USA > New York > The Pennsylvania and New York frontier : history of from 1720 to the close of the Revolution > Part 9
USA > Pennsylvania > The Pennsylvania and New York frontier : history of from 1720 to the close of the Revolution > Part 9
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The colonies were to provide the following number of men: New York 800, Connecticut 1000, Massachusetts 1500, New Hampshire 500, and Rhode Island 400. It is improbable, the complete quotas given rendezvoused at Albany, as the musten roll of effective men, July 16th, amounted to only 3192. They were, mostly, New England farmers' sons, outfitted with their own guns and powder horns. The regimental com- manders were experienced soldiers and veterans of the Old French War, and included : Colonels Timothy Ruggles, Moses Titcomb, Ephraim Wil- liams, Elizur Goodrich, Christopher Harris and William Cockroft; and Lieutenant Colonels Jonathan Bagley, Seth Pomeroy, John Pitkin, Nathan Whiting and Edward Cole.
Judging by the tenor of his letters, Johnson had little expectation of victory. In a letter to De Lancey, he speaks disparagingly of the officers and troops under him ; and in one written to Thomas Pownall, he said :: "1 am under a good deal of anxiety lest my future schemes with regard to the expedition should be too much retarded and even defeated by the want of wagons and provisions falling short"; and further "there is no due subordination among the troops; and the officers with very few exceptions a set of low lifed ignorant people, the men lazy, easily discouraged by the difficulties, and from the popularity of their governments, neither accus- tomed or disposed to obedience."4 This criticism comes with ill grace, since the same "low lifed officers and lazy soldiers," a few days later, won for him the laurels and honors he so greatly enjoyed.
General Lyman with Ruggles' regiment and some men of Pomeroy's and Williams' regiments marched to the Great Carrying Place, clearing a road as they proceeded. It was so called, because it was the beginning of the portage from the Hudson to Lake Champlain and Lake George, long
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used by the Indians and traders on their way to Canada. It had been occupied, years before by Colonel John H. Lydius as a plantation and trad- ing post. There, at the junction of Fort Edward creek and the Hudson he began the erection of a fortification called Fort Lyman, the name being changed a little later to Fort Edward. It was of earth and log construc- tion and enclosed magazines and barracks.5
August 9th, Johnson marched with the last division of troops from Albany to Fort Edward.6 It was decided to proceed by the way of Lake St. Sacrement, which Johnson reached August 28th with 1500 troops and 40 Indians.7 The name he changed to Lake George in honor of the king. He immediately began to clear the forest for his encampment. General Lyman followed with the remainder of the army. At a council of war held September 7th, King Hendrik, the Mohawk chief stated, his scouts reported a large French force was marching towards Fort Edward.
The French force, the Indians discovered, was commanded by Baron Dieskau and consisted of 200 French regulars or grenadiers, 800 Canadians and 700 Indians.8 They left Crown Point, paddled their way up Lake Champlain to the South Bay and marched through the woods toward Fort Edward, which he intended to attack, but the Indians refused because they feared the artillery fire. Learning from papers found on Adams, the messenger Johnson had dispatched to Colonel Blanchard commander at Fort Edward, whom the Indians waylaid and killed, that the main English force was at Lake George, Dieskau decided to make his attack there.
By the first light of the chilly morning, September 8, 1755, all were astir in the English camp. Johnson intended to send out two detachments of 500 men each, one to South Bay and the other towards Fort Edward. Hendrik remonstrated, maintaining a division of the force would be fatal. To clinch his argument, he picked up a stick which he easily broke, and then he put two together and was unable to break them. "There," he said, as he threw them on the ground. His illustration was irresistible. Johnson united the forces and placed them under command of Colonel Ephraim Williams and ordered him to proceed towards Fort Edward.º But, the wise old chief again objected, exclaiming they were too few to win and too many to be killed. This time, he did not prevail, but did not sulk and mounting a gun carriage harangued his warriors in an impassioned speech, beseeching them to follow him. They whooped their approval, daubed their faces with the war paint, filled their powder horns, took up their guns and filed off. Hendrik was too fat and feeble to walk, and the old man was boosted astride an artillery horse. The nag trotted off to the head of the column, which moved away shortly after 8 o'clock.
