The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.
I shall not easily forget the early breakfast next morning, or the calm
yet serious air with which my mother and two unmarried sisters went about
the few remaining duties of preparing for my departure. For all they said,
they might have been getting me ready for a fishing excursion, but it
would be wrong to assume that they did not think as gravely as if they had
flooded the kitchen with tears.
Little has been said of these good women in the course of my story, for
the reason that Fate gave them very little to do with it, and the
narrative is full long as it is, without the burden of extraneous
personages. But I would not have it thought that we did not all love one
another, and stand up for one another, because we kept cool about it.
During this last year, in truth, my mother and I had seen more of each
other than for all the time before since my infancy, and in the main had
got on admirably together. Despite the affectation of indifference in her
letter, she did not lack for pride in my being a major; it is true that
she exhibited little of this emotion to me, fearing its effect upon my
vanity, doubtless, but her neighbors and gossips heard a good deal from
it, I fancy. It was in her nature to be proud, and she had right to be;
for what other widow in the Valley, left in sore poverty with a household
of children, had, like her, by individual exertions, thrift, and keen
management, brought all that family well up, purchased and paid for her
own homestead and farm, and laid by enough for a comfortable old age? Not
one! She therefore was justified in respecting herself and exacting
respect from others, and it pleased me that she should have satisfaction
as well in my advancement. But she did ruffle me sometimes by seeking to
manage my business for me--she never for a moment doubting that it was
within her ability to make a much better major than I was--and by ever and
anon selecting some Valley maiden for me to marry. This last became a
veritable infliction, so that I finally assured her I should never
marry--my heart being irrevocably fixed upon a hopelessly
unattainable ideal.
I desired her to suppose that this referred to some Albany woman, but I
was never skilful in indirection, and I do not believe that she was at
all deceived.
The time came soon enough when I must say good-by. My carefully packed
bags were carried out and fastened to the saddle. Tall, slender,
high-browed Margaret sadly sewed a new cockade of her own making upon my
hat, and round-faced, red-cheeked Gertrude tied my sash and belt about me
in silence. I kissed them both with more feeling than in all their lives
before I had known for them, and when my mother followed me to the
horse-block, and embraced me again, the tears could not be kept back.
After all, I was her only boy, and it was to war in its deadliest form
that I was going.
And then the thought came to me--how often in that cruel week it had come
to fathers, husbands, brothers, in this sunny Valley of ours, leaving
homes they should never see again!--that nothing but our right arms could
save these women, my own flesh and blood, from the hatchet and
scalping-knife.
I swung myself into the saddle sternly at this thought, and gripped the
reins hard and pushed my weight upon the stirrups. By all the gods, I
should not take this ride for nothing!
"Be of good heart, mother," I said, between my teeth. "We shall drive the
scoundrels back--such as we do not feed to the wolves."
"Ay! And do you your part!" said this fine old daughter of the men who
through eighty years of warfare broke the back of Spain. "Remember that
you are a Van Hoorn!"
"I shall not forget."
"And is that young Philip Cross--_her_ husband--with Johnson's crew?"
"Yes, he is."
"Then if he gets back to Canada alive, you are not the man your
grandfather Baltus was!"
These were her last words, and they rang in my ears long after I had
joined Fonda and Sammons at Caughnawaga, and we had started westward to
overtake the regiment. If I could find this Philip Cross, there was
nothing more fixed in my mind than the resolve to kill him.
We rode for the most part without conversation along the rough, sun-baked
road, the ruts of which had here and there been trampled into fine dust by
the feet of the soldiers marching before. When we passed houses near the
highway, women and children came to the doors to watch us; other women and
children we could see working in the gardens or among the rows of tall
corn. But save for now and then an aged gaffer, sitting in the sunshine
with his pipe, there were no men. All those who could bear a musket were
gone to meet the invasion. Two years of war in other parts had drained the
Valley of many of its young men, who could not bear peace at home while
there were battles at the North or in the Jerseys, and were serving in
every army which Congress controlled, from Champlain and the Delaware to
Charleston. And now this levy for home defence had swept the farms clean.
We had late dinner, I remember, at the house of stout old Peter Wormuth,
near the Palatine church. Both he and his son Matthew--a friend of mine
from boyhood, who was to survive Oriskany only to be shot down near Cherry
Valley next year by Joseph Brant--had of course gone forward with the
Palatine militia. The women gave us food and drink, and I recall that
Matthew's young wife, who had been Gertrude Shoemaker and was General
Herkimer's niece, wept bitterly when we left, and we shouted back to her
promises to keep watch over her husband. It is curious to think that when
I next saw this young woman, some years later, she was the wife of Major
John Frey.
