THE LONG HOUSE OF THE IROQUOIS
The Indian country to be invaded by Sullivan stretched from the Hudson
to Niagara Falls, and was called by the Iroquois “The Long House.” To
this long house there were four “doors,” the northern at Oswego, the
southern at Tioga Point, the eastern at Schenectady, and the western at
Niagara.
In 1779 there were only a few settlements of the white man outside of a
thin line in the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys. The Six Nations of Iroquois,
the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and Tuscaroras, were
federated together and usually acted as a whole. Many of the Mohawks
living near the settlements were friendly to the American cause, and
almost the entire Oneida tribe had been won over to loyalty to the
Continental Congress through the efforts of Dominie Kirkland, afterwards
a chaplain in Sullivan’s army and the founder of Hamilton College. He
was one of the few white men who had been as far west as the great
“castle” of the Senecas, on Seneca Lake.
The Tuscaroras lived east of Cayuga Lake, the Cayugas between the
largest two of the “finger lakes,” Cayuga and Seneca. The Onondagas
dwelt around the lake which takes their name, and the Senecas, in the
region between the lake named after them and the Genesee river. Roughly
speaking, we may think of Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Elmira, Geneva
and Ithaca as being the centers of the six tribes mentioned in their
order, the central council-fire being with the Onondagas, near Syracuse.
The Senecas were, in 1779, the largest and most active of the tribes,
and “the Seneca country” was a general name for the great region which
Sullivan was to traverse. Our soldiers were to enter the Long House
through the southern door, at Tioga Point, near which, on the fertile
slope of the valley, was Esthertown, or the Indian Queen Esther’s
country and castle. One of their hardest marches would be through the
swampy valley stretching from the town of Chemung west of Esthertown to
the castle of Queen Catherine Montour, her sister, at Montour Falls, N.
Y.
The mention of Queen Esther’s name recalls the fact that the savages
were not entirely alone in their schemes of hostility, but that the
brain and hands of white men assisted them in their bloody forays.
Indeed, it was one of the counts in the Declaration of Independence that
the colonies were justified in their war of independence, because George
III. “has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the
merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” There
were several hundred white men aiding and abetting the Indians in the
arts of war and in methods of fortification. Besides the British
regulars, Johnson’s Greens, loyalists, Canadians and half-breeds, two of
the most eminent Iroquois women called “Queens” had white blood in their
veins. Both boasted descent from the French Count Frontenac, and were
married to powerful chiefs. Esther, at Sheshequin, near Tioga Point, and
Catherine, at Montour Falls, near the modern Watkins Glen, were the
owners of large and well-worked corn fields and of fenced gardens, of
horses, cattle, hogs, and other live stock and of houses made of sawed
and carved timber and spoken of as “palaces.”
It must not be forgotten that from the missionaries of France, who had
at various times lived among the Indians for over a hundred years, and
from the traders, gunsmiths, and friendly whites of various disposition
and ability, supported by the British government, the Iroquois Indians
had reached a comparatively high point of progress. Even when the white
men first met them these federated warriors were the most advanced of
all others within the limits of the United States. They had their own
myths and legends. They met in council and had orators to argue both
sides of a question or proposal. They sent embassies from one tribe to
another, and these envoys were very ceremonious and careful in dress and
etiquette. When they made a treaty of peace they solemnly buried the
hatchet and smoked the calumet, or pipe of friendship. To dig up the
same weapon meant war. Instead of our letters, seals, and documents of
paper and parchment, they used wampum made of shells drilled and laced
together, which in belts or strings served as money, as messages, as
historical records. Some of the Indian orators, Logan, Red Jacket and
others, were very famous. To become such these men practiced elocution
and rhetoric very much the same as do our public speakers. As the
Iroquois raised and stored corn and other vegetable foods, they were
able to wage systematic war and go on long campaigns. Thus they excelled
and conquered the other savages. When they left the stone age, by
obtaining guns from Europeans, their lust of conquest was fired more
than ever. When the white men of Pennsylvania and Virginia paid the
Indians for lands, the avarice of the Iroquois was still further
excited. Many tribes, even as far as Canada and the Mississippi Valley,
were vassals of the confederacy. In the Iroquois we see the highest type
of pagan man.
Our debt to the Indian is very great. He taught our fathers the use of
tobacco, maple sugar, corn, succotash and various methods of getting
food, besides the use of the birch bark canoe, the moccasin, and the
snow shoe.
