Yet there is a time for all things--even for praising God.
XVIII
ORISKANY
It is due, no doubt, to my limited knowledge of military matters and to my lack of practical experience that I did not see the battle of Oriskany as our historians have recorded it; nor did I, before or during the affair, notice any intelligent effort towards assuming the offensive as described by those whose reports portray an engagement in which, after the first onset, some semblance of military order reigned.
So, as I do not feel at liberty to picture Oriskany from the pens of abler men, I must be content to describe only what I myself witnessed of that sad and unnecessary tragedy.
For three days we had been camped near the clearing called Oriska, which is on the south bank of the Mohawk. Here the volunteers and militia of Tryon County were concentrating from Fort Dayton in the utmost disorder, their camps so foolishly pitched, so slovenly in those matters pertaining to cleanliness and health, so inadequately guarded, that I saw no reason why our twin enemies, St. Leger and disease, should not make an end of us ere we sighted the ramparts of Stanwix.
All night long the volunteer soldiery had been in-subordinate and riotous in the hamlet of Oriska, thronging the roads, shouting, singing, disputing, clamoring to be led against the enemy. Popular officers were cheered, unpopular officers jeered at, angry voices raised outside headquarters, demanding to know why old Honikol Herkimer delayed the advance. Even officers shouted, "Forward! forward! Wake up Honikol!" And spoke of the old General derisively, even injuriously, to their own lasting disgrace.
Towards dawn, when I lay down on the floor of a barn to sleep, the uproar had died out in a measure; but lights still flickered in the camp where soldiers were smoking their pipes and playing cards by the flare of splinter-wood torches. As for the pickets, they paid not the slightest attention to their duties, continually leaving their posts to hobnob with neighbors; and the indiscipline alarmed me, for what could one expect to find in men who roamed about where it pleased them, howling their dissatisfaction with their commander, and addressing their officers by their first names?
At eight o'clock on that oppressive August morning, while writing a letter to my cousin Dorothy, which an Oneida had promised to deliver, he being about to start with a message to Governor Clinton, I was interrupted by Jack Mount, who came into the barn, saying that a company of officers were quarrelling in front of the sugar-shack occupied as headquarters.