Three Rivers
Hudson~Mohawk~Schoharie
History From America's Most Famous Valleys

Border Wars

of the American Revolution

by William L. Stone. Volume I

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1843.

CHAPTER IV.

A COUNCIL of the Mohawk chiefs was held at Guy Park* on the 25th of May, which was attended by delegates from Albany and Tryon counties. The records of this council are very scanty and unsatisfactory. The principal chief of the Mohawk tribe a tthat time was Little Abraham, a brother of the famous Hendrick who fell at Lake George, in the year 1775.

This council having been but thinly attended, and only by one tribe of the Indians, the superintendent immediately directed the assembling of another in the western part of the county, to attend which he proceeded to the German Flatts with his whole family and retinue. His quarters were at the house of a Mr. Thompson, on Cosby's Manor, a few miles above the Flatts. It has been alleged that this second council was convoked because of the superintendent's dissatisfaction with the first-a conclusion not unlikely, from the absence of the western Indians, who had been invited.

On the 3d of June there was, for the first time, a

* Guy Park, a beautiful situation immediately on the hank of the Mohawk. The elegant stone mansion is yet upon the premises, giving the best evidences of a substantial building.

+ Little Abraham seems rather to have been a leading chief at the Indian Castle of the Mohawks-not the principal war-chief.

full meeting of the Tryon County Committee, the Loyalists having previously prevented the attendance of delegates from the lower, or Mohawk District.* This committee addressed a strong and patriotic letter to the superintendent, formally notifying him of
the purposes of their organization. The following
is an extract from this letter:

" We are not ignorant of the very great importance of your office as superintendent of the Indians, and therefore it is no more our duty than inclination to protect you in the discharge of the duty of your proper province ; and we meet you with pleasure, in behalf of ourselves and our constituents, to thank you for meeting the Indians in the upper parts of the county, which may be the means of easing the people of the remainder of their fears on this account, and prevent the Indians committing irregularities on their way down to Guy Park. And we beg of you to use your endeavours with the Indians to dissuade them from interfering in the dispute with the mother-country and the colonies. We cannot think that, as you and your family possess very large estates in this county, you are unfavourable to American freedom, although you may differ with us in the mode of obtaining a redress of grievances. Permit us farther to observe, that we cannot pass over in silence the interruption which

* It maybe interesting to some to give the names of this body of men, who had so often professed their willingness to peril their lives and properly in defence of the liberties of their country. (From Palatine District)-Chnstopher P. Yates, John Frey, Andrew Fink, Andrew Reeber, Peter Wagoner, Daniel M'Dougal, Jacob Klock, George Ecker, Jun, Harmanas Van Slyck, Christopher W. Fox, Anthony Van Veghten. (Canajoharie District)-- Nicholas Herkimer, Ebenezer Cos. William Seeber, John Moore, Samuel Campbell, Samuel Clyde, Thomas Henry, John Pickard, (Kingsland and German Flatts Districts)--Edward Wall, Will iam Petry. John Petry, Augustine Hess, Frederic Orendorf, George Wentz, Michael Ittig, Frederic Fox, George Herkirner, Duncan M'Dougal, Frederic Helmer, John Frink. (Mohawk District)-John Morlett, John Bliven, Abraham Van Horne, Adam Fonda, Frederic Fisher, Sampson Sammons, William Schuyler, Volkert Veeder, James M'Master, Daniel Line-42. Christopher P. Yates was chosen chairman of this body.-Campbell's Annals. VOL. I-G

the people of the Mohawk District met in their meeting, which, we are informed, was conducted in a peaceable manner; and the inhuman treatment of a man whose only crime was being faithful to his employers, and refusing to give an account of the receipt of certain papers, to persons who had not the least colour of right to demand anything of that kind. We assure you that we are much concerned about it, as two important rights of English subjects are thereby infringed-to wit, a right to meet, and to obtain all the intelligence in their power."

