For eleven days we lay at German Flatts, Colonel Visscher begging us to
aid in the defence of that threatened village until the women and
children could be conveyed to Johnstown. But Sir John Johnson remained
before Stanwix, and McCraw's riders gave the village wide berth, and on
the 18th of August we set out for Varicks'.
Warned by our extreme outposts, we bore to the south, forced miles out
of our course to avoid the Oneida country, where a terrific little war
was raging. For the Senecas, Cayugas, a few Mohawks, and McCraw's
renegade Tories, furious at the neutral and pacific attitude of the
Oneidas towards our people, had suddenly fallen upon them, tooth and
nail, vowing that the Oneida nation should perish from the earth for
their treason to the Long House.
We skirted the doomed region cautiously, touching here and there the
fringe of massacre and fire, often scenting smoke, sometimes hearing a
distant shot. Once we encountered an Oneida runner, painted blue and
white, and naked save for the loin-cloth, who told us of the civil war
that was already rending the Long House; and I then understood more
fully what Magdalen Brant had done for our cause, and how far-reaching
had been the effects of her appearance at the False-Faces' council-fire.
The Oneida appeared to be disheartened. He sullenly admitted to us that
the Cayugas had scattered his people and laid their village in ashes; he
cursed McCraw fiercely and promised a dreadful retaliation on any
renegade captured. He also described the fate of the Oriskany prisoners
and some bateaux-men taken by Walter Butler's Rangers near Wood Creek;
and I could scarcely endure to listen, so horrid were the details of our
soldiers' common fate, where Mohawk and Tory, stripped and painted
alike, conspired to invent atrocities undreamed of for their
wretched victims.
It was then that I heard for the second time the term "Blue-eyed
Indian," meaning white men stained, painted, and disguised as savages.
More terrifying than the savages themselves, it appeared, were the
blue-eyed Indians to the miserable settlers of Tryon. For hellish
ingenuity and devilish cruelty these mock savages, the Oneida assured
us, had nothing to learn from their red comrades; and I shall never be
able to efface from my mind the memory of what we saw, that very day, in
a lonely farm-house on the flats of the Mohawk; nor was it necessary
that McCraw should have left his mark on the shattered door--a cock
crowing, drawn in outline by a man's forefinger steeped in blood--to
enlighten those who might not recognize the ghastly work as his.
We stayed there for three hours to bury the dead, an old man and woman,
a young mother, and five children, the youngest an infant not a year
old. All had been scalped; even the watch-dog lay dead near the bloody
cradle. We dug the shallow graves with difficulty, having nothing to
work with save our hunting-knives and some broken dishes which we found
in the house; and it was close to noon before we left the lonely flat
and pushed forward through miles of stunted willow growth towards the
river road which led to Johnstown.
I shall never forget Mount's set face nor Murphy's terrible, vacant
stare as we plodded on in absolute silence. Elerson led us on a steady
trot hour after hour, till, late in the afternoon, we crossed the river
road and wheeled into it exhausted.
The west was all aglow; cleared land and fences lay along the roadside;
here and there houses loomed up in the red, evening light, but their
inhabitants were gone, and not a sign of life remained about them save
for the circling swallows whirling in and out of the blackened chimneys.
So still, so sad this solitude that the sudden chirping of a robin in
the evening shadows startled us.
The sun sank behind the forest, turning the river to a bloody red; a fox
yapped and yapped from a dark hill-side; the moon's yellow light flashed
out through the trees; and, with the coming of the moon, far in the
wilderness the owls began and the cries of the night-hawks died away
in the sky.
The first human being that we encountered was a miller riding an ancient
horse towards a lane which bordered a noisy brook.
When he discovered us he whipped out a pistol and bade us stand where we
were; and it took all my persuasion to convince him that we were not
renegades from McCraw's band.
We asked for news, but he had none, save that a heavy force of our
soldiers was lying by the roadside some two miles below on their way to
relieve Fort Stanwix. The General, he believed, was named Arnold, and
the troops were Massachusetts men; that was all he knew.
He seemed stupid or perhaps stunned, having lost three sons in a battle
somewhere near Bennington, and had that morning received word of his
loss. How the battle had gone he did not know; he was on his way up the
creek to lock his mill before joining the militia at Johnstown. He was
not too old to carry the musket he had carried at Braddock's battle.
Besides, his boys were dead, and there was no one in his family except
himself to help our Congress fight the red-coats.
We watched him ride off into the darkness, gray head erect, pistol
shining in his hand; then moved on, searching the distance for the
outpost we knew must presently hail us. And, sure enough, from the
shadow of a clump of trees came the smart challenge: "Halt! Who
goes there?"
"Officer from Herkimer and scout of three with news for General
Schuyler!" I answered.
"Halt, officer with scout! Sergeant of the guard! Post number three!"
Dark figures swarmed in the road ahead; a squad of men came up on the
double.
"Advance officer!" rang out the summons; a torch blazed, throwing a red
glare around us; a red-faced old officer in brown and scarlet walked up
and took the packet of papers which I extended.
"Are you Captain Ormond?" he asked, curiously, glancing at the
endorsement on my papers.