The Story of the First Jewish Settler in Alabama.

Colonel Hawkins, the Indian agent for the government at Pole Cat Springs, Alabama, in 1804, leaned across the pine table to extend a cordial hand to his visitor. Abram Mordecai, who stood before him, although almost fifty, gave one the impression of a much younger man. Lean and lithe as a panther, with shaggy black hair and keen eyes, his distinctly Jewish features were so tanned and weather-beaten that he looked far more the Indian than the Jew. He nodded gayly to his employer before he flung himself into a chair, his gun-stock between his knees, his great brown hands clasped behind his head. As he sat there dressed in the buckskin shirt and trousers of his half-civilized Indian neighbors, every free movement of his large body suggesting his life in the wilderness, the Jewish adventurer presented a perfect picture of the pioneer of his day.

“I have come, Colonel Hawkins,” he began in his usual abrupt manner, “to ask your help in building a cotton gin. Yes,” as the other showed surprise, “I know the enterprise seems a strange one for a rover like me to suggest, and, perhaps, a foolish undertaking in the wilderness. Yet the wilderness must pass and we must build now for the days to come.”

“Go on, Mordecai,” encouraged his chief. “What are your plans?”

“I know how eager you are to civilize the Indians in our region and teach them the arts of peace,” went on Mordecai. “Thus far we have done nothing but trade with them for pelties and healing barks and oils. But could we not have the squaws raise the cotton and bring it down the river in their canoes and prepare it in our gin for the market in New Orleans?”

“Good.” Hawkins nodded approvingly. “First we must gain permission of the Hickory Ground Indians for the erection of our gin, for it will not be wise to risk their enmity at the outset. But there is not another gin in the state. Where shall we find a pattern; where shall we get the workmen to fashion one for us; or the needed tools?”

“I have thought of that,” Abram Mordecai told him. “There are two Jews of Georgia, Lyon and Barrett, who have both the tools and the skill for the task. I met Lyon when we were both young men serving in the army under General Washington. You can rely upon him for faithful service.”

A little smile curved the agent’s lips. “You Jews!” he exclaimed. “Is there any enterprise in which you have not had a hand? Even back to the building of the pyramids in old Egypt! It is like a Jew to plan the first cotton gin in Alabama and to bring two of his race to build it.”

“We are indeed builders,” answered Mordecai a little dryly, “but not always for ourselves.” He rose. “Shall I send for them?”

“The sooner the better. And it will be good to meet your fellow Hebrews again, eh, Mordecai?”

Abram Mordecai, already at the door, turned a moment. His eyes, a striking hazel in the tan of his roughened face, grew wistful for a moment. “I am more Indian than Jew, more savage than white man,” he answered gravely. “Perhaps it is a pity,” and he was gone.

Mordecai, the child of the wilderness, where the struggle against savage and beast of prey sharpen the wits and teach the pioneer the need for rapid decisions, lost no time in executing his commission. As soon as word could reach Lyon, he informed his old comrade of the work he had in mind for him. The next post told Mordecai that the two men with their tools, gin saws and other materials loaded upon pack horses, were already on their way to Alabama. He waited eagerly for their arrival. The gin meant more to him than a source of revenue, were he successful in the cotton market. For, as Hawkins had observed, the Jew was not content to be a mere trader and hunter, like so many adventurers of the back woods. He longed to build, to create something lasting even in that ever-changing wilderness. And perhaps, mingled with his impatience, was a queer longing to see his own again, not merely white men like Colonel Hawkins, but Jews such as he had known before leaving his native Pennsylvania so many years ago. He smiled to find himself actually counting the days before he could expect Lyon and Barrett to arrive.

They came at last one evening near sunset, two brown-skinned rovers in half-savage dress affected by the backwoodsmen of that day; Lyon, grave and silent, Barrett, with a boy’s laugh, despite the sprinkling of gray in his curly hair. Mordecai stood at the door of his hut to greet them. A little behind him, humbly respectful like all the women of her nation to her lord and master, stood a squaw clad in a blanket with strings of beads woven in the long, dark braids of her hair. Her bright, black eyes sparkled with interest as she surveyed the strangers; but as they came nearer, she turned quickly and went back into the hut, where she continued to prepare the evening meal. But Mordecai advanced toward the travellers, his hand extended in welcome.