Dieskau, learning from his scouts, the English were approaching, laid his trap. He placed the grenadiers across the trail and ambushed his Indians on either side. Williams' force had not entirely entered the trap, when Hendrik's keen ears and eyes detected something wrong. He gave the alarm. A signal gun went off among the secreted Indians and the whole woods blazed with the French fire. The English and their Indians went down in squads. Their column recoiled and the men huddled together in fright.
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The French regulars charged the disordered ranks. Hendrik's horse, being shot, he was thrown under it and one of the charging Frenchmen bayoneted the old man to death. Colonel Williams attempted to form his men on the hillside near a large rock, but he was struck dead by a bullet through his head. Colonel Whiting finally got the panic stricken men, those who had not run away, into a semblance of order and retreated. Thus ended the "Bloody Morning Scout."
The distant but approaching sound of guns apprised the army at Lake George, that Williams had been defeated, and frantic efforts were made to defend themselves. The camp lay on an incline sloping to the lake, with a swamp on the right and a dense woods on the left. Overturned bateaux and logs were thrown into line, forming a rough barricade on the south- ern outskirts of the camp. A line of battle was formed with the Mass- achusetts men on the right and the Connecticut troops on the left. Flank- ing parties faced the swamp and the woods. Eyre placed his artillery so as to command the approach by the road.
These preparations were uncompleted, when the fugitives of Wil- liams' force came in. Soon the white uniforms and shining bayonets of the French grenadiers glistened in the noonday sunlight and the woods on either side of the road swarmed with Indians dodging from tree to tree. The French regulars coming by the open road began to fire by platoons, but the English artillery fire soon drove them to the cover of the woods.
Johnson, slightly wounded in the thigh, took to his tent, and Lyman assumed command. This was luck number three. He understood the New England men, and they had confidence he could win. He was everywhere, during the long afternoon, across the field, up and down the barricade, directing, exhorting and commanding. The canister of the artillery drove the Indians in terror from the sheltering trees and logs, and the terrific pelting, from behind the barricade, mowed the French regulars down. About 4 o'clock, they began to waver and the English infantry swept over the breastworks and, with hatchets in hand, charged. The French broke and fled.
Dieskau was wounded and his aide tried to remove him, but he would not leave the line of battle. When the English charged, a soldier shot him through the leg. "What," he said, "would you slay a wounded man. Take me to your general." This was done. Johnson had him treated by his surgeon, protected him from the Indians, who attempted his life and had him safely removed to Albany.
During the afternoon, a scouting party, from Fort Edward, under Captains Folsom and McGinnis, came upon a party of Canadians and Indians, near the scene of the morning engagement, attacked them and drove them away. McGinnis was mortally wounded. It is said, the victims of this affair were thrown into a pool, which has ever since been called "The Bloody Pond."
Lyman and the brave officers and men under him, with Eyre's artil- lery, won the Battle of Lake George. Johnson was inactive during the
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engagement and had little to do in achieving victory. The English losses are said to have been 262 killed and wounded; and the French losses were 228 killed and wounded.
Johnson did not follow up the victory, but with his army remained inactive at Lake George, until winter forced its retirement to Albany. It has been charged against him that he called a council of war and feigning illness, did not attend, in order to throw the blame of retirement on the officers attending.10 Johnson resigned his commission, December 2nd. He received all the honors from the British government. He was created a baronet and given £5000. Johnson was so jealous and ungenerous, that in all his reports, he did not mention General Lyman's name. However, it is said, he privately admitted Lyman won the fight.
Governor Shirley, who succeeded Braddock as commander in chief, was a patriotic, energetic man, but a pompous old lawyer, always plan- ning and never executing. At first, he planned reorganizing the remnants of Braddock's army, with reinforcements from Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland ; but as the colonies would not cooperate, he ordered Colonel Dunbar and the troops to Albany to assist him in his proposed Niagara campaign. Shirley did not have the sense to realize his incapacity and his vanity led him to conceive himself a great military leader and the Niagara expedition as the crux of all plans against the French.
Shirley was responsible for Johnson's preferment and at first they implicitly trusted each other. However, the Crown Point and Niagara movements were more or less rival affairs, and Shirley's diversion of some of the Massachusetts troops from the Crown Point army to the Niagara force, naturally aggravated Johnson. The real cause of dissension arose over Shirley's request for Indians to serve as guides and scouts of his army. Johnson agreed to furnish them and then hedged, stating they were not necessary until the army arrived at Oswego. Shirley became suspicious and unwilling to rely upon Johnson's uncertain cooperation, engaged Joseph Kellogg as interpreter and guide, and secured the assistance of Colonel John H. Lydius, who had great influence among the Indians. Johnson detested Lydius and this hatred, if not the cause, intensified the quarrel. William Alexander, later known as the Earl of Stirling and a leading American general of the Revolution, was Shirley's secretary and representative at Albany and Johnson took umbrage of him.
