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-
-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations, by
-William Elliot Griffis
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations
-
-Author: William Elliot Griffis
-
-Release Date: May 7, 2016 [EBook #52014]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON AND SIX NATIONS ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Larry Harrison, Cindy Beyer and the online
-Project Gutenberg team at
-http://www.pgdpcanada.net with images provided by The
-Internet Archives-US
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-<div class='figcenter'>
-<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:335px;height:auto;'/>
-</div>
-
-<hr class='pbk'/>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:6em;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.5em;'>SIR&nbsp;&nbsp;WILLIAM&nbsp;&nbsp;JOHNSON</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.7em;'>AND</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:10em;font-size:1.5em;font-weight:bold;'>The&nbsp;&nbsp;Six&nbsp;&nbsp;Nations</p>
-
-<hr class='pbk'/>
-
-<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<p class='line'>“MAKERS&nbsp;&nbsp;OF&nbsp;&nbsp;AMERICA”</p>
-<hr class='tbk100'/>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:2em;'>SIR&nbsp;&nbsp;WILLIAM&nbsp;&nbsp;JOHNSON</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:.6em;'>AND</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:1.5em;font-weight:bold;'>The&nbsp;&nbsp;Six&nbsp;&nbsp;Nations</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:.6em;'>BY</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:1em;'>WILLIAM&nbsp;&nbsp;ELLIOT&nbsp;&nbsp;GRIFFIS</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:.6em;'>AUTHOR&nbsp;&nbsp;OF&nbsp;&nbsp;“THE MIKADO'S&nbsp;&nbsp;EMPIRE,”&nbsp;&nbsp;“COREA&nbsp;&nbsp;THE&nbsp;&nbsp;HERMIT</p>
-<p class='line' style='margin-top:.5em;font-size:.6em;'>NATION,”&nbsp;&nbsp;“MATTHEW&nbsp;&nbsp;CALBRAITH&nbsp;&nbsp;PERRY,”&nbsp;&nbsp;ETC.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line' style='margin-top:6em;'>NEW&nbsp;&nbsp;YORK</p>
-<p class='line' style='margin-top:.5em;margin-bottom:.5em;'>DODD,&nbsp;&nbsp;MEAD,&nbsp;&nbsp;AND&nbsp;&nbsp;COMPANY</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:.8em;'><span class='sc'>Publishers</span></p>
-</div> <!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='pbk'/>
-
-<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';fs:.8em;' -->
-<p class='line' style='margin-top:4em;font-size:.8em;font-style:italic;'>Copyright, 1891</p>
-<p class='line' style='margin-top:.5em;margin-bottom:.5em;font-size:.8em;font-variant:small-caps;'>By Dodd, Mead, and Co.</p>
-<hr class='tbk101'/>
-<p class='line' style='margin-top:.5em;font-size:.8em;font-style:italic;'>All rights reserved.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line' style='margin-top:15em;font-size:.8em;font-weight:bold;'>University Press:</p>
-<p class='line' style='margin-top:.5em;margin-bottom:10em;font-size:.8em;font-variant:small-caps;'>John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.</p>
-</div> <!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='pbk'/>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:4em;margin-bottom:2em;font-size:1.5em;font-weight:bold;'>Dedication.</p>
-
-<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';italic;fs:.9em;' -->
-<p class='line' style='font-size:.9em;font-style:italic;'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Like my friend, the late Judge John Sanders, of Scotia,</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:.9em;font-style:italic;'>Schenectady County, N. Y., who took off his hat when meeting</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:.9em;font-style:italic;'>descendants of the heroes of Oriskany, the bloodiest, the most</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:.9em;font-style:italic;'>stubbornly contested, and perhaps the decisive battle in the War</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:.9em;font-style:italic;'>of the American Revolution, the writer makes his bow to the</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:.9em;font-style:italic;'>people of the Mohawk Valley, and to them, and to the memory</p>
-<p class='line' style='font-size:.9em;font-style:italic;'>of their brave ancestors, dedicates this sketch of one of the Makers</p>
-<p class='line' style='margin-bottom:15em;font-size:.9em;font-style:italic;'>of America.</p>
-</div></div> <!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='pbk'/>
-
-<h2><span class='pageno' title='vii' id='Page_vii'></span><span class='gesp'>PREFACE</span>.</h2>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The</span> Mohawk Valley in which Sir William Johnson
-spent his adult life (1738–1774) was the fairest portion
-of the domain of the Six Nations of the Iroquois
-Confederacy. In this valley I lived nine years, seeing
-on every side traces or monuments of the industry,
-humanity, and powerful personality of its most famous
-resident in colonial days. From the quaint stone
-church in Schenectady which he built, and in whose
-canopied pews he sat, daily before my eyes, to the
-autograph papers in possession of my neighbours; from
-sites close at hand and traditionally associated with
-the lord of Johnson Hall, to the historical relics which
-multiply at Johnstown, Canajoharie, and westward,—mementos
-of the baronet were never lacking. His
-two baronial halls still stand near the Mohawk. I
-found that local tradition, while in the main generous
-to his memory, was sometimes unfair and even cruel.
