Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations

by William Elliot Griffis

Although practically unknown to popular American history, this was the first battle of the American Revolution. For a few weeks Tryon held high revel of execution and devastation in North Carolina, and was then, in the height of his glory, transferred to New York; the Earl of Dunmore, who from Oct. 18, 1770, had served for a few months on Manhattan Island, being ordered to Virginia.

Tryon, who reached New York July 8, 1772, soon became known among the New York Sons of Liberty as “Bloody Billy.” Before the Assembly he made a conciliatory speech attributing his butchery in North Carolina to the special favour of a kind Providence. With consummate address and flattery, and the adroit distribution of ministerial patronage, he managed to hoodwink the Assembly. Backed by the order of the British Government that his salary should be paid out of the revenue, and becoming thus independent of the colony, he was well fitted to be the king’s tool. To the amazement of the patriots like Schuyler, and of other colonies, the Legislature of New York seemed to have reversed its former record, and to have become hopelessly subservient.

Local affairs were meanwhile well attended to. Early in January, 1772, Sir William Johnson, who had long believed with Philip Schuyler that a division of Albany County should be made, forwarded a petition from the people in all parts of the county. After considerable discussion a bill was passed by which the old county of Albany was divided into three counties,—Albany, Tryon, and Charlotte. All the civil officers, except one who had been nominated by Johnson, were appointed, and the county-seat of Tryon County was fixed by the Government at Johnstown. At Johnson’s suggestion, Tryon County was divided into the townships of Mohawk, Stone Arabia, Canajoharie, Kingsland, and German Flats.

Johnstown now became the centre of bustle and activity. New roads were laid out, and a jail and county court-house built; while new settlers came in by scores to select lots and build houses. In the midst of his pressing local occupations, Johnson, who had been elected a trustee,—his name standing first on the list of Queen’s, now Rutgers College, chartered Nov. 10, 1766,—received an invitation to visit New Brunswick, N. J. He was obliged to decline to attend. The college went into operation in 1771; but its sessions were soon interrupted, both professors and students entering the patriot army when the war broke out.

Remaining at home, he entertained at the Hall, in July, Governor Tryon and his wife. Tryon, as avaricious as he was murderous, had come into the Valley under pretence of holding a council with the Indians to redress their grievances against Klock and others. In reality his purpose was speculation in land; and the use of his office, like that of so many royal governors of New York, was to swell his private purse, while taking advantage of his high position. Although the Indians rehearsed their troubles, and Tryon listened, they obtained from the governor, who was too busy with his money-making schemes, no satisfaction. After reviewing the militia at Johnstown, Burnet’s Field, and German Flats, fourteen hundred men in all, and purchasing a large tract of land north of the Mohawk, Tryon returned to New York. His name was not suffered to remain on the map of New York; for Tryon County before many years became one of the first of the nineteen counties in the United States named after General Montgomery. Shortly afterward Tryon appointed Johnson major-general of the Northern Department.

At a council with the chief sachems of the Confederacy of the Six Nations held at his house, at the order of Lord Dartmouth, Johnson obtained from them their assent to the purchase of twenty-three thousand acres north of the Ohio, by the Ohio Company. After telling the chiefs that as a mark of the king’s friendship to them Fort Pitt was to be demolished, the sachems agreed to the settlement of what grew to be the State of Ohio.

Just at the time when Sir William Johnson was in the midst of the most varied activities, and was the most popular and influential man in the whole province of New York, his physical strength failed. For several years the inroads upon his constitution had warned him to seek the rest from labours and from social indulgence which seemed impossible to him. For the last ten years before his death he had suffered at intervals from dysentery, which often kept him an invalid in bed for weeks. During these periods of weakness the unextracted bullet received at Lake George in 1755 irritated his nerves, and made his wound very painful. Even when recovered from the attacks of the disease which threatened to be chronic, active exercise was frequently impossible for a long time afterward. This suffering, though so grievous to himself, was providentially turned to the advantage of millions. It was the occasion of the revelation to the world of the health-giving waters of Saratoga Springs. With a touching solicitude for his personal good, the Mohawks had called his attention to the remedial value of the High Rock Spring, to which they always turned aside in their wanderings or hunts eastward. On the 22d of August, 1767, Sir William left the Hall, and was borne to these springs by his devoted Mohawks. He travelled in a boat to Schenectady, and on their shoulders in a litter to Saratoga. A halt over night was made at Ballston Lake in the cabin of an Irishman named Michael McDonald. Reaching the springs by way of the Indian trail next day, his faithful bearers built a bark hut, and tenderly cared for him during the five days he was able to spend there,—for pressing letters soon called him home. The Adirondack air charged with ozone, and the cleansing and healing waters greatly benefited him. After his return, when this fact was known, others followed his example. Known for ages to the aborigines, its line of fame went out through all the earth; and gradually the evolution of the most famous watering-place in America followed. It is noteworthy that a camp of the red men is still found at Saratoga Springs.

Stone, in his biography of Johnson, calls attention to the coincidence that while Johnson was recovering at Saratoga, Dieskau was dying at Suresnes near Paris. Both had been leaders of the opposing forces, and both had been wounded at Lake George twelve years before. Arriving on the 4th of September, he was in time to hail his knighted son, John, just home from Europe. Had the vital nerve of an electric cable thrilled under the ocean, Johnson would have heard, four days later, of the decease of his illustrious antagonist.

Other trips for the sake of health were made to the sea-shore at New London, Conn.; but owing to the fact of his being so often overworked, he was frequently prostrated in summer by his old enemy. When Cresap’s war broke out in 1774, he was almost discouraged. Chief Logan’s relatives—the Delaware chief Bald Eagle, and the Shawanese sachem Silver Heels—had been murdered by white men, who were too eager to improve red men off the face of the earth. The treaty of Fort Stanwix had not only been trampled under foot by the whites, but the murderers of Silver Heels had, perhaps unwittingly, but certainly in accordance with Indian interpretation, committed a symbolical act which was not private, but national and declarative. It meant war. After the white murderer had shot Bald Eagle, who was alone on the river, he scalped the chief, and propping his body upright in his canoe, sent him adrift down the stream. No note of a congress or decree of a royal court could be to the red man more distinctly a declaration of war than was the bloody freight which this boat bore to the Indians.

To the Six Nations the murder of Logan, their kinsman, was a direct insult and irritating challenge; yet instead of rushing to massacre, they came to their friend Johnson to ask his counsel. For weeks before the congress which he called to meet at his house, July 7, 1774, he was in constant correspondence with his agents in the Ohio and Illinois country. As fast as the chiefs arrived, he persuaded them privately to refrain from war, and to trust in him to obtain justice. Six hundred Indians, many of them from great distances, were impatiently waiting at Johnson Hall while the war raged on the borders of Virginia. Though Johnson was sick with dysentery, he took no thought of self. From a sick-bed he rose to attend the council. After preliminaries, the meeting on the 9th of July, 1774, was addressed by an eloquent Seneca chieftain. Fortunately, God’s day of rest intervened; but on Monday—the last of Johnson’s days on earth—his answer was given. For two hours, on a hot day and in the glare of a July sun, with all his old-time fire of eloquence, this friend of the red man spoke in grave discourse. His diction was fiery, rhetorical, impassioned at times; but he spoke judicially on the problem in hand, pleading that they should not rush into war, but await the course of law. Six hundred dark faces, unrippled with emotion, were fixed intently with burning but immovable eyes, and with the gravity of statues, on the speaker during the long discourse. Then after the peroration, pipes and tobacco were passed around, and the conference broke up, that the auditors might prepare, through their orator, a reply.