The Iroquois method of raising corn was very ingenious. On the lands in
river valleys this was easy enough, yet they could win crops even in the
forest. This they did by “girdling.” They cut round the tree trunk near
the ground, and again about ten feet higher, and then stripped off the
bark between the spaces girdled by the knife or hatchet. This caused the
tree to wither and the leaves to fall, quickly letting in the sunshine
on the ground. Thus, the Indian without the trouble of chopping down the
trees and clearing the land got at once the benefit of the soil. In the
autumn, by burning the underbrush and trees, the ground was enriched and
the space easily cleared for next year’s crop. In almost every Iroquois
village there were store houses made of bark or timber, in which the
grain was saved.
The dwellings or long houses were made of wooden framework covered with
bark and built in the form of a modern compartment house. Each had a
long hall or passageway through the middle, with rooms on either side,
one for each family, with a fireplace in the center and the sleeping
bunks against the wall. The walls of these rooms were decorated with
bows and arrows, guns and equipments, and the prizes of the chase, which
all hunters love, and of war, over which warriors gloat. They had also
more horrible ornaments in the scalps of their enemies, both white and
red. These, stretched and dried on hoops, were often painted and
decorated with feathers and strings dyed in bright colors which had
symbolic significance.
Many of Sullivan’s soldiers, who enlisted hoping to rescue white
captives, often their own relatives, were able to recognize in the
Iroquois houses the hair and scalps of fathers, brothers, wives,
children, neighbors or friends. In the case of women, it was especially
easy to do this.
At several places where hill and ravine, or the situation of the rivers
and the inclosed land made natural fortresses, the Iroquois had
“castles.” These were made by driving three rows of young trees,
sharpened at the ends, into the ground to form a palisade which was
fastened at the top. Inside of these were platforms, on which warriors
could stand and shoot arrows or balls against besiegers. Besides barring
the gate tightly, they had heaps of stones ready to throw on the heads
of near assailants and tubs of water prepared to put out fires. It was
expected that the artillery would have to be used against these. The
orders were to burn all the Indian houses and utterly destroy the crops
so that the country would be left uninhabitable. There was no mistake
about the orders of Washington on this point.
While the army was assembling and the stores, boats and horses were in
preparation, other expeditions on a smaller scale had been attempted.
The State of New York, in the autumn of 1778, attempted to send an
expedition among the Mohawks and Onondagas, but on account of the
lateness of the season it was abandoned. In the following year, however,
on April 19, Colonel Van Schaick leading, 558 men of the First New York
regiment made a forced march of 180 miles in six days against the
Onondagas. He burned three of their towns with their storehouses of
food, slew twelve and took prisoners thirty-three of the savages. With
the Onondagas was the hearthstone of the confederacy, and a terrible
humbling done to the Iroquois pride was the extinguishing of the council
fire.
Pennsylvania was also active in clearing the path for Sullivan. In
September, 1778, Colonel Thomas Hartley with about two hundred soldiers
of the Eleventh Pennsylvania regiment, with seventeen horses, advanced
northward from Sunbury up the Lycoming river and into a region of
swamps, mountains, defiles and rocks. His especial object was to destroy
the power of Queen Esther. This squaw had made herself very active in
the massacre at Wyoming. She compelled the prisoners of war to kneel in
a circle around a boulder, still called “Queen Esther’s Rock,” and
tomahawked them one after another. This was in revenge for her son
killed in a skirmish. At Sheshequin, near Tioga Point, Hartley
destroyed, by the torch, her castle and everything else that could be
turned to ashes. Advancing up the Chemung Valley, towards Newtown, the
big Indian town on the flats, near modern Elmira, he found the enemy in
force and was obliged to return. On his way he cleverly defeated the
Indians and Tories who had tried to surround him. He and his men waded
or swam the Lycoming river no fewer than twenty times. He reached
Sunbury again, October 5, having marched nearly three hundred miles,
capturing among other spoil fifty head of cattle and twenty-eight
canoes. In his various battles and skirmishes he lost four men, but
killed eleven of the enemy and took fifteen prisoners. His regiment was
reorganized and became “the new Eleventh regiment,” under Colonel Adam
Hubley, which formed part of Sullivan’s army and ranked among his most
effective troops.
One has but to study the map of Eastern Pennsylvania, a region rich in
swamps, rocks, hills and mountain ranges, to see what difficulties
awaited the general who was to move a large body of troops, with
artillery and wagon trains, from Easton to Wyoming. To go up the Lehigh
Valley was impossible, for between its headwaters and the Susquehanna
were hills insurmountable. On the steel tracks of to-day a double force
of engine power is required. So from Easton, through the Blue Mountains
and Wind Gap, a road was cut through the forest, the stones taken out,
the boulders stacked, the miry hollows corduroyed and the swamps filled.