The controversy became intense and Johnson's lack of earnest sup- port seriously hampered Shirley's plans. Johnson apprehended Shirley had blackened him with the British authorities, and may have contemplated, in trepidation, a tumbling house of glory. But, ever ready luck was with him, and moreover, he won the support of two men, of inestimable service to him with the English government, Robert Orme late aide to Braddock and Thomas Pownall. The latter, was a young politician, who had come to New York as secretary to Sir Danvers Osborne, and brother of John Pownall, secretary of the British Board of Trade. Thomas Pownall later became royal governor of Massachusetts. These two intrigued for him
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and may have been largely responsible for the displacement of Shirley and the great honors bestowed on Johnson by the British government.
The army assembled at Oswego, under Shirley, was insufficient and the supplies inadequate for the reduction of Niagara ; and a French force of fourteen hundred, at Frontenac, across the lake and threatening Oswego, made its capture impossible. Leaving, seven hundred men as a garrison of Oswego, late in October, Shirley with the main army returned to Albany.
The English efforts, in 1755, had been futile. The reduction of Fort Duquesne, Crown Point and Niagara had failed, and the Battle of Lake George was a barren victory. Shirley's plans had miscarried everywhere, save, indirectly, making a Mohawk Valley Indian trader an English baronet.
NOTES-CHAPTER TEN
1. Johnson Papers 1, 465.
2. Ibid, 468-472.
3. Johnson Papers 1, 562.
4. Ibid, 2-6, 9.
5. Ibid 1-730.
6. Ibid, 842.
7. Ibid, 889.
8. Doc. Hist. of N. Y., 2, 694.
9. Ephraim Williams was born at Newton, Massachusetts, son of Ephraim Williams, who removed to Stockbridge. For several years, Ephraim Jr. followed the sea, but finally settled at Stockbridge, which he represented in the General Court in 1744. In 1745, he was commander of three frontier forts with headquarters at Fort Shirley. In 1753, he was in command of Fort Massachusetts and in March 1755, he was appointed colonel of one of the regiments recruited for the Crown Point expedition. At Albany, July 22nd, he made his will, wherein he made a bequest for the establishment of a school at Williamstown, which became Williams College.
10. For accounts of the battle, see : Doc. Hist. of N. Y., 2, 689, 691, 698; Johnson Papers, 2, 18 to 28; Montcalm and Wolfe 1, 295; Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution 1, 95, 96.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
DESOLATION OF THE FRONTIER
Soon after Braddock's defeat, Governor Morris convened the Pennsyl- vania assembly and laid before it the exigencies of the situation and the imminent danger to the frontier. The British Board of Trade had rejected the complaint, of the assembly, to the governor's former action in rejecting an act for the emission of bills of credit, and given notice it considered the assembly recalcitrant. Confronted with the displeasure of the British government, the Quaker assembly bowed to the storm, and submitted an act for the appropriation of £50,000 for the king's use, but because it taxed the proprietary estates, the governor disapproved it, on the ground that it was contrary to his instructions. These instructions were morally inde- fensible and disclosed the greed of the proprietors. Franklin had at last maneuvered the Quakers into a strong position, but both knew the act of assembly was only a gesture to avoid the wrath of the British govern- ment and the rigors of taxation. Proprietors, Quakers, Franklin and Mor- ris were all playing a game of appeasement with the English government and only the cataclysm of murder and plunder on the frontier, at last, cudgeled them into a semblance of defense.1
Many of the western Delawares and Shawnees fought with the French at Braddock's Field. The Delawares, long restive under the overlordship of the Iroquois, were revengeful towards the Pennsylvanians because of eviction from their homeland. Emboldened by Braddock's defeat and incited by the French at Fort Duquesne, these Indians had ravished the settle- ments on the Potomac in Maryland and Virginia, but there were no aggressions, on the Pennsylvania frontier, until October 16, 1755, when their fury burst forth.
