The magazine of history with notes and queries, Vol. II, No. 5, November 1905

by Various

SULLIVAN’S GREAT MARCH INTO THE INDIAN COUNTRY

PREFACE

Two great flank attacks on the British forces were made by the Americans during the war of the Revolution. One, in winter, against Quebec, in 1775–76, failed nobly; the other, in summer, into the Iroquois country, against Tories and Indians, in 1779, was superbly successful. Yet while Montgomery and Arnold have had their meed of fame, but scant and tardy justice has been done to Sullivan.

Twelve years’ residence in the lake country of the Empire State, amid the scenes of the march that destroyed savagery and opened the forests to civilization, has made its story a most fascinating study. After repeated examination, on the ground, of the camps, battlefields, scenes of bridge-building and road-making, of topographical and engineering difficulties, of marchings and of rest, and even of feasting, along nearly the whole of the routes of the main army and right wing, I have learned to appreciate more the magnitude of Sullivan’s task and the completeness of his successful enterprise. One can more readily understand why Congress and Washington first ordered the campaign, and then realized the importance and value of its victories and happy issue.

Critical analysis and comparison of local legends, study of the mythology—that grows around picturesque scenery and striking names as naturally as moss on a damp stone—and, most of all, of the original journals and documents of the men of 1779, have but added to the pleasure of the narrator. A knowledge of the march of Sullivan’s Continentals in 1779 makes the landscape between Easton and the Genesee Valley glow, kindling at once memory, imagination and patriotism.

May art glorify history and the tablet, boulder, and memorial line the pathway of the Revolutionary patriots with beacon lights of grateful remembrance.

W. E. G.

CHAPTER I
CONGRESS VOTES TO CHASTISE

After the awful massacres at Wyoming and Cherry Valley in 1778, Congress passed a vote on the 27th of February, 1779, authorizing Washington to break the power of the Iroquois Indians by desolating their country. Only thus could the American frontiers be protected from Tories and Indians and the rear and flank attacks be stopped.

Until the Revolutionary War the Iroquois had been friends of our fathers against the French in Canada, with whom the Algonquin Indians had acted as allies. How did it come to pass that the Iroquois turned to be our enemies? Lifting up the hatchet and scalping knife against us, they left at Cherry Valley, and Wyoming, great blood spots, and along the frontier a line of fire and death. To answer this question, we must go back more than a century and a half. At that time the North American continent was divided between two quite different sorts of Indians, the Five Nations of the Iroquois, who were united in a confederacy, and the much more numerous Algonquins, who lived all around them.

In 1609, two men, each representing a different civilization, penetrated the inland waters of America. Henry Hudson, an English captain in a Dutch ship and with a Dutch crew, sailed up the river that now bears his name and made the friendly acquaintance of the tribes of Northern New York. Samuel Champlain, from France, came down the lake that bears his name, acting not only as friend, but as ally to the Algonquins, who were ever at war with the Iroquois. The boundary line between these two kinds of Indians was drawn at Rock Regio, in Lake Champlain, near Burlington, Vermont.

It happened at this time that hostile parties from the North and South were out seeking each other. Dressed in bark armor, with bows and arrows, and stone hatchets, they met in combat, not in ambush, but in the open field. The Frenchmen, taking sides with the Algonquins, killed several Iroquois with their firearms. Forthwith, vowing vengeance against these white men who had interfered, the Indians of the South resolved to seek Dutch aid. A few years later they appeared at Fort Orange, near Albany, bringing their beaver and other skins in exchange for arms and ammunition. Thus armed, they were able to go forth on equal terms with the Algonquins to the slaughter of the French and their allies. With them the age of stone was over and the new era of iron and gunpowder had come.

Arendt Van Curler, whom the red men call “Corlaer,” a well-educated Hollander, who lived in America from 1630 to 1667, was superintendent of the Dutch settlement where Albany now stands and later became the founder of the city of Schenectady. He saw at once the value of a league of peace with the Iroquois. He traveled among them, learned their language, won their friendship and held them ever faithful, first to the Dutch, and then after 1664 to the English. “The covenant of Corlaer” became with the Iroquois a holy sacrament, and the policy of all English governors was to “brighten the silver chain” of mutual friendship. Van Curler was drowned near Rock Regio in Lake Champlain in 1667. Sir William Johnson from 1738 to 1774 continued, expanded and strengthened the work of Van Curler. On the other hand the Five Nations became the Six Nations, when in 1722 the Tuscaroras, driven from the Carolinas in 1713, were formally admitted into the confederacy.

