IN THE journal of occurrences that I kept posted throughout this Northern campaign, a gap occurs between June 26th 1776 and the last day of September in the same year. These three months were among the busiest and happiest in my life. In company with all the rest of the Army under the command of General Sir Guy Carleton I was busy shipbuilding. As has already been remarked on an earlier page, vessels were needed on Lake Champlain to oppose the American fleet now cruising up and down upon its waters and hindering our advance, for on either side of the lake the virgin forests presented an impenetrable barrier to invasion. Sir Guy had sent in haste to England for a number of gunboats, in sections. These could be reconstructed in the dockyard at St John’s which lay, as I have said, well above the rapids of Chambly that hindered direct navigation between Lake Champlain and the St Lawrence River. There was a vessel of one hundred and eighty tons, the Inflexible, in building at Quebec; Sir Guy ordered her to be taken to pieces and shipped up the river in batteaux together with the carpenters who had been engaged upon her construction – she was likewise to be completed in the dockyard at St John’s. The Inflexible carried eighteen twelve-pounders and was ship-rigged. Two schooners lay at Montreal, the Maria armed with fourteen six-pounders, and the Carleton with twelve. These were sailed at once to Chambly and, rather than lose the time of taking them to pieces, it was proposed by the naval lieutenant who commanded the Inflexible, to convey them upon a cradle overland to St John’s; and that the troops should be called upon to build a road for them. General Carleton acquiesced and we set to.
This was a very slow and tedious business, for it meant felling thousands of trees and levelling off the stumps, and hauling the vessels forward by means of cables fixed to windlasses at every twenty yards. Our men lost a great deal of weight by sweating, and much skin from their hands; but this hard work was on the whole beneficial to their health, as was also the copious ration of spruce beer now served out to us as a preventive of scurvy, for we were again living mainly on salt meat and biscuit. At the end of a week, in spite of all we could do, we had advanced the Maria no more than half a mile. The General, perceiving that this mode of conveyance would engross more time than the other, ordered the two schooners to be taken to pieces and reconstructed at St John’s in the same manner as the Inflexible and the gunboats. Some of us were then employed in the hauling of two hundred laden batteaux up the Chambly rapids, which demanded almost incredible exertions; others at the ropewalk at St John’s in making rigging; others in assisting the Royal Marines to improvise stocks and slip-ways, to reconstruct the schooners and the gunboats (which carried one brass field-piece apiece, varying from nine-pounders to twenty-pounders), and to build, besides the Inflexible, a flat-bottomed radeau or raft, to mount twelve guns and a number of howitzers, also a gondola with seven nine-pounders, numerous long-boats and a whole fleet of batteaux.
My company happened to be employed at first in outpost duty, three miles into the forest from St John’s, where we occupied a block-house protected by a screen of Indian scouts. It was very pleasant thereabouts. As well as the other Canadian trees before mentioned, the paper birch grew plentifully around us, and that rich shrub, the aralia, with numerous flowers and a high pink fragrance, also a wild gooseberry, the honeysuckle of the garden and strawberries in abundance. We were next set to building barracks for the troops and artificers. American block-houses never varied in plan. They were constructed of roughly trimmed logs, placed one on the other and overlapping at the corners. Each length of timber in roof and walls was so jointed as to be independent of the length next to it; so that if a piece of artillery were played upon the house only that timber which was struck would be displaced; indeed if one half of the construction were completely shot away, the remainder would stand firm. There were two storeys, a shingle-roofed loft, and a chimney constructed of brick or dressed stone; the upper storey, reached by a ladder, projected two or three feet beyond the walls of the lower one. Each of these storeys was supplied with a couple of pieces of cannon and four port-holes, so that the cannon could be trained in any direction to resist attack. There were also loopholes for musket-fire in all the walls, and holes in the floor of the upper storey – both at the projected sides, to fire down upon the enemy if he attempted to storm the lower part, and in the centre should he succeed in gaining an entrance. Each block-house served to lodge a hundred men, and there was an apartment in the upper storey for the officers. The building was made weatherproof by clay daubed in the interstices of the timber, and proved snug enough in winter if the two fireplaces were well supplied with dry fuel. A block-house was a very strong defence, unless the enemy succeed in firing it by incendiary shells, especially when placed on a little knoll in a clearing, as ours was. The barracks that we built were only rough affairs, of untrimmed logs, but sufficient to the purpose; it was not to be expected that they would be needed for more than short use. Some of our men became handy with the axe, though it would have needed years more at the task to make them equal in expertness with the Canadians or with our American foes.
