History, as we know, is often written in ink.

But in the marshlands of the new world, it was often just written in iron and wood.

Imagine you're standing at the crossroads.

It's late.

The night air carries that sharp smell of brine and the slow rod of marsh grass.

Somewhere nearby, the tide is shifting. The quiet suck and pull of water moving through the reeds. A small group of men stand in the

darkness. They're not here for a Christian burial. There are no psalms being sung, no black veils,

no mourners pressing handkerchiefs to their faces, no priests offering their comforting promise of resurrection.

Instead, there is a hurried, nervous kind of energy in the air.

They are not burying a loved one. They're disposing of a problem.

The men lower a small, frail body into a shallow

ditch beside the road. The grave is crude, a little more than a hole scraped into the damp earth.

But even that's not enough. One of the men steps forward holding a wooden stake. He places it

carefully over the chest of the woman they

have just buried, a woman who spent nearly 30 years moving through a revolving door of prison

cells and courtrooms. And then he raises a heavy mallet. The sound of wood striking wood

cracks through the night once, twice, again.

The stake punches through her body and into the ground beneath it, pinning her to the earth

like an insect mounted for display. And just to be certain, they add one more precaution.

At the top of the stake, they hang a horseshoe.

In the 17th century, a horseshoe was more than a piece of equestrian hardware.

It was protection.

...