For a century and a half the Indian was a political factor in determining the question whether the Anglo-Saxon or the Latin civilization should dominate North America. This question was settled on the heights of Quebec, in 1763, when England became mistress of the Continent. During all this time the French were never able, in war or in peace, by their money or other gifts, by threats or smiles, by political envoys or religious emissaries, to break the “silver chain” or to shake the loyalty of the Iroquois to English-speaking men. To this day the Indians call the governor of New York “Corlaer,” and Queen Victoria, their ruler, “Kora Kowa,” or the Great Corlaer.

When, under King George, the colonists in America and the corrupt British parliament and court quarreled and began war, Congress hoped to keep the friendship or neutrality of the red men. In August, 1775, the first conference and treaty was made at Albany. Later General Schuyler was sent into the Mohawk Valley to treat with the Iroquois and met a council of chiefs at German Flats. “This is a family quarrel,” he said, “and we want you to keep out of it,” and the red men promised to do so. General Herkimer also met a great gathering of warriors from the Six Nations at Unadilla.

On the other side, the British agents at Oswego tried to win over the savages, and succeeded. The Tories and British were able to present much more convincing arguments in the shape of abundance of rum, hatchets, beads, mirrors and guns and powder. Moreover the Indian is always a conservative. He holds fast to tradition. Hence he was most deeply touched by the adroit appeal to “the covenant of Corlaer,” and, being told that the Americans were “rebels,” he sided with the British. The Iroquois expected, in making this new alliance, that King George would govern all the whites, while they should conquer and rule all the red men in North America. It was a great day when General Burgoyne and his officers in their glittering uniforms confirmed with splendid presents the decision of the Iroquois to side with the King.

Active in the campaign of 1777, these confederate red men fought with the Tories and British soldiers against the Americans, especially at the battle of Oriskany. For a while they were broken and demoralized by Burgoyne’s defeat at Saratoga, when the whole British army surrendered.

When in 1778, the red men were rallied by Brant, Butler, McDonald and Sir John Johnson, they made the head of Seneca Lake, where Geneva now stands, their headquarters. Here they planned to attack Wyoming, a settlement, chiefly of Connecticut people, from which most of the able bodied men were absent in Washington’s army, only old men, boys, women and children being at home. After the battle and massacre of July 3 another skillfully planned attack on Cherry Valley in New York was made, and on the 11th of October this settlement was reduced to ashes and the people murdered or taken prisoners to Canada.

These atrocities decided Congress and Washington to chastise the savages, desolate their country and paralyze the activity of the Tories. It was especially necessary to do this, because the British were encouraging their white and red allies to make the great maize lands of Central and Western New York a granary from which they could feed their very mixed army, made up of English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Hessians, Canadians and Iroquois, besides keeping up a continual fire in the rear upon the American forces.

But they had Washington, Sullivan, and the American riflemen to reckon with.

CHAPTER II
ASSEMBLING FOR THE GREAT MARCH

Whom should Washington select for so difficult and doubtful a task? The chosen leader must make an expedition, as into a foreign country, through the unmapped and unsurveyed wilderness of Western New York, against a foe ever ready by wiles and cunning to ambuscade the invader. It might be, as in many a dismal case before, that his men would be shot by invisible marksmen. Who would dare to try to feed an army of regular troops with no base of supplies? With the precedent of Braddock’s failure and bloody Oriskany before him, who aspired to lead? It is no wonder that when Gates was offered the command he declined it at once, much to Washington’s vexation. The commander-in-chief then summoned General Sullivan. This descendant of Irish heroes was born at Durham, in New Hampshire, and grew up to be a stalwart American, a vigorous and far-seeing patriot. Just as soon, in 1774, as Great Britain forbade the importation of military stores to America, Sullivan knew there would be war.

Collecting a body of eager young men, he drilled them in military tactics. In December, 1774, he attacked Fort William and Mary, at Newcastle, at the mouth of the Piscataqua river, and took the place in daylight. In spite of the fire of the garrison, he entered without losing a man, and pulled down the British flag. This was the first hostile act of the kind in the war of the Revolution. He carried the cannon and powder to Durham, where it was stored partly in a barn and partly in the cellar of the Congregational church edifice, on the site of which the monument reared to his honor now stands. The powder reached Bunker Hill in time to fill the horns of the militia. Indeed, this was about the only supply that our men behind the breastworks and rail fence had. Sullivan commanded at Boston and on Long Island, and fought at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown and in Rhode Island.

