vu, there was no sensation of having experienced this before. Somehow, something unlocked inside me and I began to see the world in a new way. Somehow, Nibii was at the center of the change. I’m not sure how long I stood there staring at her before I realized she was waiting for me to move so she could look through the camera. We switched off, and she used the camera while I examined the photograph again.
I suddenly felt dizzy and could not concentrate on the blurry photograph. I began to mentally review our trip together, from when we had met at Beegee's Restaurant in Groveton to that moment. I could sense how she had effortlessly slipped me from my reality into hers. But what was this strange world she inhabited?
I said, “I’m useless. The shadows are all wrong. My brain can’t make the translation.” The photograph was from a Forest Service survey and over a decade old. Some of the once stubby but living trees were now dead skeletons, killed by acid rain or fire or insect infestation. The photograph had been taken at a different time of day, in a different season and from a different angle than what we had where we stood.
She ignored me and kept examining the landscape, years of practice allowing her brain to function like an image processor and match what she saw to what the photography showed. Finally Nibii said, “I see it now. This is fine.” She got the last image and started packing the expensive camera into its case. I had learned why she had been glad to invite me along. I was sure that she could never have carried all this equipment herself, but I thought it would be impolite to ask what extra equipment she has been able to bring because I was with her. In any case, she seemed to use it all with an easy expertise. Once we had left her car at the trail head, everything had seemed easy for her, even though she carried as much weight as I did.
I put on my backpack and turned my back to her so she could tie on a last few items including the tripod. I handed her my ice ax. “Tie this on, too, I’m not going to use it on the way down.”
We had not really needed the ice axes. There were still expanses of slushy spring snow in the ravines, but the axes were not needed for us to get around. I tuned and caught sight of Nibii looking wistfully up towards the summit. I suppose she would have gone on up if I had not been along, but she could easily judge that I would be happier if we started back to camp now. I had thought myself in good shape, but from the amount of time I had spent watching her disappearing down the trail in front of me, it was clear that I slowed her down. She pointed down slope. “Remember where we ate lunch?” She was pointing to a promontory on the ridge due north of the summit. “I’ll meet you there.”
I was surprised that she wanted to separate. I asked, “Where are you going?”
She pointed towards the part of the mountain she had just photographed, “If you want to get back to camp before dark, you should head back now. I’m going to go look into this ravine. I’ll catch up.”
I looked at the gash in the side of the mountain we had just photographed. She had explained to me that she was looking for stone shelters, hollows or caves that might mark a station on the Path of Life. There was some anomaly in the aerial photograph of this ravine that had attracted her attention. I had the feeling that this particular little ravine was the main reason for this entire “scouting trip”. I was tired and thirsty and had a blister on my left foot, but I did not want to quit, not after getting this close to our reason for making the journey. I said, “If we go down the ravine we’ll be on more snow and make better time.”
She grinned at me. “How do you think I was planning to catch up to you? Come on.”
I could tell she was pleased that I did not take the easy way down. We climbed up another fifteen minutes over patches of slush and glacier-polished stone, then descended into the ravine. We could now hear cascading snow melt. As I carefully worked my way down the jumble of granite slabs and boulders that filled the upper part of the ravine, Nibii scrambled around like a goat. I called to her, “What are you looking for?”
She came over to me and we paused to stick our water bottles into a small water fall. She replied, “I’m looking for cave entrances, petroglyphs, trail markers.”
I shook my head and looked at the chaos around us. “Who would put a trail here rather than on the ridge line?”
She shrugged, “Some people do not look for the easiest way to climb a mountain. There was one rule for the high trails of a Path of Life: find the spirit of the mountain.” She pointed to the little ice melt stream at our feet. “This is the life of the mountain flowing to the sea. This was the whole metaphor for life origins in the River Culture.” She put the cap on her water bottle and stowed it in a side pocket of her pack. She looked at me to judge if I had any idea what she was talking about. Years of teaching had taught her how to know from a blank or puzzled stare if a student needed more information. “Today we seek the earliest signal from the Big Bang. Ten thousand years ago this was as close as people could get to creation.”
