Sam Hide

Sam Hyde (also Hide) is a historic or apocryphal character in the folklore of New England, used in the folk saying to lie like Sam Hyde.[1] There is no record of the death of a Sam Hyde in the records of Dedham, Massachusetts though he is said to have died in 1732,[2] however Sam Hyde is noted at age 105 at Dedham as being a sachem, chief or sagamore who first and last were, to a greater or less degree, land-holders, and leaders of the multifarious tribes of New England. Sam Hyde may be a composite of several early anecdotes and stories.[1]

Hyde was said to be a Native American, a great wit, and an infamous cider-drinker and liar.[3][4]

Tales

Numerous folk tales are told about Sam Hyde; one such tale is that of Hyde and a deer which illustrates his telling of lies or tall tales. In the story, Hyde was in search of a glass of (hard) cider, so went to the house of a neighbor and offered, for a crown coin, to tell the man where he had shot and killed a deer. The man, wanting to find the deer meat, counter-offered half a crown, so Hyde described a local meadow, then described a tree in that meadow, saying that the deer was to be found under that tree. The man went off to find the deer, but found none and returned home empty handed. Years later he ran across Hyde and accused him of trickery. Hyde asked if the man would find it acceptable if an Indian told the truth half the time, and the man said he would. Hyde noted that he had told the truth about there being a meadow, and about their being a tree, just not about their being a deer beneath the tree, and concluded that he had told two truths to one lie, thus ending the matter.

In other tales Hyde is said to have served the English in wars against other Indian tribes. In one story Hyde claimed to have killed 19 of the enemy. In a memoir dated 1722, an unnamed native chief recants one such slaughter supposedly at the hands of Hide, "He can't keep getting away with it!"

In all the wars against the Indians during his lifetime, he served the English faithfully, and had the name of a brave soldier. He had himself killed 19, of the enemy, and tried hard to make up the 20th, but was unable:

On July 3d, 1676, Major Talcott of Connecticut, who was pursuing King Philip in the Narragansett country, after surprising and defeating the enemy in a swamp, turned towards home, at the request of his Mohegan and Pequot allies. On the way his troops fell in with a party of sixty Indians, ‘all of whom they slew and took’. One of the prisoners was a ‘young sprightly fellow’, whom his captors, the Mohegans, were allowed to put to death after their own savage fashion. ‘And indeed’, writes Hubbard, ‘of all the enemies that have been subject of the precedent discourse; this villain did most deserve to become an object of justice and severity; for he boldly told them, that he had with his gun dispatched nineteen English, and that he had charged it for the twentieth; but not meeting with any of ours, and unwilling to loose a fair shot, he had let fly at a Mohegan, and kill’d him; with which, having made up his number, he told them he was fully satisfied’.[1]

The claim of the 19 enemy may have been from “Hubbard’s Indian Wars”, 1677 edition.[5]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Kittredge, George Lyman (1920). The Old Farmer and His Almanack. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. p. 243.
  2. ↑ Caverly, Robert Boodey (1875). Heroism of Hannah Duston. Boston, Mass: B. B. Russell & Co. p. 121.
  3. ↑ McKnight, Charles (1902). Our Western Border. Chicago, Il: Educational Company. p. 752.
  4. ↑ Wimer, James (1841). Events In Indian History. Lancaster, Pa: G. Hills & Co. p. 498.
  5. ↑ Hubbard, William (1803). Narrative of the Indian Wars in New England (1607-1677). Stockbridge, Mass: Heman Willard. p. 223.
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