Where our hero in glory is sleeping?
Alas! shall we never more seek out his grave,
While fame o'er his memory is weeping?"
Although General Herkimer was severely wounded at the battle of Oriskany, his death was the result of unskillful treatment, and, if tradition speaks truth, of criminal indulgence of appetite on the part of his surgeon. He was conveyed from the field on a litter to his residence. The weather was sultry, and the wound, which was a few inches below the August 16, 1777 knee, became gangrenous. Nine days after the battle, a young French surgeon, who accompanied Arnold in his march up the valley, recommended amputation. Dr. Petrie, the general's medical adviser, was opposed to amputation, but it was done. The performance of the surgeon was so unskillful that the flow of blood was with great difficulty stanched. Indeed, the bleeding was not entirely checked, and it was thought advisable for the surgeon and his assistant to remain with the general, as his situation was very critical. Colonel Willett called to see him soon after the operation, and found him sitting up in his
Incidents of Herkimer's Death.—Castle Church.—Residence and Farm of Brant.—Fort Plain.—Plan of the Fortification.
bed, as cheerful as usual, and smoking his pipe. The blood continued to flow, and what little skill the surgeon possessed was rendered useless by indulgence in wine. No other physician was at hand, and toward evening, the blood still flowing, the general became convinced that his end was near. He called for the Bible, and read composedly, in the presence of his family and others, the thirty-eighth psalm, applying the deep, penitential confessions of the poem to his own case. He closed the book, sank back upon his pillow, and expired. Stone justly observes, "If Socrates died like a philosopher, and Rousseau like an unbelieving sentimentalist, General Herkimer died like a Christian hero." *
The Castle Church, as it is called—the middle one of the three constructed under the auspices of Sir William Johnson—is still standing (1848), two and a half miles below the Herkimer mansion. It is a wooden building, and was originally so painted as to resemble stone. Its present steeple is not ancient, but its form is not unlike that of the original. Here the pious Kirkland often preached the Gospel to the heathen, and here Brant and his companions received lessons of heavenly wisdom. The church stood upon land that belonged to the sachem, and the house of Brant, where Christian missionaries were often entertained before he took up the war-hatchet, stood about seventy-five rods northward of the church. Bricks and stones of the foundation were still to be seen in an apple orchard north of the road, and the locality was well defined, when I visited it, by rank weeds, nowhere else in the field so luxuriant. I returned to Little Falls in time to dine and to take the western train at one o'clock for Fort Plain, seventeen miles down the Mohawk.
Fort Plain (near the junction of Osquaga Creek and the Mohawk), one of the numerous comely children brought forth and fostered by the prolific commerce of the Erie Canal, is near the site of the fortification of that name, erected in the Revolution.