USA > New York > Livingston County > A history of Livingston County, New York: > Part 14
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whose names had been as watchwords at the declara- tion of independence, had withdrawn from the national councils, occupied either by their individual affairs, or by the affairs of their individual States."* Never too sanguine, Washington was now beguiled into no feeling of security ; but the country was lan- guid and exhausted, and had need of rest, and, all things considered, he deemed it wise to allow "Amer- ica a breathing time." He therefore assented to a defensive policy for the approaching campaign, with the single exception of this western expedition against the Indians.
He held that Indian warfare, to be effective, should not be merely defensive, but that we must make "war upon them in their own style; penetrate their country, lay waste their villages and settlements, and, at the same time, destroy the British post at Niagara, that nestling place of tories and refugees." This policy prevailed, and the campaign, now finally decided upon, was set on foot at once. It consisted of, first, an expedition from Fort Schuyler, under Colonel Van Schaick, with six hundred men, who, on the 19th of April, surprised and destroyed the Indian villages of Onondaga, and got back to camp without loss. The principal expedition of the campaign, however, was that to western New York, under General Sulli- van. Washington had devoted much thought as to the best route by which to reach the Indian settle- ments, and his leading officers were consulted, as we have seen. General Schuyler, more familiar with the country than others, believed that the most eligible course would be to ascend the Mohawk river, and continue thence westward to the Seneca villages, and, if practicable, to Niagara. There were difficulties,
* Irving's Washington.
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however, in this plan, and, upon the whole, the line adopted was doubtless the best. It was Washington's: original design that General Brodhead, who left Pitts- burg in August of that year, with six hundred men, and destroyed several Indian towns on the Alleghany and other tributaries of the Ohio, should form a junc- tion with Sullivan; but this part of the campaign was . afterward abandoned.
The command of the expedition had been tendered by Washington to General Gates; but that officer, ever jealous of the Commander-in-chief, declined the service, in a cold, and uncourteous letter. The leadership was then offered to General Sullivan, who . accepted and entered with alacrity upon the honorable and responsible duty.
The headquarters of the force was first established at Easton, Pennsylvania, from which point a general order, for the arrangement and marching of the army, was issued on the 24th of May. In the latter part of June, the troops moved to Wyoming, then recently the scene of that bloody massacre which had so shocked the sensibilities of Christendom. By the last of July, three thousand troops were assembled at Wyoming, and at one o'clock on the afternoon of the 31st of that month, the army commenced its march for Tioga, by way of the western branch of the Susquehanna river, the stores and artillery being conveyed up that stream in a hundred and fifty boats .*
This expedition, so fruitful in good results, was
* The army, as it now moved out, was composed as follows:
Gen. Hand's Brigade-Hubley's and the German Regiment, and Schott's and. Spaulding's Independent Corps, compose Light Corps.
Gen. Maxwell's Brigade-Dayton's, Shreeve's, Olden's, Spence's regiments. Gen. Poor's Brigade-Cilley's, Reed's, Scammel's, Cortlandt's regiments.
Total fit for duty July 22: Brig. Generals, 3; Colonels, 7; Lt. Colonels,
6; Majors, 8; Captains, 48; Chaplains, 3; Surgeons, 10; Drum Majors, 8 ;: Fife Majors, 3; drummers and fifers, 131; rank and file, 2,312.
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"attended with more than its share of painful incident in each step of formation and earlier movements. At the outset, the officers of a Jersey regiment hesitated to obey marching orders. Washington received the intelligence of their wavering "with infinite concern," and declared that nothing had happened in the course of the war which gave him so much pain as their action. He was fully sensible of the justice of their · demands. He was aware that they had appealed, without effect, to the Legislature of their State on the subject of the arrearages of their pay ; that they had urged the starving condition of their families, and the burthen of accumulating debt; that their appeal had been slighted, and that they had obtained no satisfac- tion whatever. They next remonstrated. "Our pay," said they, "is only nominal, not real. Four months pay of a private soldier will not procure his wretched wife and children a single bushel of wheat! The situation of your officers is worse. The pay of a colonel of your regiments will not purchase oats for his horse, nor will his whole day's pay procure him a single. dinner." The remonstrance closed by urging that unless immediate relief was afforded they would be under the necessity of quitting the service, and, unless provision for arrears was made in three days, they must be considered as having resigned. The emergency was serious. The cause of complaint was wide-spread and well founded; and had not Wash- ington now exerted his powerful influence as well with the civil authorities as with the army, the expedition might have failed at this stage. But he succeeded in securing attention to the appeal. The memorial was withdrawn and the pay sent to the regiments, who promptly took their places in the brigade to vindicate -anew throughout the campaign, their reputation, won .on many a battle-field, for unflinching valor.
