The Black Fox of Salmon River

FED BY THE sparkling waters of smaller streams with such picturesque names as Blackledge River, Pine Brook, Jeremy's River and Fawn Brook, the Salmon River flows down from Marlborough and Colchester, along the borders of East Hampton and East Haddam and finally empties into the Connecticut River, just below Haddam Neck. Meandering through deep gorges, past sleepy little towns like Leesville, under heavily wooded slopes and over several old mill dams, the Salmon, according to experienced judges of riparian beauty, is just about the prettiest little river in Connecticut.
Back in the days when Indians were the only inhabitants of the wilderness drained by the Salmon River, they called it the Tatamacuntaway, a name so long forgotten that even the earliest records fail to show it. But however it was designated, the lovely stream provided the native Americans with some of the best fishing waters to be found in all of Connecticut. In addition, the woods, meadows and wetlands of the Salmon River basin created such an attractive habitat for wildlife that the Indians often travelled many miles to hunt the abundant game and birds which helped feed and clothe their families.
In the late seventeenth century, when the first whites discovered the hunting and fishing paradise of the Tatamacuntaway, the Indians were willing to share their knowledge of the area and to pass along their ancient skills to the newcomers. The Englishmen were particularly enthusiastic about the seemingly inexhaustible supply of sea-run salmon yielded up by the easy-flowing river with the hard-pronouncing name. As the whites became proficient at taking the swift silver-sides from the stream, the salmon became a staple of the local settlers' diet and was soon honored with a river-naming by the grateful English fishers. Though both the Indians and the fish have long since disappeared, the Salmon River it has been to this day.
During those early years, too, the white hunters who ranged the hills in the company of friendly Indians began to hear from their native guides a strange legend, a story so compelling and yet so tragic that they scarcely knew what to make of it. Along the banks of the Tatamacuntaway, the red men said, there lived a black fox endowed with mysterious powers never seen in another animal. The fox had a coat so thick and sleek that whatever hunter chanced to see the beautiful pelt had an immediate and overwhelming desire to possess it. However, the Indians claimed that as many times as one of their fox-haunted hunters had sent an arrow winging toward the heart of the jet-black beast, none had ever found its mark. Instead, each arrow would seem to pass directly through the animal's body and emerge on the other side without causing any effect whatsoever.
Then, they said, the magical fox would begin to run, luring the frustrated but fascinated hunter into a lengthy chase, often punctuated by additional shots from the archer -- but always with the same strange results. Such was the obsession with killing the black fox, however, that no amount of failure could ever discourage the hunter from continuing the hunt. Rather, each futile shot and each unsuccessful chase seemed to strengthen in the hunter a passion to bring down the enchanted quarry once and for all.
Sometimes, the Indians said, their bemused braves would return from a two or three-day chase after the fox so exhausted they could hardly move, but never too tired to recount in great detail their amazing adventures with the ghostly animal. At other times, the red men were saddened to say, some hunters who had set out to find and kill the darkling creature were never again seen on earth. Each mysterious disappearance, the Indians believed, could be attributed to the whimsical, indifferent but alluring spirit dwelling within the black fox of Salmon River.
On first hearing the legend, white hunters merely laughed in disbelief. There was probably no truth at all to it, they said, because Indians were forever making up stories such as this to explain those things which they found otherwise unexplainable. But, even if there were some marvelous phantom fox prowling the banks of the Salmon River, the Englishmen had supreme confidence that their powerful muskets and shot would succeed where the Indians' fragile bows and arrows had failed.
Nevertheless, when the reports came in from the first white gunners who actually saw and fired at the legendary black fox, they, too, contained the familiar ingredients of the red men's stories. First would come the uncontrollable desire, then the rifle shots passing through the ghost-like body without effect and, finally, the futile, almost overpowering chases over miles of rough terrain, ending in babbling frustration or -- in the cases of those few who never returned from the hunt -- tragic destruction. As time went on, the bitter truth of the black fox of Salmon River was accepted by the whites who inhabited the fertile valley as it had been by the red hunters before them: covetousness warps-- and sometimes even kills -- the human animal.
More than a hundred years after the last Indian had passed from the Salmon River hunting and fishing grounds, and not long before the last Atlantic salmon would run up the languid stream to spawn, the legend of the black fox was evidently still a living tradition among the white residents of the mid-Connecticut River valley. For it was from this tradition that Hartford poet John G. C. Brainard drew inspiration for one of the most popular verses published in his Occasional Pieces of Poetry, in 1825. Entitled "The Black Fox of Salmon River," Brainard's poem recaptured much of the mood and mystery of the original legend and probably did much to perpetuate the tradition far beyond its time. It ended, peacefully, with this: And there the little country girls Will stop to whisper, and listen, and look, And tell, while dressing their sunny curls, Of the Black Fox of Salmon Brook.

from Legendary Connecticut by David E. Philips / ISBN 1-880684-05-5 / $17.95

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