A BRIEF HISTORY OF HILLFIELD (Pt. 7)

7 - Vote for Goat

  In 1860 the United States teetered on the precipice of civil war. The states were sharpening their long knives in preparation for the inevitably violent dissolution of the country. The only hope for peace seemed to lie in the approaching presidential election in the form of Democratic nominee Senator Stephen Douglas, the rhetorical colossus in the body of a dwarf. Douglas championed the philosophy of “popular sovereignty” -- that each state and territory should have the right to decide the fate of slavery within its own borders. 
  Enter H. Grubbly Arrears. Born in Hillfield in 1818, Arrears began working at Linus Braggart’s Crippled Bear Farms at the age of nine. By seventeen he had saved his money -- and allegedly pilfered more from the increasingly prone-to-drink Braggart -- and used it to purchase his own small plot of farm land. By the age of twenty-one he had successfully ostracized Braggart’s children and convinced their now-alcoholically catatonic father to will his farm to the only young man with the old buzzard’s best interests at heart. Coincidentally, Braggart was dead within the year. Like Hugh Giggley before, Arrears began investing in extra-agrarian enterprises and gradually built an imposing fortune. Over time he gained a controlling interest in two manufacturers through means too byzantine and potentially homicidal to detail here: Broomward Clothiers in Newark and Cawley Canneries in the nearby metropolis-in-the-making Madsen. Arrears was a steely-eyed barrel of a man who, as Hillfieldologist Mark Krasker has awkwardly written, “sought to crush his enemies with his icy stare like a snail under hoof.” 
  By 1860 Arrears had vertically integrated his farming and canning, but Broomward Clothiers was by far his most profitable and highest-earning business. Broomward sold staggering volumes of its wares to the Southern plantation lords who clothed their slaves in cheap, practical scraps of cloth. Arrears was all too aware of the hit  his income would take with the outbreak of civil war -- no Southern slave owner was going to outfit his slaves with Yankee apparel! -- and resolved that the diminutive fire-breather Douglas must become President, not the popular Republican lawyer from Bumfuck, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.
  Arrears was not the only industrialist indirectly profiting from slavery who conspired to undermine Lincoln. He was, however, the only one who, for whatever reason, did not resort to outright bribery. He could not have had an ethical objection to the practice -- it was, after all, instrumental, in his own rise to power -- and he may simply have deemed it more expensive than necessary. Instead, he poured his money into assassinating Lincoln’s character. His modus operandi was to paint Lincoln as a harbinger of doom, as the instrument of the nation’s destruction. Arrears commissioned numerous political cartoons and attack ads that literally painted Lincoln as the Antichrist stabbing at the American flag or the Mason-Dixon line with a pitchfork, replete with hooves and goat’s horns. Arrears then began verbally attacking Lincoln as, “a goat,” simultaneously scapegoating him for the impending civil strife and implying a lecherous and villainous personality masquerading behind the Honest Abe-persona. 
  New Jersey’s Republicans, however, fought back, accusing the state’s manufacturing interests of fear-mongering, corrupting the electoral process, and making fun of them. In July of 1860 several dozen Republicans (or, at least, several dozen roughnecks hired by them) gathered outside the Broomward factory in Newark and confronted H. Grubbly Arrears as he emerged from the factory. During the confrontation Arrears is reported to have barked, “Do you want an animal for President? He looks like a goat!” This off-the-cuff insult is believed to have inspired Arrears’ following salvo: a series of ads featuring a realistic portrait of the Republican candidate juxtaposed against a picture of a goat, highlighting Lincoln’s caprine resemblance. The state’s Republicans, not to be outdone, embraced the accusation and turned it on its ear, adopting the call “Vote for Goat,” and sporting hand-held signs and sandwich boards trumpeting the absurd battle cry. It is unclear if this tactic originated within Lincoln’s campaign, the only circumstantial evidence supporting the claim being Lincoln’s sardonic goat’s bleat in answer to a question regarding Arrears’ attack ads. 
  Ultimately H. Grubbly Arrears won the battle for the New Jersey electorate but lost the war. The state was one of only two to vote for Douglas, and Lincoln’s subsequent election led to the secession of the Southern states. Arrears doubled down on the election of 1864, backing General George McClellan as the Democratic candidate. McClellan, however, openly repudiated the party’s official platform of negotiating a peaceful settlement with the Confederacy. His campaign never gained traction, and Arrears’ attacks were now seen for the desperate and transparent sops that they were, specifically his insinuation that Lincoln enjoyed the remote woods of Illinois because he liked having sex with trees. McClellan was trounced and Arrears never again enjoyed such material wealth or political influence. 