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It is said that Sullivan's requisitions embraced many articles deemed extravagant by the Board of war. Among other things a large number of eggs were called for, while the quantity of rifle powder was greater, the board thought, than could in any event be necessary. It is certain that Congress received the requisitions with disfavor, and tardily granted orders for such supplies as by them were regarded essen- tial. All this tended to delay the movement, and give publicity to what it had been designed to keep secret. Washington meantime grew anxious, and urged that. success depended upon celerity. The commissariat, even at last, was but illy supplied either in quantity or quality. On reaching Wyoming not a pound of salted meat remaining was fit to eat, and in other departments contractors had equally wronged the public service. Sullivan says that more than a third of his men were without a shirt to their backs. Many of the cattle furnished him were too poor to walk and some were even unable to stand. Of the fourteen hundred horses provided, full fifty were worn out and unable to travel further than a single day's march beyond the Chemung river, where they were abandoned and ordered shot. The Indians afterwards gathered the heads of these slaughtered animals and arranged them beside the trail. From this circum- stance the locality derived its present name of Horse- heads.
On the 11th of August the army arrived at Tioga. A mile above the junction of the Tioga and Susque- hanna rivers they approach each other to within a few rods. "Here a fort was built called Fort Sullivan,. while the army, somewhat fatigued, lay on what. might almost be called an island below," awaiting the arrival of Clinton's division. The water of the Sus- quehanna, through which the troops had to pass, was.
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up to their arm-pits, and to preserve the ammunition dry, they hung their cartouch-boxes upon their bayo- nets, carried high above their heads. From this point Sullivan detailed General Poor with a detach- ment of seven hundred men, to meet Clinton. The precaution proved a wise one, for, after traversing thirty miles or more of wilderness, the detail came upon a body of Indians lying in ambush beside a well-beaten trail at Round Hill, near Choconut creek, awaiting the coming of Clinton. The Indians were surprised, and being driven down the bank and dis- persed, the detachment moved on and soon after came up with Clinton's division. After a brief halt the latter's march southward was resumed.
The advent of Clinton's army into the region of Otsego lake with a well-appointed force, was an event so unexpected to the Indians and so formidable in character, that a wide-spread terror seized their fam- ilies and they fled in large numbers across the country, first, to near Newtown, and, after the battle of the latter place, to the homes of the Senecas on the Genesee, where, remote from white settlements, they fancied themselves secure, little suspecting the blow, now preparing through the agency of this very force, to fall upon those distant towns .*
* In 1860, Judge Avery, of Flint, Michigan, saw, on the Grand river, in Canada, a venerable squaw, (nearly a hundred years old,) of the Nanticoke tribe, named Way-way, who was born at Choconut, and resided near that place at the time Clinton's army was on its way to form a junction with Sullivan. She recollected perfectly the dismay occasioned by that event, and also the flight with her people to the Genesee to seek safety, and when driven from the Seneca villages along the latter river by Sullivan, the con- tinued flight with others, to Niagara. On the return of peace, Way-way and her mother, (she lost her father in the Newtown battle) came back with others, and settled near Owego, where they recovered their kettles and other valuables left buried when they fled westward. Judge Avery, to whom I am much indebted for facts, has used his interesting pen with marked suc- cess in rescuing many a fugitive leaf of early history from destruction.