“Shalom Aleichem,” he began, his tongue faltering a little over the old Hebrew greeting he had not used for so long. “I am glad you have come at last.”

“Aleichem Shalom,” answered Lyon. “It is long since we have met, Abram Mordecai.” He took his old comrade’s outstretched hand and indicated Barrett with a curt nod. “My friend,” he said, briefly. “He will help us build the gin.”

“You are both welcome,” their host assured them. “Becky,” he called, and the Indian woman appeared at the door, “unload the horses and bed them for the night with ours,” and he indicated a roughly constructed barn a little way from the hut which it so resembled. “But first bring a pail of fresh water from the spring that these gentlemen may wash after their journey.”

Becky, still devouring the newcomers with her eyes, curiously, like those of an inquisitive squirrel, caught up a wooden bucket that stood by the open door and started down the winding path that led to the spring. “My wife,” explained Mordecai, pretending not to see the look of surprise with which his former friend Lyon greeted his statement. “Yes,” half in apology, “I know it seems strange to you. But for so many years I felt myself a part of the Creek nation, that when I was ill with malarial fever and she nursed me back to health, I was glad to lessen my loneliness and make her my wife according to the customs of her people. Yet,” and he smiled a little bitterly, “yet, strange as it may seem, I still remember that I am a Jew.”

He led them into the little cabin with its one window and floor of clay. At one end stood a rude fireplace made of bricks where a huge kettle swung Indian-fashion above the logs. At the other end of the room several heavy blankets indicated a bed, the only furniture being a few rough chairs, a table and an old trunk half covered by a gayly striped blanket such as Indian women weave. “A rough place, even for the wilderness,” confessed Mordecai, “but I dare attempt no better. Of late, the Indians once so friendly, have grown surly and suspicious; they rightly fear that the white man will wrench the wilderness from them. Especially Towerculla, a neighboring chief, who hates the ways of the whites and has been murmuring against me ever since he has heard that a cotton gin will be erected through my agency. So who knows when I will be driven from this place by the red men providing that they allow me to escape with my life.”

“And have you no white neighbors?” asked Barrett, who had seated himself upon the trunk, where he sat loosening his dusty leggins.

“There is ’Old Milly’.” Mordecai’s hazel eyes twinkled a little. “She is the wife of an English soldier who deserted from the army during the Revolution. After her husband’s death she took up her abode here. She is a woman of strong and resolute character and has considerable power over the Indians of this district, who stand greatly in awe of her. She lately married a red man and is really a great person in our little community, for she owns several slaves and many horses and cattle. Tomorrow I will introduce you to my only white neighbor. But here is Becky with the water,” as the squaw entered with the brimming pail. “Wash the dust from your faces that we may sit and eat, for you must be nearly famished.”

The travelers, having washed in the wooden basin that stood on one of the chairs and shaken some of the dust from their garments, now came eagerly enough to the table, which the silent Becky had prepared for them. Upon the bare boards she had set several mugs and heavy crockery bowls, pewter forks and a large, steaming vessel of the stew which she had taken from the fire, as well as several cakes made of corn flour and cooked in the ashes. Such fare was familiar enough to the pioneers, but the two guests could not help staring at the book that lay at each plate, a worn Sidur (prayer book), the ancient Hebrew characters looking strangely foreign in the primitive forests of America. Abram Mordecai saw the two men exchange glances and flushed a little beneath his tan.

“A foolish thought of mine,” he murmured. “When I left my father’s house in Pennsylvania I carried one of these in my pack, wrapped in the talith (praying shawl), he had brought with him from Germany. And later I found the two others in the bundle of a Jewish peddlar murdered by the Indians. The Indian agent at St. Mary’s sent me to ransom him and several other captives taken by the Creeks, but I came too late. Somehow, I could not bear to throw them away or destroy them. They have been with me in all my wanderings and more than once when I thought it about time for the fall holy days have I read the prayers and wished that I might have a few of my brethren with me to observe them aright. And tonight ” for a moment the confident, self-reliant adventurer seemed as embarrassed as a bashful child, “and tonight I hoped that since there would be three of us at grace, we might read the benedictions together if you care to and I would know how it feels to be a Jew again.”