-The hatreds engendered by the partisan features of
-the Revolution, and the just detestation of the savage
-atrocities of Tories and red allies led by Johnson’s
-son and son-in-law, had done injustice to the great
-man himself. Yet base and baseless tradition was in
-no whit more unjust than the sectional opinions and
-<span class='pageno' title='viii' id='Page_viii'></span>
-hostile gossip of the New England militia which historians
-have so freely transferred to their pages.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the following pages no attempt at either laudation
-or depreciation has been made. My purpose has
-been simply to set forth the actions, influence, and
-personality of Sir William Johnson, to show the character
-of the people by whom he was surrounded, and
-to describe and analyze the political movements of his
-time. I confess I have not depicted New York people
-in the sectional spirit and subjective manner in which
-they are so often treated by New England writers. The
-narrow and purely local view of some of these who have
-written what is called the history of the United States,
-greatly vitiates their work in the eyes of those who do
-not inherit their prejudices. Having no royal charter,
-the composite people of New York, gathered from
-many nations, but instinct with the principles of the
-free republic of Holland, were obliged to study carefully
-the foundations of government and jurisprudence.
-It is true that in the evolution of this Commonwealth
-the people were led by the lawyers rather than by the
-clergy. Constantly resisting the invasions of royal
-prerogative, they formed on an immutable basis of
-law and right that Empire State which in its construction
-and general features is, of all those in the
-Union, the most typically American. Its historical
-precedents are not found in a monarchy, but in a republic.
-It is less the fruit of English than of Teutonic
-civilization.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Living also but a few yards away from the home of
-Arendt Van Curler, the “Brother Corlaer” of Indian
-<span class='pageno' title='ix' id='Page_ix'></span>
-tradition, and immediately alongside the site of the
-old gate opening from the palisades into the Mohawk
-country, I could from my study windows look daily upon
-the domain of the Mohawks,—the places of treaties,
-ceremonies, and battles, of the torture and burning
-of captives, and upon the old maize-lands, even
-yet rich after the husbandry of centuries. Besides
-visiting many of the sites of the Iroquois castles, I have
-again and again traversed the scenes of Johnson’s exploits
-in Central New York, at Lake George, in Eastern
-Pennsylvania, and other places mentioned in the
-text. With my task is associated the remembrance
-of many pleasant outings as well as meetings with local
-historians, antiquarians, and students of Indian
-lore. I have treated more fully the earlier part of
-Johnson’s life which is less known, and more briefly
-the events of the latter part which is comparatively
-familiar to all. I trust I have not been unfair to the
-red men while endeavouring to show the tremendous
-influence exerted over them by Johnson; who, for
-this alone, deserves to be enrolled among the Makers
-of America.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>My chief sources of information have been the Johnson
-manuscripts, which have been carefully mounted,
-bound, and are preserved in the State Library at Albany.
-They were indexed by my friends, the late
-Rev. Dr. H. A. Homes, and Mr. George R. Howell,
-the accomplished secretary of the Albany Institute.
-To the former I am especially indebted. The printed
-book to which I owe special obligations is Mr.
