Part 22 (1/2)
[Footnote 393: The above particulars are gathered from the voluminous papers in the State House at Boston, _Archives, Military_, Vols. LXXV., LXXVI. These contain the military acts of the General Court, proclamations, reports of committees, and other papers relating to military affairs in 1755 and 1756. The _Letter and Order Books of Winslow_, in the Library of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, have supplied much concurrent matter. See also _Colonial Records of R.I._, V., and _Provincial Papers of N.H._, VI.]
From Winslow's headquarters at Half-Moon a road led along the banks of the Hudson to Stillwater, whence there was water carriage to Saratoga.
Here stores were again placed in wagons and carried several miles to Upper Falls; thence by boat to Fort Edward; and thence, fourteen miles across country, to Fort William Henry at Lake George, where the army was to embark for Ticonderoga. Each of the points of transit below Fort Edward was guarded by a stockade and two or more companies of provincials. They were much pestered by Indians, who now and then scalped a straggler, and escaped with their usual nimbleness. From time to time strong bands of Canadians and Indians approached by way of South Bay or Wood Creek, and threatened more serious mischief. It is surprising that some of the trains were not cut off, for the escorts were often reckless and disorderly to the last degree. Sometimes the invaders showed great audacity. Early in June Colonel Fitch at Albany scrawls a hasty note to Winslow: ”Friday, 11 o'clock: Sir, about half an hour since, a party of near fifty French and Indians had the impudence to come down to the river opposite to this city and captivate two men;”
and Winslow replies with equal quaintness: ”We daily discover the Indians about us; but not yet have been so happy as to obtain any of them.”[394]
[Footnote 394: Vaudreuil, in his despatch of 12 August, gives particulars of these raids, with an account of the scalps taken on each occasion. He thought the results disappointing.]
Colonel Jonathan Bagley commanded at Fort William Henry, where gangs of men were busied under his eye in building three sloops and making several hundred whaleboats to carry the army of Ticonderoga. The season was advancing fast, and Winslow urged him to hasten on the work; to which the humorous Bagley answered; ”Shall leave no stone unturned; every wheel shall go that rum and human flesh can move.”[395] A fortnight after he reports: ”I must really confess I have almost wore the men out, poor dogs. Pray where are the committee, or what are they about?” He sent scouts to watch the enemy, with results not quite satisfactory. ”There is a vast deal of news here; every party brings abundance, but all different.” Again, a little later: ”I constantly keep out small scouting parties to the eastward and westward of the lake, and make no discovery but the tracks of small parties who are plaguing us constantly; but what vexes me most, we can't catch one of the sons of----. I have sent out skulking parties some distance from the sentries in the night, to lie still in the bushes to intercept them; but the flies are so plenty, our people can't bear them.”[396] Colonel David Wooster, at Fort Edward, was no more fortunate in his attempts to take satisfaction on his midnight visitors; and reports that he has not thus far been able ”to give those villains a dressing.”[397] The English, however, were fast learning the art of forest war, and the partisan chief, Captain Robert Rogers, began already to be famous. On the seventeenth of June he and his band lay hidden in the bushes within the outposts of Ticonderoga, and made a close survey of the fort and surrounding camps.[398] His report was not cheering. Winslow's so-called army had now grown to nearly seven thousand men; and these, it was plain, were not too many to drive the French from their stronghold.
[Footnote 395: _Bagley to Winslow, 2 July, 1756._]
[Footnote 396: _Ibid., 15 July, 1756._]
[Footnote 397: _Wooster to Winslow, 2 June, 1756._]
[Footnote 398: _Report of Rogers, 19 June, 1756._ Much abridged in his published _Journals_.]
While Winslow pursued his preparations, tried to settle disputes of rank among the colonels of the several colonies, and strove to bring order out of the little chaos of his command, Sir William Johnson was engaged in a work for which he was admirably fitted. This was the attaching of the Five Nations to the English interest. Along with his patent of baronetcy, which reached him about this time, he received, direct from the Crown, the commission of ”Colonel, Agent, and Sole Superintendent of the Six Nations and other Northern Tribes.”[399] Henceforth he was independent of governors and generals, and responsible to the Court alone. His task was a difficult one. The Five Nations would fain have remained neutral, and let the European rivals fight it out; but, on account of their local position, they could not. The exactions and lies of the Albany traders, the frauds of land-speculators, the contradictory action of the different provincial governments, joined to English weakness and mismanagement in the last war, all conspired to alienate them and to aid the efforts of the French agents, who cajoled and threatened them by turns. But for Johnson these intrigues would have prevailed. He had held a series of councils with them at Fort Johnson during the winter, and not only drew from them a promise to stand by the English, but persuaded all the confederated tribes, except the Cayugas, to consent that the English should build forts near their chief towns, under the pretext of protecting them from the French.[400]
[Footnote 399: _Fox to Johnson, 13 March, 1756. Papers of Sir William Johnson._]
[Footnote 400: _Conferences between Sir William Johnson and the Indians, Dec. 1755, to Feb. 1756_, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VII. 44-74. _Account of Conferences held and Treaties made between Sir William Johnson, Bart., and the Indian Nations of North America_ (London, 1756).]
In June he went to Onondaga, well escorted, for the way was dangerous.
This capital of the Confederacy was under a cloud. It had just lost one Red Head, its chief sachem; and first of all it behooved the baronet to condole their affliction. The ceremony was long, with compliments, lugubrious speeches, wampum-belts, the scalp of an enemy to replace the departed, and a final gla.s.s of rum for each of the a.s.sembled mourners.
The conferences lasted a fortnight; and when Johnson took his leave, the tribes stood pledged to lift the hatchet for the English.[401]
[Footnote 401: _Minutes of Councils of Onondaga, 19 June to 3 July, 1756_, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VII. 134-150.]
