He adds that "in the spring following they [the Indians] were sent down to assist General Burgoine in his expedition across Lake Champlaine"—an entry which recalls the fate of poor Jane McCrea, whose death at the hands of the Indians, near Saratoga, used to draw tears from our childish eyes in the good old times before patriotism was no more.
In that expedition they seem to have done no valuable service to King George (except the killing of Miss McCrea), and on their return they were assembled at Mackinaw for the purpose of making a diversion in favor of the English General Hamilton, whom George Rogers Clark, our paragon of Western soldiers, had defeated already (though de Peyster did not know it) and sent across the Alleghanies, a prisoner, to Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia.
Now comes in the mention of Chicago. De Peyster made a speech to the assembled redskins, which speech he next day turned into rude rhyme at the request of a fair lady whom he calls, in gallant French phrase, "une chère compagne de voyage." The poem is included in the "Miscellanies."[AJ]
[AJ] The lady was his wife. The marriage was childless, and General J. Watts de Peyster (1892) says in a private note: "She was chère indeed to de P's lineal heirs, for her cajolery of the Colonel transferred his property from his nephew, protege and namesake. Captain Arent Schuyler de Peyster, to her own people, McMurdo's, or whatever was the name of her nephews." General de Peyster says that he himself got the story from Captain Arent Schuyler de Peyster, the namesake in question, and the discoverer of the "De Peyster Islands," in the Pacific Ocean.
The entire versified speech is too long to quote, interesting though it be as an unstudied sketch of things of that time and place. Any one wishing to know more of it can find it in the "Miscellanies," of which a copy should be easily found in any large library.
SPEECH TO THE WESTERN INDIANS.
Great chiefs, convened at my desire
To kindle up this council-fire,
Which, with ascending smoke shall burn,
Till you from war once more return
To lay the axe in earth so deep
That nothing shall disturb its sleep.
I know you have been told by Clark
His riflemen ne'er miss the mark;
In vain you hide behind a tree
If they your finger-tip can see.
The instant they have got their aim
Enrolls you on the list of lame.
But then, my sons, this boaster's rifles,
To those I have in store are trifles:
If you but make the tree your mark
The ball will twirl beneath the bark.
Till it one-half the circle find,
Then out and kill the man behind.
Clark says, with Louis in alliance
He sets your father at defiance;
That he, too, hopes, ere long, to gain
Assistance from the King of Spain.