Colonel Nicholas Herkimer and Edward Wall were deputed to deliver the letter to the superintendent, for which purpose they proceeded to Cosby's Manor, and discharged their trust. The following was Colonel Johnson's reply-manly and direct; and with which, if sincere, certainly no fault could be found, bating the lack of courtesy in its commencement :

" Thompsons, Cosby's Manor, June 5th, 1775.
" GENTLEMEN,
" I have received the paper signed Chris. P. Yates, chairman, on behalf of the districts therein mentioned, which I am now to answer, and shall do it briefly, in the order you have stated matters. As to the letter from some Indians to the Oneidas, I really knew nothing of it till I heard such a thing had been by some means obtained from an Indian messenger ; and from what I have heard of its contents, I can't see anything material in it, or that could justify such idle apprehensions; but I must observe, that these fears among the people were talked of long before, and were, I fear, propagated by some malicious persons for a bad purpose.

" As to your political sentiments, on which you enter in the next paragraph, I have no occasion to enter on them or the merits of the cause. I desire to enjoy liberty of conscience and the exercise of my own judgment, and that all others should have the same privilege ; but, with regard to your saying you might have postponed the affair, it there had been the least kind of probability that the petition of the General Assembly would have been noticed more than that of the delegates, I must, as a true friend to the country, in which I have a large interest, say, that the present dispute is viewed in different lights, according to the education and principles of the parties affected; and that, however reasonable it may appear to a considerable number of honest men here, that the petition of the delegates should merit attention, it is not viewed in the same light in a country which admits of no authority that is not constitutionally established; and I persuade myself you have that reverence for his majesty, that you will pay due regard to the royal assurance given in his speech to Parliament, that whenever the American grievances should be laid before him by their constitutional assemblies, they should be fully attended to. 1 have heard that compulsory steps were taken to induce some persons to come into your measures, and treasonable toasts drank; but I am not willing to give too easy credit to flying reports, and am happy to hear you disavow them.

" I am glad to find my calling a Congress on the frontiers gives satisfaction ; this was principally my design, though I cannot sufficiently express my surprise at those who have, either, through malice or ignorance, misconstrued my intentions, and supposed me capable of setting the Indians on the peaceable inhabitants of this county. The interest our family has in this county, and my own, is considerable, and they have been its best benefactors ; any malicious charges, therefore, to their prejudice, are highly injurious, and ought to be totally suppressed.

" The office I hold is greatly for the benefit and protection of this county, and on my frequent meetings with the Indians depends their peace and security; I therefore cannot but be astonished to find the endeavours made use of to obstruct me in my duties, and the weakness of some people in withholding many things from me, which are indisputably necessary for rendering the Indians contented; and I am willing to hope that you, gentlemen, will duly consider this, and discountenance the same.

" You have been much misinformed as to the origin of the reports which obliged me to fortify my house and stand on my defence. I had it, gentlemen, from undoubted authority from Albany, and since confirmed by letters from one of the committee at Philadelphia, that a large body of men were to make me prisoner. As the effect this must have on the Indians might have been of dangerous consequences to you (a circumstance not thought of), I was obliged, at great expense, to take these measures. But the many reports of my stopping travellers were false in every particular, and the only instance of detaining anybody was in the case of two New-England men, which I explained fully to those of your body who brought your letter, and wherein I acted strictly agreeable to law, and as a magistrate should have done.

" I am very sorry that such idle and injurious reports meet with any encouragement. I rely on you, gentlemen, to exert yourselves in discountenancing them ; and I am happy in this opportunity of assuring the people of a county I regard, that they have nothing to apprehend from my endeavours, but that I shall always be glad to promote their true interests.

" I am, gentlemen, your humble servant, "G. JOHNSON."

Guy Johnson did not remain long at Cosby's Manor, nor did he hold the Indian council there which had been notified, but departed immediately farther west. His removal from Thompson's was thus announced to the Committee of Palatine by Mr. Wall, on the 8th of June : " Our people are greatly alarmed at Colonel Johnson's motions, and cannot understand his reasons for the same. "We dare say that before now you have been [made] acquainted that he has removed with his retinue from Mr. Thompson's to Fort Stanwix, and there are rumours that he intends to move yet farther. We leave you to conjecture what may be his reasons."