-William L. Stone’s “Life and Times of Sir William
-<span class='pageno' title='x' id='Page_x'></span>
-Johnson, Bart.” These two superbly written octavo
-volumes, richly annotated and indexed, make any
-detailed life of Johnson unnecessary, and form a noble
-and enduring monument of patient scholarship.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>For generous assistance at various points and in
-details, I have to thank, and hereby do so most heartily,
-Mr. Edward F. De Lancey, of New York; Mr.
-William L. Stone, of Jersey City; Prof. A. L. Perry,
-of Williams College; Mr. Berthold Fernow, keeper of
-the State Archives, Albany; Rev. J. A. De Baun,
-D. D., of Fonda; Rev. J. H. Hubbs, of Grand Rapids,
-Mich.; Rev. Henry R. Swinnerton, of Cherry
-Valley; Mr. R. A. Grider, the chief American specialist
-and collector of powder-horns and their art
-and literature; Mr. A. G. Richmond, archæologist
-in Indian relics, of Canajoharie, N. Y.; Mrs. I. E.
-Wells of Johnson Hall at Johnstown; Mr. Ethan
-Akin, of Fort Johnson at Akin near Fonda; James
-Fuller, Esq., of Schenectady, N. Y.; and Major J. W.
-MacMurray, U. S. N.; besides various descendants of
-the militiamen who served under the illustrious Irishman
-who is the subject of the following pages.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:0em;margin-top:1em;'>W. E. G.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;font-size:.8em;font-variant:small-caps;'>Boston, Mass.,</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:5em;font-size:.8em;'>May 21, 1891.</p>
-
-<hr class='pbk'/>
-
-<h2><span class='pageno' title='xi' id='Page_xi'></span>CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE.</h2>
-
-<hr class='tbk102'/>
-
-<table id='tab1' summary='' class='center'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/>
-<col span='1' style='width: 6em;'/>
-<col span='1' style='width: 16em;'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tab1c1-col2 tdStyle0' colspan='2'><span class='bold'>1400–1600 <span class='sc'>a. d.</span></span></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'>Occupation of the region between</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;&nbsp;the Niagara and the Hudson</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;&nbsp;River by the Indian tribes</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;&nbsp;of the Long House.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'>{ July 29.</td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'>Defeat of the Iroquois near</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'>{</td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;&nbsp;Ticonderoga, N. Y., by</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'>{</td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;&nbsp;Champlain.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1609</span>,</td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'>{ Sept. 1-23.</td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'>Hendrick Hudson explores the</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle0'>{</td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;&nbsp;river as far as the Mohawk.</td></tr>
-</table>
-<table id='tab2' summary='' class='center'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/>
-<col span='1' style='width: 22em;'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1613.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Hollanders build on Manhattan and Nassau Islands.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1617.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Iroquois form an alliance with the Dutch.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1623.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Jesse De Forest and the Walloons settle and found New York City.—Fort Orange built.—Settlement at Albany.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1630.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Patroon Kilian Van Rensselaer.—Arrival of Arendt Van Curler.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1642.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Van Curler enters the Mohawk Valley and ransoms Isaac Jogues.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1661.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Van Curler founds the city of Schenectady.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1664.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>English Conquest of New Netherlands.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1667.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Kryn leads the Caughnawaga Indians to Canada.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1690.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Massacre at Schenectady.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1710.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Palatine Germans in New York.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1713.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>The Tuscaroras join the Iroquois Confederacy.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1715.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Sir William Johnson born.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1722.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Palatines settle in Mohawk Valley.—Oswego founded.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1738.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Johnson settled at Warrensburgh, N. Y.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1740.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Johnson made head of the Indian Department.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1754.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>The Congress and Council at Albany.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1755.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Battle of Lake George.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1757.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Massacre at German Flats.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1759.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Surrender of Niagara to Johnson.—Fall of Quebec and the French power in America.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1763.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Conspiracy of Pontiac.—Johnstown founded, and Johnson Hall built.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1768.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Treaty at Fort Stanwix.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1770.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>January 18, First bloodshed of the Revolution.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1771.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>First battle of the Revolution at Alamance, N. C.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1772.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Division of Albany County.—Johnstown made the county-seat of Tryon County.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1774.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Death of Sir William Johnson.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1777.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Battle of Oriskany.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1778.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Massacre at Cherry Valley.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1779.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Brant at Minnisink.—General Sullivan’s Expedition against the Six Nations.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1782.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>New York’s Western lands transferred to the nation.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab2c1 tdStyle0'><span class='bold'>1783.</span></td><td class='tab2c2 tdStyle1'>Tories banished from the Mohawk Valley.</td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<hr class='pbk'/>
