QUEEN ETTA, The Seneca - The Life & Death Of A Social Outcast

 QUEEN ETTA, THE SENECA

LIFE AND VIOLENT DEATH OF A SOCIAL OUTCAST

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A Strange Family Of Savages Who Dwell in Caves and Cabins in the Woods Of Western Pennsylvania

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 A party of sportsmen, who have been bear hunting in, the wilds of Potter Co., near the little town of Abbott, report the finding of the body of Goble, a notorious character, who has been missing from her home in the mountains near -Wharton, for several months. 

Her death was a most horrible tragic one, and a fitting end to a strange life (nil of romance and misery. Etta Goble was ono of a large family of half-savage people known as "The Krabels." This strange family is said to number from 200 to 350 men, women and children, and a more degraded lot of people it would be hard to find in the United States. They dwell in small caves and cabins in the wooded hills of Potter Co., and on the borders of Cameron and Clinton counties.

 Despite their Dutch name the Krables are undoubtedly of Indian descent, the Seneca breed, they claim and they all bear the peculiar facial marks of their ancestors, while their habits and mode of living are even more indecent and less cleanly than those of their uncivilized forefathers. They intermarry exclusively, and no divorce is necessary to separate man and. wife, if either par ty desire such separation. Marriage services, of a peculiar sort, followed by an incantation, are performed by the "sage" of the tribe, and the occasion is one of the most open defiance of all laws of morality. The results of the defiance of physiological laws, by intermarriage, are evident in the forms of their children. Many of them are idiots, some are strangely deformed.

 A BEARDED FEMALE FORTUNE-TELLER

 Such is the race or family to which Etta Goble belonged, or rather with which she lived, tor she frequently declared that she could boast of purer Indian blood than the rest of the tribe. She was always regarded with a great deal of awe by her associates, and she was treated with as much deference as gypsies usually pay to their "Queen," and with as much respect as Indians show to their "medicine men." She was reputed to have been the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and was, in consequence, believed to be endowed with the magic power of curing all kinds of bone fractures and diseases. She was a fortune- teller of remarkable skill and her hand was crossed with silver by many a backwoods maiden who desired to know her future, and whether her rustic swain was true to his vows.

 In appearance "the Queen," as she was usually called, was somewhat, startling. She was nearly six feet nine inches in height, her skin was a saffron-yellow, her hair long, coarse and black as a raven's wing, and her chin was covered with a beard at least three inches in length. She adopted the regular Indian costume and lived alone in her small cabin in the woods, midway between Abbott and New Bergen. During her summer excursions to Coudersport and Emporium she was constantly besieged by people who wanted the future revealed to them by this wonderful fortune teller. She made some wonderful predictions. She foretold the assassination of President Garfield ; she predicted the strike of the famous oil well "646," and she warned the people of Ridgway, Elk county, not very far from Emporium, of the fire which recently laid that town in ashes.

 A DANGEROUS PET.

 She made money and knew how to save it. She rarely spent a cent except for liquor, and one of her peculiarities was that she would never allow any human being to sleep in her cabin, not even her own brother, and those of the tribe who went to visit her always went prepared to sleep out of doors. She had a pet rattlesnake whose fangs had never been drawn, and she frequently boasted that she did not want a better protector. There was an annual gathering of these wandering people, usually held at Etta's cabin, and these convocations were the wildest orgies imaginable, and more than one member ot the great family has been missing after the long debauches in the lonely wilds of Potter county.

"Queen Etta" was last seen alive the day before Thanksgiving, when she was as frisky and as full of whisky as usual. Just before Christmas one of the Goble tribe, while in the post-office at Abbott, casually remarked, "Queen Et' haint t' hum no more, and I sh'udu't wonder ef she hed kicked the bucket afore this, on 'count o' th' hard winter." One of the bystanders made a trip to her cabin next day and found it deserted. On the earthen floor ,in one corner of the room, lay a half bushel of chestnuts and walnuts, while to the beams supporting the thatched roof hung a ham, the half decayed body of a chicken and a string of red peppers No signs of "Queeu Etta" were anywhere to be seen, and after a two days' search the neighbors concluded she had gone to join the rest of the tribe near Millport.

A few days ago the party of hunters from Conders- port, first referred to, were chasing a black bear through the swamp near the cabin where "the Queen" formerly lived, when one of the hunters stumbled and fell over what he supposed to be a stone, but which, upon closer examination proved to be a human skull, still covered with patches of bloody skin and hair. Upon communicating his discovery to the people living in that vicinity they came to the conclusion that the skull was that of "Queeu Etta," the peculiar shape of her head corresponding to the shape of the skull. Suddenly one of their dogs stopped and commenced barking furiously under a chestnut tree on the hillside.' Running to the spot the men discovered that the dogs had scented a partly decomposed body. It required but a brief examination to convince them that the remains of the old "Queen" lay before them. She had climbed the chestnut tree to shake down some nuts when the limb, in the top of the tree broke, and she fell a distance of at least thirty feet. A large jagged stump of a tree that had been shattered by lightning, caught her body as she fell, and one large splinter of it was thrust entirely through her body, impaling her. Her death must have been instantaneous. A bear, or some other carnivorous animal, had gnawed away her feet and hands, which had hung nearly to the ground, and it was undoubtedly a bear that had torn her head from her body and carried it into the swamp.

 A BONFIRE OF A COFFIN. 

The news of the recovery of "Queen Etta's" body spread like wild fire through the sparsely settled districts, and the Goble family gathered in full force to attend the "Queen's" funeral and to dispose of her body, which had been encased in a cheap pine coffin at the expense of the county, and placed in her cabin. It was on a Wednesday afternoon that at least two hundred of these half-savage men and women assembled at "Queen Etta's" hut and held a wake over the mangled remains. They indulged in drunkenness and wild orgies for two days. The clergyman who went from Wharton to read the burial service was driven from the spot by the drunken people, and they made an illumination in his honor by splitting the coffin to pieces and burning it. The next day they departed, after having set fire to the cabin. What became of the old woman's body no one can tell, for it is said, to be a custom of the Tribe  never to leave any trace of the burial-place of any of its members. 

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The Williamsport Sunday Breakfast Table, Feb 18 1883

Similar reports were carried in various newspapers, all the way to Vermont.