These apprehensions were certainly not unreasonable for although Colonel Johnson's letters were plausible, and apparently frank and sincere, when the people saw him setting his face thus to the west, and moving up through the valley, not only with his own family, but accompanied by a large retinue of his dependants and the great body of the Mohawk Indians-who left their own delightful country at this time, never more peaceably to return-it is not strange that suspicions as to his ulterior designs were excited.

The affair of Lexington had, of course, been the signal for war throughout the colonies. The forts, magazines, and arsenals were everywhere seized. Troops were raised, and money for their support; and it was not many weeks before an army of thirty thousand men appeared in the environs of Boston, under the command of General Putnam-a veteran of the old French war, in whom the people had great confidence. Early in May, Colonel Ethan Allen, a hardy leader of the settlers upon the New Hampshire grants (now Vermont), concerted an expedition against Ticonderoga and Crown Point. About forty volunteers from Connecticut were of the expedition, which, with the forces collected for the object at Castleton, made up the number of two hundred and thirty. Allen was unexpectedly joined by Colonel Benedict Arnold, -who had planned the same enterprise. They readily agreed to act in concert; and so admirably was the project carried into execution, that the Americans actually entered the fortress by the covered way just at daylight, formed upon the parade ground within, and awoke, the sleeping garrison by their huzzas. A slight skirmish ensued, and the commander, De la Place, surrendered to the novel summons of Allen, " I demand a surrender in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." Colonel Seth Warner was sent thence to Crown Point, which was easily taken, the garrison consisting of only a dozen men, commanded by a sergeant. Arnold proceeded northward to St. Johns, and succeeded in capturing a sloop-of-war by surprise ; while, at the same time, the pass of Skenesborough, at the south end of Champlain, was taken possession of, Colonel Skene and a small number of troops being made prisoners, and several pieces of cannon taken. Thus, by a sudden blow, and without the loss of a man, was the command of Lakes George and Champlain obtained.

The next act in the grand drama then unfolding was the battle of Bunker Hill. Towards the close of May re-enforcements of troops from England had arrived at Boston, with Generals Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton, all of whom were officers of reputation. The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts had, early in that month, renounced General Gage as governor of the colony, declared him an enemy of the country, and forbidden obedience to his orders. On the other hand, General Gage had issued his proclamation, promising a gracious pardon to all who would lay down their arms and return to the duties of peaceable subjects, excepting only Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whose offences were declared to be of " too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration than that of condign punishment." By the same instrument Massachusetts was declared to be under martial law. General Gage was also preparing, in other respects, for more energetic action ; but every measure he took, and every moment that passed, served only to unite and imbolden the Whigs, and increase the audacity with which they now, in action, if not in words, contemned the royal authority. The provincial troops began to assemble in force around Boston, and were throwing up defences, when the battle of Bunker Hill, at once and forever, severed the tie that bound the colonies to the parent country. The fighting on this occasion was of such a determined character as to show the enemy that it was no pastime upon which they had entered. One of the British officers, in writing home to a friend, declared that " the rebels fought more like devils than men." The loss of the British, in killed and wounded, was 1054. That of the provincials, 139 killed and 314 wounded. The great calamity of the day was the fall of the brave and accomplished Warren, who was shot through the head early in the action.

It is not to be supposed that, with the evidence before them of Colonel Johnson's exertions to excite he Indians against the provincial cause, the friends of the latter were by any means inactive. On the contrary, they left no fair and honourable means untried so far to win upon their favour as, at least, to secure their neutrality in the contest; nor were they wholly unsuccessful, although the majority of the Six Nations ultimately threw themselves into the opposite scale. Disappointed in not meeting a fuller and more general council at Guy Park in May, a conference was arranged with the Oneidas and Tuscaroras, through the agency of their friend, the Rev. Mr. Kirkland, which took place at the German Flatts on the 28th of June. The Indians were met by the inhabitants of that district, and also by a deputation from Albany. The minutes of that meeting were not preserved at large among the papers of the Tryon County Committee. The result of the council, however, was to obtain a pledge of neutrality from the greater portion of the Indians assembled. The efforts of Mr. Kirkland had uniformly been directed to the same humane design.