Next:

The Jughandle From Hell

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HILLFIELD (pt. 5)

5 - Red, White, and Black & Blue

            When the sun broke over Hillfield on the morning of September 1, 1779, the town was prepared to greet Colonel Tye and the Black Brigade. Joshua Murray, fermenting in Old Testament zealotry, had press-ganged Hillfield's younger, sprier boys into serving as lookouts, shaming them for their masturbatory decadences. He proceeded to plant various weapons on the premises and outfit the town with all manner of makeshift booby traps. Murray spoke little, contenting himself to quietly singing Irish folk songs with hostile lyrics lifted from the Bible. Allegedly he slept with his eyes open.

            At 8:47 AM on September 5, the thirteen-year old son of a weaver ran into town, crying that the Black Brigade was less than a mile away. Murray ordered the townsfolk to go about their normal activities until Tye arrived, but according to Filman Hazelworth's diary, Murray's shrill barking emphasized his brogue, and someone had to ask him to repeat himself. He did and promptly disappeared into the nearby Meeker's Inn.

            Tye and the Black Brigade rode into town just after 9:00 AM, and the entirety of Hillfield's citizen body gathered in the town square to present themselves to Tye. Included in the assembly were Hillfield's slaves. Tye took one look and started shaking his head with insincere disappointment. He ordered a gallows constructed and a man identified as Amos Longtickle strung up. As his men made quick time of the gallows' construction, the Hillfieldians looked on, unsure of how to proceed without Murray's instruction.

            With the gallows erected and the noose around Amos Longtickle's neck, Tye addressed the petrified townsfolk. "This is why your nation will prove stillborn," he proclaimed. "A whipped animal will work for so long before baring its teeth." Tye raised his hand, ready to order Longtickle's hanging, when a dagger whistled through the rope. It landed in the mud as Longtickle dropped to the ground. The Black Brigade immediately drew their muskets, their heads turning every which way, their horses excited and ready to take off. Only Colonel Tye maintained his poise.

            Joshua Murray's voice rang from the second-story balcony of Meeker's Inn. "Colonel Tye! I defy you, you traitorous namesake of a pagan despot!"

            Tye remained still and unimpressed. "Does the innocent betray the penitentiary when he escapes, Mr. Murray?"

            " 'The wise store up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool invites ruin.' Proverbs 10:14."

            "Please interpret, pastor."

            "It means, 'Fuck your twisted darkie logic.' "

            Murray drew two muskets, fired, and threw himself backwards through the balcony's glass doors.

            Hazelworth described what followed in his diary:

We ran for sanctuary as the negro brigade reared their horses and gave chase. Tye directed two of his mercenaries to dismount and pursue Murray into the inn while another guarded the exit to the back. Shots rang from inside the inn, followed by another and the neighing of a horse from behind the inn. A moment later the Irishman sprinted from behind the inn, whooping like an Indian and confusing both us and the negros. Murray proceeded to lead Tye and his barbarians throughout the town, killing them one at a time with musket, saber, pitchfork, or improvised cudgel. When trapped Murray displayed no fear at diving through glass, wood, or thicket in escape. Even when a black succeeded in wounding the Irishman with a musket shot or saber slash, Murray exacted judgment on the animal and continued to his next target. He succeeded in scalding one of the Brigade with hot stew and bludgeoned another with a slaughtered pig.

            Eventually only Colonel Tye remained alive, but when Murray dropped from a tree, Tye crippled him with a well-placed shot to the right leg. He netted Murray from atop his horse, but as he rode toward his hobbled quarry, Murray produced another musket and fired into the knee of Tye's horse. Tye fell and Murray, drawing a dagger, rushed to cut the Colonel's throat. Tye was quick to draw his own musket and pressed it to Murray's head just as the Irishman's blade met the black commander's Adam's Apple.

              What followed can only be surmised through speculation. Tye and Murray spoke to one another, but their words have not been recorded. The witnesses were likely too far away to hear, but we know that they did watch several minutes of conversation followed by a period that saw Tye and Murray each mutilate himself in turn. It is believed that, however the issue was arrived at, each man sought to prove to the other that he was more willing to endure pain and eventual death for his respective cause, for the stand-off climaxed with Murray holding Tye's musket to his own head and Tye holding Murray's dagger to his own throat.