-
-<h2><span class='pageno' title='xiii' id='Page_xiii'></span>TABLE OF CONTENTS.</h2>
-
-<table id='tab3' summary='' class='center'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' style='width: 4em;'/>
-<col span='1' style='width: 25em;'/>
-<col span='1' style='width: 2em;'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'></td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>Preface</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_vii'>vii</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'></td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>Chronological Outline</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_xi'>xi</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>I.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>The First Settlers of the Mohawk Valley</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>II.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>Johnson as an Indian Trader</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_11'>11</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>III.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>The Six Nations and the Long House</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_35'>35</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>IV.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>The Struggle for a Continent</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_61'>61</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>V.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>A Chapter in the Story of Liberty</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_80'>80</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>VI.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>A Typical Frontier Fight with Indians</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_92'>92</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>VII.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>At the Ancient Place of Treaties</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_109'>109</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>VIII.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>The Battle of Lake George</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_132'>132</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>IX.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>British Failures Preparing for American Independence</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_146'>146</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>X.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>The “Heaven-born General”</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_167'>167</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>XI.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>Decline of the Indian as a Political Factor</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_178'>178</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>XII.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>Life at Johnson Hall</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_194'>194</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'>XIII.</td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>Johnson’s Family; Last Days; Euthanasia</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_206'>206</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td class='tab3c1 tdStyle2'></td><td class='tab3c2 tdStyle3'><span class='sc'>Index</span></td><td class='tab3c3 tdStyle2'><a href='#Page_223'>223</a></td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<hr class='pbk'/>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='1' id='Page_1'></span><h1>CHAPTER I.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>THE FIRST SETTLERS OF THE MOHAWK VALLEY.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The Mohawk Valley</span> was first settled by men
-escaping from feudalism. The manor-system, a surviving
-relic of the old days of lordship and villeinage,
-had long cursed England, Germany, and Holland,
-though first outgrown and thrown off in the latter
-country. It was from this system, almost as much as
-from Church laws, that the Pilgrim Fathers were glad
-to escape and find free labour as well as liberty of conscience
-in Holland,—the land where they “heard,”
-and found by experience, “that all men were free.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Netherlands was the political training-school of
-the Pilgrims, and of most of the leaders of the Puritans,
-who before 1640 settled New England. In
-America they were more fortunate than their more
-southern neighbours, in that they were freed from the
-semi-feudalism of the Dutch Patroons and the manor-lords
-of Maryland and Virginia. The Hollanders, on
-<span class='pageno' title='2' id='Page_2'></span>
-coming to New Netherland and settling under the
-Patroons, enjoyed far less liberty than when in their
-own country. They were practically under a new
-sort of feudalism unknown in their “Patria.” Their
-Teutonic instincts and love of freedom soon, however,
-drove them to relinquish their temporary advantages
-as manor-tenants, and to purchase land from the Indians
-and settle in the “Woestina,” or wilderness.
-These Dutch farmers cheerfully braved the dangers
-and inconveniences of “the bush,” in order to hold
-land in fee simple and be their own masters.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was this spirit of independence that led a little
-company of worthy sons or grandsons of men who
-had fought under William the Silent, to settle in the
-“Great Flat,” or Mohawk Valley. They were led by
-Arendt Van Curler, who, though first-cousin of the
-absentee Patroon Van Rensselaer, of Rensselaerwyck,
-had educated himself out of the silken meshes of
-semi-feudalism. Finding men like-minded with himself,
-who believed that the patroon or manor-system
-was a bad reversion in political evolution, he led out
-the Dutch freemen, and founded the city of Schenectady.
