"Because it's part of history?" she said, her face scrunched with doubt.
"Sure. Of course. It's part of the history of the town. And history and folklore go hand in hand. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the two apart." Ludwig chuckled at his own joke, but no one else responded.
He was about to go on when a hand went up near the back of the room. It belonged to a typical looking student, a frat boy type with a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes, wearing a T-shirt that looked like it had been slept in. Ludwig inwardly yearned for the days when students wore shirts and ties to class.
"Yes, sir?" Ludwig said.
"So are you going to tell us what this Pioneer Club did that's such a big deal?"
"You want to know?" Ludwig said.
"Yeah," the student said.
No one else responded.
"You really want to know?"
"Yeah, man."
Ludwig knew the guy was a brown noser, an ass kisser and a boot licker from the word go. He also didn't care. No one—not his colleagues and certainly not his students—ever asked him about his research. And the students would never ask again. But why pass up a golden opportunity to practice the kind of spiel he might make at a conference someday?
"Okay. Fine. I can tell you about that." He cleared his throat and felt himself warming to the subject matter. "As I said, there are no real conclusive records to show that The Pioneer Club ever actually existed. Perhaps there's a good reason for that. Perhaps they didn't want anyone to know the kinds of things they were doing back then. But no matter how hard we try, all of us leave fragments of ourselves behind. In letters, in diaries. Or in a way that you might understand, emails and text messages. But once you send a letter to someone, you lose a certain amount of control over it, right? It becomes property of the person you sent it to. And if that person is careless with it, who knows what hands it might fall into? So I learned the things I've learned about The Pioneer Club as the result of digging around in the papers and effects of people long dead, people who had no idea that the things they said in their lifetimes would matter to someone in the future. It's interesting to think about, isn't it? The different avenues we have to achieving immortality of some kind?"
A few heads nodded.
"As I said, the new settlement, which was at the time called Lenape after the Indians who were living here, ran into a number of hardships after their initial settling. Disease, hunger. Indians. And in order to survive, it appears as though certain prominent citizens, all of whom were men, of course, began to meet on their own to make decisions that would shape the course of the settlement. Because they were a small group and not subject to the same rules and haggling that went on in the typical town council meeting, they could move quickly and unilaterally once a decision was made. A nice power to have. And a nice power to abuse.
"But early on, they did what was necessary. One document exists that mentions Blue Bear, a particularly vicious member of the Delaware tribe who was leading bands of his men against the settlers, harassing them, stealing their supplies, on occasion, violating their women. Nowhere is The Pioneer Club given credit or responsibility for what ultimately happened to Blue Bear, but there's no doubt they benefited most directly from his demise."
"What happened to him? This Blue Bear guy?"
Ludwig liked the questions. It meant someone was paying attention.
"He was found dead, in the woods. He'd been decapitated." Ludwig paused, letting his words sink in. "But they also did more practical things. They rationed food. Assisted farmers with their crops. All the necessities of life. But there's one other thing necessary for the survival of a new people in a new land that I haven't mentioned yet. Do you know what that is?"
"Money?"
"No."
"Schools."
Ludwig shook his head. "No."
"More people," someone shouted from the back.
"Exactly. A small settlement can't survive unless you keep making new people. So The Pioneer Club began to help with that."
"How did they do that?" someone said.
"Let's just say they took an active interest in procreation. In other words, if there was a suitable young woman of child-bearing years, they made certain that she was...available to a suitable man, whether she wanted to be available to him or not. Her opinion didn't matter. The good of the community did."
Ludwig heard groans, mostly from the women in the room.
"But that's not to say they valued all life equally," Ludwig said.