Early in the morning of that day, a band of fourteen warriors stealthly approached the settlements along Penn's creek, which with its tributary, Middle creek are sizeable streams meandering through the rich and roll- ing farm lands of Snyder county and emptying their waters into the Sus- quehanna near Selinsgrove. Dividing themselves into groups, they, here and there, struck the unsuspecting inhabitants, burning their cabins, murdering, scalping and capturing the occupants. The last depredation was at the house of Jacob Leroy or King, whom they barbarously burned and finally killed by driving two tomahawks into his forehead. Twenty four were killed or
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taken prisoners. One person escaped and carried the news to the lower settlements. Seventeen of the remaining settlers organized a military com- pany, which went to the scene of the massacre and buried the dead, thir- teen men and women and one child. They, then, returned to the house of George Gabriel, which they made their headquarters.2 The Indians, fear- ing pursuit, immediately decamped with their prisoners, going over the mountains to Kittanning.3
This tragedy was the first Indian massacre, since the settlement of the province and set the whole Pennsylvania frontier aflame. Many, of the settlers in Cumberland county, abandoned their isolated cabins and sought places of possible safety ; and the terrible news terrorized the in- habitants in the outlying sections of York, Berks and Lancaster counties.
John Harris, upon receipt of the news, dispatched a letter, to Gov- ernor Morris, beseeching support of the back settlements ;4 and gathered a force, of forty men, which went up the river to Gabriels, and from thence to Shamokin, where they spent the night of October 24th in con- ference with the Indians, some of whom were friendly, but the Delawares, there, appeared hostile. Among those in the party were Thomas Foster, a magistrate and Thomas McKee, an Indian trader, whose place was on the east side of the river, near the present Dalmatia.5 The latter understood Indians, and distrusted the attitude of a band of painted and strange Delawares.
The next morning, Harris and his men left Shamokin. Andrew Mon- tour advised them to go down the east side of the river, but Harris suspected him of laying a trap and, as the road was easier, they went down the west side. Montour was loyal and had they followed his timely warn- ing, they would have escaped disaster.
As the party descended the bank of Penn's creek, at a place near its mouth, they were fired upon by a band, of some twenty Indians, secreted in the bushes on the other side. Two were killed and most of them fled, but fifteen sought the shelter of the trees and resisted. Finding their posi- tion untenable, they retreated but in crossing the river, one was shot and four or five others drowned. Harris' horse was wounded and he was compelled to swim to the eastern shore. The next night, the Indians burned the buildings at Gabriels.6
Conrad Weiser gathered the men of Heidelberg township and marched to Benjamin Spycker's (the present Stouchsburg), where the men of Tulpehocken township had assembled. Weiser divided this united force, of between three and four hundred men, into companies, each with a captain, and marched to Adam Reed's house in Hanover township. A force was sent to guard Swatara Gap, where it was expected the Indians would come through. Finding most of the rumors to be false and that there were no Indians east of the Susquehanna, Weiser and his men returned home.7
He reported to the governor, what he had done, and upon receiving it, Morris wrote him, enclosing a colonel's commission, and said : "I have no time to give you any instructions with the commission, but leave it to
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your judgment and discretion, which I know are great, to do what is most for the safety of the people and service of the crown."8 Thus, the burden, of defending the frontier east of the Susquehanna, was cast upon Conrad Weiser, without instructions, arms, munitions or the semblance of an army, as there was then no militia in the province, and no law for raising and regulating one. Most of the inhabitants, north of the Kittatinny mountains, abandoned their settlements and fled southward. All was terror and confusion.
About 4 o'clock in the morning of October 31st, William Parsons, late surveyor general, who was at his plantation, "Stonykiln," in Bethel township, Berks county, was aroused by Adam Rees, who informed him of the murder of his neighbor, Henry Hartman. Parsons summoned some men and they went to the scene, which was beyond the first mountain and about four miles away. There, they found the body of Hartman, who had been brutally murdered, and nearby came upon the corpses of two other men, badly mangled and scalped.10
The attack at Hartman's was the first Indian depredation, east of the Susquehanna; and occasioned the fascinating story of Regina, the captive German girl, which in popularity through the generations, has rivaled the romantic tale of Frances Slocum. In later years, Mrs. Hart- man told her story to Rev. Henry M. Muhlenburg, which he has related in the Hallische Nachrichten at page 1029. Henry Hartman with his wife, two sons and two daughters came from Wurtemburg to Pennsylvania and squatted in a fertile vale north of the mountains. They were pious Luth- erans and told their children Bible stories, taught them to pray and sing sweet German hymns. The morning of October 30th, Mrs. Hartman and one of her sons went to a mill, some miles away ; and upon their return, found their home burned, the father and son murdered and the two daughters, Barbara aged ten and Regina aged nine missing. She and her son fled southward to Tulpehocken, where they continued to reside.