-On the land made sacred to the Mohawks for
-centuries, by reason of council-fires and immemorial
-graves, this free settlement began. Here, not indeed
-for the first time in New Netherlands, and yet at a
-period when the proceeding was a novelty, the settlers
-held land in fee simple, and demanded the rights
-of trade.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was before 1660 that these men, who would
-rather have gone back to Patria, or Holland, than
-<span class='pageno' title='3' id='Page_3'></span>
-become semi-serfs under a manor-lord, came to Van
-Curler, or “Brother Corlaer” as the Iroquois called
-him, and asked him to lead them westward. In Fort
-Orange, July 21, 1661, in due legal form, by purchase
-from and satisfaction to the Mohawk Indian
-chiefs, the Indian title was extinguished. Thus, by a
-procedure as honourable and generous as William
-Penn’s agreement with the Lenni Lenapes under the
-great elm at Shackamaxon, was signalized the entrance
-of Germanic civilization in the Mohawk Valley.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Early in the spring of 1662 Van Curler led his
-fourteen freemen and their families into their new
-possession. Travelling westward, up what is now
-Clinton Avenue in Albany, until they reached Norman’s
-Kill, they struck northward, following the Indian
-trail of blazed trees, until after a circuit of twenty
-miles they reached their future home, on a low plateau
-on the banks of the Mohawk. On this old site
-of an Indian village they began the erection of their
-houses, mill, church, and palisades. The aboriginal
-name of the village, from which the Mohawks had
-removed, pointed to the vast piles of driftwood deposited
-on the river-flats after the spring floods; but
-not till after the English conquest did any one apply
-the old Indian name of the site of Albany—that is,
-“Schenectady”—to Van Curler’s new settlement.
-Both French and Indians called the village “Corlaer,”
-even as they also called the Mohawk River “the
-river of Corlaer,” and the sheet of water in which he
-was drowned, not after its discoverer, Champlain, but
-“Corlaer’s Lake.” Nevertheless, since the Mohawks
-<span class='pageno' title='4' id='Page_4'></span>
-had already retired from the Hudson River, and “the
-place outside the door of the Long House” was no
-longer Albany, but “Corlaer,” they and the Europeans,
-soon after 1664, began to speak of the new settlement
-as “Schenectady;” especially, as by their
-farther retirement up the valley, “Corlaer” was now
-the true “Schenectady;” that is, outside the door of
-the Iroquois confederacy or Long House. Schenectady
-enjoys the honour of being more variously
-spelled than any other place in the United States;
-and its name has been derived from Iroquois, German,
-and Japanese, in which languages it is possible
-to locate the word as a compound. It is a softened
-form of a long and very guttural Indian word.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Then was begun, by these Dutch freeholders, the
-long fight of fifty years for freedom of trade with the
-Indians. Their contest was against the restrictive
-jealousy of Albany, including both Colony and Manor.
-With Dutch tenacity they held on, until victory at
-last crowned their persistence in 1727.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In a word, in its initiation and completion, the
-opening of the Mohawk Valley to civilization forms
-a noble episode in the story of American freedom.
-One of the first places in New York on which the
-forces representing feudalism and opposed to freeholding
-of land, and on which mediæval European
-notions arrayed against the ideas which had made
-America were beaten back, was at Schenectady, in
-the throat of the Mohawk Valley. Here was struck
-by liberty-loving Hollanders a key-note, of which the
-long strain has not yet ceased.