It was a stiff ride on to overtake the stalwart yeomen of our regiment,
which we did not far from a point opposite the upper Canajoharie Castle.
The men had halted here, weary after their long, hot march, and were
sprawling on the grass and in the shade of the bushes. The sun was getting
low on the distant hills of the Little Falls, and there came up a
refreshing stir of air from the river. Some were for encamping here for
the night; others favored going on to the Falls. It annoyed me somewhat to
find that this question was apparently to be left to the men themselves,
Colonel Visscher not seeming able or disposed to decide for himself.
Across the stream, in the golden August haze, we could see the roofs of
the Mohawks' village--or castle as they called it. Some of the men idly
proposed to go over and stampede or clear out this nest of red vermin, but
the idea was not seriously taken up. Perhaps if it had been, much might
have been changed for the better. Nothing is clearer than that Molly
Brant, who with her bastard brood and other Mohawk women was then living
there, sent up an emissary to warn her brother Joseph of our coming, and
that it was upon this information he acted to such fell purpose. Doubtless
if we had gone over and seized the castle and its inmates then, that
messenger would never have been sent. But we are all wise when we
look backward.
* * * * *
By the afternoon of the next day, August 3, the mustering at Fort Dayton
was complete. No one of the thirty-three companies of Tryon County militia
was absent, and though some sent barely a score of men, still no more
were to be expected Such as the little army was, it must suffice. There
were of more or less trained militiamen nearly six hundred. Of artisan
volunteers, of farmers who had no place in the regular company formations,
and of citizens whose anxiety to be present was unfortunately much in
excess of their utility, there were enough to bring the entire total up to
perhaps two-score over eight hundred. Our real and effective fighting
force was about half-way between these two figures--I should say about
seven hundred strong.
It was the first time that the whole Tryon militia had been gathered
together, and we looked one another over with curiosity. Though called
into common action by a common peril, the nearness of which made the
Mohawk Valley seem a very small place and its people all close neighbors,
the men assembled here represented the partial settlement of a country
larger than any one of several European monarchies.
As there were all sorts and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue
and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and
linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and
huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of head-gear and
equipment, all fashions of faces. There were Germans of half a dozen
different types, there were Dutch, there were Irish and Scotch
Presbyterians, there were stray French Huguenots, and even Englishmen, and
here and there a Yankee settler from New England. Many there were who
with difficulty understood each other, as when the Scotch Campbells and
Clydes of Cherry Valley, for example, essayed to talk with the
bush-Germans from above Zimmerman's.
Notable among the chief men of the communities here, so to speak, huddled
together for safety, was old Isaac Paris, the foremost man of Stone
Arabia. He should now be something over sixty years of age, yet had
children at home scarce out of the cradle, and was so hale and strong in
bearing that he seemed no less fit for battle and hardship than his
strapping son Peter, who was not yet eighteen. These two laid their lives
down together within this dread week of which I write. I shall never
forget how fine and resolute a man the old colonel looked, with his good
clothes of citizen make, as became a member of the State Senate and one of
the Committee of Safety, yet with as martial a bearing as any. He was a
Frenchman from Strasbourg, but spoke like a German; no man of us all
looked forward to fighting with greater appetite, though he had been
always a quiet merchant and God-fearing, peaceful burgher.
Colonel Ebenezer Cox, a somewhat arrogant and solitary man for whom I had
small liking, now commanded the Canajoharie regiment in place of Herkimer
the Brigadier-General; there were at the head of the other regiments stout
Colonel Peter Bellinger, the capable and determined Colonel Jacob Klock,
and our own Colonel Frederick Visscher. Almost all of the Committee of
Safety were here--most of them being also officers in the militia; but
others, like Paris, John Dygert, Samson Sammons, Jacob Snell, and Samuel
Billington, coming merely as lookers-on. In short, no well-known Whig of
the Valley seemed absent as we looked the gathering over, and scarcely a
familiar family name was lacking on our lists, which it was now my
business to check off.
Whole households of strong men marched together. There were nine Snells,
all relatives, in the patriot ranks; so far as I can remember, there were
five Bellingers, five Seebers, five Wagners, and five Wollovers--and it
may well be five of more than one other family.
The men of the different settlements formed groups by themselves at the
first, and arranged their own separate camping-places for the night. But
soon, as was but natural, they discovered acquaintances from other parts,
and began to mingle, sitting in knots or strolling about the outer
palisades or on the clearing beyond. The older men who had borne a part in
the French war told stories of that time, which, indeed, had now a new,
deep interest for us, not only in that we were to face an invading force
greater and more to be dreaded than was Belletre's, but because we were
encamped on historic ground.
From the gentle knoll upon which the block-house and stockade of Fort
Dayton were now reared we could see the site of that first little Palatine
settlement that had then been wiped so rudely from the face of the earth;
and our men revived memories of that dreadful night, and talked of them in
a low voice as the daylight faded.
The scene affected me most gravely. I looked at the forest-clad range of
northern hills over which the French and Indian horde stole in the night,
and tried to picture their stealthy approach in my mind. Below us, flowing
tranquilly past the willow-hedged farms of the German Flatts settlers, lay
the Mohawk. The white rippling overcast on the water marked the shallow
ford through which the panic-stricken refugees crowded in affright in the
wintry darkness, and where, in the crush, that poor forgotten woman, the
widow of an hour, was trampled under foot, swept away by the
current, drowned!
How miraculous it seemed that her baby girl should have been saved, should
have been brought to Mr. Stewart's door, and placed in the very sanctuary
of my life, by the wilful freak of a little English boy! And how
marvellous that this self-same boy, her husband now, should be among the
captains of a new and more sinister invasion of our Valley, and that I
should be in arms with my neighbors to stay his progress! Truly here was
food enough for thought.
But there was little time for musing. After supper, when most of the rest
were free to please themselves, to gossip, to set night-lines in the river
against breakfast, or to carve rough initials on their powder-horns in
emulation of the art-work displayed by the ingenious Petrie boys, I was
called to the council held by General Herkimer in one of the rooms of the
fort. There were present some of those already mentioned, and I think that
Colonel Wesson, the Massachusetts officer whose troops garrisoned the
place, was from courtesy also invited to take part, though if he was
there he said nothing. Thomas Spencer, the Seneca half-breed blacksmith,
who had throughout been our best friend, had come down, and with him was
Skenandoah, the war-chief of the Oneidas, whom Dominie Kirkland had kept
in our interest.
The thing most talked of, I remember, was the help that these Oneidas
could render us. General Schuyler had all along shrunk from the use of
savages on the Continental side, and hence had required only friendly
neutrality of the Oneidas, whose chief villages lay between us and the
foe. But these Indians now saw clearly, that, if the invasion succeeded,
they would be exterminated not a whit the less ruthlessly by their
Iroquois brothers because they had held aloof. In the grim code of the
savage, as in the softened law of the Christian, those who were not for
him were against him. So the noble old Oneida war-chief had come to us to
say that his people, standing as it were between the devil and the deep
sea, preferred to at least die like men, fighting for their lives.
Skenandoah was reputed even then to be seventy years of age, but he had
the square shoulders, full, corded neck, and sharp glance of a man of
forty. Only last year he died, at a great age--said to be one hundred and
ten years--and was buried on Clinton Hill beside his good friend Kirkland,
whom for half a century he had loved so well.
There were no two opinions in the council: let the Oneidas join us with
their war-party, by all means.
After this had been agreed upon, other matters came up--the quantity of
stores we should take, the precedence of the regiments, the selection of
the men to be sent ahead to apprise Gansevoort of our approach. But these
do not concern the story.
It was after this little gathering had broken up, and the candles been
blown out, that General Herkimer put his hand on my shoulder and said, in
his quaint German dialect:
"Come, walk with me outside the fort."
We went together across the parade in the growing dusk. Most of those whom
we passed recognized my companion, and greeted him--more often, I am bound
to say, with "Guten Abend, Honikol!" than with the salute due to his rank.
There was, indeed, very little notion of discipline in this rough, simple
militia gathering.
We walked outside the ditch to a grassy clearing toward the Flatts where
we could pace back and forth without listeners, and yet could see the
sentries posted at the corners of the forest enclosure. Then the honest
old Brigadier laid open his heart to me.
"I wish to God we were well out of this all," he said, almost gloomily.
I was taken aback at this. Dejection was last to be looked for in this
brave, stout-hearted old frontier fighter. I asked, "What is wrong?"
feeling that surely there must be some cause for despondency I knew
not of.