The sun was sliding below the rim of the little gorge we were in and her words combined with the shadow, a moment of inactivity and a gulp of the ice cold water sent a shiver up my spine. I tried to picture being here in the ancient times she spoke of. I asked, “Weren’t there glaciers on these mountains ten thousand years ago?”
Nibii replied, “It has been very hard to find data indicating that alpine glaciers persisted for significant times after the continental ice sheet retreated. The “last gasp” of the ice age was about 10-11,000 years ago, and after that, it seems like the glaciers were just gone, even from these high mountains.” She nodded towards the summit of Mt. Cabot.
I said, “So people could have stood here 10,000 years ago.”
“As far as we know.” We were in full shadow now. Nibii turned down slope and said, “Okay, there is a nice snow field below this boulder pile. Let’s have some fun!”
I felt out of control and like I was flying, but there was no way I could keep up with Nibii as we skipped and ran down the steep, slush-covered slope. Finally the stretch of mostly open slope ended at a stand of trees and I stopped to catch my breath. Nibii was hardly breathing any deeper than normal. She had a grin from ear to ear and she asked, “Well, did that make the climb worth while?”
I replied, “That wasn’t very safe was it?” The rapid descent had been exhilarating and spiced with a series of icy crevices, jagged rock outcrops, and stubby tree spikes ready for impaling.
She looked at me like I was crazy, “Would you really trade something like that for a bit of safety?”
I replied, “No, but I doubt you could carry me out of here if I broke my leg.”
We were on a little promontory at about 1,000 meters elevation. She stood with her fists on her hips looking out towards the Connecticut river. “This would not be a bad place to die.”
Fifteen minutes of bush whacking brought us back to the trail and we were able to make it back to our camp site in the falling darkness. After a hasty dinner we crawled into our sleeping bags and I reminded Nibii of the last I had heard her saying the previous night. We had spent the previous day reaching our base camp below the summit of Mt Cabot and then she had started to share the stories she had heard from her father, including a most interesting tale involving three "sisters". (optional story fork, you can read Nibii's telling of "The Three Sisters").
“There are cave petroglyphs in America that have been dated as maybe 20,000 years old. There are sites twice that old in Europe,” Nibbii said, relating the oral legends passed down through her family.
Listening to Nibii telling the ancient legends gave me some insight into her world. I realized that her trips to the mountains were attempts to make an important archeological discovery that would link the modern world back to something important from the past that had been lost. I realized that it was possible that there had been one particular sacred mountain in New England and that Nibii hoped to discover which mountain it was. “So you have given up on the Green Mountains and are starting to explore the White Mountains?” I asked.
Nibii launched into a long account of how she had spent a decade searching the mountains of Vermont along the Path of Life. Legend held many clues that made her suspect that the Mountain Spirit was specifically associated with one mountain in Vermont. “It is not uncommon for a people to have one sacred mountain.”
I suggested, “Maybe this is a different culture. Why can’t all of the mountains be sacred?”
Nibii muttered, “Oh, they are.”
I asked, “So, which mountain do you think is the most likely candidate?”
Nibii replied without hesitation, “Mt. Mansfield. There are many clues that point to that conclusion. That’s what came out of my dissertation research and it was all published over a decade ago. But it never worked out. I spent five years searching every square meter of Mt. Mansfield.”
That was the last either of us spoke that night. I soon slipped into sleep.
Would I trade those six months I had with her for the life of Nibii? I’m glad I was never offered that choice, for who can say if any choice I might have made could have lengthened her life? Maybe if I had spoken the magic word that night, it would have sent us on the run to the cave and would have prevented me from getting to know her during that glorious summer. Maybe. What if. Futility.
[]
Continue to the next chapter.
Return to Introduction | previous chapter
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority." - E. B. White
There were a dozen times that summer when I could have spoken the word that would have combined with Nibii’s knowledge to reveal the location of the cave. The second opportunity came after we emerged from the forest and Nibii came to my home in Derby so she could see the mysterious inscription on the grave stone of John Stanton.
