This story is told by Bethia, child of a pious Christian family who lives on the island we know as Martha’s Vineyard. While exploring its beaches and forests she meets a native American boy, son of a leader of the Wopanaak band whose lands are ten miles away.
Both children are highly intelligent and eager to learn. Both are barred from a formal 17th century education; Bethia because learning was not thought seemly for girls, he because he was a “salvage”. In spite of this, they learn each other’s languages. He teaches her about the plants and herbs abundant on the island, she teaches him to read. His name was Cheehahteaumauk, but “I would call him Caleb,” she writes,”after the companion of Moses in the wilderness … noted for his powers of observation and his fearlessness.” He gave her the Indian name of Storm Eyes.
The stumbling blocks these young people must have had to climb over in obtaining their goals were enormous. “The total number of the “College of Newtowne” [Harvard] was only 465 in the seventeenth century.” And Caleb was among them.
Bethia educated herself by eavesdropping on her brother’s lessons at home, and later at Harvard by leaving the door of the buttery open while working there as a scullery maid. She married a highly educated young doctor, who treated her as an equal.
This book gives us insights into the harshness of life and religion in Seventeenth Century New England , and the brutality that went hand in hand with Christianizing a new world.
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