"The provisions and stores had been plundered and destroyed. Among the supplies was a large number of boxes of chocolate which had been broken open and their contents strewed upon the ground, which dissolving in the fervid heat of the summer sun, mingled with the pools and rivulets of blood forming a sickening and revolting spectacle. The convoy had been ambushed and attacked immediately after leaving the protection of the stockade post, and the massacre took place upon the flats, between the Half-Way Brook, and the Blind rock, or what is more commonly known at the present day as the Miller place.
"Putnam with his command, took the trail of the marauders, which soon became strewed with fragments of plunder dropped by the rapidly retreating savages, who succeeded in making their escape, with but little loss of life. The Provincials unable to catch up with the savages, returned immediately to the scene of the butchery, where they found a company from Fort Edward engaged in preparing a trench for the interment of the dead.
"Over one hundred of the soldiers composing the escort were slain, many of whom were recognized as officers, from their uniforms, consisting in part of red velvet breeches. The corpses of twelve females were mingled with the dead bodies of the soldiery. All the teamsters were supposed to have been killed. While the work of burial was going forward the rangers occupied themselves in searching the trails leading through the dense underbrush and tangled briars which covered the swampy plains. Several of the dead were by this means added to the already large number of the slain. On the side of one of these trails, the narrator of these events found the corpse of a woman which had been exposed to the most barbarous indignities and mutilations, and fastened in an upright position to a sapling which had been bent over for the purpose. All of the bodies had been scalped, and most of them mangled in a horrible manner.
"One of the oxen had no other injury, than to have one of its horns cut off. This they were obliged to kill. Another ox had been regularly scalped. This animal was afterwards driven to the lake, where it immediately became an object of sympathy and attention of the whole army. By careful attendance and nursing, the wound healed in the course of the season. In the fall the animal was driven down to the farm of Col. Schuyler, near Albany, and the following year was shipped to England as a curiosity. Far and wide it was known as 'the scalped ox.' The bodies of the dead were buried in a trench near the scene of the massacre, a few rods east of the picketed enclosure.
"The French version of the affair, states the oxen were killed, the carts burned, the property pillaged by the Indians, the barrels of liquor destroyed, one hundred and ten scalps secured, and eighty-four prisoners taken; of these twelve were women and girls. The escort which was defeated consisted of forty men commanded by a lieutenant who was taken. The remainder of the men who were killed or taken prisoners consisted of wagoners, sutlers, traders, women and children."
The loss of this convoy was keenly felt by the English. General Abercrombie lost some baggage and effects, and, according to the French reports, his music as well. He, as soon as possible, sent Rogers and his body of Rangers across country to try and intercept the marauders before they reached Lake Champlain. Rogers was too late to accomplish his purpose, and on his way back he fell into an ambush near Fort Ann, about a mile from "Clear River" (or the Half-Way), on August 8th, and was badly defeated by M. Marin and his force of three hundred Regulars, Canadians and Indians. In this fight, Israel Putnam was taken prisoner, but was later released from captivity through the intercession of Col. Schuyler. [FN]
[FN] For other and corroboratory original accounts of the attacks of July 20th and 27th see French despatches in Col. Doc. N. Y., Vol. X, pp. 750, 816, 817, 849, 850, and English reports in Watson's Essex, pp. 96, 97; Pouchot's Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 123; Rogers' Journals, p. 117; Putnam's Journals, pp. 72-73; Sewall's Wobum, Mass., pp. 550, 551, 552, 553; Dawson's Hist. Mag, Aug., 1871, pp. 117, 118; Cutter's Putnam, pp. 96, 97; Stark's Memoirs, pp. 26, 436. These accounts differ some in details but are alike in essentials.
This massacre was the cause of a permanent guard of about eight hundred men being stationed at the "Half-Way Brook," which is referred to in the Thompson Diary under date of August 1st, he being one of the eighty out of Col. Nichol's regiment who were ordered on duty at that spot. And from that time until the close of the campaign late in the fall, the road between Lake George and the "Half-Way Brook," and Fort Edward and the same point, was constantly patrolled by detachments from the two forts, practically putting an end to further assaults and surprises.
The diaries of those days show that, as yet, the temperance idea half a century or so afterward to arise in this locality, had no place among the hard drinking, hard swearing, and hard fighting men of that period, as these extracts from the Thompson Journal prove: