ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

The

known to be from Ellinipsico, the son of Cornstalk. Americans brought him also into their toils as a hostage, and were thankful that they had thus secured to themselves peace; as if iniquity and deception ever secured that first condition of all good! Another day rolled by, and the three captives sat waiting what time would bring. On the third day, two savages, unknown to the whites, shot one of the white hunters, toward evening. Instantly the dead man's comrades raised the cry, "Kill the red dogs in the fort." Arbuckle tried to stop them, but they were men of blood, and their wrath was up. The Captain's own life was threatened, if he offered any hindrance. They rushed to the house where the captives were confined; Cornstalk met them at the door, and fell, pierced with seven bullets; his son and Redhawk died also, less calmly than their veteran companion, and more painfully. From that hour peace was not to be hoped for.

But this treachery, closed by murder, on the part of the Americans, though perhaps the immediate cause of the outbreak in the West, was not, in any degree, the cause of the great border war. Two years had been spent by Britain in arranging and organizing that war. Cornstalk fell into the snare, because that war was organized. Before his death the whole Cherokee contest was begun and ended, and Brant, in person, had commanded an expedition against Cherry Valley, which was attended with slight results, but was still proof of the condition of matters and the temper of men. And, almost at the moment when Cornstalk was dying upon the banks of the Ohio, there was a Congress gathering at Oswego, under the eye of Colonel Johnson, "to eat the flesh and drink the blood of a Bostonian "; in other words, to arrange finally the measures which should be taken against the devoted rebels by Christian brethren and their heathen allies.*

And here, before entering upon the actual bloodshed, it may be as well, perhaps, to say what we have to say upon the comparative merits, or demerits, of the parties to the revolutionary contest, in respect to their measures for the employment of the Indians.

The first mention of the subject, which we meet with, is in the Address of the Massachusetts Congress to the Iro

[blocks in formation]

quois, in April, 1775. In that they say, that they hear the British are exciting the savages against the colonies; and they ask the Six Nations to aid them, or stand quiet.* It would seem, then, that, even before the battle of Lexington, both parties had applied to the Indians, and sought an alliance. Nor was this strange or reprehensible. Both parties had been used to the employment of the natives in contests between the whites, and both knew that a portion of the coming struggle, at least, must be inland, among the tribes of red men, and that those tribes could not be expected to stand wholly neutral. In the outset, therefore, both parties were of the same mind and pursued the same course. The Congress of the United Colonies, however, during 1775, and until the summer of 1776, advocated merely the attempt to keep the Indians out of the contest entirely, and instructed the commissioners, appointed in the several departments, to do so. But England was of another mind. Promises and threats were both used to induce the savages to act with her, though, at first, it would seem, to little purpose, even the Canada tribe of Caghnawagas having offered their aid to the Americans. When Britain, however, became victorious in the North, and particularly after the battle of the Cedars, in May, 1776, the wild men began to think of holding to her side, their policy being, most justly, in all quarrels of the whites, to stick by the strongest. Then it was, in June, 1776, that Congress resolved to do what Washington had advised in the previous April, that is, to employ the savages in active warfare. Upon the 19th of April the Commander-in-chief wrote to Congress, saying, that, as the Indians would soon be engaged, either for or against, he would suggest, that they be employed for the colonies; ‡ upon the 3d of May, the report on this was considered; upon the 25th of May, it was resolved to be highly expedient to engage the Indians for the American service; and, upon the 3d of June, the General was empowered to raise two thousand to be employed in Canada. Upon the 17th of June, Washington was authorized to employ them where he pleased, and to offer them rewards for prisoners; and, upon the 8th of July, he was empowered to call

* Sparks's Washington, Vol. III. p. 495. Ibid., p. 55. Ibid., p. 364.

out as many of the Nova Scotia and neighbouring tribes as he saw fit.*

Such was the course of proceeding, on the part of the colonies, with regard to the employment of the Indians. The steps, at the time, were secret, but now the whole story is before the world. Not so, however, with regard to the acts of England; as to them, we have the records of but few placed within our reach. One thing, however, is known, namely, that, while the colonies offered their allies of the woods rewards for prisoners, some of the British agents gave them money for scalps. And this leads us to speak of a distinction, which we would have kept in mind by those who read our remarks, with regard to the employment of the savages. It is this; that whatever tends to produce animosity between the individuals of two warring nations is to be avoided, as leading inevitably to enmity during peace, and thence to renewed war. The great cause of the bitterness of frontier and civil wars, is the individual hatred that mingles with, and envenoms, the public hostility. This same individual feeling had much to do with the perpetual warfare of those times, when men fought hand to hand, instead of destroying whole ranks by cannon and musket shot; and the production of this individual feeling is one of the great, peculiar objections to privateering. Now, so far as the employment of the Indians helped to produce this personal, rather than public hatred, we think it wholly objectionable. We do not see, that it would help to do this necessarily, and we do not learn, that it did in fact. But the British plan of paying the savages for scalps, and thus setting a bounty on murder, one may well conceive, would produce personal, angry feelings, because it was unusual; whereas the employment of the red men, as between those warring in America, was not so.