Up to this time, 1779, the French Alliance had not amounted to anything, and there were but fifteen thousand regular Continental soldiers fit for duty. Yet so important did Washington consider this expedition to destroy the Iroquois power that he detached one-third of his whole force, or 5000 picked Continentals. In its organization the army of chastisement consisted of four brigades, a regiment of artillery and eight companies of riflemen, making about five thousand men, with about two thousand pack horses and twenty-five hundred cattle and two fleets of boats for river service, with stores and ammunition. The New Hampshire brigade, then encamped at Redding, Conn., and the New Jersey brigade at Elizabeth, N. J., with the Pennsylvania regiments, were ordered to march to Easton, and thence to move on to Wyoming, from which point the stores and cannon were to follow the army until they should reach Tioga Point, where is now Athens. Here they were to be joined by the New York brigade from Schenectady.

The Chemung and the Susquehanna, flowing from the east and the west out of the heart of the Indian country, approach very near to each other at Tioga Point, enclosing a pretty peninsula shaped like an arrow head. Further down they meet and unite in one stream, the lordly Susquehanna, on which canoes could reach the cities on the Chesapeake Bay or any of the rivers flowing into it. Tioga Point was the Southern Door of the Long House of the Iroquois confederacy, and here, as a base of supplies, a diamond-shaped fort with a block house at each corner, with hospital and barracks, was to be built. Upon this the army could fall back in case of defeat, and here be re-victualed on their return march.

In the rivers, nature provided the only highways, though the Iroquois during centuries of war, trade and travel had made many trails. From Tioga Point the Continentals were to march up the Chemung Valley and thence into the wonderfully fertile lake country of Central New York. Along the ridge overlooking Seneca Lake they would pass, in order to strike the Tory headquarters and center of supplies at the lake’s northern end, where then stood a big Indian village, and now not far away is the city of Geneva. Thence westwardly they were to move to Canandaigua and along the great trail at the southern end of the smaller lakes, Canadice, Hemlock and Conesus, into the valley of the Genesee. Possibly they might be able to reach the British fort at Niagara.

Indeed, in the great virgin wilderness of Central and Western New York there was no other way of advance, save through the river valleys and along Indian trails. When leaving the former and advancing through the forests, it would be necessary for the axemen to chop their way. In miry places the pioneers must cut down trees, lay the logs and make corduroy roads. Swamps must be filled and the smaller streams bridged. In many parts of the country to be traversed there were indeed large open spaces where the cornfields of the Indians furnished stores of food, while their gardens yielded, as our men discovered, twelve kinds of vegetables. Yet in the main, the army would have to march through a country covered with timber and brush wood.

A large force of axemen, pioneers, surveyors and road-makers would be necessary, especially as the artillery must be carried along, for Washington, being himself a backwoodsman and an Indian fighter, knew the persuasive power of cannon with the Indians. Brave as the painted warriors undoubtedly were, they preferred fighting behind logs and trees under cover. They objected, most decidedly, to stand up in ranks and coolly keep their places in the presence of howitzers that could tear them to pieces, not only by a frontal attack, but by sending shells to burst among and behind them. The Indian had physical stamina, but he lacked moral courage. Washington knowing this, ordered Colonel Proctor to take nine pieces of artillery and his regiment of three hundred artillerists.

Of the guns, two were howitzers of five and a half inch caliber that could throw bombs, two were six, and four were three pounders. Then there was a Coehorn mortar, so light that it could be borne by four men. This diminutive implement of war proved to be very effective, being usually posted in the advance and easily carried over hill and valley. Mounted on an iron frame, with hickory legs, it could easily be “laid” or aimed at any angle. After a discharge it always kicked itself over, and, because of its long spindle-like limbs, the soldiers called it “the grasshopper.” Along with Proctor’s (now the Second United States) Artillery went “a band of music,” that is, a fife and drum corps. In all, there were about two hundred musicians with their drum and fife majors. The lively tunes, such as “The White Cockade,” “The Tall Grenadier,” and “Derry Down,” greatly inspirited our men, while at the solemn burials in the forest, “Roslin Castle” was the usual dirge.

Each regiment had its chaplain, and until the advance from Tioga Point in battle array there were frequent services for worship and preaching at the camps.

Washington’s plan was to have a right and a left wing to the main body. While Sullivan advanced through the Susquehanna country, Clinton’s New Yorkers, with part of the Sixth Massachusetts, were to move up the Mohawk river and valley with two field pieces and a fleet of two hundred boats. At Canajoharie he was to load his stores and boats on wagons, each drawn by eight horses, and march over the hills to Otsego Lake, thence to descend the outlet and enter the Susquehanna at Chenango Point where Binghamton now stands. Floating past Owego, he was to join Sullivan at Tioga Point, where the Chemung and Susquehanna unite. This programme was very successfully carried out.