When he returned to Fort Johnson a fever seized him, and he lay helpless for a time; then rose from his sick bed to meet another congregation of Indians. These were deputies of the Five Nations, with Mohegans from the Hudson, and Delawares and Shawanoes from the Susquehanna, whom he had persuaded to visit him in hope that he might induce them to cease from murdering the border settlers. All their tribesmen were in arms against the English; but he prevailed at last, and they accepted the war-belt at his hands. The Delawares complained that their old conquerors, the Five Nations, had forced them ”to wear the petticoat,” that is, to be counted not as warriors but as women. Johnson, in presence of all the a.s.sembly, now took off the figurative garment, and p.r.o.nounced them henceforth men.
A grand war-dance followed. A hundred and fifty Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Delawares, Shawanoes, and Mohegans stamped, whooped, and yelled all night.[402] In spite of Piquet, the two Joncaires, and the rest of the French agents, Johnson had achieved a success. But would the Indians keep their word? It was more than doubtful. While some of them treated with him on the Mohawk, others treated with Vaudreuil at Montreal.[403] A display of military vigor on the English side, crowned by some signal victory, would alone make their alliance sure.
[Footnote 402: _Minutes of Councils at Fort Johnson, 9 July to 12 July_, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VII. 152-160.]
[Footnote 403: _Conferences between M. de Vaudreuil and the Five Nations, 28 July to 20 Aug._, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 445-453.]
It was not the French only who thwarted the efforts of Johnson; for while he strove to make friends of the Delawares and Shawanoes, Governor Morris of Pennsylvania declared war against them, and Governor Belcher of New Jersey followed his example; though persuaded at last to hold his hand till the baronet had tried the virtue of pacific measures.[404]
[Footnote 404: _Johnson to Lords of Trade, 28 May, 1756. Ibid., 17 July, 1756. Johnson to s.h.i.+rley, 24 April, 1756. Colonial Records of Pa._, VII.
75, 88, 194.]
What s.h.i.+rley longed for was the collecting of a body of Five Nation warriors at Oswego to aid him in his cherished enterprise against Niagara and Frontenac. The warriors had promised him to come; but there was small hope that they would do so. Meanwhile he was at Albany pursuing his preparations, posting his scanty force in the forts newly built on the Mohawk and the Great Carrying Place, and sending forward stores and provisions. Having no troops to spare for escorts, he invented a plan which, like everything he did, was bitterly criticised.
He took into pay two thousand boatmen, gathered from all parts of the country, including many whale-men from the eastern coasts of New England, divided them into companies of fifty, armed each with a gun and a hatchet, and placed them under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel John Bradstreet.[405] Thus organized, they would, he hoped, require no escort. Bradstreet was a New England officer who had been a captain in the last war, somewhat dogged and self-opinioned, but brave, energetic, and well fitted for this kind of service.
[Footnote 405: _s.h.i.+rley to Fox, 7 May, 1756. s.h.i.+rley to Abercromby, 27 June, 1756. London to Fox, 19 Aug. 1756._]
In May Vaudreuil sent Coulon de Villiers with eleven hundred soldiers, Canadians, and Indians, to hara.s.s Oswego and cut its communications with Albany.[406] Nevertheless Bradstreet safely conducted a convoy of provisions and military stores to the garrison; and on the third of July set out on his return with the empty boats. The party were pus.h.i.+ng their way up the river in three divisions. The first of these, consisting of a hundred boats and three hundred men, with Bradstreet at their head, were about nine miles from Oswego, when, at three in the afternoon, they received a heavy volley from the forest on the east bank. It was fired by a part of Villiers' command, consisting, by English accounts, of about seven hundred men. A considerable number of the boatmen were killed or disabled, and the others made for the shelter of the western sh.o.r.e. Some prisoners were taken in the confusion; and if the French had been content to stop here, they might fairly have claimed a kind of victory; but, eager to push their advantage, they tried to cross under cover of an island just above. Bradstreet saw the movement, and landed on the island with six or eight followers, among whom was young Captain Schuyler, afterwards General Schuyler of the Revolution. Their fire kept the enemy in check till others joined them, to the number of about twenty. These a second and a third time beat back the French, who now gave over the attempt, and made for another ford at some distance above.
Bradstreet saw their intention; and collecting two hundred and fifty men, was about to advance up the west bank to oppose them, when Dr.
Kirkland, a surgeon, came to tell him that the second division of boats had come up, and that the men had landed. Bradstreet ordered them to stay where they were, and defend the lower crossing: then hastened forward; but when he reached the upper ford, the French had pa.s.sed the river, and were ensconced in a pine-swamp near the sh.o.r.e. Here he attacked them; and both parties fired at each other from behind trees for an hour, with little effect. Bradstreet at length encouraged his men to make a rush at the enemy, who were put to flight and driven into the river, where many were shot or drowned as they tried to cross. Another party of the French had meanwhile pa.s.sed by a ford still higher up to support their comrades; but the fight was over before they reached the spot, and they in their turn were set upon and driven back across the stream. Half an hour after, Captain Patten arrived from Onondaga with the grenadiers of s.h.i.+rley's regiment; and late in the evening two hundred men came from Oswego to reinforce the victors. In the morning Bradstreet prepared to follow the French to their camp, twelve miles distant; but was prevented by a heavy rain which lasted all day. On the Monday following, he and his men reached Albany, bringing two prisoners, eighty French muskets, and many knapsacks picked up in the woods. He had lost between sixty and seventy killed, wounded, and taken.[407]
[Footnote 406: _Detail de ce qui s'est pa.s.se en Canada, Oct. 1755 Juin, 1756_.]