Pretty soon the strange phenomenon of a crow playing near a man arrested their attention, and they at once marched into the trap to see the curious sight. Very soon they discovered that the man was a corpse, and the crow was tied to it with a string. At this moment when nearly all were in the defile along the creek, and off their guard, the crash of the enemy’s guns enlightened them as to the situation. They found themselves in a ravine or hollow curved like a horseshoe, and nearly surrounded on both sides by woods, from which puffs of white smoke and flashes of fire were issuing from unseen enemies. Eight or ten of the whites were at once stretched dead on the clay ground, and then the yelling savages leaped out of cover with knife and hatchet.
The militiamen soon broke and ran, but the Schenectady men bravely stood their ground. It took a moment to deliver their fire, and then with musket clubbed or thrown aside, the fighting became, for a few minutes, a series of desperate encounters between white and red man, in which it happened more than once that both buried their knives in each other. After the battle the bodies of Glen, De Graaf, and other noted Indian fighters were found alongside their dead enemies with whom they had wrested in deadly struggle. In this hand-to-hand fight twelve of the party of whites were killed, and five made prisoners; Lieutenant Darling’s company losing seven men, who were shot dead, and six missing.
Adrian Van Slyck and a company of New York militiamen now reached the scene, where the little band of whites were found behind trees and stumps holding the enemy at bay; Lieutenant Darling having been killed at the first fire, Ackes Van Slyck was directing the fight. No sooner had the New York reinforcements got into the line of Indian fire, than they all fled in the most cowardly manner. Adrian Van Slyck and the two or three Schenectady men who stood by him in this part of the field were shot down.
The rest of the original party of whites now retreated out through the western entrance of the vale, and joined by Albert Van Slyck and a few men from the village, reached the house of Abraham De Graaf near by. This substantial edifice—still standing, but used as a dried-apple bleacher when the writer visited it—was not then occupied, but was new and strong, and stood on commanding ground. The fact of its being empty shows the condition of affairs; the people who lived in isolated farm-houses being at this time gathered almost wholly in palisaded villages or other fortified places.
Hastily entering, they barred the door, and reaching the second story, tore off all the boards near the floor and eaves, and prepared for a stubborn defence. With their keen marksmanship they kept the enemy at bay, completely baffling the savages, who peppered the house in vain. While this siege was going on, the two Indian lads left in charge of Dirk Van Voast, eager to see the fight, tied their prisoner to a tree, and climbing up the slope of the ravine, became absorbed in the firing. Van Voast succeeded in reaching his knife, cut the thongs binding him, and ran off to Schenectady, meeting another squad of armed men from the village hastening to the scene. These were led by Jacob Glen, and Albert Van Slyck, the writer describing the event.
Van Slyck had hoped to gather enough men to get out and surround the Indians so as to capture the whole band; but Garret Van Antwerp, fearing lest the town would be left without a garrison in case of attack, would suffer no more to leave the palisades. However, this last reinforcement reached the battle-ground in time to drive off the savages, who were fighting the previously sent party from behind trees, and to save the bodies of Adrian Van Slyck and the dead men near him from being scalped and stripped. Seeing this last party approaching, the savages drew off, retreating up the Sacandaga road. All the whites, including the last comers, the scattered out-door fighters behind trees, and the little garrison in the house, now united. They proceeded at once to count up their loss, and to gather up the dead men and load them on wagons for burial in Schenectady.
What the loss of the Indians was in this battle, as in most others, the white men were never able to find out. Except at the scene of the first firing and ambuscade, Indian corpses were not visible. The first purpose of the redskins, as soon as the opening fury of battle slackened, was to conceal their loss. To run out from cover, even in the face of the fire, and draw away the corpses of their friends, was their usual habit, and to this they were thoroughly trained. Exposure in such work was more cheerfully borne than in regular combat, though usually the dead body was reached by cautious approach, and with as much concealment as possible in the undergrowth. A noose at the end of a rope was skilfully thrown over the head of the corpse, and the end of the rope carried back into cover. As skilfully as a band of medical students or resurrectionists can put a hook under the chin of a corpse and hoist it up from under the coffin-lid half sawed off, the savages in ambush would draw the body of their fallen comrade out of sight, to be quickly concealed or buried. Indian fighters often told stories of dead men apparently turning into snakes and gliding out of sight. Owing to this habit of the Indians, it was very difficult to arrive at the exact execution done by the white man’s fire. As most of the Schenectady men were trained Indian fighters, the loss of the savages was probably great.
This was a sad day for Schenectady. One third of the white force engaged were dead or wounded. Twenty corpses—twelve of them Schenectady fathers, sons, or brothers, and eight Connecticut men—were laid on the floor of a barn, near the church, which is still standing. The sorrowing wives, mothers, and sisters came to identify the scalped and maimed dear ones. Thirteen or fourteen men were missing, while the number of wounded was never accurately known. In the Green Street burying-ground, east of the “Old Queen’s Fort,” the long funeral procession followed the corpses, while Domine Van Santvoord committed dust to dust.
Many are the touching traditions of sorrow connected with this “Beukendal massacre.” So it, indeed, appeared to the people of Schenectady, because of so many of their prominent men thus suddenly slain. To them it was in some sense a repetition of the awful night of Feb. 8, 1690. Yet, instead of its being a massacre, it was a stand-up, hand-to-hand fight in Indian fashion, and a typical border-battle. In the superb and storied edifice of “The First Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Schenectady, in the county of Albany,”—so called in the old charter given by King George II., and so rich in the graphic symbols of “the church in the Netherlands under the Cross,” as well as of local history,—a tablet epitomizing the history of the church in its five edifices was set in its niche after the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of the church, celebrated June 21, 1880. It is “in pitiful remembrance of the martyrs who perished in the massacres of February 9th, 1690, and July 18th, 1748.” From the rear church window one may still look, in 1891, on the barn on the floor of which the bodies were brought and laid for identification on the day when the sturdy Dutch-American Albert Van Slyck signed his letter to “Coll. William Johnson at Albany,” “your Sorrowfull and Revengfull friend on those Barbarous Enemys, and am at all Times on your Command.”
Clinton, accompanied by his satellite, Dr. Colden, and some other members of his council, arrived in Albany, July 20. The next day, after those necessary ceremonies to which the Indians are as great bond-slaves as their civilized brethren, the council fairly opened. A great palaver ensued, and talk flowed unceasingly for hour after hour, until many ears needed rest even more than the few busy tongues. The governor wound up his long address by referring to the battle of Beukendal, so recent and so near by.