The Wept of Wish-ton Wish

James Fenimore Cooper wrote most of his historical novel THE WEPT OF WISH-TON-WISH in Switzerland. Published in 1829, in England it has always been called THE BORDERERS. ***

Four major tableaux are presented in greater or less detail. They range from (A) roughly the English Civil Wars (1640s), (B) 1662 and the granting of a Royal Charter for Connecticut, (C) 1675 - 1676 (King Philip's War), with (D) a final brief look back from around the year 1800. A large farm, Wish-Ton-Wish ("the Whip-poor-will") is the main scene of action. It had been laboriously carved out of the wilderness, a twenty hours march from the Connecticut River, in the English colony of the same name. Wish-Ton-Wish lies in a beautiful, remote valley near the undemarcated southern boundary of Massachusetts and also "borders" hundreds of Indian tribes in all directions. ***

Here lives the family and dependents of "the Puritan," Captain Mark Heathcote, a once ungodly fighting man born in Queen Elizabeth's reign. As a young man he was a carousing chum of no less than Oliver Cromwell, the future Lord Protector of England. Seeking greater tolerance for his narrow religious views, the Puritan, at Civil War's end, had migrated to Massachusetts and later to Connecticut, as far from cities and strife as he could get. ***

Over some years Captain Heathcote shelters off and on an old comrade in arms named Submission, one of Cromwell's judges who had condemned to death King Charles the First. Early widowed, the Puritan raises his son Content Heathcote to hardy manhood. Before leaving the Boston area for the Connecticut wilderness, young Content had married Ruth Harding. The remainder of THE WEPT OF WISH-TON-WISH is the story of Content, Ruth and their daughter Ruth interacting with a high ranking Narragansett Indian warrior named Conanchet. ***

Connecticut was long spared worries about witches and Indian turmoil which tormented Massachusetts Bay Colony. But in an isolated incident around 1663 the Puritan and his retainers capture 15 year old Conanchet who is scouting them out. They keep him with them in growing freedom for well over half a year. During that time the hunted regicide Submission covertly teaches the future chief of the Narragansetts both English and elements of Puritan Christianity. In the latter project all the family and associates of Captain Mark Heathcote also take part. In particular, Mistress Ruth Heathcote is notably kind to and trusting of the European-hating, wary teen-age Indian. During a raid on Wish-Ton-Wish to free Conanchet, his tribesman abduct both a half-wit adolescent boy and Ruth the younger. Years-long efforts by her father, Comfort, to find and ransom Ruth fail. (NOTE: Comfort makes one trip into central New York and the Finger Lakes area where James Fenimore Cooper grew up and where he set some of his LEATHERSTOCKING novels.) Her mother, Ruth Senior, grows increasingly despondent. ***

Meanwhile, far, far away young Ruth grows into her late teens among the Narragansetts. Now a mighty chief, Conanchet takes her to wife under the name Narra-mattah. Conanchet falls under the spell of Chief Metacom (King Philip) who leads his Wapanoags and other Indians into a formidable multi-tribe alliance and rising in 1675-76 designed either to exterminate all the whites or to expel them from New England. Together with hundreds of followers the two chiefs Metacom and Conanchet raid a now much enlarged Wish-Ton-Wish settlement, long recovered from its burning over a decade earlier. The Indians kill over a score of the white defenders, and capture the Puritan, his son Comfort, Madame Ruth Heathcote, the old regicide Submission and a couple of others outside the community's almost impregnable blockhouse. The young sagamore/sachem Conanchet is moved by earlier dreams and memories of kind treatment by the Puritan's family to return his wife Ruth/Narra-mattah to her astonished parents. He also breaks off the raid and lets his prisoners go free. ***

Not much later, Conanchet tracks Submission to his well concealed hiding place overlooking Wish-Ton-Wish and hands over his baby son to be united with his mother. Despite the shame of a pagan wedding and a half-breed grandson, Comfort Heathcote resolves to keep both daughter and grandson. He says, "The wept of my household is again with us; ... God hath returned our child!" ***

Soon the great sagamore is captured by a force led by united New England Commissioners and allied Mohican and other Indians. The scrupulous Puritan Commissioners turn Conanchet over to the Indians to judge him, only forbidding torture before either death or release. Death by tomahawking is decreed. But Conanchet is first furloughed to take leave of his wife and son. Narra-mattah is present at his execution and dies of grief on the spot. Not many weeks later her mother dies as well. Her husband Comfort Heathcote lives another 50 years as a widower. ***

Around 1800 a researcher into legends of early Connecticut visits the prospering but still remote village of Wish-Ton-Wish and the graveyard of the Heathcotes. In a place removed from other family members, but side by side, are two graves marked only, "The Narragansett" and "The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish." ***

In my opinion, this is one of the greatest of American novels. If you can lay your hands on a good critical edition, do so. More people, I think, will read and relish THE WEPT if their text is replete with historical notes, a map of colonial Connecticut, and a detailed sketch of Wish-Ton-Wish and its buildings, especially the first blockhouse and its massive well. Before Fenimore Cooper, American literature had two notable genres: Indian captivity tales by survivors and historical-interpretative sermons (by notables like Reverend Increase Mather and his son Cotton). From these a wide-spread Puritan interpretation of the North American wilderness emerged: it was the land of Satan, allied with the heathen Indian savages to prevent the English Saints from establishing a foothold there. ***

All these motifs reappear in THE WEPT OF WISH-TON-WISH. The novel is also an extended meditation on man and the environment, cross-cultural communication between alien races and the obstacles which love between an Indian man and a white woman face in bridging the cultural divide. This tragic novel easily, I think, lends itself to re-expression in the form of stage play, grand opera and a BBC mini-series along the lines of Cooper's THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. You will not regret burrowing into THE WEPT OF WISH-TON-WISH. -OOO-