The Black Eagle; or, Ticonderoga

by G. P. R. James

"Were you there, captain?" asked Mr. Prevost. "I did not know you had seen so much service."

"Sure I was," answered Woodchuck, with a laugh; "though, as to service, I did more than I was paid for, seeing I had no commission. I'll tell you how it war, Prevost: just in the beginning of September--it was the seventh or eighth, I think, in the year afore last, that is seventeen fifty-five--I was going up to the head of the lake to see if I could not get some peltry, for I had been unlucky down westward, and had made a bargain in Albany I did not like to break. Just on the top o' the hill, near where the King's road comes down to the ford, who should I stumble upon amongst the trees, but old Hendrik, as they called him--why, I can't tell--the Sachem of the Tortoise totem of the Mohawks. He was there with three young men at his feet; but we were always good friends, he and I, and, over and above, I carried the calumet, so there was no danger. Well, we sat down and had a talk, and he told me that the general--that is, Sir William, as he is now--had dug up the tomahawk, and was encamped near Fort Lyman to give battle to You-non-de-yoh--that is to say, in their jargon, the French governor. He told me, too, that he was on his way to join the general, but that he did not intend to fight, but only to witness the brave deeds of the Corlear's men--that is to say, the English. He was a cunning old fox, old Hendrik, and I fancied from that, he thought we should be defeated. But when I asked him, he said no, that it was all on account of a dream he had had, forbidding him to fight, on the penalty of his scalp. So I told him I was minded to go with him and see the fun. Well, we mustered, before the sun was quite down, well nigh upon three hundred Mohawks, all beautiful painted and feathered; but they told me that they had not sung their war song, nor danced their war dance, before they left their lodges, so I could see well enough they had no intention to fight, and the tarnation devil wouldn't make 'em. How could we get to the camp where they were all busy throwing breastworks, and we heard that Dieskau was coming down from Hunter's in force? The next morning early, we were told that he had turned back again from Fort Lyman, and Johnson sent out Williams with seven or eight hundred men to get hold of his haunches. I tried hard to get old Hendrik to go along, for I stuck fast by my Ingians, knowing the brutes can be serviceable when you trust them. But the Sachem only grunted and did not stir. In an hour and a half we heard a mighty large rattle of muskets, and the Ingians could not stand the sound quietly, but began looking at their rifle-flints and fingering their tomahawks. Howsever, they did not stir, and old Hendrik sat as grave and as brown as an old hemlock stump. Then we saw another party go out of camp to help the first; but in a very few minutes they came running back with Dieskau at their heels. In they tumbled, over the breastworks, head over heels any how; and a pretty little considerable quantity of fright they brought with them. If Dieskau had charged straight on that minute, we should have all been smashed to everlasting flinders; and I don't doubt, no more than that a beear's a crittar, that Hendrik and his painted devils would have had as many English scalps as French ones.

"But Dieskau, like a stupid coon, pulled up short two hundred yards off, and Johnson did not give him much time to look about him, for he poured all the cannon-shot that he had got into him as hard as he could pelt. Well, the French Ingians--and there was a mighty sight of them--did not like that game of ball, and they squattered off to the right and left--some into the trees, some into the swamps; and I couldn't stand it no longer, but up with my rifle, and give them all I had to give, and old Hendrik, seeing how things was like to go, took to the right end too, but a little too fast; for the old devil came into him, and he must needs have scalps. So out he went with the rest; and just as he had got his forefinger in the hair of a young Frenchman, whiz came a bullet into his dirty red skin, and down he went like an old moose. Some twenty of his Ingians got shot too; but, in the end, Dieskau had to run.

"Johnson was wounded too; and then folks have since said that he had no right to the honour of the battle, but that it was Lyman's, who took the command when he could fight no longer. But that's all trash. Dieskau had missed his chance, and all his irregulars were sent skimming by the first fire long afore Johnson was hit. Lyman had nothing to do but hold what Johnson left him, and pursue the enemy. The first he did well enough; but the second he forgot to do--though he was a brave man and a good soldier, for all that."

This little narrative seemed to give matter for thought both to Mr. Prevost and his English guest; and, after a moment or two of somewhat gloomy consideration, the latter asked the narrator whether the friendly Indians had, on that occasion, received any special offence to account for their unwillingness to give active assistance to their allies, or whether their indifference proceeded merely from a fickle or treacherous disposition.

"A little of both," replied Captain Brooks. And after leaning his great broad forehead on his hand for a moment or two, in deep thought, he proceeded to give his view of the relations of the colonies with the Iroquois, in a manner and tone totally different from any he had used before. They were grave and almost stern; and his language had few, if any, of the coarse provincialisms with which he ordinarily seasoned his conversation.

"They are a queer people, the Indians," he said, "and not so much savages as we are inclined to believe them. Sometimes I am ready to think that in one or two points they are more civilized than ourselves. They have not got our arts and sciences; and, as they possess no books, one set of them cannot store up the knowledge they gain in their own time to be added to by every generation of them that come after; and we all know that things which are sent down from mouth to mouth are soon lost or corrupted. But they are always thinking, and they have a calmness and a coolness in their thoughts that we white men very often want. They are quick enough in action when once they have determined upon a thing, and for perseverance they beat all the world; but they take a long time to consider before they act, and it is really wonderful how quietly they do consider, and how steadily they stick in consideration to all their own old notions.

"We have not treated them well, sir; and we never did. They have borne a great deal, and they will bear more still; yet they feel and know it, and some day they may make us feel it too. They have not the wit to take advantage at present of our divisions, and, by joining together themselves, make us feel all their power; for they hate each other worse than they hate us. But, if the same spirit were to take the whole red men, that got hold of the Five Nations many a long year ago, and they were to band together against the whites, as those Five Nations did against the other tribes, they'd give us a great deal of trouble; and though we might thrash them at first, we might teach them to thrash us in the end.

"As it is, however, you see there are two sets of Indians and two sets of white men in this country, each as different from the other as anything can be. The Indians don't say, as they ought, 'The country is ours, and we will fight against all the whites till we drive them out;' but they say, 'The whites are wiser and stronger than we are, and we will help those of them who are wisest and strongest.'

"I don't mean to say that they have not got their likings and dislikings, or that they are not moved by kindness, or by being talked to; for they are great haters, and great likers. Still what I have said is at the bottom of all their friendships with white men. The Dutchmen helped the Five Nations--Iroquois, as the French call them--gave them rifles and gunpowder against their enemies, and taught them to believe they were a very strong people. So the Five Nations liked the Dutch, and made alliance with them. Then came the English, and proved stronger than the Dutch, and the Five Nations attached themselves to the English.