On one of the rare days when I was free to leave my duty for an hour or so and visit the dockyard I found that the two schooners, Maria and Carleton, had been reconstructed in a mere ten days; but even this prodigy of expedition was surpassed by the building of the frigate Inflexible. Her parts only arrived at St John’s on September 4th, her keel was laid on September 7th, and she was all rigged, armed, and ready to sail by the end of that month. Only sixteen shipwrights built her, and one of these was so badly wounded by an adze on the third day as to be of little service.
One evening at the block-house, where I happened to be in command, since the two company commanders were absent at a general conference of officers, and the other officers were out hunting with their dogs, I visited my chain of sentries. I heard a challenge at some distance away and a deal of argument. Presently Mad Johnny Maguire and another soldier brought along for my examination two persons who wished to pass through the posts.
‘Who are they, Maguire?’ I asked. There was only a feeble light and they had halted at a few paces from me.
‘That I do not know, Sergeant,’ he grumbled. ‘I have had many and various customers pass through my post since first I stood sentry, but here’s a pair of queer fish that beat and bewilder me entirely. There’s one who says he’s a warrior, though, by Jesus, he’s a squaw unless my two eyes are liars; and the other calls himself Captain Brant and speaks better English than I do, yet he’s a rogue of an Indian for all that. Who knows that they an’t a couple of Yankee spies, such fancy fellows as they are, upon my soul!’
I brought them into the officers’ apartment at the blockhouse, where I could question them at greater convenience and without the inquisitive stares of the men. Maguire had not deceived me as to their appearance. The person describing himself as Captain Brant was clearly an Indian of blood, tall, slender, and of commanding appearance. He wore elegant deer-skin leggings trimmed with gold lace, moccasins with diamond buckles, a blue military topcoat with tarnished silver buttons, good lace at his cuffs and throat, a pair of excellent duelling pistols in a holster at his side, and several strings of wampum about his neck. His head was bare and shaved clean, but for his scalp-lock which was dyed vermilion. His face was streaked with war-paint.
The other, introduced as Sweet Yellow Head, wore a red velvet dress with a silver girdle, bangles, and long Spanish ear-rings, a necklace of garnets and small white beads, a wrapper of white fox fur, and a fusil slung on his shoulder. His face was delicately powdered and rouged, and his long, braided hair, with its vermilion-streaked parting, was dyed bright yellow. He walked in an exaggerated mincing manner, rolled his eyes coyly about, constantly tossed his hair, and in a word behaved exactly as a gay young ensign would do at a regimental theatrical performance when called upon to play the heroine in a farce.
Captain Brant spoke severely to this creature in the Mohawk language, which I did not understand, and evidently bade him conduct himself in a more seemly fashion. Then he asked me in a deep voice: ‘Sergeant, where are your officers?’
I told him that I was in command at the block-house and asked him his business. He replied: ‘I am a great man of your allies, the Six Iroquois Nations. I am Thayendanegea, the Mohican war-chief. My English name is Captain Brant. In the month of May last I fought in the company of Captain Forster at the engagement of The Cedars, thirty miles from Montreal. We took near five hundred Yankees as prisoners; it was great glory. Yet for the love of Jesus Christ, who died for us all, I restrained my warriors from taking scalps and from burning alive a Yankee captain whom they had secured.’