Colonel Guy Johnson, as we have already seen, had previously left the lower district of the Mohawk Valley. He was a man of too much discernment, holding the opinions he did, to remain at Johnstown an inactive spectator of events, the inevitable tendency of which could only be very soon to rouse the whole thirteen colonies to arms against the British power, and he had prudently anticipated the battle of Bunker Hill in his departure. But his movements had thus far been pacific, or, rather, not openly belligerant; and it is probable that an excited and jealous people may not have treated him, during his hegira, with all their wonted respect.

Making a very brief sojourn at Fort Stanwix, Guy Johnson hastened as far west as Ontario, there to hold a grand council with the Indians, remote from the white settlements; and where, as he alleged, their action might be independent, and unembarrassed by the interference of the colonists. It was at Ontario that he received a letter from the Provincial Congress of New York, written at the solicitation of the Congress of Massachusetts, and complaining of his alleged endeavours to fill the minds of the Indian tribes with sentiments injurious to the colonies. He replied to it, on the 8th of July, in a letter glowing with loyalty, and complaining bitterly of the malecontents, and those in opposition to regular governments, who, he again repeated, were exciting the Indians against him.

Colonel Johnson was accompanied in his departure by Joseph Brant, or Thayendanegea, his secretary, and by Colonel John Butler and his son Walter, and they succeeded in convening a very large council at Ontario. The greater portion of the Indians attending, however, were probably, Cayugas and Senecas. These were now far the most numerous of the Six Nations, although the Mohawks yet stood in rank at the head of the confederacy. Formerly the last-mentioned tribe had been the most numerous and powerful of the cantons; but at an early day after the planting of the colony of New York, the French had succeeded in seducing a large section of the Mohawks to return to Canada, whence they originally came, after breaking the vassalage in which they had been held by the Algonquins. Their proximity to the whites, moreover, had been attended by the effect, invariable and seemingly inevitable, in regard to their race, of diminishing their numbers. Added to all which, their warlike character, and their daring ferocity, exposing them to more frequent perils than were encountered by their associated cantons, had contributed still farther to this unequal diminution.*

It is not known that any record of this council was preserved, although the speeches interchanged were doubtless written, since that was the universal practice in the conduct of Indian intercourse. But no doubt exists as to the fact that the superintendent succeeded in still farther alienating the affections of the great majority of the Indians from the Americans, if they did not immediately join the ranks of the invaders. Nor, when all the circumstances of their case and position are dispassionately considered, is it surprising that their inclinations were favourable to the crown. On the contrary, the wonder is that Colonel Johnson did not

* Among the manuscripts of Sir William Johnson, I have found a census of the Northern and Western Indians, from the Hudson River to the great lakes and the Mississippi, taken in 1763. The Mohawk warriors were then only 100 ; the Oneidas, 250 ; Tuscaroras, 140 ; Onondagas, 150; Cayugas, 200 ; Sencas, 1050 : total, 1950. According to the calculation of a British agent, several of the tribes must have increased between the close of the French war and the beginning of the American Revolution, as it was computed that, during the latter contest, the English had in service 300 Mohawks, 150 Oneidas, 200 Tuscaroras, 300 Onondagas, 230 Cayugas, and 400 Senecas. -Author.