            We don't know how the two settled the conflict, but both exchanged their weapons and walked away from one another, leaving the town in peace but perplexed. Admittedly this makes for an enigmatic and unsatisfying end to the episode, at least as it pertains to Hillfieldology. Tye would eventually prove the victor, killing Murray the following year in Monmouth County. But the two combatants engendered a distrust of both blacks and Irish that resulted in the immediate abolition of slavery in Hillfield and a great deal of strife-ridden absurdity in the years to come.

Next:

Hillfield & the New Constitution

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HILLFIELD (Pt. 4)

4 - Let the Red Flow Freely

            The problem Hillfieldologists face when studying the chapter of the town's history involving the Loyalist-killer Joshua Murray is a paucity of primary sources. Very little exists pertaining to Murray's life whatsoever. He was born in Derry, Ireland in the mid-eighteenth century and immigrated to the American colonies with his mother when he was still a young boy. They settled in Monmouth County, New Jersey where Murray grew to become a stonemason, married, and had four children. Murray was a staunch Patriot and when the Revolution erupted, he immediately enrolled in the First Regiment Monmouth Militia. There is no evidence that Joshua Murray ever rose to a rank higher than Private, but by 1778 he had earned himself an indelible reputation that persists to the present day.

As a member of the Militia, his official enemy was the Royal Army and its allies. But Murray made a name for himself by killing Americans still loyal to the English crown, and he did so with an idiosyncratic savagery that quickly made him a hero among Patriots and a virtual bogeyman to Loyalists. Allegedly the Monmouth Militia, recognizing the psychological value of Murray's wave of terror, encouraged and even covertly funded his bloodletting activities. We have no idea when he started targeting Loyalists or what the ultimate motive behind his violent distaste for them was. For many years the popular theory was that Murray, being a native Irishman, had been brought up with a particularly venomous loathing for all things British. In recent years however, this theory, being based solely on an ethnic stereotype, has lost traction. It also fails to explain Murray's single-minded hatred for Loyalists. There is no record of him attacking the Royal Army with any more vigor than every other man in his outfit. To date, however, no historian or Hillfieldologist has posited a viable alternative (Mark Krasker's "Defense-in-Girth" theory is not viable).

Complicating matters further is the lack of consensus amongst historians as to how much of Murray's terror is apocryphal and how much is to be believed. Hillfieldologists are lucky that the only surviving primary source attesting to his butchery is Filman Hazelworth's diary. It gives a detailed account of Joshua Murray's brief stay in Hillfield and the horror he brought with him. Hazelworth writes, "Less than one hour passed between Murray's ingress into the environs of the town and the occasion on which he claimed his first victim… He was retribution made manifest, invoked from Providence by Edwards himself." Debate still rages amongst Hillfieldologists as whether or not Hazelworth's word should be accepted at face value -- a debate that has triggered mutual recriminations across the internet and at least one visit to their clubhouse from Hillfield's finest.

Joshua Murray entered Hillfield on August 28, 1779, riding a massive ink-black donkey. His head was entirely hairless save for the wide bushy mustache that hung down past his mouth. Every stitch of clothing he wore was a deep burgundy, and the cross that hung from his neck was carved, likely by his own hand, from stark black-and-white stone. The Town Fathers immediately ran out to greet him with the rest of the populace looking on. The town's leaders invited him to speak with them regarding Colonel Tye in private, and Murray silently followed them into the meetinghouse. Approximately forty minutes passed before the pillars of the community emerged into the street. There is no record of what transpired or what words were exchanged in the meetinghouse, but we are able to make reasonably educated guesses in the hindsight of the following events.

Emerging from their parley with Murray the Town Fathers assembled the entirety of Hillfield's citizenry along Main Street. A few minutes later the Loyalist-killer emerged from the meetinghouse. Standing in the center of Main Street he announced in a guttural brogue that he was willing to protect the town from, as Hazelworth reports, "the darkies swinging from King George's teat." Before he would assent to do so, however, he insisted that Hillfield had to be cleansed of its Loyalist taint. He wheeled around and pointed to a one Mr. Lemuel Truburgh, owner of Hillfield's first bank (and ancestor to Elihu Truburgh, who would transform Madsen, New Jersey from a redheaded stepchild of a city in Philadelphia's shadow to one of the major metropolitan centers of the Twentieth Century). Murray had Truburgh brought forth and accused him of not only harboring Loyalist sympathies but of directly colluding with the British. Shocked by the accusation, the people looked to their civic leaders for their opinion. The leaders watched silently, so the people followed their lead and bore witness to the bloody spectacle that unfolded.