‘That was a noble action on your part,’ I remarked dryly, ‘and I applaud you for it.’
‘I thank you, Sergeant,’ said he. ‘I persuaded my people to do no more than nick a few of their ears, as we do with cattle, to claim possession.’
‘That must have angered them excessively,’ said I, and he nodded.
‘But,’ said he, ‘they were revenged upon our people for this indignity, for when some of our warriors stripped them of their military finery to wear themselves, the smallpox infected them, and many died.’
He told me that the American Congress had not only refused to ratify a cartel for an exchange of prisoners made between Captain Forster and Colonel Arnold, on the ground of Captain Forster’s inhumanity in the matter of the nicked ears, but had demanded him to be delivered up to them by General Carleton to answer for his conduct in this ‘atrocious massacre’. Congress, Thayendanegea conjectured, took this unheard-of course to spite Colonel Arnold – though why they did not rather fulfil the agreement than leave their hostages in the hands of so merciless an enemy, only Mr Samuel Adams perhaps could explain.
Said I: ‘No doubt Mr Adams and his kind regard their troops only when Heaven makes them victorious.’ I continued: ‘Yet I find it a little singular that you speak English so well, and that the name of the Saviour is on your lips. How does that come about?’
‘Easily answered,’ replied Thayendanegea (which means, in the Indian tongue, ‘holder-of-the-stakes-made-by-the-parties-in-a-wager’, or ‘mediator’). ‘As a youth I attended the missionary school of the Reverend Doctor Wheelock at Lebanon in the colony of Connecticut, and embraced the Christian religion. I am a well-read man. I assisted Doctor Barclay in revising the Prayer Book as translated into the Mohawk tongue, and Doctor Stewart in translating the Acts of the Apostles. I have myself made a translation of the Gospel of Saint Matthew and have converted numbers of my people. I am acquainted with many English men of letters, including your famous Doctor Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer and author of that pertinent pamphlet, Taxation no Tyranny; to whom his fidus Achates, Mr James Boswell, introduced me.’
‘From whence do you come now? I had no notification of your approach.’
‘From General Herkimer of the New York Militia at Unadilla, in New York Colony, one hundred and fifty miles to the south-west of this place. He called me to a conference.’
‘You have been treating with the enemy!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you dare tell me so?’
‘He had been my friend and neighbour on the Mohawk River and I could not refuse to parley with him. It might be that he wished me to take a letter to Sir Guy Carleton, offering his submission to the King. I agreed to a rendezvous at Unadilla, where a large hut was to be erected in an open space between his encampment and ours, a mile apart from each. We covenanted to leave our arms behind us, and to meet with only ten men in the suite of each. This was done.
‘We shook hands and exchanged general talk, he seeking to know my mind, I to know his. The old man spoke much about peace and how greatly to the advantage of the Mohawk nation it would be if we embraced the sacred cause of Liberty, or at least remained neuter. I spoke to him like a brother, warning him that the cause of rebellion was one accursed of God. He grew impatient. He asked me how much money Sir Guy Carleton had paid me for my services in the cause of tyranny, and undertook to double this sum and to give every member of my suite a rifle-gun and other gifts if we would join his forces. I was offended. I asked, did he take us for dogs? I sent my warriors running back for their rifle-guns to show him that we were not beggars. They discharged a volley in the air and uttered a war-whoop, to his great consternation. He said: “You have broken the cov enant,” and he was right. For in my impetuosity I had forgotten that no weapons were to be brought to the hut. Then he said: “Tomorrow let us meet again, tomorrow in the morning, and talk quietly without anger on these matters.” We agreed that only four of us were to be present at the meeting.
‘That evening a squaw, who was living as the wife of an American named Waggoner, came secretly to me; she made me swear to spare her husband if she disclosed a plot to take my life. I swore. She was a good woman and to be trusted. “Father,” she said, “tomorrow the General and his three men, my husband among them, will have pistols concealed in their shifts. When he proffers you his snuff-box and you go forward to take a pinch, it will be the signal to them to murder you with a volley.”