succeed in carrying with him the Oneidas and Tuscaroras also ; and he probably would have done so, but for the salutary, though indirect influence of Mr. Kirkland, and their noble chief, the sagacious Schenandoah, always the warm and unwavering friend of the colonists. With regard to these Indians, it must be considered that they had then been in alliance with Great Britain during a period of more than one hundred years. In all their wars with their implacable enemies the Algonquins, acting in alliance with the French, the Six Nations had been assisted by the English, or fighting side by side with them. For a long series of years Sir William Johnson had been their counsellor and friend. His family was, to a certain extent, allied with the head canton of the confederacy, and he was consulted by them in all affairs of business, or of high emergency, as an oracle. They had drawn their supplies through him and his agents, and it was natural that, upon his decease, their affection for him should be transferred to his successor in office, who was also his son-in-law. Miss Molly, moreover, was a woman of vigorous understanding and of able management. And, as we have already seen, she and Colonel Guy himself were sustained by the powerful aid of Thayendanegea, who united the advantages of education with the native sagacity of his race. Added to all which, the cause was considered, if not desperate, at least of doubtful issue; while the unenlightened Indians had been taught to hear the name of the king with great reverence, and to believe him allpowerful. They considered the officers of the crown their best friends ; and it was but natural that they should hold on upon the great chain which they had so long laboured to keep bright between them.

It has already been remarked, that, thus far, Colonel Guy Johnson had committed no act of actual hostility. While this council was holding in Ontario, however, the whole valley of the Mohawk was filled with alarm, by reports that he was preparing an expedition to return upon them, and lay the country waste by fire and sword. On the llth of July, Colonel Herkimer wrote from Canajoharie to the Palatine Committee, that he had received credible intelligence that morning, that Guy Johnson was ready to march back upon them with a body of eight or nine hundred Indians, and that the attack would be commenced from the woods below the Little Falls, on the northern side of the river. He therefore proposed sending to Albany immediately for a corresponding number of men. An urgent letter was forthwith despatched by the committee to Schenectady and Albany for the amount of assistance mentioned, " to prevent these barbarous enterprises," and to enable * them " to resist their inhuman enemies with good success-that they might not be slaughtered, like innocent and defenceless sheep before ravaging wolves."

From the positive character of the intelligence, and the mysterious movements of Guy Johnson and his followers, the inhabitants had good cause of alarm; more especially as Sir John Johnson* remained at the Hall in Johnstown, having at his beck a large body of Loyalists, making his castle (for the Hall was now fortified) their headquarters, who, in the event of such a movement by his brother-in-law from the west, would doubtless be prepared to join the Indians in the enterprise, and, between them both, be able to whelm the settlements in destruction at a single blow. Every possible preparation was therefore made for their defence, but the alarm proved to be without foundation; and after Guy Johnson had completed his business at Ontario, he returned to Oswego, where he very soon afterward convened another council and held a treaty, at which he succeeded in still farther estranging the Indians from the colonies.+

* Sir John Johnson held a commission, as brigadier-general of militia. + The following passage from Ramsay's History of the Revolution seems to refer to this Indian convocation at Oswego. There was no other meeting during that year to which this notice of Ramsay could refer. "Colonel Johnson had repeated conferences with the Indians, and endeavoured to influence them to take up the hatchet, but they steadily refused. In order to gain their cooperation, he invited them to a feast on as Bostonian, and to drink, his blood. This in the Indian style, meant no more than to partake of a roasted ox and a pipe of wine at a public entertainment, which was given on design to influence them to co-operate with the British troops. The colonial patriots affected to understand it in its literal sense. It furnished, in their mode of explication, a convenient handle for operating on the passions of the people."

From Oswego Guy Johnson crossed into Canada; and thence descended the St. Lawrence to Montreal, accompanied by a large number of the chiefs and warriors of the Six Nations, who were invited to an interview with Sir Guy Carleton and Sir Frederic Haldimand-both those distinguished officers being in that city at the time-and were induced by them to embark in the cause of the king.

It has often been asserted, especially by British historians, that Sir Guy Carleton was opposed to the employment of the Indians in the contest, from principles of humanity. Such, however, was not the fact. Brant repeatedly asserted in after life, in speeches delivered by him, copies of which are yet extant, that on their first arrival in Montreal, General Carleton proposed to them to enter the service. Strict historical accuracy is often of slow attainment ; but, after all deductions from the merits of General Carleton, afterward Lord Dorchester, enough that is truly excellent and great will remain to leave him a reputation of which most public men might well be proud.

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