THE HORSE FIDDLER

   “In December my father was out on a scout, when, at break of day one morning, he came to a large field, in which there were about a thousand horses running loose, feeding on the scanty herbage. These horses belonged to our calvary. In one corner of the field he found a horse-fiddle (an instrument making a loud noise, like a watchman’s rattle). He gave it several rapid turns, which frightened the horses and caused them to run towards the camp, over the frozen ground, making a thundering noise. Alarm guns were fired. Washington and his aides mounted their horses, it having been rumored that the British Light Horse had intended to surprise our army and capture Washington, as they had before taken General [Charles] Lee. When the horses came near the camp, it was found to be a false alarm, and quiet was restored. When my father reached his quarters, he was closely questioned as to the cause of the fright of the horses, but very prudently affected to be wholly ignorant with regard to it”- Peter Osterhout

      This must be where my grandfather got his characterization of the Osterhout family descending from horse thieves. In battle, with men receiving musket balls to the vitals, or scalps lifted on a daily basis, these Osterhout hi-jinx seem to border on insanity. Still, it’s good to know that the subversive, prankster qualities of these aliens, that I share and enjoy, has very deep roots.

     As happens so often in this writing, I can be attempting to unravel events that occurred centuries ago, just down the road, when I suddenly realize the dates correspond exactly with my calendar, forming a kind of elastic reality. The heavy snows of December 27, 1777 gives way to the bright 3 degree day of Dec. 27, 2017. The snow and hard freeze of earlier in the month behind us, leaves neighbors up and down the road digging out from under a similar line of squalls and flurries that hit Goshen in January 1819. Near the banks of the Esopus, a friend goes out to his barn to check on his sheep and a hungry bear, awakened from his hibernation on an unusually warm late winter day, explodes out the door, almost knocking the rifle out of George Holz’s hand. The organism spreads, lives, dies….is reborn.

     A little project, begun in response to (what I considered) an inadequately written book, has spiraled out of control. As a visual artist I’m used to getting work done quickly, and moving on. There is no such luxury in this undertaking, as I vainly try to keep the kin anchored in my blurry, wandering gaze. The sprightly spirits of Reed and Freeman will help immensely.    

      As invisible, and under represented as women, black and Indian adults were in 1820’s America, children (of all races and sex) were the truly powerless and dispossessed, constantly at risk of exploitation, victims to enslavement by their adult custodians—until they were old enough to fight back. Whether on the farm, or in the cities, children historically were put to work as soon as their little fingers and flexible backs, could manage the task. Physically powerless to resist, always at the mercy of the parent, boss or teacher, a child was the property of the mother and father, until otherwise determined by the state. And then it could get much worse. 

     For years, the Iroquois had targeted children for kidnapping in their raids on white settlements, in order to replenish their shrinking numbers. In many cases when eventually freed, and allowed to repatriate into white society, the children refused to go back to their Christian families; preferring the loving, communal society of their abductors. But, not so with the Osterhouts. Defying the norm, at least three Osterhouts, Jacob, John and Anna, were kidnaped by Indians and escaped, returning to their families….or whomever was left.  

      

      After the whipping it took mere hours for Austin Reed to escape from the disciplinarian farmer, Herman Ladd. The proud boy, so traumatized by the farmer’s unwarranted horse whipping, soliciting the help of a sympathetic neighbor, was able to get back to his siblings and mother in Rochester. There, he found temporary sanctuary and a willing ally in his older sister. Austin told her his story of the old man and the horse-whipping and his successful escape. Terrified for her young brother’s welfare, his sister responded with a knife, a pistol, and a plan. 

        As the The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict continues, armed with his weapons, disguised in his sister’s dress and hood, the angry boy walked the twenty miles (past the ghostly warnings emitting from his father’s grave) to the peacefully sleeping Ladd farm. In his black riding hood drag, he waited for the moon to rise. Then, in the Hollywood light, he made his stalk on the villain, farmer Ladd. Austin rapped softly on the door. It creaked open, revealing a black servant and the sleepy-eyed master of the house, emerging from the shadows. Look out! 

      In his telling, at just the right moment, Austin dramatically threw off his hood, pulled his pistol from his dress, and fired. Missing Herman Ladd, he rushed forward into the kitchen, slashing Ladd with his sister’s knife, escaping again, into the moonlight. In quick succession he is captured, with the help of the neighbors (and their snarling dogs) restrained “by hand and foot,” and taken to await punishment in the house of a local constable. Not realizing the super-boy’s revenge was far from satiated, the constable mercifully untied the ten year old, and left him unattended. How much damage could a ten year old do? All this happens in the first few pages of Reed’s action packed memoir.