‘The next day I went to the hut with my three men, all unarmed. The General spoke to me very mildly, like a dove, and asked me whether it would be the act of a Christian to permit savages to fall upon my co-reli-gionists, to burn, kill, and destroy them. I replied: “When I was at Lebanon, learning at the feet of the Rev. Dr Wheelock, he told me that war was evil. But, Neighbour Herkimer, were not your people the first to take up arms in this war?” “Never mind about that,” said he hotly. “God damn it, my friend, we were but defending our liberties.” I said: “The Rev. Dr Wheelock, that excellent man, taught me and my friends that the first duty of a Christian was to fear God, and the second to honour the King. Now you both blaspheme God and try to win me, by bribery, to take up arms against your King.” He turned pale with rage and said to me: “Let us not bandy arguments, Captain Brant, but know each other for open foes, since you will not listen to the voice of conscience. Let me offer you a pinch…”
‘I interrupted him: “No, General Herkimer, I will have none of your SNUFF.” At that word, which was a signal, five hundred of my warriors sprang from the long grass where they had lain concealed, dressed in their war-paint and brandishing their arms. “Now,” says I, “you see, Neighbour Herkimer, how unwise it would have been for me to accept your snuff. I would have sneezed you into your graves. You are in my power, but since we have been friends and neighbours, I will not take advantage of you. We have both been at fault, I to forget yesterday that rifles were not to be brought near to the hut; you to come here today with a pistol concealed in the bosom of your shirt. But let me assure you of this, that if ever we meet again before the hatchet is buried, I know well which scalp, of our two, will adorn the other’s wigwam.” So we came away through the woods, and here I am.’
‘Can such treachery be possible?’ I asked. ‘I have heard that General Herkimer is much regarded among the Americans as a gentleman of honour.’
‘That may be,’ he replied. ‘But with American gentlemen there is this reservation to their code of honour: as none would ever believe the oath either of a whore or an Indian, so one would not hold oneself bound by any oath sworn to a whore or an Indian. They seldom cloak their sentiments, neither. I would rather a thousand times deal with a poor French farmer or a raw British subaltern officer than with General Washington himself, who is the most honourable man in their whole army, barring only Philip Schuyler.’
It came into my mind to ask him what his opinion was upon negro slavery, which I regarded as a detestable practice and incompatible with the Americans’ claim in their Declaration of Independence that all men have an inalienable right to be free. Says he: ‘That is a matter for their consciences. The Congress of Massachusetts raised the subject two years ago, but upon their considering the ill effect that a motion condemning slavery would have upon their friends in the South, the matter was allowed to subside. I am told that General Washington is an attentive and just master to his slaves, and there are many like him in this respect. Should I settle down to farm an estate when this war is over, I should assuredly employ negro slaves. No Indian is apt to the labour of farming, and no white man would care to work for an Indian. Besides, the blessed Bible countenances slavery, saying, “Ham shall serve his brethren.”’
I objected to this conclusion, declaring that there was a world of difference between service and slavery. Then he told me a fable current among the Indians, which I consider not unworthy of repetition here.
The Great Spirit, God, made the world. It was solitary and very lovely to look upon. The forests were rich in game and fruit, the prairies abounded in deer, elk, and buffalo, the rivers were well stocked with fish. There were also countless bears, beavers, and other fat animals, but no sentient being was present to enjoy these good things. God then spoke: ‘Let us make man.’ And man was made; but when he came up before his Maker he was of a pale, whiteish colour. God was sorry, He had pity on the poor pale creature and did not resolve him into his original elements, but permitted him to live. God tried once more, determined to improve upon his handsel task, but inadvertently ran to the other extreme, making his second man of a black colour. He liked this black man even less than the white, but at the third trial he was fortunate enough to accomplish his design: he made a red man, and was content.