-<span class='pageno' title='5' id='Page_5'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The immigrants who next followed the Dutch pioneers,—like
-them, as real settlers, and not as land-speculators
-and manor-builders,—and who penetrated
-still farther westward up the valley, were not English,
-but German. These people, who, as unarmed peasants
-in the Rhine Valley, had been unable to resist
-the invasion of Louis XIV. or to face the rigours of
-poverty in their desolated homeland, made the best
-sort of colonists in America. Brought by the British
-Government to settle on remote frontiers, to bear the
-brunt of contact with Indians, Spaniards, and Frenchmen,
-these sturdy Protestants soon proved their ability,
-not only to stand their ground, but to be lively
-thorns in the sides of despotic landlords, crown-agents,
-and governors.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The “first American rebel” Leisler, born at Mannheim
-in Germany, was a people’s man. In his own
-rude way he acted with the intent of making ideas
-dominant then, which are commonplace now. His
-“rebellion” grew out of a boast made by the British
-Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson, that the Dutch colonists
-were a conquered people, and not entitled to
-the right of English citizenship. Hanged, by order
-of a drunken English governor, near the site of the
-Tribune Building, May 16, 1691, it is more than
-probable that he will yet have his statue in the metropolitan
-city of America. He belongs to the list of
-haters of what is falsely named aristocracy, the un-American
-state-church combination, and other relics
-of feudalism which survive in England, but which had
-been cast off by the Dutch Republic, in whose service
-<span class='pageno' title='6' id='Page_6'></span>
-as a soldier he had come to America. His place in
-the list of the winners of American liberty is sure.<a id='r1'/><a href='#f1' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[1]</span></sup></a></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Under Governor Hunter’s auspices, in 1710, nearly
-three thousand Germans from the Palatinate settled
-along the Hudson and in New York. By a third
-immigration, in 1722, ten per cent was added to the
-population by the Palatines, who settled all along
-the Mohawk Valley, advancing farther westward into
-the “Woestina.” At German Flats and at Palatine
-Bridge their “concentration” was greatest. So jealous
-were the money-loving English of their wool-monopoly,
-that these Germans were forbidden under
-extreme penalties to engage in the woollen manufacture.
-The same intense jealousy and love of lucre
-which, until the Revolution, kept at home all army
-contracts that could possibly be fulfilled in Great
-Britain, prescribed the ban which was laid on the
-Mohawk Valley Palatines. With chains thus forged
-upon the Germans, who were expected to furnish
-“naval stores,” there was no encouragement for them
-to raise sheep or improved stock. In this way it
-happened that Sir William Johnson was later enabled
-to boast that he was the first who introduced fine
-sheep and other live-stock in the Mohawk Valley.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The characteristics of these Germans were an intense
-love of liberty, and a deep-seated hatred against
-feudalism and the encroachments of monarchy in
-every form. The great land-owners, both Dutch and
-English, who wished to use these people as serfs,
-<span class='pageno' title='7' id='Page_7'></span>
-found that they possessed strange notions of liberty.
-Poor as they were, they were more like hornets to
-sting than blue-bottles to be trapped with molasses.
-The Hessian fly had a barb in his tail. Loyal to the
-Crown, they refused to submit to the tyranny of the
-great landlords. It was one of these Germans, a poor
-immigrant, that first fought and won the battle of the
-freedom of speech and of the press. Now, intrenched
-in the Constitution of the United States, it is to us
-almost like one of the numerous “glittering generalities”
-of the Declaration of Independence, at which
-Englishmen smile, but which Americans, including
-the emancipated negroes, find so real. Then the
-freedom of the press was a dream. In 1734 John
-Peter Zenger, who incarnated the spirit and conscience
-of these Palatine Germans, was editor of the
-“New York Weekly Journal.” He was reproached
-as a foreigner and immigrant, for daring to criticise
-the royal representatives, or ever to touch upon the
-prerogatives of Governor Cosby, the king’s foolish
-representative. Zenger was imprisoned, but managed
-to edit his paper while in jail. At his trial he
-was defended by Hamilton, a lawyer from a colony
-whose constitution had been written by the son of a
-Dutch mother, in Holland, where printing had been
-free a century or more before it was even partially
-free in England. James Alexander Hamilton was
-the Scottish lawyer who had left his European home,
-to the detriment of his fortune, in order to enjoy
-richer liberty in Pennsylvania. He it was who first
-purchased Independence Square in Philadelphia, for
-<span class='pageno' title='8' id='Page_8'></span>
-the erection thereon of the State House, in which the
-Liberty Bell was to hang, and “proclaim liberty to
-all the land, and to all the inhabitants thereof.”
-Going to New York at his own expense, he, without
-fee, defended Zenger and secured his acquittal.
-This event marks an important point in the making
-of America and in the story of American freedom.