We spent a few minutes in a cold rain, just long enough for Nibii read the grave stones. As I stood there watching her, I was thankful that we had good weather for our field trip and that I was safely home with this late spring storm arriving. It pained me to think of Nibii having to make the long drive back to Amherst so late in the day. In my mind, I tried to compose an invitation for her to spend the night that she would not want to refuse.
As we walked away from the cemetery I started to tell Nibii some of what I could remember my grandmother having told me about John Stanton. “John’s father lived during the war against the French and worked several jobs along the Crown Point Road until he met his wife and they settled near Rutland. They were declared traitors by the British for their support of the Green Mountain Boys, and fearing capture by British troops, they moved to this area, when John was nine. That was the year that Vermont declared its independence. When he reached 15, John went to Windsor and apprenticed as a printer.”
We went inside took off our wet coats and boots. I offered Nibii the use of a warm pair of boot liners and took her down in the basement. Half of the floor of that basement is raw bedrock and there were old family treasures down there that had not been touched in sixty or seventy years. I opened up an old storage trunk and showed Nibii some ancient issues of the Vermont Journal and the Universal Advertiser. “These old prints are from John’s first job, working for one of the earliest printers in Vermont.”
I rummaged around looking for something my mother had once shown me while Nibii read of bits of news about the Republic of Vermont in the 1780s. Finally she commented on the collection of old Stanton family documents, “These should be in a museum, you know.” I was still rooting through old crates and she asked, “What are you looking for?”
I explained, “When my mother moved to Florida, she showed me some of this stuff. There was an odd book that I remembered when you were telling me about the Three Sisters.”
Nibii tentatively looked in an old chest of drawers. “What does the book look like? Big? Small?”
I replied, “It is small. It has been years since I’ve seen it. I remember a black cover with a gold inlay design.”
Nibii held up a copy of the Bible she had found, “Like this?”
I shook my head. “Not that thick. Maybe only 50 or 75 pages. The cover had no words, just an inlaid design.”
While we searched, I remembered something else of what she had told me. I said, “I have been wondering about something. You described The Three Sisters legend as a story without people. Why was the cave called a lodge?”
Nibii shrugged, “The trivial explanation is that somewhere down through the years a human-oriented term crept into the story. But in this case, there is probably a more interesting explanation. Several of the legends that do not include human characters make reference to places that do become important to people and re-appear in other stories with people at those places.”
I looked puzzled.
Nibii explained, “There is a legend called Black Heart. It is about the initiation ceremony for a Spirit Tender. It’s rather long and full of ritualistic chanting, the entombing of a heart that the initiate has cut from a living animal and all sorts of lessons a new Spirit Tender is supposed to have learned from the old master.”
I interrupted, “What do you mean by ‘entombing of a heart’?”
She explained, “Traditionally, an animal’s heart holds its spirit. If you bury the heart then the spirit of the dead animal returns to the Land Spirit and can be reborn, allowing the cycle of life to continue. It was important to think about such things when taking life to sustain life.”
She continued to summarize the Black Heart legend. “So, the initiate is shown a carved image of Moz, what we would call a mastodon. The initiate sings, -I am ready to join Moz. I will pass on to the Sky Land to complete my learning.”
“But the initiate is afraid and bungles the initiation ritual and there is an accident and the initiate dies. Moz is horrified and says, -I will not watch anymore of these ceremonies.”
Nibii fell silent and I looked up. “That’s it?”
She nodded, “Basically. There is a bunch of moralizing about how Spirit Tenders should listen to the advice of their master. But my father always claimed that the Spirit Tender initiations took place on a mountain. The mountain of Moz, presumably the same mountain as in the legend of The Three Sisters.”
