LAURA SECORD
"Woman! A woman! What does a white woman here?" demanded the chief, seizing her arm. She answered that she was a friend and it was matter of life and death for her to see Fitzgibbons at once. So Laura Secord delivered her warning and saved the Canadian army. The episode has gone down to history one of the national legends, like the story of Madeline Verchères on the St. Lawrence. Fitzgibbons posts his forty men in place, and Ducharme, commander of the Indians, scatters his one thousand redskins in ambush along the trail. Also, word is sent for two other detachments to come with all speed.
June 24, at seven in the morning, Boerstler is moving along a narrow forest trail through the beech woods of Beaver Dams. The men are advancing single file, mounted infantrymen first with muskets slouched across saddle pommels, then the heavy wagons, then cavalry to rear. The timber is heavy, the trail winding. Here the long line deploys out from the trail to avoid jumping windfall; there halt is made to cut a way for the wagons; then the long line moves sleepily forward, yellow sunlight shafted through the green foliage across the riders' blue uniforms. Suddenly a shot rings out, and another, and another! The forest is full of unseen foes, before, behind, on all sides, the cavalry forces breaking rank and dashing forward among the wagons. Boerstler sees it will be as unsafe to retreat as to go on. Sending messengers back to Fort George for aid, he pushes forward into an open wheat field. Fifty-six men have fallen, and the bullets are still raining from an invisible foe. Looking back he sees mounted men in green coats passing and repassing across his trail, filing and refiling. It is a trick of Fitzgibbons to give an impression he has ten times forty men, but the Americans do not know. There is no retreat, and Indians are to the fore. In the midst of confusion Fitzgibbons comes forward with a white handkerchief on his sword point and begs Boerstler to prevent bloodshed by instant surrender. Boerstler demands to see the number of his enemies. Fitzgibbons says he will repeat the request to his commanding officer. Luck is with Fitzgibbons, for just as he goes back a small party of reënforcements arrives, and one of its captains acts the part of commanding officer, telling Boerstler's messenger haughtily that the demand to see the enemy is an insult, and answer must be given in five minutes or the Canadians will not be responsible for the Indians. The fight has lasted three hours. Boerstler surrenders with his entire force. Such was the battle of Beaver Dams.
Ever since Brock had captured Detroit in 1812, General Procter, with twenty-five hundred Canadians, had been holding the western part of Ontario; and the defeat of the English at Fort George had placed him in a desperate position. His men had been without pay for months; their clothes were in tatters, and now, with the Americans in possession of Niagara region, there was danger of Procter's food supply being cut off. Procter himself had not been idle these six months. In fact, he had been too active for the good of his supplies. Space forbids a detailed account of the raids directed by him and carried out with the aid of Tecumseh, the great Shawnee chief. January of 1813 saw a detachment of Procter's men up Raisin River, west of Detroit, where they defeated General Winchester and captured nearly five hundred prisoners, to be set free on parole. Harrison, the American general, is on his way to Lake Erie to rescue Detroit. Procter hastens in May to meet him with one thousand Canadians and fifteen hundred Indians. The clash takes place at a barricade known as Fort Meigs on Maumee River, south of Lake Erie, when again, by the aid of Tecumseh, Procter captures four hundred and fifty prisoners. It was on this occasion that the Indians broke from control and tomahawked forty defenseless American prisoners. August sees Procter raiding Sandusky; but the Americans refuse to come out and battle, and the axes of the Canadians are too dull to cut down the ironwood pickets, and when at night Procter's bugles sound retreat, he has lost nearly one hundred men. At last, in September, the fleets being built for the Canadians at Amherstburg and for the Americans at Presqu' Isle are completed. Whichever side commands Lake Erie will control supplies; and though Captain Barclay, the Canadian, is short of men, Procter cannot afford to delay the contest for supremacy any longer. He orders Barclay to sail out and seek Commodore Perry, the American, for decisive battle.
On Barclay's boats are only such old land guns as had been captured from Detroit. His crews consist of lake sailors and a few soldiers, in all some three hundred and eighty-four men on six vessels. September 10, at midday, at Put-in-Bay, Barclay finds Perry's fleet of seven vessels with six hundred and fifty men. For two hours the furious cannonading could be heard all the way up to Amherstburg. Space forbids details of the fight so celebrated in the annals of the American navy. After broadsides that tore hulls clean of masts and decks, setting sails in flame and the waters seething in mountainous waves, the two fleets got within pistol shot of each other, and Perry's superior numbers won. One third of Barclay's officers were killed and one third of his men. The Canadian fleet on Lake Erie was literally exterminated before three in the afternoon.
TWO VIEWS OF THE BATTLE ON LAKE ERIE (From prints published in 1815)
Procter's position was now doubly desperate. He was cut off from supplies. At a council with the Indians, though Tecumseh, the chief, was for fighting to the bitter death, it was decided to retreat up the Thames to Vincent's army near modern Hamilton. All the world knows the bitter end of that retreat. Procter seems to have been so sure that General Harrison would not follow, that the Canadian forces did not even pause to destroy bridges behind them; and behind came Harrison, hot foot, with four thousand fighters from the Kentucky backwoods. October first the Canadians had retreated far as Chatham, provisions and baggage coming in boats or sent ahead on wagons. Procter's first intimation of the foe's nearness was a breathless messenger with word the Americans just a few miles behind had captured the provision boats. Sending on his family and the women with a convoy of two hundred and fifty soldiers, Procter faced about on the morning of October the 5th, to give battle. On the left was the river Thames, on the right a cedar swamp, to rear on the east the Indian mission of Moraviantown. The troops formed in line across a forest road. Procter seems to have lost both his heart and his head, for he permitted his fatigued troops to go into the fight without breakfast. Not a barricade, not a hurdle, not a log was placed to break the advance of Harrison's cavalry. The American riders came on like a whirlwind. Crack went the line of Procter's men in a musketry volley! The horses plunged, checked up, reared, and were spurred forward. Another volley from the Canadians! But it was too late. Harrison's fifteen hundred riders had galloped clean through the Canadian lines, slashing swords as they dashed past. Now they wheeled and came on the Canadians' rear. Indians and Canadians scattered to the woods before such fury, like harried rabbits, poor Tecumseh in the very act of tomahawking an American colonel when a pistol shot brought him down. The brave Indian chief was scalped by the white backwoodsmen and skinned and the body thrown into the woods a prey to wolves. Flushed with victory and without Harrison's permission, the Kentucky men dashed in and set fire to Moraviantown, the Indian mission. As for Procter, he had mounted the fleetest horse to be found, and was riding in mad flight for Burlington Heights. It is almost a pity he had not fallen in some of his former heroic raids, for he now became a sorry figure in history, reprimanded and suspended from the ranks of the army. The only explanation of Procter's conduct at Moraviantown is that he was anxious for the safety of his wife and daughters, perhaps needlessly fearing that the rough backwoodsmen would retaliate on them for the treachery of the Indians tomahawking American prisoners of war.