Barrett laughed, his hearty school boy laugh, as he flung himself unceremoniously into a chair beside the table. “It’s many a day since I’ve said or heard a brocha (blessing),” he said, “but I’ll go through it without any book, thank you.”

Lyon said nothing, as he took the place Mordecai assigned him at the foot of the table, but there was a tender look about his grave mouth. Perhaps he realized how difficult it had been for Mordecai to confess his loneliness for the customs of his people; but, according to his wont, he said nothing.

Smiling almost childishly, Mordecai passed a bowl of water to each of his guests that they might wash their hands, which they did, murmuring the blessing as they did so. Then, taking his place at the head of the table, he poured water over his own hands, saying the Hebrew benediction as he wiped them upon a faded red napkin which lay beside his Sidur. Somehow, after his brief confession, he felt ashamed to tell his guests that the napkin had belonged to his mother and had rested beside the neglected Sidur for so many years. Then, breaking a bit from the bread and handing it to each of the men, he repeated the blessing for which, although he had not recited it for so many years, he need no prompting from the worn black book beside his plate.

“Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who bringest forth bread from the earth,” he said in Hebrew.

Becky, as her husband called her, stood in the background as silent as a bronze statute until the little ceremony was over. If she was impressed by the strangeness of it all, she gave no sign. For so many of the customs of her husband’s alien race were strange to her that she had long ago ceased to wonder or desire any explanation. Now at a sign from Mordecai, she took away the bowl of water, and, filling a plate with the savoury stew, took it to the corner of the hut, here, crouched upon the blankets, she ate her supper, quite content to watch the white strangers from a distance.

Mordecai served his guests, then himself, and over the stew and corn bread the men exchanged stories of their experiences in the wilderness. The host told a little of his own adventures since leaving the east, of his life as a trader with the Indians, of the peace treaty he had brought about with the Chickasaw nation, of his journeys south to New Orleans and Mobile, his furs and medicinal barks piled high in the barge with no companions but the painted savages to assist him. A life of highly-colored adventure with variety enough to satisfy any spirit, but even now Mordecai was growing restless and longed for another enterprise to occupy him after the cotton gin should be completed.

Then, the meal being over, Mordecai, with the same shamefaced bashfulness he had shown when speaking of the Sidurim, turned the pages of the book, saying almost wistfully: “I know that tonight is not a festival or Sabbath with us, gentlemen, but if you would care to go over the psalm with me

“We’ve been waiting a long time for this and we’ll give good measure,” laughed little Barrett, but his eyes did not jest as Mordecai in the quaint old sing-song of the synagogue began “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion” and Lyon gravely followed.

“And now,” Mordecai’s face fairly glowed with pleasure, “now we will have the special grace, since there are three of us at the table.”

“Let us say grace,” he began, with hardly a look at the Hebrew.

“Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forever,” responded his guests.

“With the permission of those present,” went on the host, “we will bless Him of whose bounty we have partaken.”

“Blessed be He of whose bounty we have partaken,” answered the others, “and through whose goodness we live.”

As Mordecai repeated the Hebrew phrases, learned in his almost forgotten Cheder (Hebrew School) days, a great longing came upon him and the tears coursed down his cheeks. To return again to this home, to keep the customs of his people and to die at last with Jewish friends about him and the Hebrew’s declaration of faith upon his lips! But, as he closed the book, his eyes glanced about the little room and they grew dark with pain. The gun standing in the corner, the furs drying upon the wall, Becky crouching upon the blankets all spoke to him of a life he had lived too long to exchange for the quiet existence of which he sometimes dreamed. He rose, and, with an abrupt gesture, pointed to a shaggy robe before the fire place.

“I have no better bed to offer you,” he said, “but I know you are not used to a soft couch. You must be tired from your journey. Becky will tend to your horses so you had better sleep now, that tomorrow we may start out early and visit Colonel Hawkins. He would see you before you begin work on the cotton gin.”