These three men were very poor at the first. They had no lodges, no houses, no tools, no traps – nothing. All of a sudden down came three large chests from the sky on ropes; and the three men, the red, the white, and the black, watched their gradual descent. They landed in a meadow. God said: ‘My poor white eldest-begotten, you shall have the privilege of first choice from these boxes. Open them, examine them, choose your portion.’ The white man opened, looked, chose. The chest was filled with pens, ink, paper, sand-castors, spectacles, nightcaps, chairs and tables. He put spectacles on his nose, a nightcap on his head, took a pen in hand, sat down on a chair at a table, and began writing out his accounts; nor did he pay any further attention to the proceedings. God thrust the black man aside and said, ‘I do not like you, the red man has the next choice.’ The red man chose a box filled with tomahawks, war-clubs, traps, knives, calumets, and a variety of other useful objects. He thanked his Maker and went off proudly into the wilderness. God laughed with pleasure. The black man had what was left. It was a chest full of hoes, sickles, water-buckets, ox-whips and shackles; and this slavish lot has been the lot of the negro ever since, and so will ever be.
I should add to this that the Indian would slay a negro with as much unconcern as a dog or a cat. I heard of an Indian woman of rank who had a negro slave captured in a raid from an estate in Virginia; application was made to her for the return of this negro, who was a remarkably tall, handsome fellow. She listened quietly to the American officers who came after their property, but was determined not to gratify them. Instead, she stepped inside her lodge, fetched a large knife and walking up to her slave, without any sign of emotion plunged it into his belly. ‘Now,’ she said to the Virginians, ‘you can have him if you wish.’ The negro lay writhing on the ground in agony until one of the warriors compassionately put him out of his pain with a blow of a tomahawk.
While I was thus agreeably conversing with Captain Brant, his companion had sidled out of the room and begun conversing with the men in the lower apartment. Hearing angry oaths, loud laughter, and shrill falsetto cries, I hastily drew out the wedge, or stopper, from a musket-hole in the floor and gazed down. Sweet Yellow Head had taken a fancy to Sergeant Buchanan, who had just entered the room, and now pursued him with disgusting advances, which the troops found very ludicrous but which enraged the Sergeant beyond measure. He flung the Indian from him, seized a musket and would have shot him had I not loudly bawled out: ‘No, no!’ from above him. This prompted Corporal Terry Reeves, who stood by, to knock up the musket and disarm him; and I then hurriedly descended the ladder by way of the trap-door.
Thayendanegea came after me, and thanked Terry and myself for our good services. Said he: ‘If this sergeant had killed my poor cousin, I should have been obliged in honour to avenge the death, as his nearest relation. I am deeply grateful that no blood has been shed. My poor cousin is a bardash, born neither one thing nor the other; God knows the reason but not I. He is a brave man and the fleetest on his feet of our whole nation. He has married three men and been faithless to all. I should not have let him out of my sight.’
He called his cousin to him, and publicly chastised him, to the great amusement of the barrack-room. Thereupon, bidding me good-day and assuring me that I could always call upon his services were I ever in need of them, he went off under the escort of Terry Reeves and another soldier in the direction of the camp, taking Sweet Yellow Head with him. On the following day another Indian arrived at the block-house with a fine buck upon his shoulders and a great basket of cranberries in his hand, as a present from Thayendanegea for myself. I recognized the Indian as Strong Soup, his locks still untrimmed, his face still black in mourning. He told me that his squaw having died, his Sachem had at length permitted him to join the war-party; soon his luck would change. I would have given him a present; but he refused, saying that Theyendanegea had forbidden him either to ask for or accept anything, unless it were a fill for his pipe. The fresh meat was so seasonable that I filled his pouch with tobacco, and he appeared gratified. He skinned the buck for me very dexterously and cut it into steaks. The cranberries we boiled in maple sugar.