Littlepage Manuscripts: Satanstoe, The Chainbearer & The Redskins (Complete Edition). James Fenimore Cooper
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not be lost for want of support, I have made a solemn request in my will, that those who come after me will consent to continue this narrative, committing to paper their own experience, as I have here committed mine, down as low at least as my grandson, if I ever have one. Perhaps, by the end of the latter’s career, they will begin to publish books in America, and the fruits of our joint family labours may be thought sufficiently matured to be laid before the world.
It is possible that which I am now about to write will be thought too homely, to relate to matters much too personal and private, to have sufficient interest for the public eye; but it must be remembered that the loftiest interests of man are made up of a collection of those that are lowly; and, that he who makes a faithful picture of only a single important scene in the events of single life, is doing something towards painting the greatest historical piece of his day. As I have said before, the leading events of my time will find their way into the pages of far more pretending works than this of mine, in some form or other, with more or less of fidelity to the truth, and real events, and real motives; while the humbler matters it will be my office to record, will be entirely overlooked by writers who aspire to enrol their names among the Tacituses of former ages. It may be well to say here, however, I shall not attempt the historical mood at all, but content myself with giving the feelings, incidents, and interests of what is purely private life, connecting them no farther with things that are of a more general nature, than is indispensable to render the narrative intelligible and accurate. With these explanations, which are made in order to prevent the person who may happen first to commence the perusal of this manuscript from throwing it into the fire, as a silly attempt to write a more silly fiction, I shall proceed at once to the commencement of my proper task.
I was born on the 3d May, 1737, on a neck of land, called Satanstoe, in the county of West Chester, and in the colony of New York; a part of the widely extended empire that then owned the sway of His Sacred Majesty, George II., King of Great Britain, Ireland, and France; Defender of the Faith; and, I may add, the shield and panoply of the Protestant Succession; God bless him! Before I say anything of my parentage, I will first give the reader some idea of the locus in quo, and a more precise notion of the spot on which I happened first to see the light.
A “neck,” in West Chester and Long Island parlance, means something that might be better termed a “head and shoulders,” if mere shape and dimensions are kept in view. Peninsula would be the true word, were we describing things on a geographical scale; but, as they are, I find it necessary to adhere to the local term, which is not altogether peculiar to our county, by the way. The “neck” or peninsula of Satanstoe, contains just four hundred and sixty-three acres and a half of excellent West Chester land; and that, when the stone is hauled and laid into wall, is saying as much in its favour as need be said of any soil on earth. It has two miles of beach, and collects a proportionate quantity of sea-weed for manure, besides enjoying near a hundred acres of salt-meadow and sedges, that are not included in the solid ground of the neck proper. As my father, Major Evans Littlepage, was to inherit this estate from his father, Capt. Hugh Littlepage, it might, even at the time of my birth, be considered old family property, it having indeed, been acquired by my grandfather, through his wife, about thirty years after the final cession of the colony to the English by its original Dutch owners. Here we had lived, then, near half a century, when I was born, in the direct line, and considerably longer if we included maternal ancestors; here I now live, at the moment of writing these lines, and here I trust my only son is to live after me.
Before I enter into a more minute description of Satanstoe, it may be well, perhaps, to say a word concerning its somewhat peculiar name. The neck lies in the vicinity of a well-known pass that is to be found in the narrow arm of the sea that separates the island of Manhattan from its neighbour, Long Island, and which is called Hell Gate. Now, there is a tradition, that I confess is somewhat confined to the blacks of the neighbourhood, but which says that the Father of Lies, on a particular occasion, when he was violently expelled from certain roystering taverns in the New Netherlands, made his exit by this well-known dangerous pass, and drawing his foot somewhat hastily from among the lobster-pots that abound in those waters, leaving behind him as a print of his passage by that route, the Hog’s Back, the Pot, and all the whirlpools and rocks that render navigation so difficult in that celebrated strait, he placed it hurriedly upon the spot where there now spreads a large bay to the southward and eastward of the neck, just touching the latter with the ball of his great toe, as he passed Down-East; from which part of the country some of our people used to maintain he originally came. Some fancied resemblance to an inverted toe (the devil being supposed to turn everything with which he meddles, upside-down,) has been imagined to exist in the shape and swells of our paternal acres; a fact that has probably had its influence in perpetuating the name.
Satanstoe has the place been called, therefore, from time immemorial; as time is immemorial in a country in which civilized time commenced not a century and a half ago: and Satanstoe it is called to-day. I confess I am not fond of unnecessary changes, and I sincerely hope this neck of land will continue to go by its old appellation, as long as the House of Hanover shall sit on the throne of these realms; or as long as water shall run and grass shall grow. There has been an attempt made to persuade the neighbourhood, quite lately, that the name is irreligious and unworthy of an enlightened people, like this of West Chester; but it has met with no great success. It has come from a Connecticut man, whose father they say is a clergyman of the “standing order;” so called, I believe, because they stand up at prayers; and who came among us himself in the character of a schoolmaster. This young man, I understand, has endeavoured to persuade the neighbourhood that Satanstoe is a corruption introduced by the Dutch, from Devil’s Town; which, in its turn, was a corruption from Dibbleston; the family from which my grandfather’s father-in-law purchased having been, as he says, of the name of Dibblee. He has got half-a-dozen of the more sentimental part of our society to call the neck Dibbleton; but the attempt is not likely to succeed in the long run, as we are not a people much given to altering the language, any more than the customs of our ancestors. Besides, my Dutch ancestors did not purchase from any Dibblee, no such family ever owning the place, that being a bold assumption of the Yankee to make out his case the more readily.
Satanstoe, as it is little more than a good farm in extent, so it is little more than a particularly good farm in cultivation and embellishment. All the buildings are of stone, even to the hog-sties and sheds, with well-pointed joints, and field walls that would do credit to a fortified place. The house is generally esteemed one of the best in the Colony, with the exception of a few of the new school. It is of only a story and a half in elevation, I admit; but the rooms under the roof are as good as any of that description with which I am acquainted, and their finish is such as would do no discredit to the upper rooms of even a York dwelling. The building is in the shape of an L, or two sides of a parallelogram, one of which shows a front of seventy-five, and the other of fifty feet. Twenty-six feet make the depth, from outside to outside of the walls. The best room had a carpet, that covered two-thirds of the entire dimensions of the floor, even in my boyhood, and there were oil-cloths in most of the better passages. The buffet in the dining-room, or smallest parlour, was particularly admired; and I question if there be, at this hour, a handsomer in the county. The rooms were well-sized, and of fair dimensions, the larger parlours embracing the whole depth of the house, with proportionate widths, while the ceilings were higher than common, being eleven feet, if we except the places occupied by the larger beams of the chamber floors.
As there was money in the family, besides the Neck, and the Littlepages had held the king’s commissions, my father having once been an ensign, and my grandfather a captain, in the regular army, each in the earlier portion of his life, we always ranked among the gentry of the county. We happened to be in a part of Westchester in which were none of the very large estates, and Satanstoe passed for property of a certain degree of importance. It is true, the Morrises were at Morrisania, and the Felipses, or Philipses, as these Bohemian counts were then called, had a manor on the Hudson, that extended within a dozen miles of us, and a younger branch of the de Lanceys had established itself even much nearer, while the Van Cortlandts, or a branch of them, too, dwelt near Kingsbridge; but these were all people who were at the head of the Colony, and with whom none of the minor gentry attempted to vie. As it was, therefore, the Littlepages held a very respectable position between the higher class of the yeomanry and those who, by their