The cotton gin, the first to be built in Alabama, was completed in due time, and Barrett and Lyons, their pack horses again loaded with their tools, were ready to return to Georgia. If Mordecai felt any pain at having his co-religionists depart, he was skilful in concealing it. For, after his confidence over the supper table, he had slipped back into his stoical reserve and not even the taciturn Lyon was more silent or chary of speech in anything that did not directly concern the business in hand. So it was merry little Barrett who alone mentioned the occasion that for a moment had brought the strangers of the wilderness together and had made them brothers.

“We’ll be coming back again when we want a taste of Becky’s good stew and a blessing afterwards,” he jested as he swung himself into his saddle and reached down to shake hands with Mordecai.

“Or to build another gin if the Indians do not molest this one and drive me off,” answered Mordecai lightly, but the jest lingered in his mind. His life among the superstitious savages, his solitary hours in the wilderness, had helped to tinge his shrewd, practical mind with a strong mysticism. He tried to dismiss the matter; but, as he walked back to his hut that evening, Barrett’s light words haunted him and gave him no rest. “Perhaps,” he muttered, “perhaps, before my life is over, we will meet again and there will be three of us at grace.”

But his fancies fled and his dreamy face grew hard and alert as he came to the clearing before his hut. There, in the midst of his Indian followers, all armed with long poles, stood Chief Towerculla, threatening Becky. The squaw had placed herself in the door of the hut, where she stood with folded arms, listening to the Chief’s angry threats. If she felt any fear, there was no trace of it in her expressionless face. Nor did she seem relieved when Mordecai pushed between her and the angry Indian and demanded what business had brought him there. She merely shrugged a little, hitched up her buckskin skirt and resumed her task of pounding corn between two stones at the door of the hut, appearing to take no interest in the quarrel that followed. For like a good squaw, she did not think it seemly to interfere in her husband’s business affairs.

“And now, Towerculla,” began Mordecai in the Indian tongue which he spoke fluently. “Why do you come here and seek to frighten my squaw in my absence? And why have you brought your men with you?”

The Chief grunted in disgust. “And why do you bring the pale face here to build?” he answered Mordecai question for question. “Our squaws are well satisfied to work in the fields, to make oil from the hickory nuts, to weave blankets. But you would have them sell you cotton to make you rich; you would build a store and other white men would be greedy to trade with our women and build other gins and other stores and soon there would be many of your people while we ” he waved his hand toward his warriors, “we children of the red men would be driven further into the wilderness. You have already driven us too far, you white men. I am willing to spare you for the sake of ’Old Milly,’ whom we do not fear, for she is one of us. And she has pleaded for you more than once. So I will allow you and your squaw to depart in peace. By tomorrow morning leave for some other place for it is not good to dwell here any longer.”

For a moment Mordecai was too astonished to answer. Then he laughed boldly into the Indian’s angry face. Towerculla sprang for him, but Mordecai swiftly stepped aside, and crouching, sprung upon the Chief and struck him to the ground. For a minute the two struggled together. Then the Indians fell upon Mordecai and released Towerculla, who rose from the dust, his face terrible in his anger. Mordecai struggled in vain against the blows of Towerculla’s followers. As he sank to the ground overpowered, he caught himself murmuring, “They cannot kill me, until we three say grace together again,” even while he longed for death to cut short the agony which was beginning to wrack every limb of his cruelly beaten body. Then out of the mist of red which seemed to swim before his eyes, a merciful black cloud descended and he knew nothing more until he regained consciousness and found himself in “Old Milly’s” cabin, with Becky, still calm of face and quiet of voice bathing his wounds with cool water from the spring.

“What has happened?” he asked, trying to rise, but falling back moaning in his pain.

“Old Milly,” a tall, sharp-faced woman, who sat weaving a basket as skillfully as any squaw, answered him. “Towerculla would have slain you, had not Becky brought me in time. He is not a good enemy to have, Abram Mordecai. When you are stronger, you must take his advice and go away. The Indians did not burn the barn, so your horses are safe, but the house was in flames before I could reach it and persuade Towerculla to leave you in peace.”