Filman Hazelworth writes,

The dreaded archangel tied M. Truburgh's hands to a nearby hitching post. He drew from inside his great coat a nightmarish blade the full length of a man's forearm. He quoted from Scripture -- Exodus I believe, "If they cry out to me, I will hear their cry. My anger will be aroused and I will kill you with the sword." I'm sickened to even commit what followed to paper. M. Murray cut into M. Truburgh's leg and the poor banker screamed like a dying pig. M. Murray cleaved away the meat from his bone, which he finally tore out with his bare hands. He held aloft the bone from M. Truburgh's body and again quoted from The Book, "The cook took up the leg with what was on it and set it before Saul. Samuel said, 'Here is what has been kept for you. Eat.' " Poor M. Truburgh was killed with his own bone through his mouth and the back of his skull.

            Whether this horrific scene happened precisely as described by Hazelworth, if at all, Joshua Murray managed to convince Hillfield that he was the man to protect them from the wrath of Colonel Tye.

Next:

Red, White, and Black & Blue

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HILLFIELD (Pt. 3)

3 - The Redcoats Are Coming!

            When open warfare finally erupted in April, 1775 between the nascent United States and the still-waxing British Empire, Hillfield came to a standstill as it debated whether to declare themselves Loyalists or take up the Patriot cause. The town's population was still predominantly Quaker and generally considered the violent revolution advocated by the Patriots anathema. On the other hand, the town's citizens found the British to be insufferably snotty and exceptionally annoying. Perhaps predictably the town fathers ultimately settled on a policy of unofficial neutrality. Hillfield would not openly declare for either their fellow Americans nor for their English overlords. It was also decided that in the event a contingent from either army was to enter the town or otherwise make demands of the citizenry, each situation would be dealt with on an individual basis.

            Isolated deep in the wooded tangle of the Pine Barrens, Hillfield remained untouched by the fires of the Revolution for the first four years of the war's hostilities. During that time life in the small town continued uninterrupted, the town's residents only peripherally aware of the conflict over their future. But on August 4, 1779, Colonel Tye brought the war to Hillfield's doorstep.

            The escaped slave had been born (or branded, rather) Titus Cornelius by his former owner, a Quaker from Monmouth County, northwest of Hillfield. Prone to drink and eschewing the Quaker practice of educating their slaves and freeing them upon their twenty-first birthdays, Tye's owner had been known as an especially unforgiving slaveholder. Shortly after Lexington and Concord Virginia's last royal governor offered freedom to all slaves who escaped and took up arms under the Loyalist banner. Tye wasted no time. He quickly escaped to Virginia and was soon back in New Jersey, armed and uniformed with the intent of crushing the colonists' rebellion. While Tye's exact date of birth is unknown, it is believed that he was still in his mid-twenties by 1778. By that point he been granted the honorific of "Colonel" for his tactical ingenuity and charismatic leadership, despite the prohibition of blacks as commissioned officers in the British Army, and been given the command of one of the most dreaded Loyalist units in the country. The Black Brigade was an elite guerilla unit of two dozen former slaves committed to supply seizures, hit-and-run attacks on Patriot outposts and detachments, and assassinations of important American leaders.

            However, when his British commanders had not given him specific missions, Tye regarded the Black Brigade's standing orders to be the liberation of slaves, particularly if those slaves belonged to Quakers, and to do so with extreme prejudice.

            On August 6, 1779, two days after Tye arrived at the secluded hamlet of Hillfield, Filman Hazelworth, a tanner, recorded the eventy of the 4th in his diary:

The Black Brigade - twenty-three ink-black negroes on twenty-three ink-black horses - rode slowly, almost sleepily, down the thoroughfare. At the head of this obsidiun (sic) mass rode a single bright eye. It was he - the Colonel Tye - astride a steed white as milk. Of a paler complection (sic) than his fellows, the Colonel was the embodiment of patrician class and command. His carriage was that of Cornwallis himself. His likeness would not be misplaced were it displayed in Charring Cross, such was his austere comportment and stentorian resolve. His compatriots, meanwhile, seemed freshly plucked from the deepest jungles of the Dark Continent, for if they be any indication, Africa is as dark of soul as it is of skin.

The Colonel, the picture of gentlemanly eloquence informed us, the townsfolk, of his identity and that of his brigands. He requested, with utmost politeness and as a fully-authorized representative of the English Crown, a litany of provisions that, were we to acquiese (sic) to their requisition, would leave our settlement on a rather frightening brink. We relented, of course, with little argument for fear of raising the ire of the Colonel's savages.