The left wing, at Pittsburg, was led by Colonel Daniel Brodhead, a Continental veteran, afterwards Surveyor-General of Pennsylvania. He had assembled about six hundred men, including some friendly Delawares and Cherokees, with one month’s provisions, and started August 11, transporting his cattle and pack horses to Mahoning. Entering the country of the Mingoes and the Muncey tribes in Western Pennsylvania, and the Seneca towns in Southwestern New York, he desolated their houses and corn fields.

“The parings of scalps and the hair of our countrymen at every warrior’s camp on the path,” wrote Colonel Brodhead to Washington, “are new inducements to revenge.” Although his men on their return, September 14, were bare-footed and in rags, and had had no pay for nine months, he offered to lead an expedition to Detroit. Of two soldiers whom he sent to General Sullivan, he heard nothing. “I apprehend,” he wrote, “they have fallen into the enemy’s hands.” Dressing many of his men like Indians, he sent out various parties that devastated the region, and made it for a time uninhabitable by the savages. Very few men on our side were lost, and not a soldier but these two fell into the enemy’s hands.

Although Brodhead’s “Allegheny expedition,” or “Diversion in favor of General Sullivan’s expedition,” failed to make direct communication with the main body of Continentals, yet his was a vital part of the great expedition of 1779. It aided powerfully in that series of blows which shattered the Iroquois confederacy. By keeping probably five hundred Senecas from Sullivan’s front, Brodhead helped to toll the death knell of savagery on the North American continent.

CHAPTER III
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.

CHAPTER IV
THE MOVEMENT OF THE RIGHT WING

The right wing of the expedition, consisting of the 3rd, 4th and 5th New York, the 6th Massachusetts, and 4th Pennsylvania, with four companies of riflemen and two pieces of artillery, was under the command of General James Clinton. This veteran officer gathered his forces at Schenectady. He encamped his regiments around this little palisaded frontier town, while his flotilla of over 215 boats was building in the boat yards that then lined the Mohawk river, between the stream and the town’s wooden walls on its north and west sides.

When all was ready, about June 15, the boats were pushed, poled or rowed up the river to Canajoharie. Then both the stores and the boats were loaded on wagons drawn by four yokes of oxen, carried over the hills and unloaded on the beach at Otsego Lake. This very toilsome work was over by July 3, and on the “Glorious Fourth” was celebrated by a parade, salute of cannon, divine service and a banquet with thirteen patriotic toasts. Herds of cattle had been driven from Kingston, N. Y., by the great western route through the Catskill mountains, to furnish fresh beef. The soldiers enjoyed their camp life in the fragrant woods, though eager to move against the enemy.

An engineer and the father of the “father of the Erie Canal,” General Clinton’s first object was to provide enough water to float his boats down out of the lake and into and along the shallow Susquehanna, in order to make junction with Sullivan at Tioga Point. To secure this, in the dry mid-summer a reservoir was made by damming up the little lake at its source near the present Cooperstown. The flow of rain not only in this, but also in the adjoining Schuyler Lake, during four weeks of waiting to hear from Sullivan, was thus secured. The gain of one month’s water from sky and earth was apparent. It is uncertain from extant journals and diaries how high a level was reached, some saying that three feet, but one declaring that only one foot of water was gained. At any rate, the rise was sufficient to send the flotilla down into the valley, as if moving on a toboggan slide.

Monday, August 9, was fixed as the date of movement. On the previous Saturday, the chaplain, the Reverend Mr. Gano, inquired of the general whether he could break the news to the army. Being forbidden, he asked whether he might make choice of any text he pleased. To this full liberty was granted. When the preacher stood up before his audience he pronounced the words in Acts xx. 7, “Ready to depart on the morrow”; at which the faces of all the troops lightened.

The glad work of chopping away the dam was begun on Sunday night when the water rushed out, so filling the lower channels of the river as to afford easy passage for the boats. The Tuscaroras dwelling in the valley looking upon the swollen stream and their inundated cornfields, deemed themselves under the wrath of the Great Spirit, and fled in alarm. After every defeat the savages, according to their custom, hung up white dogs to avert the anger and beg for the pity of their gods. Our men found these tokens of primitive religion all along the route. As the army marched overland the various settlements of Indians and Tories were destroyed by fire and axe.

William Elliot Griffis.

Ithaca, N. Y.

(To be continued.)