Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1903-12-22
The Legend of Chocorua.

Among the hills of old New Hamp-
shire rises Chocorua Mountain, noted
among the other White Mountains as the
only one not covered during the Ice Age
and also as the only one having we'll
defined peak. At the base of the mount
ain lies Chocorua Lake, a pretty sheet of
water, but over the mountain and the
lake lies a curse, and this is the story as
it came to me:
Long ago, when the white man first
came to New Hampshire and began the
resistless pushing backward of the rcd
man, Chief Chocorua and his tribe lived
on the shores of the lake. Here the war
riors fished and hunted, here the squaws
had built their wigwams, burned the
trees and raised their corn. But with
the coming of the settlers the Indians
were forced to move back farther into
the wilderness. Old Chocorua alone re-
mained.
The chief was an old man, what to
him would life in new country be? He
judged it better to die here on the shore
of the dear old lake, where he had lived,
hunted and fished, so he and his son
staid and made friends with the whites.
Among the settlers was man by the
name of Cummings, who made his clear
ing and built his log cabin on the south
eastern shore of the lake. This man
Chocorua trusted and, in his savage.
stole way, loved.
One winter it was necessary for the
old chief to go away for time and, as it
was impossible for him to take his son,
he left the boy with Cummings. Shortly
after Chocorua went the boy sickened
and finally died.
The time passed, the chief returned to
find his son, the pride of his heart, dead.
In his savage grief he imagined that
Cummings. the man he had trusted, had
poisoned the boy and he swore to be re-
venged. Silent, but nursing within him
the flame of his wrath, the old chief
waited his time.
Finally the time came. Cummings
was away from home, the family un-
protected, then Chocorua had his re-
venge. Cruel, but satisfactory. Cum
mings came back at nightfall to find his
cabin in ashes, and few blackened
bones among the embers.
The horrible news spread among the
few settlers, band of armed men met
and swore to hunt Chocorua to his death.
Then the hunt began, the most cruel
hunt that can be, the hunt of man for
man. Silently they tracked the Indian
from the lake shore toward the mountain,
up the mountain side they climbed, and
still no sight of their quarry. When at
last they caught sight of Chocorua, he
was on the highest part of the mountain
looking down calmly on his pursuers.
grand old man on grand old mountain!
AS the hunters neared him, the chief
stepped to the edge of precipice, look
ed back on the men, looked out over the
land that had belonged to his tribe, then
raising his arms to the sky he called on
the Great Spirit to curse the white men,
to curse their descendants, their crops,
their cattle. To curse all the land with
in his range of vision. Then, before the
white men could shoot he leaped to his
death-and to his son. A monarch
stripped of his empire, robbed of his
treasure. he chose to die by his own
hand rather than by the hand OF his
enemies.
But the strange part is to come.
Chocorua Mountain, the land the old
Chief cursed, is barren: the attempts at
crops are failures; the cattle pastured on
its sides die; the people of the lower
class are ready to commit any crime
Do these things rise from natural causes,
or is Chocorua's curse working? Who
shall say?
The white people robbed Chocorua of
his birthright,' but they have raised to
him monument as enduring as time.
The monument is this-a river, lake,
town and a mountain, all bearing his
name, the name Chocorua.
There is saying that on still nights the
old Chief and his son glide out on the
placid lake in their phantom canoe, re-
visiting their old haunts. Even in death
the old monarch can not be driven from
his own.
Some may call Chocorua murderer
and a suicide, he was, in the eyes OF our
Twentieth Century law, but who are we,
the people who drove him from his pos
sessions, who are we to judge him? He
meted out what to him seemed justice.
AcNEs HOLMES FULLER.