We regard the British, then, as more culpable than the colonists in three respects; first, for trying to involve the Indians, in the South, West, and North, from the outset, ‡ whereas the Americans tried to keep them out of the contest for more than a year; secondly, for offering money for scalps,

*Secret Journals, Vol. I. pp. 43-47. Jefferson's Writings, Vol. 1.

p. 456.

Not culpable because the natives were savages, but because they were not in war, and the British sought to involve them in war. The wrong would have been the same, had it been a civilized neighbour whom they sought to bring into the quarrel.

an unusual measure, and one calculated to irritate individual feeling; and thirdly, for keeping the whole matter in the dark to this day.

Having disposed, thus summarily, of a point that might be discoursed on through twenty pages or more, we return to our history.

It was some time in July, probably, that Guy Johnson, with his loyalist and Indian friends, ate their Bostonian at Oswego. He was there, soon after, joined by Colonel St. Leger, with about two hundred British regulars, who, in conjunction with the Tories and savages, were to move up the river, and across to Fort Schuyler, and thence down the Mohawk to join Burgoyne on the Hudson. It was a pleasantly arranged plan, and does credit to the British ministers. New England, containing the most rebellious of the rebel provinces, was to be cut off from her sisters, and the same blow which did this was to clear the Mohawk Valley of its Whig population, and so leave all north of New York the King's own. A good plan it was; but it failed. Burgoyne, as we all know, found a lion in his path; and his coöperator, St. Leger, was not more happy.

This last-named officer, with seventeen hundred men, got under way toward the last of July. Of his march and proceedings, Mr. Stone gives a clear and full account from the original papers.* His van-guard, with which was Brant, came before Fort Schuyler on the 2d of August, just after a reinforcement of two hundred men, and several boat-loads of provisions, had been safely housed. The main British force reached the post on the 3d. St. Leger, as we have said, had seventeen hundred men ; Colonel Gansevoort, who commanded the Americans, had seven hundred and fifty, with food and powder, however, for six weeks. Thus supplied, the provincials were prepared to stand a strong siege, although their works were in a bad condition. One thing they needed, a flag; but this they soon furnished from red and white shirts, and a blue camblet cloak which was at hand, and the stars and stripes were, in a little while, waving above them.

Meantime, news having gone down the Mohawk of the approach of the British army, the militia of that region were

[blocks in formation]

called in, and assembled at German Flats, to the number of near a thousand, under the command of General Herkimer. This brave old officer, while on his march to the relief of Fort Schuyler, was induced, by circumstances related by Mr. Stone, to doubt the propriety of advancing; but, being taunted by some of his subordinates with Toryism and cowardice, he suffered his judgment to be overruled, and gave the order to march on. His body of untrained soldiers marched on at the command, in such form and disposition as to expose themselves not a little. By and by they came to a ravine. In the same loose order, in which they had hitherto been advancing, they entered it. When nearly the whole body of troops were within its limits, those in advance and upon the flanks were shot down by an unseen enemy, and the forest rang with the true Indian yell. It was Brant and his warriors; and the battle that followed is known as the battle of Oriskany. The British force, under the direction of Brant, as Mr. Stone thinks, had disposed itself in a circular form, so that, no sooner had the provincials entered through a gap left at one point of the circle, than the whole of them were surrounded, with the exception of the rear-guard, which ran away. And then began one of those contests which are very like to the battles of Homer and Scott, had we but a Homer or Scott to describe them; a battle of man against man; of individual prowess; of individual glory; not a battle of manœuvre, (which, despite its name, is not handwork, but head-work,) but of the true hand-work, and well worthy of being sung, if we could but get rid of the Dutch names of Herkimer, and Visscher, and Van Sluyck. It was a battle too, we regret to say, of that individual hatred which the knights of old did not feel for one another. Here were the rebels who had denied their king; there the traitors who were fighting against their country. Bitter indeed was the feeling between them, brother even seeking the life of brother.

Two men, especially, distinguished themselves on that day, Captain Gardinier and Captain Dillinback. The former, seeing one of his men seized by a pretended friend, but real enemy, sprang upon the captor, and levelled him with his spear, (for he fought with the arms as well as the spirit of Hector and Caur-de-lion,) and rescued the man. Others sprang upon him. The first that came, "with mor

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »