The town was deserted, but our troops had to wait all day Thursday for the pack horses and cattle that emerged one by one, or in parties, from the darkness of the dreadful swamp. They found an old squaw, whom they compelled to give information about the Indians. Then they built for her a hut and left her some provisions. Moving northward along the eastern shores of Seneca Lake, through open woods and level country, they found corn roasting in the fire, their supper left untasted and all the evidences of the hasty movement of a large body of Indians.
The next day they moved as far as North Hector, to a village consisting of one very large apartment house with several rooms and fires. To this day the new timber, grown up in the place of the old forest cut through for the artillery, can be easily discerned. Resuming their march, they came on Sunday, September 5, to Kendaia, or Apple Town. This was an Indian village of the first class, over twenty large, long apartment houses built of timber and bark, some of them well painted. There were apple and peach orchards, with many hundreds of trees ripening their fruit, and a cemetery, in which there were tombs erected to the chiefs and made of hewn and painted planks. Here they met with a white captive, Luke Sweetland, whom the Indians had kept employed in making salt. All this lake region is underlaid with beds of the purest chloride of sodium, and in times of peace the Senecas and Onondagas drove a thriving trade with the other tribes in this necessity of life. They made their salt by boiling the brine from salt springs. To-day at Ithaca and Ludlowville the white crystals fill daily a freight train.
On the sixth of September the evening gun sounded at Indian Hollow. On the seventh day they reached the great Seneca town of Kanadesaga, lying on both sides of Castle Creek near what is now Geneva, N. Y. Here had dwelt Old Smoke, the Indian King, and his son who married a daughter of Catherine Montour. In 1756, during the Old French War, Sir William Johnson had built a fort, or stockade, in this town, which was regularly laid out with the open square, in which the fort stood, in the center. Orchards and gardens were plentiful, especially on the north and northeast. Although Sullivan had expected to fight a battle here, and had deployed his regiments for assault, yet the town was found to be entirely deserted, except that a little white boy three years old, captured from one of the settlements, was found playing, though nearly starved. The circular mound, on which the councils of the chiefs and orators were held, still stands, a monument of a nearly vanished race. Gleefully the troops marched in and through the town, with pumpkins and squashes skewered on their bayonets.
The Continentals were now in that renowned lake region of New York famous among the Indians not only for its salt springs, but for its abundance of fish and fruit, and the general fertility of the soil. The forest was still dense all around them, except the more frequent openings, but the Indian villages were numerous and with luxuriant vegetable gardens. In these, onions, peas, beans, squashes, potatoes, turnips, cabbages, cucumbers, watermelons, carrots and parsnips were plentiful, while great cornfields stretched farther off into the clearings and to the very edge of the forest, and orchards of apple, peach and mulberry trees were within easy reach.
It was this great store of vegetable food found everywhere ready that decided Sullivan and his brigade commanders, after a council of war, to push on further westward, despite the very scanty supplies of meat and flour rations. So the horses and the men unable to proceed further by reason of sickness or lameness, were sent back to the fort at Tioga Point, Captain Reed of Massachusetts with fifty men forming the escort. Thence he was to return again, as we have seen, to Kanawaholla, near the present city of Elmira, with supplies for the army on its return.
The main army, facing the setting sun, camped at Flint Creek September 9, and on the next day at noon reached Canandaigua, so named because here the trading Indians on the trail, or red commercial travellers on the road, “took off their pack” to rest. It was an Indian town of twenty-three large houses, with standing crops, all of which, as at the other places, were given to the torch. It is said that the women and pappooses hid themselves on Squaw Island, in the lake near the town. On Saturday, September 11, the Stars and Stripes were unfurled at the foot of Honeoye Lake, where stood the Indian village of twenty long houses. All these except one, selected for a fortified storehouse, were set on fire. The walls of this strongest dwelling were still further strengthened with kegs and bags of flour, and a ditch dug and abatis made. Then two three pounders were mounted and their black noses poked out of the port holes cut through the walls. Here the sick and disabled, amounting to nearly three hundred, were left, in camp. The weakest found quarters in the rooms and bunks of the Indian house. Then the whole army, now able to move as a light armed corps, pressed forward to the goal, which was the big Indian town in the Genesee river valley, near what is now Cuylerville, below Geneseo, N. Y. Delayed by storm and rain next day, only eleven miles were made to Adjuton, a village of eighteen houses, near Conesus Lake, where had lived two celebrities, Captain Sunfish, a negro, and Big Tree, a Seneca chief. The fresh evidences of savages near at hand, were very manifest on the Indian path leading to the Genesee town.
It may be wondered what had become of the motley British force after their defeat at Newtown. As a matter of fact, two hundred fresh Indian warriors had joined Brant just after the battle. They were clamorous to advance at once against the Americans, but those who had a taste of grape shot and bursting bombs were unwilling to make a stand. So the whole force of red and white allies of King George had retreated to the north and west, making camp near Avon, in Livingston County. Keeping out their scouts on the hilltops, they were well informed of Sullivan’s movements.
Now, knowing that he had left Conesus, evidently to attack the big town of the Senecas, Brant and Butler chose a strong position. It was remarkably like that of Braddock’s field, in Pennsylvania, wherein the pride of England’s infantry were changed, from red-coated soldiers, in the glory of lusty life, to heaps of bleaching bones. On a bluff, parallel with the western side of Conesus Lake, well forested, but full of deep ravines, Butler posted his men in ambush. He hoped that Sullivan would advance with his men up the well known trail between two ravines. He had broken down the old, rude bridge over the stream, but he knew that the Continental pioneers would be likely to build another out of the oak and hickory which abounded here. Here he expected to post his men and watch for the opportunity when the scouts should announce the nearness of Sullivan, who was without artillery. With his fresh reinforcements Butler was confident of victory.
William Elliot Griffis.
Ithaca, N. Y.