Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile

8. The White Witch

8 THE WHITE WITCH The earliest extant house in Scratch Flat was constructed in 1658 near Beaver Brook, although according to a number of different records there were several others in the area by that date, none of which are now standing. After the breakup of Nashoba Plantation, the house of Peleg Lawrence was built on the west end of the Great Road, and new structures appeared one after another from that beginning until the early 1800s, when there were, according to old maps, seven houses within the square mile and approximately five large farm holdings. In the early years the houses were probably no more than rude cabins. In fact, some of them may have been mere hovels, holes dug into the side of a hill, shored up with timbers and covered on one side with planks. In effect the white newcomers had not advanced much beyond the stage of the Archaic rockshelter. But these hovels were temporary; they housed the family, and perhaps an indentured servant or slave, while the main house was under construction. And even the most modest of these early English houses were elaborate structures in comparison to the dwellings that were there before. The frames were massive—four or five times as thick as they needed to 109 110 Ceremonial Time be; and carefully mortised and tenoned so that the house would withstand the great snows of winter, the hurricanes of autumn, and the eternal drenching rains of spring. These houses represented an entirely new way of dealing with the world. Up until that time the dwellings of the native people of Scratch Flat had been temporary structures made from cut saplings set in the ground, bent over, joined in the middle, and then covered with strips of bark, animal skins, and in some cases mats woven from cattails collected on the Beaver Brook marshes. In the years of the Archaic period, some of these might have had the unique snail-shell construction of the Archaic Indian culture; you entered a corridor and then wandered in a spiral into the center of the hut. This served well to keep out elements and possible unwanted invaders. In the center of these wickiups or wigwams the cooking fire was set, and the smoke rose through a hole in the roof that could be opened or closed with a flap of animal skin. A family group, including grandparents and uncles and aunts, slept in these small structures, although there may have been on Scratch Flat some of the larger houses which could hold more than one family or large extended family. The structures were perfectly fitted to the environment. They could be put up in a day—the women doing most of the work—they kept out the rain and the cold, and when they became old or dirty or, in summer, infested with fleas or other vermin, they were simply deserted and burned. Villages of these wigwams would have appeared and disappeared on Scratch Flat throughout history, here one summer for fishing, or a winter for hunting, or for no reason in particular other than the fact that Scratch Flat was recognized as good land. No one among these mobile people ever took their houses too seriously; they were merely shelters—what mattered to them was the family and food; housing was a secondary consideration. But the English structures were built for time. Hard work, tediousfittingjobs , long delays because of the weather did not discourage these enduring craftsmen. They had a singular idea, and that was permanence. They had the wood, they had the granite for foundations , and they were coming to stay—or so they thought—and so they built to last. But although the houses were built for all time, they were as mortal as their inhabitants. There is only one structure left from the seventeenth century, and of the seven houses built in the The White Witch 111 eighteenth century, only two are still standing. In most cases, these older structures were undone by fire. The center of the town in which Scratch Flat is located is one mile distant; and even if there had been a proper fire department and efficient fire-fighting system, it is unlikely that the firemen could have mobilized and reached the burning structures by the time the fire was reported. As in most towns, the old houses that have survived in the community are near...