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At ten o'clock on Sunday morning, the 22d of August, General Clinton appeared with his division, in two hundred and ten boats. Salvos of artillery announced their arrival. The light corps was drawn up, Colonel Proctor's music was advanced to the front, and, while drums were beating and fifes play- ing, the division floated past the light corps to the camp of the main army. The force, with this addition, now numbered about five thousand men.
Clinton's division, consisting of sixteen hundred men, had come from the valley of the Mohawk by way of Otsego lake, and the easterly bank of the Susquehanna. As he neared Sullivan he despatched a small detachment under command of Lieutenant Boyd, whose untimely fate a few days later near Con- esus lake, gives a tragic coloring to the expedition's `history, to announce his coming, which arrived at the general head-quarters in a soaking rain.
The baggage was now got ready for the march. Several tents were cut up and a considerable force was detailed for work through the day and night to make up this material into flour sacks convenient for trans- porting on horse-back.
Having attained a comparatively open country the line of march was arranged in the following order : Gen. Hand's brigade, in front, in eight columns ; Gen. Poor's brigade on the right, in eight columns, flanked by a strong body of light troops ; Gen. Max- well's brigade on the left in eight columns, flanked by light troops ; Gen. Clinton's brigade, in eight col- umns, in the rear ; Col. Proctor's artillery in the centre, flanked on the right and left by double files of pack-horses, which separated his command from Poor's and Maxwell's brigades ; Major Parr, with the riflemen, disposed considerably in front of the whole, with orders to reconoitre all suspicious places previ-
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ous to the arrival of the army. Colonel Cortland's regiment was added to Clinton's division, Olden's to Poor's brigade, and Butler's regiment and Major Parr's corps to Hand's brigade.
On the 26th of August the signal-gun was fired, and the whole army took up its line of march. A great and unknown wilderness-formidable obstacles to the movement of an army-spread before them. Un- bridged creeks and rivers were to be forded, mountain defiles to be threaded, and morasses to be crossed. The maps of the country were full of errors, while the guides, even the best that could be procured, were so little acquainted with the route that they "could not conduct a party out of the Indian path by day nor in it by night." General Hand had been informed that the region between the Chemung river and the Gen- esee, was in great part particularly low, wet, and swampy, and could be travelled only with difficulty, and so informed Washington in March, yet nothing, as we know, could well be further from the truth. A wily foe, perfectly familiar with every pass, and at home on every trail, hovered always upon their flanks. Pioneers moved invariably in advance, and riflemen were disposed in front to reconnoitre suspicious places, and thus to prevent surprise. But while these precautions were taken to guard against disaster, con- fidence and good nature prevailed throughout the ranks, and neither officers nor men were unmindful of the demands of the palate. Besides the usual sup- plies, the Commander carried dried tongues and other articles of like character ; and a number of live cattle were driven along to supply them with fresh meat. The general officers were entertained at Sullivan's table, where, with characteristic freedom, he criticised the Congress, and particularly the Board of war. This impolitic course, though evincing independence,
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was cause of much after controversy and personal . embroilment.
Six light brass field-pieces and two howitzers were carried by the artillery. The morning and evening guns were always fired, even in the deepest recesses of the forest ; and much as Sullivan was criticised, even on the floor of Congress, for thus notifying the Indians of his progress and whereabouts, he never justified his course as he might have done, by quoting his orders from the Commander-in-chief himself. These orders, in the handwriting of Hamilton, and bearing Washington's autograph signature are still in existence.
Sullivan was familiar with Indian warfare, and was well aware of the terror which the discharge of cannon occasioned in the Indian mind. The peace of New England had in a measure been preserved by provid- ing a "big gun" for exposed settlements. to . be now and then fired from the little garrison house. Indeed, the shaking of a linstock by a woman over an unload- ed cannon, proved enough on a notable occasion to hold at bay a band of savages. As the expedition was no longer a secret he determined to make the most of this feeling of dread on the part of the red- man. In his special orders of the 31st of May, Washington said, "the immediate objects (of the expedition) are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible." Wash- ington had hoped to keep the route of the army a secret, but the fact had transpired, hence, as the natives, encumbered by little or no baggage, and familiar with the country, could easily keep out of the way of an army whose progress at best must be necessarily slow, it at once became clear that his attention must be confined to the principal object, that
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of destruction to their settlements, since he could take no prisoners, and even if he had been able to do so, no suitable provisions could be made for their support or transportation. The morning and evening guns afforded little information as to the army's whereabouts, for the Indian runners were constantly watching its progress and reporting its movements to the retreating chieftains.
