THEREBY HANGS...
We very seldom meet with a ghost or kindred creature who sports a real, live, switching tail as a spinal extension.
Satan has had somewhat of a corner on such bodily attachments, it seems, and together with his red-flannel skin he
certainly seems unique enough. Old Nick stands alone in having a tail as a regular portion of his torso.
There is a creditable account, however, of a red man – a Native American known by the somewhat unpleasant name of “Mud Turtle”. He was both - “red” and with tail assembly as well.
Unlike his namesake, he lived near the top of a small cliff on the shore of Nantucket Island.. That would be to the north side of the main island itself, facing the long, extended arm of the sand barrier streches out to all the way to the Great Point Lighthouse.
That elongated area of shifting sands and half-submerged pine forests has long been called "Coatue" and it was really Mud Turtle's true home. He was shunned by his own people there because they deemed him to be innately evil since he was the only one among them who had a tail. In truth they actually feared him, so he lived apart on the island's edge and traded with them across the narrow waters by means of his sturdy canoe. He was a good fisherman; he knew the backwaters area better than any other man. He was also keenly aware of the herbs and shells the main island offered which were not available on the sandy shifting shores of Coatue.
We have little creditable knowledge of the groups who lived there in the early days. It is said that a ship of Europeans wrecked on the barrier on Coatue's constantly moving shores. It was looted and all hands murdered by natives.... possibly some of Mud Turtle's earlier kinsmen.
A time passed Mud Turtle was, no doubt, blamed for anything bad which happened to the tribe. But he went about his tasks of of fishing in the backwaters and exploring up and down the coast. On such trips he found the King of a tribe down the coast from his own area had a daughter whom he felt had to be the most beautuful woman in the world. When rumor came to him that she was about to be given in marriage, he decided to kidnap her and to bring her back to his cave dwelling on Nantucket.
There was little time for special preparation. He must depend on suprizing her guards,and the first really foggy he carefully brought his canoe quietly to the shore where he knew she dwelt.All was going well, until, in his excitement, he felt his tail begin to wag from side to side, then rise up and down, and back and forth from side to side. The guards heard the unusual night noise. They thought a hugh cat creature had found its way from the dense forest to their camp. They were alert but didn't know where to look and when they came to realize it was Mud Turtle he was swinging his body from tree to tree, actully flying, it seemed, back to his canoe.
In desperation they did all the could. They rained a shower of arrows on the escaping man through the foggy bank scudding above where they thought he might be. Several days later, Mud Turtles' body washed up on the shore beneath his cave home and the Kharzds, now at war with the Mud Turtles' tribe, gained control of his arrow-pierced body. They amputated the tail and burned it. They placed a conch shell in each hand and burried him, face down in a deep pit of muck.
Mud Turtle still searches for his lost love there on Coatue on foggy nights. It is said that he blows mournful calls on conche shells cupped in his hands. They never see his face. He is allways looking away from them, but they insist he has re-grown a long, red tail which is never still.
A. L. M. December 15, 2002 [c689wds]