Becky rose and walked to the table. Returning to where her husband lay, she placed in his hand three books with worn black covers and a faded red napkin. “I ran and got these when I saw they were destroying our cabin,” she told him. “I knew you had kept them long; that they were dear to you as the gods of our people are to us like a charm, maybe, to keep death away. And perhaps, when the white men come again, you will want to have them on the table and sing.”

For the moment, Mordecai forgot that Becky was only a squaw, undeserving, according to the custom of her people, either thanks or praise. “You are a very good wife,” he said, gently, “and I will buy you real gold earrings with the first money I earn from the cotton gin.” And since he was so weak, neither woman dared to tell him for several days that the vengeance of the Indians had extended to the gin house, which now lay a heap of black ruins hear the river.

Broken in body and ruined in fortune, Mordecai accompanied by the faithful Becky, bade farewell to Colonel Hawkins and journeyed further into the wilderness. For the Indian agent prudently refused to erect a second gin while the Indians still planned to injure Mordecai, and the adventurer himself felt that it would be hopeless to seek to gain the friendship of the embittered Chief. Trader and trapper, he led his solitary existence in the south, with no companionship but Becky’s, until her death left him entirely alone.

He had regained his former vigor by this time and sometimes dreamed of returning to his boyhood home. But from the pioneer towns springing up wherever he passed, he knew that a new civilization was rising in America; that he was of the generation that must pass away as surely as the Indian and he realized that he would feel sadly out of place in the surroundings that he had known as a boy. Yet, dreamer that he was, he never ceased to picture himself, a sober stay-at-home citizen, living out the last years of his life in communion with his fellow Jews, who had never left their quiet firesides. Nor in all his wanderings did he ever part with the three Sidurim and the faded red napkin. For as he grew older, the fantastic notion grew ever stronger that before he died he would again say grace with the builders of his cotton gin.

Almost a century old, he wandered back at last to Montgomery county, seeking the very spot where his hut had stood before Chief Towerculla had driven him away. Now the settlement of Dudlyville, so close at hand, made him feel cramped and uncomfortable. Colonel Hawkins had long since left Pole Cat Springs; Chief Towerculla, driven away by the white men he had always feared, was dead; “Old Milly” no longer lived in her savage kingdom with her husband and her slaves.

But he felt too tired to travel further; perhaps he realized that no matter where he went he would feel lonely as the survivor of another day and generation. So he built a tiny cabin for himself, even putting together some crude furniture. Here he lived, never seeing a human face unless he walked to the village to secure supplies, which the settlers, vaguely touched by his loneliness, never failed to press upon him. He talked to them sometimes of the days before the wilderness had been conquered, speaking too, of the first cotton gin, which the Indians had destroyed. “I love the spot,” he used to say, “but it is growing too crowded; yes,” with a shake of his white head, “too crowded for one who needs plenty of fresh air to breathe. Next spring I must journey on.” But when spring came, he would wait until fall, and again through the long winter. For his old ambition had left him and though his heart still wandered afar through the forests, his feet were too weary to follow it.

But one evening he felt strangely strong and refreshed. He had worked hard all the afternoon cleaning his little hut and now the humble room looked as spotless as spring water and vigorous scrubbing could make it. Even the table and chairs were scoured and the fireplace cleaned, while, to complete the day’s task Mordecai had emptied an old barrel in the corner, burning the heap of odds and ends which had accumulated since his return. But now as he stood behind the table he held in his hand three black books and a faded napkin which he could not bring himself to destroy. As he stood there with the rays of the setting sun falling through the open door on his shaggy white head, old memories burned in his faded eyes and a strange, dreamy smile played about his mouth.

“I have found the books it is time for them to come and say ’grace’,” he murmured to himself. “I have put my house in order. I know it is time for me to go away into the Great Wilderness but not until we have three at grace once more.”

Carefully placing a book at each place, he drew up two chairs and a box, spread the napkin at the head of the table and set out his few poor dishes and humble evening meal. Then he took his place, opened his book and waited. The Hebrew letters seemed strangely blurred; for the first time in his life his keen eyes failed him. But, glancing up, he thought he saw his two guests, Lyon and Barrett in their places waiting for him to begin the blessing before the meal.

“I am ready,” he said, and even as he spoke, his head dropped upon the open book and Mordecai’s restless spirit was at rest forever.