Washington was well aware of the effect of dash and clamor, and he particularly suggested that when going to attack the Indians, "it should be done with as much impetuosity, shouting, and noise as possi- ble," and that it should be "impressed upon the minds of the men whenever they have an opportu- nity, to rush on with the war-whoop and fixed bayonet. Nothing will disconcert and terrify the Indians more than this."
On Sunday, the 29th of August, the expedition arrived at Newtown, near the present city of Elmira. The Indians and Tories, one thousand strong, under the Butlers and Brant, were here found entrenched behind well constructed earth-works, a short distance below the modern city, at a point wisely chosen for defence. Sullivan at once began to engage them, by opening his field-pieces upon their defences-mean- time detaching General Hand's light troops to the left and Poor to the right around the mountain, the latter to fall upon their left flank, and thus cut off their retreat in that direction. Poor was obliged, however, to march over a mile in full view of the enemy, who readily penetrated his design. They observed, too, that when he opened signal fire other movements were making to surround them ; and see- ing that opposition was useless, they delayed no longer, but sounding the wild retreating whoop, at · once quitted their works and betook themselves to
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precipitate flight, the artillery's well-directed cannon- ade serving, meantime, to quicken their motions. The engagement lasted two hours. Sullivan had seven men killed and about thirty wounded. The enemy suffered more seriously, and were pushed so closely that in their retreat Walter Butler's commis- sion, and the warrant of another tory officer, together with several orderly books, fell into our hands. The defeat proved decisive. The leaders could not, during the whole progress of the expedition, again bring the savages face to face with the army marching to invade their homes, and though ever on the watch to embar- rass its movements and to strike a stealthy blow, they were obliged constantly to retreat,-slowly and sul- lenly,-before the steadily advancing expedition.
After the war, Brant told General Peter B. Porter, that Red Jacket, whose great influence was first fully exerted in connection with this expedition, sought to perplex the Indians by holding private councils with the young chiefs, and more timid sachems, to induce them to sue for peace, even on humiliating terms. Colonel Stone says, that at one time Red Jacket so far succeeded in his plan as to send secretly a runner into Sullivan's camp to make known the divisions existing among the Indians, and to advise the General to dispatch a flag of truce with certain propositions calculated to increase these divisions and to secure a peace dishonorable to them. Brant was privately informed of these proceedings, but fearful to disclose them, detailed two confidential warriors to waylay and kill the bearer of the flag of truce before he should reach the Indian camp.
