"It's a good thing to be shifty in a new country."
--Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs,
Johnson Hooper (1845)

We do not know a great deal about Ebenezer Cook. To most of us he is the protagonist of a contemporary novel, The Sot-Weed Factor, by John Barth. The real Ebenezer Cook was born probably in London, probably about 1670. He apparently had experiences similar to those of the poem's protagonist. He seems to have traveled to Maryland, where he had inherited property and to have sold it there in 1717. We assume that "The Sot-Weed Factor" reflects the Cook's own impressions of the barbarous colonial frontier-the strange manners and dress, the outlandish food and eating habits, the prodigious drinking, the rough practical jokes, the fighting and admixture of law with violence, and the general intellectual poverty and lack of education.

All these elements would appear again and again in our literature, but here it all is at the very beginning.⁽¹⁾ The poem stands as one of our earliest examples of debunking and disillusionment⁽²⁾, in the most exact sense of that word. For various reasons, one of them being the need to lure and recruit settlers to populate exploitable territories, a spate of bonanza or "come-on" literature appeared, promotional tracts or "pamphlets of news" touting the "Good News" of America. Our unfortunate sot-weed factor-or Cook himself-might well have picked up a pamphlet like the one published in 1616 by one George Alsop, who had been an indentured servant in Maryland. It was entitled,"A Character of the Province of Mary-Land," in which it was stated that "Tobacco is the current Coin of Mary-Land, and will sooner purchase Commodities from the Merchant, than money."

The hero of "The Sot-Weed Factor" is an easy mark in this new world. When he is defrauded of all his wealth and property, he seeks out a lawyer. But the lawyer turns out to be "an ambodexter quack," who poses as either solicitor or physician, and sometimes confuses the two professions. The impostor is one of the first in a long line of confidence men, scam artists and tricksters who make up a recurring theme in American humor and literature. Hooper's Simon Suggs is but one of a long line that includes the clever stranger who fills Jim Smiley's jumping frog, Dan'l Webster, with buckshot and Mark Twain's irrepressible pair of scalawags, the Duke and the Dauphin in Huckleberry Finn, wonderful masters of what Faulkner's narrator in The Hamlet would call "the art and pastime of skulduggery." The type naturally has its avatars in our own century; witness, in that novel, Pat Stamper, champion horse trader of Yoknapatawpha Country and, of course, that archangel of deceit, Flem Snopes. When characters like Sgt. Milo Minderbinder of Catch-22 appear, we recognize the archetype.

What a new country, a frontier, a "West," afforded was a perfect happy hunting ground for such human predators as the "ambodexter quack," shifty strangers who could easily invent themselves on the spot as the main chance demanded . Requiring little or nothing by way of credentials, having no brand or mark or record of past depredations, they could assume a myriad of disguises, establish authority by putting up a sign or asserting a claim. Herman Melville's confidence man, in the book of that name, turns up on a Mississippi steamboat-the very kind that Mark Twain piloted-in a variety of shapes: as a crippled Negro, a businessman, a philosopher, a soldier, and more. There is a song about the West that goes:

What was your name in the States?
Was it Johnson or Thompson or Bates?
Did you murder your wife?
Did you run for your life?
What was your name in the States?

For better and for worse, all this openness to possibilities is fundamental to the American experience and character. F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby, from far west of West Egg, Long Island "sprang from his Platonic conception of himself." As for Ebenezer Cook, it is believed that his destiny was the very opposite of poor Crévecoeur's, that, despite his hero's horrendous initiation and despite the"Dreadful Curse"at the end of the poem, the poet himself returned to America and made a go of it.

                                                                        Arthur Kay     Tucson, AZ      1998

To the Poem



Notes on the introduction (by Arthur Kay):

1. If it is important to categorize precisely, Cook's poem probably belongs to English literature, the poet being in fact an Englishman writing in the form and style of his time. More specifically, the form and style are those of a celebrated 17^th Century satire, Samuel Butler's "Hudibras" (1663). Cook's diction is typical: tea is not sweetened, but "dulcify'd"; bear meat is referred to as "Orson's flesh," and England is "Albion."

