The magazine of history with notes and queries, Vol. II, No. 5, November 1905

After the awful massacres at Wyoming and Cherry Valley in 1778, Congress passed a vote on the 27th of February, 1779, authorizing Washington to break the power of the Iroquois Indians by desolating their country. Only thus could the American frontiers be protected from Tories and Indians and the rear and flank attacks be stopped.

Until the Revolutionary War the Iroquois had been friends of our fathers against the French in Canada, with whom the Algonquin Indians had acted as allies. How did it come to pass that the Iroquois turned to be our enemies? Lifting up the hatchet and scalping knife against us, they left at Cherry Valley, and Wyoming, great blood spots, and along the frontier a line of fire and death. To answer this question, we must go back more than a century and a half. At that time the North American continent was divided between two quite different sorts of Indians, the Five Nations of the Iroquois, who were united in a confederacy, and the much more numerous Algonquins, who lived all around them.

In 1609, two men, each representing a different civilization, penetrated the inland waters of America. Henry Hudson, an English captain in a Dutch ship and with a Dutch crew, sailed up the river that now bears his name and made the friendly acquaintance of the tribes of Northern New York. Samuel Champlain, from France, came down the lake that bears his name, acting not only as friend, but as ally to the Algonquins, who were ever at war with the Iroquois. The boundary line between these two kinds of Indians was drawn at Rock Regio, in Lake Champlain, near Burlington, Vermont.

It happened at this time that hostile parties from the North and South were out seeking each other. Dressed in bark armor, with bows and arrows, and stone hatchets, they met in combat, not in ambush, but in the open field. The Frenchmen, taking sides with the Algonquins, killed several Iroquois with their firearms. Forthwith, vowing vengeance against these white men who had interfered, the Indians of the South resolved to seek Dutch aid. A few years later they appeared at Fort Orange, near Albany, bringing their beaver and other skins in exchange for arms and ammunition. Thus armed, they were able to go forth on equal terms with the Algonquins to the slaughter of the French and their allies. With them the age of stone was over and the new era of iron and gunpowder had come.

Arendt Van Curler, whom the red men call “Corlaer,” a well-educated Hollander, who lived in America from 1630 to 1667, was superintendent of the Dutch settlement where Albany now stands and later became the founder of the city of Schenectady. He saw at once the value of a league of peace with the Iroquois. He traveled among them, learned their language, won their friendship and held them ever faithful, first to the Dutch, and then after 1664 to the English. “The covenant of Corlaer” became with the Iroquois a holy sacrament, and the policy of all English governors was to “brighten the silver chain” of mutual friendship. Van Curler was drowned near Rock Regio in Lake Champlain in 1667. Sir William Johnson from 1738 to 1774 continued, expanded and strengthened the work of Van Curler. On the other hand the Five Nations became the Six Nations, when in 1722 the Tuscaroras, driven from the Carolinas in 1713, were formally admitted into the confederacy.

For a century and a half the Indian was a political factor in determining the question whether the Anglo-Saxon or the Latin civilization should dominate North America. This question was settled on the heights of Quebec, in 1763, when England became mistress of the Continent. During all this time the French were never able, in war or in peace, by their money or other gifts, by threats or smiles, by political envoys or religious emissaries, to break the “silver chain” or to shake the loyalty of the Iroquois to English-speaking men. To this day the Indians call the governor of New York “Corlaer,” and Queen Victoria, their ruler, “Kora Kowa,” or the Great Corlaer.

When, under King George, the colonists in America and the corrupt British parliament and court quarreled and began war, Congress hoped to keep the friendship or neutrality of the red men. In August, 1775, the first conference and treaty was made at Albany. Later General Schuyler was sent into the Mohawk Valley to treat with the Iroquois and met a council of chiefs at German Flats. “This is a family quarrel,” he said, “and we want you to keep out of it,” and the red men promised to do so. General Herkimer also met a great gathering of warriors from the Six Nations at Unadilla.

On the other side, the British agents at Oswego tried to win over the savages, and succeeded. The Tories and British were able to present much more convincing arguments in the shape of abundance of rum, hatchets, beads, mirrors and guns and powder. Moreover the Indian is always a conservative. He holds fast to tradition. Hence he was most deeply touched by the adroit appeal to “the covenant of Corlaer,” and, being told that the Americans were “rebels,” he sided with the British. The Iroquois expected, in making this new alliance, that King George would govern all the whites, while they should conquer and rule all the red men in North America. It was a great day when General Burgoyne and his officers in their glittering uniforms confirmed with splendid presents the decision of the Iroquois to side with the King.

Active in the campaign of 1777, these confederate red men fought with the Tories and British soldiers against the Americans, especially at the battle of Oriskany. For a while they were broken and demoralized by Burgoyne’s defeat at Saratoga, when the whole British army surrendered.