"_I_ am wrong," he said, simply.
"I do not understand you, Brigadier."
"Say rather that _they_, who ought to know me better, do not understand
me."
"They? Whom do you mean?"
"All these men about us--Isaac Paris, Ebenezer Cox the colonel of my own
regiment, Fritz Visscher, and many more. I can see it--they suspect me.
Nothing could be worse than that."
"Suspect _you_, Brigadier! It is pure fancy! You are dreaming!"
"No, I am very much awake, young man. You have not heard them--I have! It
has been as much as flung in my face to-day that my brother Hon-Yost is a
colonel with Johnson--up yonder."
The little man pointed westward with his hand to where the last red lights
of day were paling over the black line of trees.
"He is with them," he said, bitterly, "and I am blamed for it. Then, too,
my brother Hendrick hides himself away in Stone Arabia, and is not of us,
and his son _is_ with the Tories--up yonder."
"But your brother George is here with us, as true a man as will march
to-morrow."
"Then I have a sister married to Dominie Rosencranz, and he is a Tory; and
another married to Hendrick Frey, and _he_ is a Tory, too. All this is
thrown in my teeth. I do not pass two men with their heads together but I
feel they are talking of this."
"Why should they? You have two other brothers-in-law here in camp--Peter
Bellinger and George Bell. You imagine a vain thing, Brigadier. Believe
me, I have seen or heard no hint of this."
"You would not. You are an officer of the line--the only one here.
Besides, you are Schuyler's man. They would not talk before you."
"But I am Valley born, Valley bred, as much as any of you. Wherein am I
different from the others? Why should they keep me in the dark? They are
all my friends, just as--if you would only believe it--they are yours
as well."
"Young man," said the General, in a low, impressive voice, and filling and
lighting his pipe as he slowly spoke, "if you come back alive, and if you
get to be of my age, you will know some things that you don't know now.
Danger makes men brave; it likewise makes them selfish and jealous. We are
going out together, all of us, to try what, with God's help, we can do.
Behind us, down the river, are our wives or our sweethearts; some of you
leave children, others leave mothers and sisters. We are going forward to
save them from death or worse than death, and to risk our lives for them
and for our homes. Yet, I tell you candidly, there are men here--back here
in this fort--who would almost rather see us fail, than see me win my rank
in the State line."
"I cannot credit that."
"Then--why else should they profess to doubt me? Why should they bring up
my brothers' names to taunt me with their treason?"
Alas! I could not tell. We walked up and down, I remember, until long
after darkness fell full upon us, and the stars were all aglow--I trying
my best to dissuade the honest Brigadier from his gloomy conviction.
To be frank, although he doubtless greatly exaggerated the feeling
existing against him, it to a degree did exist.
The reasons for it are not difficult of comprehension. There were not a
few officers in our force who were better educated than bluff, unlettered
old Honikol Herkimer, and who had seen something of the world outside our
Valley. It nettled their pride to be under a plain little German, who
spoke English badly, and could not even spell his own name twice alike.
There were at work under the surface, too, old trade and race jealousies,
none the less strong because those upon whom they acted scarcely realized
their presence. The Herkimers were the great family on the river from the
Little Falls westward, and there were ancient rivalries, unexpressed but
still potent, between them and families down the Valley. Thus, when some
of the Herkimers and their connections--a majority, for that
matter--either openly joined the enemy or held coldly apart from us, it
was easy for these jealous promptings to take the form of doubt and
suspicions as to the whole-hearted loyalty of the Brigadier himself. Once
begun, these cruelly unjust suspicions rankled in men's minds and spread.
All this I should not mention were it not the key to the horrible tragedy
which followed. It is this alone which explains how a trained Indian
fighter, a veteran frontiersman like Herkimer, was spurred and stung into
rushing headlong upon the death-trap, as if he had been any ignorant and
wooden-headed Braddock.
We started on the march westward next day, the 4th, friendly Indians
bringing us news that the van of the enemy had appeared on the evening of
the 2d before Fort Stanwix, and had already begun an investment. We forded
the river at Fort Schuyler, just below where Utica now stands, and pushed
slowly forward through the forest, over the rude and narrow road, to the
Oneida village of Oriska, something to the east of the large creek which
bears the name Oriskany.
Here we halted a second time, encamping at our leisure, and despatching,
on the evening of the 5th, Adam Helmer and two other scouts to penetrate
to the fort and arrange a sortie by the garrison, simultaneous with
our attack.