At this point, I found the book I was looking for. I showed the neatly bound volume to Nibii. On the cover was an enigmatic gold leaf design. The contents of the book were hand written in some language neither Nibii nor I could recognize. I turned to the page I wanted to show to her, “My mother told me that she had been told that John Stanton wrote this book. Look at this map.” It was not much of a map. It was basically a wiggly line with about two dozen place names written in along either side of the line. At one end of the line was the word “Keniltun” and “Kenilwug” was at the other end. Both of these words could also be found in the main text of the book. Nibii did a quick scan and count and found that Keniltun appeared many more times than did Kenilwug.
We took the book upstairs and I started trying to get Nibii to stay longer, at least for a meal. She looked out into the deepening darkness of that stormy evening and insisted that she had to be back in Amherst the next day for some meetings. She asked if she could show John Stanton’s book to a language expert. I replied, “Of course, please do.” We said our goodbyes and she was gone.
Looking back on that evening, it is impossible not to wonder what might have happened if I had taken the time to talk more about what I knew of John Stanton’s life. Even a short description of where he had lived and worked after leaving Windsor would have moved us towards the line of discovery that we only actually reached later, after that long sunny summer.
Through the course of that summer, I went on half a dozen more trips to the White Mountains with Nibii. Usually we were accompanied by one or more Amherst students or other colleagues. I got to hear more of the stories that Nibii had learned from her father, including the rest of the Black Heart story. Some of the details of that story did not take on their special meaning until months later.
Nibii explained that in the initiation ritual of the Black Heart story, Spirit Tender initiates were given a challenge. The initiates were made to smoke the leaves of some plants that contained psychoactive chemicals. Made susceptible to suggestion by the drugs and ritualistic chanting, they were shown some rock carvings and told to follow Moz and the other depicted creatures to Sky Land.
“Here you see Moz and the other creatures who have gone to Night Sky. Join them and you will emerge in Sky Land as a Spirit Tender. We will meet you on the other side of the sky.” Nibii explained that the initiate was then left alone to chant a rather long prayer about courage and wisdom and then, when done with the prayer, to enter Night Sky.
When Nibii was telling the Black Heart story, we were sitting around a fire with an Amherst College student who asked, “How did one enter the Night Sky?”
Nibii had no idea. “I’ve often wondered that myself. Maybe the initiate was taken to a high place like this and carefully intoxicated.” She looked up at the stars. “Just walking away from the fire might seem like walking into Night Sky. I can imagine that an initiate might panic and run, falling in the dark and being injured and killed.”
Nibii had then finished telling the Black Heart story. An initiate known as Night Song was afraid of Night Sky and did not journey to Sky Land with a pure heart. Night Song went to Night Sky but fell out of Sky Land with a rock. The rock crushed Night Song’s head, and thereafter Night Song was known as Black Heart. Moz was so distressed that she never again lit the way for new initiates to reach Night Sky.
Beyond the wonder of how Nibii and I repeatedly failed to combine our knowledge and solve the mystery of John Stanton’s curse, two other thoughts cannot be avoided when I think back on that summer. Both of those thoughts center on the magical person that was Nibii. I was hopelessly infatuated with her, both as a woman and as a mystical force which periodically invaded my universe from beyond- from the alternative universe where she resided.
With increasing frequency I had insight into the nature of her world. I allowed myself to fantasize that if I continued to learn about her world, I might become enough a part of that world that she would no longer view me as some alien creature. I came to learn that she fully accepted the reality that her native American ancestors had existed within. She had a faith that told her that if enough could be learned about how the Spirit Tenders of old had knit together the spirits of land, sky, river, beasts, people and plants then it would become possible to recover the harmony of our planet.
Nibii was not one to wish for the ancient times. She could imagine a future that combined the best of East and West, ancient America and modern Europe. Driving through the hills and valleys of New England, we discussed how Europeans had tried to rip the heart from the land and dam the rivers and had come dangerously close to filling the sky with poison that will kill the forests. In the end, the great marble quarries were closing, the dams were being torn down, and the forests were surviving the assaults of farmers, lumberjacks, and pollution. Can we find a way past the excesses of modern technology back to a respectful stewardship of this world?