2. Sad is the case of Hector St.John de Crèvecoeur-the name itself means "heartbreak"-who settled in America and wrote enthusiastically optimistically about it in Letters From an American Farmer (1782). Returning from an official trip in France, he found his wife dead, his home burned, and his children living with strangers. He spent the rest of his life in Europe.

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Notes on the poem (by Ebenezer Cook):

3. Sot-weed factor: a dealer in tobacco.

4. To Cove is to lie at Anchor safe in Harbour.

5. The Bay of Piscata-way, the usual place where our Ships come to an Anchor in Mary-Land.

6. The Planters generally wear Blue Linnen.

7. A Canoo is an Indian Boat, cut out of the body of a Popler-Tree.

8. Wolves are very numerous in Mary-Land.

9. "Tis supposed by the Planters, that all unknown Persons are run away from some Master.

10. Pon is Bread made of Indian-Corn.

11. Mush is a sort of Hasty-pudding made with Water and Indian Flower.

12. Homine is a Dish that is made of boiled Indian Wheat, eaten with Molossus or Bacon Fat.

13. Syder-pap is a sort of Food made of Syder and small Homine, like our Oatmeal.

14. 'Tis the custom for Servants to be obliged for four Years to very servile Work; after which time they have their Freedom.

15. These are the general Excuses made by English Women, which are sold, or sell themselves to Mary-Land.

16. Beds stand in the Chimney-corner in this Country.

17. Frogs are called Virginea Bells, and make, (both in that Country and Mary-Land)during the Night, a very hoarse ungrateful Noise.

18. Kekicknitop is an Indian Expression, and signifies no more than this, How do yo do?

19. These Indians worship the Devil, and pray to him as we do to God Almighty, "Tis suppos'd , That America was peopl'd from Scythia or Tartaria, which Borders on China, by reason the Tartarans and Americans were very much agree in their manners, Arms and Government. Other Persons are of Opinion, that the Chinese first peopled the West Indies; imagining China and Southern part of America to be contiguous. Others believe that the Phænicians, who were very skillful Mariners, first planted a Colony in the Iles of America, and supply'd the Persons left to inhabit there with Women and all other Necessaries; till either the Death or shipwreck of the first Discoverers, or some other Misfortune occasioned the loss of the Discovery, which had been purchased by the peril of the first Adventurers.

20. Pizzaro was the Person that conquer'd Peru, a Man of a most bloody Disposition, base, treacherous, covetous, and revengeful.

21. Spanish Shoar

22. There is a very bad Custom in some Colledges, of giving the Students A Groat and purgandus Rhenes, which is usually employ'd to the use of the Donor.

23. Bears are said to live by sucking of their Paws, according to the Notion of some learned Authors.

24. The Phænicians were the best and boldest Saylors of Antiquity, and indeed the only Persons in former Ages, who durst venture themselves on the Main Sea.

25. The Priests argue, That our Senses in the point of Transubstantiation ought not to be believed, for tho' the Consecrated Bread has all the accidents of Bread, yet they affirm, 'tis the Body of Christ, and not Bread but Flesh and Bones.

26. In the County-Court of Mary-land, very few of the Justices of the Peace can write or read.

27. "Tis the Custom of the Planters, to throw their own, or any other Persons Hat, Wig, Shooes or Stockings in the Fire.

28. Planters are usually call'd by the Name of Oronooko, from their Planting Oronooko-Tobacco.

29. Cockerouse, is a Man of Quality.

30. Musmelion Vines are what we call Muskmillion Plants.

31. Æthon is one of the Poetical Horses of the Sun.

32. Chinces are a sort of Vermin like our Bugs in England.

33. Wild Turkies, are very good Meant, and prodigiously large in Mary-land.

34. Succahana is water.

35. A Goad grows upon an Indian Vine, resembling a Bottle, when ripe is hollow; this the Planters make use of to drink water out of.

36. This Fellow was an Apothecary, and turn'd an Attorney at Law.

37. The Yaws is the Pox.

38. The chief of Maryland, containing about twenty four Houses.

39. There is a Law in this Country, the Plaintiff may pay his Debt in Country pay, which consists in the produce of the Plantation.

40. The homeward bound Fleet meets here.

41. The Author does not intend by this, any of the English Gentlemen resident here.