When in 1778, the red men were rallied by Brant, Butler, McDonald and Sir John Johnson, they made the head of Seneca Lake, where Geneva now stands, their headquarters. Here they planned to attack Wyoming, a settlement, chiefly of Connecticut people, from which most of the able bodied men were absent in Washington’s army, only old men, boys, women and children being at home. After the battle and massacre of July 3 another skillfully planned attack on Cherry Valley in New York was made, and on the 11th of October this settlement was reduced to ashes and the people murdered or taken prisoners to Canada.

These atrocities decided Congress and Washington to chastise the savages, desolate their country and paralyze the activity of the Tories. It was especially necessary to do this, because the British were encouraging their white and red allies to make the great maize lands of Central and Western New York a granary from which they could feed their very mixed army, made up of English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Hessians, Canadians and Iroquois, besides keeping up a continual fire in the rear upon the American forces.

But they had Washington, Sullivan, and the American riflemen to reckon with.

CHAPTER II ASSEMBLING FOR THE GREAT MARCH

Whom should Washington select for so difficult and doubtful a task? The chosen leader must make an expedition, as into a foreign country, through the unmapped and unsurveyed wilderness of Western New York, against a foe ever ready by wiles and cunning to ambuscade the invader. It might be, as in many a dismal case before, that his men would be shot by invisible marksmen. Who would dare to try to feed an army of regular troops with no base of supplies? With the precedent of Braddock’s failure and bloody Oriskany before him, who aspired to lead? It is no wonder that when Gates was offered the command he declined it at once, much to Washington’s vexation. The commander-in-chief then summoned General Sullivan. This descendant of Irish heroes was born at Durham, in New Hampshire, and grew up to be a stalwart American, a vigorous and far-seeing patriot. Just as soon, in 1774, as Great Britain forbade the importation of military stores to America, Sullivan knew there would be war.

Collecting a body of eager young men, he drilled them in military tactics. In December, 1774, he attacked Fort William and Mary, at Newcastle, at the mouth of the Piscataqua river, and took the place in daylight. In spite of the fire of the garrison, he entered without losing a man, and pulled down the British flag. This was the first hostile act of the kind in the war of the Revolution. He carried the cannon and powder to Durham, where it was stored partly in a barn and partly in the cellar of the Congregational church edifice, on the site of which the monument reared to his honor now stands. The powder reached Bunker Hill in time to fill the horns of the militia. Indeed, this was about the only supply that our men behind the breastworks and rail fence had. Sullivan commanded at Boston and on Long Island, and fought at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown and in Rhode Island.

Up to this time, 1779, the French Alliance had not amounted to anything, and there were but fifteen thousand regular Continental soldiers fit for duty. Yet so important did Washington consider this expedition to destroy the Iroquois power that he detached one-third of his whole force, or 5000 picked Continentals. In its organization the army of chastisement consisted of four brigades, a regiment of artillery and eight companies of riflemen, making about five thousand men, with about two thousand pack horses and twenty-five hundred cattle and two fleets of boats for river service, with stores and ammunition. The New Hampshire brigade, then encamped at Redding, Conn., and the New Jersey brigade at Elizabeth, N. J., with the Pennsylvania regiments, were ordered to march to Easton, and thence to move on to Wyoming, from which point the stores and cannon were to follow the army until they should reach Tioga Point, where is now Athens. Here they were to be joined by the New York brigade from Schenectady.

The Chemung and the Susquehanna, flowing from the east and the west out of the heart of the Indian country, approach very near to each other at Tioga Point, enclosing a pretty peninsula shaped like an arrow head. Further down they meet and unite in one stream, the lordly Susquehanna, on which canoes could reach the cities on the Chesapeake Bay or any of the rivers flowing into it. Tioga Point was the Southern Door of the Long House of the Iroquois confederacy, and here, as a base of supplies, a diamond-shaped fort with a block house at each corner, with hospital and barracks, was to be built. Upon this the army could fall back in case of defeat, and here be re-victualed on their return march.

In the rivers, nature provided the only highways, though the Iroquois during centuries of war, trade and travel had made many trails. From Tioga Point the Continentals were to march up the Chemung Valley and thence into the wonderfully fertile lake country of Central New York. Along the ridge overlooking Seneca Lake they would pass, in order to strike the Tory headquarters and center of supplies at the lake’s northern end, where then stood a big Indian village, and now not far away is the city of Geneva. Thence westwardly they were to move to Canandaigua and along the great trail at the southern end of the smaller lakes, Canadice, Hemlock and Conesus, into the valley of the Genesee. Possibly they might be able to reach the British fort at Niagara.