The Hartman sisters, with other captives, were taken westward and parted. Barbara was never seen afterwards. Regina and another girl two years old were given to an old squaw, who, treated them cruelly, and they were reared in slavery, amid scenes of savage brutality, until Regina was about nineteen and the other girl about eleven. During their captivity, Regina taught her companion to pray and sing the German songs she had learned. This they did alone and away from the fury of the old squaw.
In 1764, Colonel Henry Boquet crushed the western Indians and required them to surrender all their white prisoners. He collected the captives at Fort Pitt and took them over the mountains to Carlisle. Adver- tisements were inserted in the colonial newspapers, fixing a day, when those who had lost relatives, should come to Carlisle and reclaim their loved ones.
On the day appointed, hundreds of fathers, mothers, relatives and friends, from the colonies north and south, assembled at Carlisle. Colonel Boquet was a skilfull soldier, who conducted the proceedings with mili- tary precision, but in a spirit of kindness and humanity. More than four
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hundred, wretched captives were gathered in a hollow square, guarded by the grim and bayoneted soldiers, and formed into a long line facing the multitude gathered on the common at Carlisle. Many would have run away, for they had been forced to leave their savage foster parents, and were homesick for the Indian homes they had learned to love so well. Some were tots, so small, they had to be led by the soldiers, but most of them were half grown boys and girls, who during their long captivities had forgotten their mother tongues and their own names. Clad in scant and wretched Indian attire, with their long and unkempt hair and darkly tanned faces, their aspect was that of the savages. Wild eyed, shy and bewlidered, these poor little creatures faced the uncertainties of the future, hardly knowing what it was all about. A few recalled their names and were thus reclaimed, some were identified by peculiarities of feature or scars or marks on the body; others were recognized by incidents, songs and stories, and many of them were unclaimed and forced to seek the protec- tion of strangers.
Mrs. Hartman, time and again, passed along the sorrowful line, but was unable to find her lost children. At last despairing, she withdrew and began to sob. The disconsolate woman attracted the attention of Colonel Boquet, as he passed back and forth. He went to her and she told him her sad story. He kindly suggested, was there no mark, no scar by which she could identify them. She shook her head. Was there an incident, a story of childhood, they might recall, he asked. Again, she shook her head. Had they learned some song, he inquired. Immediately, the woman's face brightened with a smile, and she began to sing in a sweet German voice, the beautiful hymn, Regina had loved:
"Alone, yet not alone am I Though in solitude so drear ; I feel my Saviour always nigh He comes the very hour to cheer I am with him and he with me, E'en here alone, I can not be."
Then, from the line of captives, the answer came, in the same strain from a young woman, and Regina Hartman broke away and embraced her mother. The other friendless and unclaimed child clung to Regina, and Colonel Boquet allowed Mrs. Hartman to take her home.11
The Great Cove and the Conolloways are fertile valleys lying in what is now Fulton county. They attracted squatters, who as previously related were evicted in 1750, but returned and occupied their farms. Those settled in the northern part were Scotch Irish and those, in the southern part, which was disputed territory, from Maryland.
A trader and two others were killed in the Tuscarora valley, October 31st ;12 and Shingas a Delaware chief, with about a hundred Delaware and Shawnee warriors, came from Kittanning and attacked the Great Cove settlement. Although, different dates have been given, there is no doubt,
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it was Saturday, November 1st, as Sheriff Potter, in his report, stated it was "Saturday last about 3 o'clock in the afternoon," and Benjamin Chambers, in his warning to the inhabitants, dated it, "Sabbath morning November 2, 1755" (Col. Recs. 6,673,675).
The Indian force divided, the part, under Shingas, attacking the Cove and the other the Conolloways. Sheriff Potter and Adam Hoops led a force, to the scene, Sunday morning and found houses still burning and sad evidence of the ravages. A, Mrs. Jordan and young woman named Clark had escaped, but unfortunately, the morning after, went back to the Jor- dan home to get milk for the children and were captured. The sheriff and Mr. Hoops favored pursuing the Indians, but the majority overruled them and the expedition returned.13 The latter, in a letter to the governor stated, "the Great Cove and Conolloway settlements are all burned to ashes and about fifty persons killed or taken."14
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