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It was pure accident that I discovered the next piece of the puzzle. Browsing the Internet for information about caves and curses and the Abenakis, I came across an intriguing tale: the curse of Brunswick Springs.
Brunswick Springs lies at the northernmost section of the Connecticut River. High on a bluff, overlooking the river, seven springs pour forth, each, according to legend, with a separate chemical makeup. Nestled in a pine forest, such springs could not be overlooked by the entrepreneurs who, at the turn of the twentieth century, saw profits in the healing waters.
But the profits were not to be. While the white businessmen sought to develop a spa for wealthy Americans, the Abnakis objected, claiming the site as a holy place. The stories I read revealed that a curse arose out of the conflict of the Abnakis and the Americans. A succession of four hotels were built and each burned to the ground within a year.
I was stunned as I read the story. The Abnakis and the white Americans and a curse that arose from the collision of two worlds; could it be coincidence. I picked up the phone and called Nibii.
She answered after the first ring. "I knew you were going to call," she said.
For a moment I was going to challenge her prescience, but I knew better. She had shown me more than once her ability to read and understand the unsaid.
I gave her a web address, and while I waited, she went to the site and read the story of Brunswick Springs. I waited quietly, and she said nothing as she read. Even through the phone, I could imagine her face, thoughtfully absorbing the information.
When she finally answered, she said, "I remember this story, but it was years ago that I heard about Brunswick Springs. Until now, I had forgotten about them."
I was much more blunt and forward thinking: "Do you think they relate to the Stanton Curse?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said.
But even as she contemplated my first question, I rushed on. "Do you think these springs were on the Path of Life?"
Nibii paused. "They are too far north," she said slowly, measuring her words carefully. But I could hear her thinking. Had she assumed the Path of Life rejoined the Connecticut River farther south? Had she confined her search for the Cave and the other legends to the wrong area, thereby cutting off some of the most intriguing geography. And could the story of the Path of Life and John Stanton and Brunswick Springs all suggest that the real collision of cultures happened at the farthest reachest of the Hamonassett journey?
It was less than a week later that Nibii and I stood on the crest of a clif, looking down on the Connecticut River.
She met me earlier in the day in Island Pond, and we drove fifteen miles east to the town of Brunswick. There was no marker to Brunswick Springs, but a local person, walking beside the road told us the way. We parked at the old community building, and then walked down an abandoned road. It was quiet, the sound of our feet on the pine needle floor, the warning call of a squirrel, the cawing of a crow, the only sounds.
Nibii was quiet. She had done her research and knew we were on holy ground. The original site of Brunswick Springs -- the cursed site -- was now returned to the Abenakis.
Half a mile down the road we saw a small pond to our right. There were no buildings, no boats, no signs of people at all. But then, in the midst of this quiet eastern forest, we saw a concrete staircase going up a hillside on our left. We climbed the twenty or so steps and saw the spectacular view below us. Two hundred feet down was the meandering river, much smaller in this northern most reach than it would be farther down as it passed the towns of Hanover, Brattleboro, Springfield, and Hartford.
From on this stairway, we could see the foundation of the last hotel, apparently, according to the legends, destroyed as were several previous structures by the curse of the Abenakis. We walked around and through the foundation, and we could imagine the rich Bostonians, pulling up to the front door in their carriages or Model T's for a chance to heal in the springs.
And then we saw another staircase, going down the cliff. At the bottom, seven small concrete pools were bubbling with water, smelling of sulphur, and displaying yellow stains that clung like moss to the rocks. And all around, on the cement platform, were shrines made of buttons, beads, feathers, and even painted coffee cans. Dream catchers hung in the branches, threads and strands of colored ribbon, and even little piles of rock. I remembered Nibii's story of the Path of Life, and the transporting of rocks from the ocean. Where did these rocks come from?
Nibii was quiet. In my experience with her, in our first meeting and each subsequent outing, she was a teacher, telling me stories, filling in the blanks, helping me appreciate a richness of the local history that few knew. But today she was silent and contemplative. I could feel an emotional energy coming from her. She was processing information that somehow brought into question many of her beliefs.
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