The little Indian village of Newtown was laid in ashes, and the surrounding crops of corn and beans were also destroyed. From this point, on the night succeeding the battle, General Sullivan sent back to
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Pennsylvania his heavy artillery, retaining only four brass three pounders, and a small howitzer. Having loaded the necessary ammunition on horse-back, and being otherwise ready, the army resumed the march early next morning for Catherine's Town, the home of the half-blood Queen Catherine Montour, which lay on a creek about three miles from Seneca lake, encamping at night-fall within thirteen miles of that village. The next day a road was opened for the artillery, through a hemlock swamp, nine miles in extent. Over this, as well as through several danger- ous defiles, the army was now to pass. It had also to ford a swift running river which in many places. was considerably broad and waist deep, while its course was so serpentine that it had to be crossed seven or eight times in the day's march. Sullivan was cautioned by his scouts against entering the swamp until daylight, and Clinton, who brought up the rear and was much fatigued, on reaching its entrance at night-fall, was so strongly assured that the lives of his horses and cattle, if not of his men, would be risked if he tried to go through before morning, that he did not attempt the task till the next day. Sullivan, however, pressed on, determined to cross that night. Flanking parties were accordingly sent forward, and other precautions taken against surprise ; but such was the boldness of the hills and so narrow were the defiles, that a score or two of Indians might easily have obstructed the progress of the troops and thrown the army into confusion. The night was intensely dark, and as the men slowly groped their way, often sinking deep in the treacher- ous ground, they became weary and scattered, and not a few lay down here and there on the pathway for the night, unable to go farther. The situation was one of no little peril ; but fully alive to its demands
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the General encouraged his army forward, and by midnight had the satisfaction of reaching the already deserted town. The Indian scouts had keenly watched the army until evening, but having no thought that they would continue the march in a night so dark, over a route presenting so many difficulties, and to so late an hour, they made their way to the town at dusk where, roasting their corn, they passed the evening in busily planning for the next day, while the resolute commander of the invading forces was pushing forward his troops, amid difficulties whose daring character, singularly enough, secured him from the dangers, incident to the movement. Such a stroke was characteristic of Sullivan. Washington, well aware of his intrepidity and dauntless courage, had selected him as chief officer of the expedition, which involved risks like this, risks for which he had a relish. Though when the troops had safely accomp- lished that night's march, Sullivan, it is said, declared he would not repeat it for the honor of a command. Several of the cattle had been killed, and a number of pack horses lost in the mazes of the swamp. The men, however, all arrived safely, those who had drop- ped out coming in with Clinton in the morning. The army halted here until the second day to rest from the unusual fatigues. Catherine's Town, it was found, consisted of thirty houses, several of which were quite good. These were destroyed together with the orchards and growing crops of corn, beans and other vegetables.
An incident here occurred which proves the absence of personal hatred on the part of the army, however ready they were to destroy the towns and crops of the Indians, as a military necessity. An old Cayuga squaw, of great age, had been left in Catherine's Town by the Indians, in their precipitate flight, and was
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found in the neighboring woods. The soldiers at once provided for her present wants, and treated her with kindness during their stay. Before leaving, the town having meanwhile been burnt, they erected a hut for the old woman, and gathered a quantity of wood for her use. They also left her a supply of provisions, which she was found using on the army's return. Such unexpected usage, drew grateful tears from her venerable eyes, and made her quite communicative. She assured the officers that the squaws generally were anxious for the Indians to remain in their vil- lages, and make peace with the Yankees.
On the 30th of August, Sullivan addressed an order to the army in which, reflecting severely on the colonial authorities for neglect in furnishing supplies of food and horses, he requested the officers to ascer- tain if the troops were willing to draw half rations of flour, meat and salt, until the leading purpose of the expedition should be accomplished. The necessity of this measure, so essential to success, since the supplies, never sufficient in quantity, were now much reduced ·by loss in various ways, was fully appreciated, and the suggestion was received with cheers by the whole army, resolved as they were to execute the orders of Congress for the devastation of the Indian country at any personal sacrifice. But they really suffered noth- ing from hunger, since vegetables, common to the country through which they were passing, were found in profusion, and their wants were thus supplied from day to day by the several localities. Hominy or paune, made from corn, the camp-kettles serving as graters, was especially palatable, but caused bowel complaints to such an extent that its use was discontin- ned for a time. On the 8th of September, a captain and fifty men were detached with all the sick and lame, and ordered to return to the garrison at Tioga.
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The work of destruction to Indian property was pursued relentlessly, and desolation marked the army's route. Grains and crops were destroyed. Orchards of apple, pear and peach trees, raised in most instances from the seeds and stones, under advice of the Jesuit missionaries, met the fate common to other species of property. In one place fifteen hun- dred peach trees, bending under the ripened fruit, were cut down. This is much to be regretted. Indeed, the Indians themselves, in their incursions upon the white settlements, were in the habit of sparing fruit trees, the growth of many years ; and some of the officers desired Sullivan to mitigate his orders in this regard, but his instructions from Washington were specific and he insisted that they should be literally carried out. This was effectually done. "The blow must be sure and fatal," said Sullivan, ."otherwise the Indians will derive confidence from our ineffectual attempts and become more insolent than before."
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