The army moved together, back to Conesus Lake, then Honeoye Lake, where they found Captain Cummings and his 50 man detachment safe and sound, still protecting their large cache of supplies, along with the 250 men who were sick or otherwise incapable of continuing, and these once sick and tired men seemed glad enough when they were told of the destruction of the Genesee Castle, but when they learned that the army was making its return march they let out a cheer. But then they learned of the massacre of Boyd’s party and they toned down their rejoicing some, out of respect for the fallen heroes. After distributing enough of those stored supplies to make a hearty celebratory banquet, they army collected its remaining cannons and provisions and marched back to Canandaigua Lake, and that is where the young and self-important Oneida sachem, Blueback, found them.
Tommy Allen and Murphy were out in front of the forward regiment when the four warriors came riding up. They raised their rifles and were ready to shoot the Indians from their saddles when the one in the front, shining like a silver watch in the afternoon sunshine, raised his hand in greeting.
“What’s your business?” Major Parr asked him.
“I come with a message for General Sullivan,” he said in good English. They were a well-dressed bunch, all smiles and looking happy and pleased with themselves, and Major Parr promptly took them to General Sullivan’s tent where they had a conference.
But when the Indians rode back the way they had come not a half hour later, Murphy could see right away that they were not a happy bunch anymore. The smiles of the Indian ambassadors had been replaced with scowls, and they learned later from Major Parr that they had come with a message from the Cayuga Chief Tegatleronwane, from the Cayuga Castle. It seemed the Cayuga’s had heard about the success of the rebel army and wanted to make peace. Blueback told Sullivan that the Oneida hoped that he would spare the Cayuga villages and croplands, for the Oneida would not be able to provide for them since they already had more Onondagas in their towns than they could feed. He also told him that the Cayuga Chief had released a lot of white prisoners as a sign of good faith. But General Sullivan had to tell Blueback that he had his orders from Washington himself, telling him that he had no authority to make peace with any of the Indian tribes until “the total ruin of their settlements is effected.”
After the meeting with Blueback, Sullivan called another conference of his officers and told Colonel Butler, “You will take your regiment, along with Parr’s riflemen and the Oneida guides, down the east side of Cayuga Lake, and destroy all the villages you come across. Colonel Dearborn, you will take your regiment down the west side of the lake and do the same. Your forces should meet at the southern end of the lake before rejoining with the main army. Look for us first at Catherine’s Town, but we might be back down on the Chemung by the time you’re finished.”
So Allen and Murphy found that they would be scouting for the 500-man detachment of Butler’s force as it advanced down the east side of Cayuga Lake. Allen had always tried to keep in touch with the old hunter, Skaggs Holloway, as the army moved, and Skaggs had always been a source of information and good advice to him, and so young Tommy sought him out when the army camped at Canadesaga, where he was camped with Captain Cummings and the few Oneida Indian scouts that remained with the army.
“I heard you was detailed with Butler, Tommy,” said Skaggs. “But I plan to see the campaign through right to the end, and I’ll probably see you again down on the Chemung or thereabouts when you’re finished with the Cayuga’s,” and that was how Skaggs had avoided having to say goodbye to young Tommy Allen, who he knew was still traumatized by having lost most of his best friends, men who he had gone through hell together with, men who had trudged beside him over many a rough road, with blisters on their feet, through rain or shine, slogging across one creek or river after another, having to forage on Indian crops for most of their meals, and sleeping on the hard ground, and some having sustained wounds and injuries that would bother them for the rest of their lives. Skaggs had surprised himself with his decision to go back with the army, to see the campaign through right to the end, for he had always been a loner and had never enjoyed much the company of others, especially soldiers who could be loud and obnoxious. But he had since come to see that all men felt a sense of aloneness and by recognizing this he had begun to feel a connectedness to them. He also knew what it was like to have lost a loved one, for he still missed his horse, the one he had named Goldie, for her blond mane, and it saddened him to hear that Sullivan had over 300 horses killed on their way back, horses that had carried on their backs officers or supplies for the soldiers, horses that had been used up by the hard campaign. Ten years later, after Skaggs had moved out into the good hunting grounds around Detroit, he would hear that the first settlers of the area named the place “Horseheads,” after discovering the bleached skulls of those poor horses.
The first Indian village Butler’s force found just before they crossed the Seneca River, with Private’s Allen and Murphy scouting out in front, was a place called Scawyace. It had been visited by four scouts under Colonel Harper a month earlier, but being so few in number they had not had time to completely destroy the place, and so Butler had some of Cilley’s New Hampshire boys cut down the remaining eight acres of corn and squash and pile it into the eighteen cabins before burning them, for they had found that that was the best way to ensure a good result.
Burning vegetables always caused a lot of smoke and parched their throats, and so Tommy Allen and Murphy had gone down to the stream to fill up their canteens, and that is where they found that the Indians had ingeniously dammed up three different places along the rocky ravine where the stream ran, and had made ponds where at least a dozen good sized trout were swimming in each. The men had a good fish supper that evening, but the next morning, before they moved out, the Colonel had them break down the stone walls and liberate the remaining trout, and they had some fun doing that, because the weather was hot and they got to splash in the stream for a while, and even Murphy seemed to come out of his gloom for a few minutes and say, “Hey, you know, this fish farm is a good idea. I might even try it back home when the war is over,” and showed that he was thinking of the future.
The next day the detachment covered over ten miles as it moved along the shore of the lake, an area once cultivated but now left to fields of Joe Pye weed, sky blue chicory, goldenrod, thistle, and low brush. Now and again they found an isolated cabin and some cornfields which they burned as they passed through. Then they reached an area of dense forest and camped on the other side of a marshy swamp where a mile of cattails bounded the shore of the lake.
Around noon of the next day, one of the Oneida guides pointed out the Great Gully Brook to Colonel Butler, and he had the army follow it up the hill, away from the lake, and after a couple of miles they reached the capital town of the Cayuga tribes, Goiogouen, or the Cayuga Castle, where Chief Tegatleronwane had once lived, the Cayuga sachem who had wanted to make peace with the rebel army. The village was high up on the hill and offered a commanding view of the big lake. Like all the others, the inhabitants knew of the army’s movements and the place was deserted, and contained about fifty large log cabins, where the men found dozens of baskets full of salt. They also found five muskets that had been stamped, “United States,” proving they had been taken from soldiers, and a lot of the boys thought they might have been taken from Boyd’s men, proving to them that the Cayuga deserved to be burned out along with the Seneca and Onondaga. Surrounding this hub of Cayuga village life were a series of smaller communities, and the army was busy all that day burning the crops of corn, squash, potatoes, turnips, onions and other vegetables, along with chopping down large orchards of peaches that they found in the area. Tommy and Murphy were glad that they had been assigned to sharpen axes as they grew dull, and that kept them busy all day, but at least they could do it in the shade and were able to avoid the hot, burning fields and choking smoke.
The army then moved south to Chonodote, a place the men called “Peachtown,” because of the fifteen hundred peach trees they girdled there, along with burning fourteen more cabins.
The land as they left Peachtown was broken by a series of deep ravines, where waterfalls coursed down through deep woodlands, and after traversing these they arrived at the end of the lake, where they could see the smoke from a burning cabin and surmised that Colonel Dearborn had arrived there ahead of them.