Israel Putnam, the redoubtable hero of Indian and French adventure in the old colonial wars, the survivor of many a revolutionary fight, was born at Salem, Mass., January 7, 1718. His grandfather, from the south of England, was one of the first settlers of the place. The boy was brought up with his father on the farm. He had little education in literature; much in the development of a hardy, vigorous constitution, in his contest with the soil and the actual world about him. He was fond of athletic exercises, an adept in running and wrestling, in which he proved himself more than a match for his village companions. The story is told of his being insulted for his rusticity, on his first visit to Boston, by a youth of twice his size, when he taught the citizen better manners by a sound flogging.
Before he was of age, he was married to the daughter of John Pope, of Salem, and presently removed with his wife to a farm in the town of Pomfret, in Eastern Connecticut. His rugged powers were, no doubt, sufficiently taxed in the ordinary labors of the field. In those days the farmer had enemies to encounter, which have since vanished from the land.
The well-known fable of Æsop, of the boy and the wolf, had then a literal application. Every child in the days of our fathers knew the story of Putnam, and the she-wolf which he dragged from its den. This and similar tales go far to make up the popular reputation of the hero, and it was as a man of the people that Putnam first appears upon the public scene.
On the breaking out of the old French war, as it was termed, at the age of thirty-seven, he drew together a band of his neighbors and reported himself with the Connecticut contingent before Crown Point. He appears to have been employed in this service under Major Rogers, the celebrated partisan "ranger," whose life he is said to have saved in an encounter with a stalwart Frenchman. Putnam conducted himself as a man of resources and valor in this mixed species of warfare, in achieving a reputation which brought him, in 1757, the commission of a major from the Connecticut Legislature. It was the year of the memorable massacre of Fort William Henry. Putnam was with the forces whose head-quarters were at the neighboring Fort Edward, under command of General Webb, and made several vigorous attempts to assist in the support of the beleaguered fortress, but his efforts were not seconded by the commander, who ungenerously left the fort a prey to Montcalm and the Indians. These adventures of Putnam displayed his personal courage, in approaching the enemy on Lake George, and subsequently in command of his Rangers in rescuing a party of his fellow-soldiers from an Indian ambuscade at Fort Edward.
The year 1758 saw Major Putnam again in the field, under the command of Abercrombie, at the scene of his former labors, in the vicinity of Lake George. In the early movements of the campaign, Putnam distinguished himself in an ambuscade, by a destructive night attack upon a party of the enemy at Wood Creek. When the main line advanced toward Ticonderoga, he was, with the lamented Lord Howe, in the front of the centre, when that much-loved officer was slain upon the march. It was the first meeting, after landing from Lake George, with the advance of the French troops. There was some skirmishing, which attracted the attention of the officers. Putnam advanced to the spot, accompanied, contrary to his dissuasions, by Lord Howe, who fell at the first fire. The party of Putnam, enraged by this disaster, fought with gallantry, and inflicted a heavy loss upon their opponents. The result of this miserably conducted expedition, however, made no amends for the loss of the gallant Howe. Two thousand men were blunderingly sacrificed before Ticonderoga, and the threatened siege was abandoned.
The life of Putnam is full of perilous encounters incident to border service against the Indians. In one of these he narrowly avoided capture by the savages on the Hudson, near Fort Miller. He escaped only by shooting the rapids with his boat, a marvellous adventure, which is said to have wakened a superstitious veneration for him in the minds of his Indian assailants.
Not long afterward, however, the barbarians had an opportunity of treating him with less respect. It was in the month of August of this year that he was engaged with a reconnoitring party in company with the partisan Rogers, near Ticonderoga. They had been employed in watching the movements of the enemy, and were on their return to Fort Edward when the attention of the French partisan officer, Molang, who was on the lookout, was attracted to them by a careless shooting-match between Rogers and a fellow British officer. A confused hand-to-hand action ensued in the woods, in the course of which Putnam, his gun missing fire, "while the muzzle was pressed against the breast of a large and well-proportioned savage," was captured and bound to a tree by that formidable personage. The English party now rallying, drove their pursuers backward, which brought the unfortunate Putnam to a central position between two fires. "Human imagination," well says Colonel Humphreys, "can hardly figure to itself a more deplorable situation." Putnam remained more than an hour deprived of all power save that of hearing and vision, as the musket-balls whizzed by his ears and a ruthless savage aimed his tomahawk repeatedly, with the infernal dexterity of a Chinese juggler, within a hair's breadth of his person. This amusement was succeeded by the attempt of a French petty-officer to put an end to his life by discharging his musket against his breast. It happily missed fire. The action was now brought to an end in favor of the Provincials; but Putnam was carried off in the retreat by his Indian captor. He was now destined to witness one of those scenes, since so well described by Cooper, of the peculiar tortures inflicted by the Indians upon their prisoners in war; but unhappily with less complacent feelings than the reader of the skilful novelist experiences, whose terrors are tempered by the delightful art of the narrator. With Putnam the spectator and the sufferer were the same. He has been bound on the march with intolerable thongs, he has almost perished under his burdens, he has been tomahawked in the face; he is now to be roasted alive. A dark forest is selected for the sacrifice; stripped naked, he is bound to a tree, and the inflammable brushwood piled around him. Savage voices sound his death-knell. Fire is applied, when a sudden shower dampens the flame, to burst forth again with renewed strength. Though securely fastened, the limbs of the victim are left some liberty to shrink from the accursed heat. He has thought his last thought of home, of wife and children, when the desperate French partisan, Molang, the commander of the savage hordes, hearing of the act, rushes upon the scene and rescues him from his tormentors. Putnam is now restored to the guardianship of the Indian chief by whom he had been captured, and from whom he was separated during these hours of agony, when he had fallen into the hands of the baser fellows of the tribe. The party now reach Ticonderoga, where Putnam is delivered to Montcalm, and thence courteously conducted by a French officer to Montreal.
There he found himself within reach of a benevolent American officer, then a prisoner in the city, Colonel Peter Schuyler, who generously ministered to his necessities, and who was instrumental in procuring his release from the French commander, when he himself was exchanged after the capture of Frontenac. Putnam, on his return home, gallantly conducted through the wilderness the sorely tried Mrs. Howe and her children, whose adventures in Indian captivity and among the French, equal the inventive pages of romance.