Once the provisions were delivered in full, the Colonel demanded the town's entirety of slaves and indentured servants be brought forthwith. This we did with far greater consternation. The Colonel addressed our negroes sweetly as a governess, inviting them to cast off their shackles - they were not shackled at all - and join his Brigade. Our blacks, having grown accustomed to our munificence and having been well trained, did not move or make an utterance. It was then the Colonel, betraying the primitivity of his race, ordered his men to go forth and assault our women, which they proceeded to do with ferine abandon. With the rapine concluded, the Slave Colonel demanded we free our slaves before his return in September. If we had not done so upon his arrival, he swore to raze Hillfield to the ground.

            Tye and the Black Brigade wheeled around and rode out of town, carrying their requisitions back to the Loyalist keep in Monmouth County.

            The people of Hillfield trembled at Colonel Tye's promised wrath. But they were a proud and stubborn and not altogether intelligent people and were loath to bend to a man they considered to be little more than a dark-skinned terrorist. Their deeply-prized neutrality had been violated alongside their women. They determined to violate with equal violence the vengeance of Tye and his savages.

            It was then that Hillfield turned to the only man they believed could exact that violation.

Next:

Let the Red Flow Freely

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HILLFIELD (Pt. 2)

2 – The Indigenous in Dutch

            The great powers of Europe began to colonize the New World. The Dutch founded New Netherland in the land that became the states of New York and New Jersey. New Sweden was founded in the area now known as the Delaware Valley. The Dutch then seized New Sweden, and the English followed suit in their seizure of New Netherland. The Duke of York quickly divested himself of New Jersey in 1665, selling the eastern half to Sir George Cartaret and the western half to Lord John Berkeley. After several unprofitable years’ attempt to promote settlement and collect tribute from the few who loped after the Lords Proprietors’ carrots and sticks, Berkeley sold his half to the Quakers in 1674.

            Throughout these lean, strife-riven years the Hillfield Lenape remained isolated on their hunched patch of land nestled amongst the pines and bogs that swamped the southern half of the colony. In 1675, however, the Quakers first set eyes upon them. As the settlers migrated east from Philadelphia to the Atlantic Ocean, they came upon the Lenape, now numbering no more than two hundred, on their large open field blanketing a hill of almost negligible elevation. The Quakers had always gone to great lengths to live peaceably with the indigenous populations. But these natives – stunted, deformed, and mumbling gibberish unintelligible even by the standards of the other Algonquin tribes – frightened the Quakers. Of no mind to slaughter other human beings, the Quakers proceeded to ignore them and settle the surrounding environs. The area thus became a series of small farms and cabins inhabited by white Quakers surrounding a field full of disfigured and slow-witted American Indians. The Hillfield Lenape remained inviolate.

But in 1695 their isolation came to a swift and violent end when three concurrent events conspired to change the course of Hillfield forever.

            As the Quakers had originally fled England in search of religious freedom, one wealthy Quaker named Faulk Madrigal sought to establish a settlement in New Jersey that welcomed those who believed in his particular iteration of the Quaker faith. Most of the details of Madrigal’s beliefs have been lost, but the specifics with which we are familiar – Jesus’ ministry in the New World, the corruption of Christian doctrine by Greco-Roman culture, undergarments imbued with supernatural powers – bare an uncanny resemblance to Joseph Smith’s Church of Mormon (pre-dating Smith’s religion by one-hundred twenty years, some, such as Hillfieldologist Mark Krasker, speculate as to the influence Madrigal’s beliefs may have had on Smith). Faulk Madrigal believed that the land occupied by the Hillfield Lenape would be perfect if he could convince the Lenape to leave on their own accord.

            Around this time a strange Dutchman began roaming the area and terrorizing the people. He claimed to be not only the last survivor of the drowned city of Saeftinghe, but also the bastard offspring of the mermaid who warned of Saeftinghe’s impending doom and the fisherman who caught her in his net. Initially the Quakers considered this aspect of Saeftinghe’s destruction to be mere folklore and the Dutchman to be a harmless kook. Soon, however, he began avowing himself to be an agent of divine retribution and proceeded to frighten crops, curse livestock, and scream incomprehensibly at children.

            Madrigal recognized the superstitious nature of the Hillfield Lenape and concocted a plan that would net him both the land he coveted and the respect of the Quaker community at large. He convinced the Saeftinghe Dutchman that a local mother of twelve known to us only as “the Woman Leeds” was to be the mother of the Anti-Christ unless he, the Dutchman, seeded her first. The Dutchman reportedly bound her to her bed, stripped her, and flung his ejaculations at her for several hours. The Woman Leeds’ screams and bloodcurdling prayers were eventually heeded when her neighbors found themselves unable to sleep through the caterwauling. The Saeftinghe Dutchman was dragged from the house and presumably killed somewhere in the nearby woods.

            The Woman Leeds soon found herself pregnant with her thirteenth child, but was traumatized by her experience with the Dutchman. Under the guise of comforting her, Madrigal preyed upon her piety, expressing fear as to what a baby conceived in such sin would be. Prayer services were conducted almost continuously, but the Woman Leeds repeatedly proclaimed, “Let it be the devil!” Meanwhile, Madrigal, feigning neighborly relations with the Lenape, stoked fear throughout the tribe with each new appraisal of the developing situation. On the night of the baby’s birth, Madrigal ran to the Lenape and told them that the Woman Leeds had indeed given birth to a monstrous demon with the head of a goat and wings like a bat. The Lenape were so terrified they immediately evacuated their land and disappeared toward the Atlantic.

            Madrigal promptly swooped in and bought the land. His plan had been a complete success, but his fortune would be short-lived. Soon after, a riot erupted at a meeting of the new settlement’s residents. Everyone agreed on the name of the new settlement – Hillfield – but they could not come to an accord as to whether it should be so named because it comprised a hill located in a field or a field located on a hill. Tempers flared and Madrigal was killed in the ensuing brouhaha.

            Hillfield was born.

Next:

The Redcoats Are Coming!

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HILLFIELD (Pt. 1)

1 – The Lenape Rebels

            The origin of the township of Hillfield, New Jersey begins long before the arrival of European colonists, when the state was still known as Scheyichbi by its original inhabitants, the Lenape. Much of the specifics concerning the area’s initial settlement have been lost in the fog of history. But even the broad strokes of the township’s primordial nascency support a theory of increasing popularity among Hillfieldologists (as the three of them have labeled themselves) – that Hillfield’s survival and growth has continued because of the serendipitous foolishness of its citizenry rather than in spite of it.

            The key to understanding the settlement of Hillfield lies in two important elements of Lenape society. Firstly: the Lenape held strict adherence to exogamy – that is, marrying outside their respective clans, which were matrilinealy defined. Secondly: the collective Algonquin peoples; which included the Massachusett, the Pennacook, the Mohegan, and many others; regarded the Lenape as their “grandfathers,” the originators from which they all arose. As a result the other Algonquins afforded them special status and respect and often deferred to them in inter-tribal councils. 

            At an unknown time prior to the arrival of the Europeans, a schism tore through the Lenape when an unorthodox sect emerged and challenged the prevailing order of their society. Those in the sect maintained the belief that the Lenape were the “grandfathers,” thus wiser and greater than the other Algonquin peoples, but came to believe that the practice of exogamy was diluting their power. They believed that intermarriage and subsequent inbreeding would increase their wisdom and greatness and make them more powerful. We do not know how many generations were born before the wider Lenape society recognized the sect’s propensity to produce physically and mentally deformed children. Eventually, however, an inter-tribal council was formed and ordered the sect to disband and resume the practice of exogamy. When the sect refused, they were exiled from the greater Lenape community and came to settle in a small stretch of sandy, wooded land they believed to be haunted. It was on this stretch of land that the township of Hillfield would one day be founded.

            The Hillfield Lenape, as two of the three Hillfieldologists have dubbed them (Mark Krasker insists on referring to them as “the indigenous Hillfieldians”), began felling trees and building homes. They implemented a limited form of companion planting and supplemented their crop production by fishing from the nearby rivers. Their handicaps, however, prevented them from having the same success as their estranged relations. Archeological remains of shoddily constructed foundations suggest a deficiency of hand-eye coordination. The use of recent developments in soil analysis reveal that the Hillfield Lenape may have lost the basic understanding of companion planting – in which different crops are grown next to one another for polycultural benefit – and instead grew their crops densely bunched together in very small plots. The reduced harvests were a constant danger to the Hillfield Lenape, but their shortened life spans and the frequency of prenatal deaths kept their population low enough for the limited food supply to sustain them. This was the state of the Hillfield Lenape when the first European settlers arrived.

Next:

The Indigenous in Dutch