Marvelous to relate, this military road, about seventy miles long, was
built within ten days. It was indeed one of the wonders of the
Revolution. Several hundred road builders, mostly Continental soldiers,
under Colonels Spencer and Van Cortlandt, did the work in parties, while
guarded by outlying scouts and riflemen. To-day the turnpike road and
the iron rails and bridges of the great railway companies traverse the
region in which “The Sullivan Road” once was, but the achievements of
the modern engineers are in no way more wonderful. In five days the
three brigades of Poor’s New Hampshire men, Hand’s Pennsylvania Light
Corps and Maxwell’s New Jerseymen, with Proctor’s artillery and the
wagon trains, made the march over the new road. Their camps were at Wind
Gap, Larner’s on the Pocono, “Chowder Camp,” near the Tobyhanna, on the
creek near the “Shades of Death,” and at “Great Meadows,” or Bullock’s.
Some of the relics of the road builders, including the section of a tree
carved with the camp name of “Hell’s Kitchen,” are still preserved.
By the building of the military road from Easton to Wyoming, and through
Hartley’s and Van Schaick’s raids, the enemy was now fully convinced
that an invading army was being made ready for their chastisement.
Rousing the whole confederacy of the Six Nations, Brant, the Mohawk, and
Butler, the Tory, sent their warriors to make a series of attacks on the
American settlements, hoping thus to distract and scatter the coming
avengers. Sullivan, however, understood these tactics. He refused to
detach any pursuing parties, and pressed right on. In April he had sent
his advance guard of two hundred of the Eleventh Pennsylvania under
Major Powell to strengthen the garrison at Wyoming. On the 23d, when not
far from the site of Wilkes-Barre, the party having reached, as they
thought, nearly the end of their journey, were desirous of entering the
settlement in good order and in fine personal appearance. They halted,
therefore, to brush and clean themselves, while the officers put on
their coats and ruffles. Then marching forward, but having their
attention called from possible present danger by the presence of a deer
crossing their path, they were led into an Indian ambuscade, in which
several of them were killed. In 1896 a monument was reared to their
memory by the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution.
Another incident previous to the movement of Sullivan’s force was in the
attack, by one hundred British and two hundred Indians under command of
Captain McDonald, fifteen miles above Northumberland, Pa., on Freeland’s
Fort. This they surrounded on the 28th of July, 1779, and compelled the
garrison of thirty-two men to surrender. They also ambuscaded Captain
Boon’s party, which had marched to their relief, killing fourteen of his
men.
During the same week Brant with a party of warriors moved down the
Wallkill valley, destroying the Minisink settlements in Orange county,
New York, killing many and making many prisoners. They decoyed into an
ambush more than 150 militia from Goshen, of whom over 100 were slain.
Brant then moved on to the destruction of the settlement of Lackawaxen,
which was laid in ashes and the inhabitants slain.
All this was done to distract and scatter the avenging army, but every
effort failed, and the Continentals moved steadily on.
General Sullivan was implored, by messengers who brought him the
terrible news, to march to the relief of the burned settlements. Wisely
and firmly he refused to detach a single soldier from his column. He
knew full well that advance into the enemy’s country would compel both
red and white foes to draw away their forces and concentrate. This
policy was really the best means of protecting the settlements. He
therefore hastened his preparations, so as to move on at the first
moment possible. On July 31, at 1 P. M., he broke camp at Wyoming.
Determined not to be led into ambush or to be “Braddocked,” he threw out
the riflemen in advance, to guard against surprise, and moved in line of
battle. The flotilla of boats, the line of twelve hundred pack horses
and seven hundred cattle, the park of artillery and the brigades of
infantry being all ready, the signal was given by firing a cannon on the
_Adventurer_, Proctor’s flagboat lying in the Susquehanna. The march
from Wyoming to Tioga Point, through swamps and over frightful
precipices, was safely made in good order. The procession of boats on
the water and of soldiers on land were each several miles long. Reaching
Sheshequin on the Susquehanna, the soldiers faced the flood, locked arms
and forded the swiftly flowing river at where Milan, Pa., now stands,
and then again crossed the stream to reach the peninsula at Tioga Point,
where they encamped, awaiting the arrival of their right wing, Clinton’s
New York brigade.