Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations

by William Elliot Griffis

Parkman’s magic pen has drawn the picture of the movements of Dieskau, the German, and his French and Indian forces opposed to the provincial army, and has brilliantly described the camp and forces at Lake George, when, on the morning of Sept. 8, 1755, the Canadians, Indians, and French, numbering fifteen hundred, being, unknown to the English, only an hour’s march distant, one thousand men sallied out from the camp to capture Dieskau and his forces. The spirit of Braddock seemed to be still in the air; and the men—New England and New York militia—sallied out jauntily, expecting easy victory, but in reality to what proved “the bloody morning scout.” They were led by Col. Ephraim Williams—whose will, creating what is now Williams College, had been made a few days before at Albany—and by Lieutenant-Colonel Whiting. In three divisions the little army marched out and soon disappeared from view in the forest, just before nine o’clock a. m. The two columns, French and English, were thus approaching each other in a narrow road, like trains on a single track in a tunnel.

Not knowing what the issue might be, Johnson made preparation for all risks. He at once ordered trees felled and laid lengthwise. With these and the wagons, bateaux, and camp equipage, he constructed a rough line of defence, which faced all along the one side of the camp which an assaulting party might be reasonably expected to attack,—that is, on that side of the rough quadrangle which was parallel to the lake. At that portion fronting the road, he planted three of his heaviest pieces of cannon, one thirty-two and two eighteen-pounders. Another was posted a little way round to the left, while five howitzers of smaller calibre, with the mortars, one of thirteen-inch, and four of smaller calibre, were stationed to throw shell in the morasses and woods on the flanks. The superb artillerist, Major William Eyre, with a company of British sailors, served the guns.

The situation then was as follows: Colonel Williams’s party was marching southward along the stump-embossed road cut by Johnson’s axemen a few days before. After advancing two miles he halted for the other divisions to come up, and then moved in a solid body. With what seems incredible carelessness, neglecting to send out scouts, they moved on, Braddock-like, unsuspicious of danger, imagining that the French were miles away.

On the contrary, Dieskau’s scouts had watched their departure from the camp, and quickly reported the news to the German baron. He at once ordered his regulars to halt, and sent the Canadians and Indians into the forest, three hundred paces ahead, with orders to lie flat on the ground behind trees, rocks, and bushes, and make no noise or sign until the regulars had fired, when all were to rise and surround the English.

Here, then, was a horseshoe ambuscade in a swampy spot. It was another case of “the fatal defile.” The regulars were, to the party approaching them, invisible, for they lay behind a swell of ground. All was as silent as the grave when the head of Colonel Williams’s line entered the trap. Had it not been for the treachery of the Indians, or the warning signal of the French Iroquois to their kindred, given by the discharge of a gun,—though it may be possible that this unexpected shot was an accident,—the English would have been nearly annihilated. But before the party had passed the calks of the horseshoe at the ends of the ambuscade, the war-whoop and the countless puffs of smoke and whistling bullets told the whole story. The silent wilderness at once became hell.

Colonel Williams at once took in the situation, and mounting a rock to direct his men, ordered them to spread out on the hill to the right. He was soon shot through the head. Hendrick had fallen at the first fire. The Americans were rallied by Nathan Whiting, and retreated stubbornly, contesting the ground rod by rod, and firing from behind trees and rocks at the Canadians and Indians, who followed the same tactics. Where they met reinforcements sent out by Johnson, their firing was more steady and destructive.

It was near Bloody Pond that Lieutenant Cole and the three hundred men sent out from camp by Johnson met them, and ably covered their retreat, so that the wounded were brought in, and the main body reached the camp in good order about ten o’clock. Le Gardeur, the officer to whom Washington had surrendered a few months before, commanded the Canadian Indians in this battle, and was slain. The savages, seeing the English out of the way for the present, at once fell back to scalp and plunder the slain Americans. Dieskau ordered them off, refusing to let them stop and thus lose time. Though obeying, they were angry and insubordinate, and later in the day sneaked out of the fight, to return like dogs to their vomit of war. Dieskau ordered the bugles to sound the assembly, and re-formed his forces, hoping by a rush on Johnson’s camp to capture it at once. Unfortunately for him, he had to reckon with Indians and bush-rangers instead of with trained soldiers.

Once inside the camp, the Massachusetts men were ranged on the right, the Connecticut men on the left, with the New York and New Hampshire men between. Five hundred troops were posted on the flanks in reserve. Lying down flat on their stomachs behind the hastily thrown up barricade, they lay awaiting the enemy, whom they expected at a double-quick pace.

Everything now depended on the steadiness of the militia. The officers threatened death to all who flinched from the foe. All eyes were bent on the woods in front, and especially down the road whence they expected to see the regulars rush on them with levelled bayonets. Could raw provincials, commanded by a fur-trader and a lawyer, face the veterans of Europe?

Three long, cold iron noses poked out at them were too much for Dieskau’s Indians. The black-mouthed cannon, intercepting with their round circles a charming view of the blue lake ahead, took away the courage of the bush-rangers, and both reds and whites scattered and took to the woods. To the exasperation of Dieskau, all his life used to regular military formations, his great host melted away from his sight in the undergrowth and behind trees; where, now creeping forward, now squatting or lying, they began a dropping fire in the front and on the flanks of the Americans. In traditional European style, the French regulars, in white uniforms and with glittering bayonets, marched up and delivered their volleys from double ranks.