The Iroquois method of raising corn was very ingenious. On the lands in river valleys this was easy enough, yet they could win crops even in the forest. This they did by “girdling.” They cut round the tree trunk near the ground, and again about ten feet higher, and then stripped off the bark between the spaces girdled by the knife or hatchet. This caused the tree to wither and the leaves to fall, quickly letting in the sunshine on the ground. Thus, the Indian without the trouble of chopping down the trees and clearing the land got at once the benefit of the soil. In the autumn, by burning the underbrush and trees, the ground was enriched and the space easily cleared for next year’s crop. In almost every Iroquois village there were store houses made of bark or timber, in which the grain was saved.
The dwellings or long houses were made of wooden framework covered with bark and built in the form of a modern compartment house. Each had a long hall or passageway through the middle, with rooms on either side, one for each family, with a fireplace in the center and the sleeping bunks against the wall. The walls of these rooms were decorated with bows and arrows, guns and equipments, and the prizes of the chase, which all hunters love, and of war, over which warriors gloat. They had also more horrible ornaments in the scalps of their enemies, both white and red. These, stretched and dried on hoops, were often painted and decorated with feathers and strings dyed in bright colors which had symbolic significance.
Many of Sullivan’s soldiers, who enlisted hoping to rescue white captives, often their own relatives, were able to recognize in the Iroquois houses the hair and scalps of fathers, brothers, wives, children, neighbors or friends. In the case of women, it was especially easy to do this.
At several places where hill and ravine, or the situation of the rivers and the inclosed land made natural fortresses, the Iroquois had “castles.” These were made by driving three rows of young trees, sharpened at the ends, into the ground to form a palisade which was fastened at the top. Inside of these were platforms, on which warriors could stand and shoot arrows or balls against besiegers. Besides barring the gate tightly, they had heaps of stones ready to throw on the heads of near assailants and tubs of water prepared to put out fires. It was expected that the artillery would have to be used against these. The orders were to burn all the Indian houses and utterly destroy the crops so that the country would be left uninhabitable. There was no mistake about the orders of Washington on this point.
While the army was assembling and the stores, boats and horses were in preparation, other expeditions on a smaller scale had been attempted. The State of New York, in the autumn of 1778, attempted to send an expedition among the Mohawks and Onondagas, but on account of the lateness of the season it was abandoned. In the following year, however, on April 19, Colonel Van Schaick leading, 558 men of the First New York regiment made a forced march of 180 miles in six days against the Onondagas. He burned three of their towns with their storehouses of food, slew twelve and took prisoners thirty-three of the savages. With the Onondagas was the hearthstone of the confederacy, and a terrible humbling done to the Iroquois pride was the extinguishing of the council fire.
Pennsylvania was also active in clearing the path for Sullivan. In September, 1778, Colonel Thomas Hartley with about two hundred soldiers of the Eleventh Pennsylvania regiment, with seventeen horses, advanced northward from Sunbury up the Lycoming river and into a region of swamps, mountains, defiles and rocks. His especial object was to destroy the power of Queen Esther. This squaw had made herself very active in the massacre at Wyoming. She compelled the prisoners of war to kneel in a circle around a boulder, still called “Queen Esther’s Rock,” and tomahawked them one after another. This was in revenge for her son killed in a skirmish. At Sheshequin, near Tioga Point, Hartley destroyed, by the torch, her castle and everything else that could be turned to ashes. Advancing up the Chemung Valley, towards Newtown, the big Indian town on the flats, near modern Elmira, he found the enemy in force and was obliged to return. On his way he cleverly defeated the Indians and Tories who had tried to surround him. He and his men waded or swam the Lycoming river no fewer than twenty times. He reached Sunbury again, October 5, having marched nearly three hundred miles, capturing among other spoil fifty head of cattle and twenty-eight canoes. In his various battles and skirmishes he lost four men, but killed eleven of the enemy and took fifteen prisoners. His regiment was reorganized and became “the new Eleventh regiment,” under Colonel Adam Hubley, which formed part of Sullivan’s army and ranked among his most effective troops.
One has but to study the map of Eastern Pennsylvania, a region rich in swamps, rocks, hills and mountain ranges, to see what difficulties awaited the general who was to move a large body of troops, with artillery and wagon trains, from Easton to Wyoming. To go up the Lehigh Valley was impossible, for between its headwaters and the Susquehanna were hills insurmountable. On the steel tracks of to-day a double force of engine power is required. So from Easton, through the Blue Mountains and Wind Gap, a road was cut through the forest, the stones taken out, the boulders stacked, the miry hollows corduroyed and the swamps filled.
Marvelous to relate, this military road, about seventy miles long, was built within ten days. It was indeed one of the wonders of the Revolution. Several hundred road builders, mostly Continental soldiers, under Colonels Spencer and Van Cortlandt, did the work in parties, while guarded by outlying scouts and riflemen. To-day the turnpike road and the iron rails and bridges of the great railway companies traverse the region in which “The Sullivan Road” once was, but the achievements of the modern engineers are in no way more wonderful. In five days the three brigades of Poor’s New Hampshire men, Hand’s Pennsylvania Light Corps and Maxwell’s New Jerseymen, with Proctor’s artillery and the wagon trains, made the march over the new road. Their camps were at Wind Gap, Larner’s on the Pocono, “Chowder Camp,” near the Tobyhanna, on the creek near the “Shades of Death,” and at “Great Meadows,” or Bullock’s. Some of the relics of the road builders, including the section of a tree carved with the camp name of “Hell’s Kitchen,” are still preserved.
By the building of the military road from Easton to Wyoming, and through Hartley’s and Van Schaick’s raids, the enemy was now fully convinced that an invading army was being made ready for their chastisement. Rousing the whole confederacy of the Six Nations, Brant, the Mohawk, and Butler, the Tory, sent their warriors to make a series of attacks on the American settlements, hoping thus to distract and scatter the coming avengers. Sullivan, however, understood these tactics. He refused to detach any pursuing parties, and pressed right on. In April he had sent his advance guard of two hundred of the Eleventh Pennsylvania under Major Powell to strengthen the garrison at Wyoming. On the 23d, when not far from the site of Wilkes-Barre, the party having reached, as they thought, nearly the end of their journey, were desirous of entering the settlement in good order and in fine personal appearance. They halted, therefore, to brush and clean themselves, while the officers put on their coats and ruffles. Then marching forward, but having their attention called from possible present danger by the presence of a deer crossing their path, they were led into an Indian ambuscade, in which several of them were killed. In 1896 a monument was reared to their memory by the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution.
Another incident previous to the movement of Sullivan’s force was in the attack, by one hundred British and two hundred Indians under command of Captain McDonald, fifteen miles above Northumberland, Pa., on Freeland’s Fort. This they surrounded on the 28th of July, 1779, and compelled the garrison of thirty-two men to surrender. They also ambuscaded Captain Boon’s party, which had marched to their relief, killing fourteen of his men.