Cool Cape May 2021-22

summer events [47]
The CAPE
By Charles Whitecar Miskelly
The first white man to see the mainland of what
would later be New Jersey, and especially the
southern end of it, was one Estevão Gomez
in 1525, but nobody did anything about it
for nearly a century. The land, between its
bay and its ocean, lay as it had for ages. Its people, of the
tribe of Lenni-Lenape, walked its woods and beaches, and
where the brightly colored stones lay strewn upon the bar,
they watched the sea and marveled at the winged ships that
rode on the sea. But no ship, and no white man, ever came
to their shore.
And then, one winter day when a change of wind
blew the mists away to let the sun show red beyond the
waters of the bay, a ship seemed to sail away from the
land. From behind the point of the cape, where the land
hooked its finger between the bay and the ocean to form
a harbor, the ship sailed out to the sea. It left the shore
where the little stream trickled down from the sweetwater
pond among the cedar trees, where at the foot of
the wooded slope a little band of red people lived, back
a way from the beach.
There were a dozen wigwams or tepees, made of skins
and bark, each with the totem of the turtle painted on its
walls. Each home had its problems, of food and shelter and
water. Commonplace things through commonplace ages,
until that winter day when the strange ship moved through
the east-wind mists and sailed away when the wind had
changed to the west.
From the sandy and wooded bluff some five miles to
the north, almost as far as the little creek which shoved its
salted and twisting thread through the narrow and tree-girt
meadow, Wawakna, chief of another band, saw the ship sail
away. He stood on the bluff with his daughter, Minyanata,
who was eight years old. Forgetting both dignity and daughter,
Wawakna shouted and pointed. From the town among
the trees, back a little from the bay, his people came running.
And Lagunaka, too, the medicine man. All stood and
wondered. They were frightened, too, because how could
the ship sail away from the land without first having come
to it?
No one had seen the ship come in, but Wawakna
gravely explained that this was because of the mists. But
Lagunaka pondered. Wise in the ways of devils and such,
the magician doubted. He believed there was devilry in the
wind. He would make a brew and sing a song and shake a
rattle, and do what he could to fend off the evil.
However, because of the quarrel between the two
camps, none could go down to the point to see what had
happened. In the morning Wawakna would send a wampum
down to seek the peace and learn the news. But the
night wind shifted to the north of east; for four long days a
blizzard blew; the snow piled high in the trails. The mystery
of the ship could wait a while, and with the waiting the fear
of the people lessened. Perhaps, the ship hadn’t been leaving
the harbor at all; more likely it had been sailing along the
coast, as others had done. After his brew and his song, and
especially after the blizzard had begun to blow, Lagunaka
explained that the distance had been deceptive: the ship had
sailed past the point of land and not from it.
Lagunaka, a jealous man, was extremely isolationist.