-It was in its effects as significant as the skirmish
-at Lexington. The doctrine, novel at that time in
-England but not in Holland, was advanced, that the
-truth of the facts in the alleged libel could be set up
-as defence, and that in this proceeding the jury were
-judges both of the law and the facts.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Though hundreds of Germans left New York for
-the greater advantage of land and the liberty of Pennsylvania,
-which had been settled under republican
-influences, yet those Palatines who rooted themselves
-in the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys proved one of
-the best stocks which have made the American people.
-They were never popular with the men or
-women who wanted to make America a new London
-or a new England, with courts and castles, aristocracy
-and nobles, so called, entail and primogeniture, the
-landlords of feudal domain, and other old-world burdens.
-Honest, industrious, brave, God-fearing, truthful,
-and clean, they soon dotted the virgin forest with
-clearings, farms, and churches. Whatever else in
-their wanderings they lost or were robbed of, they
-usually managed to hold to their hymn-books and
-Bibles, and, in the case of the Reformed Churchmen,
-their Heidelberg Catechism. Their brethren
-<span class='pageno' title='9' id='Page_9'></span>
-in Pennsylvania—the holy land of German-Americans—published
-the first Bible in America, printed
-in a European tongue; and many early copies found
-their way northward. They lived on terms of peace
-with the Indians, treating these sons of the soil with
-kindness, and helping them in generous measure to
-the benefits of Christianity. The most honest and
-influential of Johnson’s Indian interpreters were of
-Dutch or German stock.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Though other nationalities—Scottish, Irish, English—afterward
-helped to make the Mohawk Valley
-at first polyglot, and then cosmopolitan, it was by
-people of two of the strongest branches of the Teutonic
-race that this fertile region was first settled.
-The dominant idea of these people was freedom
-under law, reinforced by hearty contempt for the
-injustice which masquerades under the forms of prerogative
-and of “majesty.” For all the self-styled,
-insolent vicegerents of God, in both Church and State,
-they felt a detestation, and were glad to find in America
-none of these. If found, they felt bound to resist
-them unto the end. Theirs was the democratic idea
-in Church and State, and they expressed it strongly.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was this spirit which explains the rude and rough
-treatment, by Germans of both sexes, of arrogant royal
-agents and landlords in the Schoharie Valley, and
-which at the erection of churches built by public
-money, in which only a liturgical sect could worship,
-led to turbulence and riot. Certain historic old edifices
-now standing were once finished only after the
-king’s bayonets had been summoned to protect masons
-<span class='pageno' title='10' id='Page_10'></span>
-and carpenters from people who hated the very sight
-of an established or government church, built even
-partly by taxation, but shut to those of the sects not
-officially patronized.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Among such a people, strong in the virtues of unspoiled
-manhood; exhilarant with the atmosphere
-and splendid possibilities of the New World; trained
-in the school of Luther’s Bible and the Heidelberg
-Catechism; taught by Dutch laws commanding purchase
-of land from the aborigines, and by the powerful
-example of Van Curler and their domines or
-pastors, to be kind to the Indians,—Sir William Johnson,
-one of the greatest of the makers of our America,
-came in 1738. It was the daughter of one of the
-people of this heroic stock that he married. At a
-susceptible age he learned their ideas and way of
-looking at things, especially at their method of justly
-treating the Indians of the Six Nations, who were
-looked upon as the rightful owners of the soil.
-Among these people Johnson lived all his adult life.
-He was ever in kindly sympathy with them, never
-sharing the supercilious contempt of those who were
-and who are ignorant alike of their language, abilities,
-and virtues.</p>
-
-<hr class='footnotemark'/>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_1'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div id='f1'><a href='#r1'>[1]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>See “The Leisler Troubles of 1689,” by Rev. A. G. Vermilye,
-D.D. New York. 1891.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='11' id='Page_11'></span><h1>CHAPTER II.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>JOHNSON AS AN INDIAN TRADER.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>There</span> is probably no good foundation for the local
-tradition, mentioned by Gen. J. Watts De Peyster,
-in his Life of Gen. John Johnson (Preface, p. ii,
-note), that the family name of William Johnson was
-originally “Jansen, and that the first who bore it and
-settled in Ireland was a Hollander, who, like many of
-his countrymen, went over afterward with William III.
-in 1690, won lands and established themselves in Ireland.”
-The subject is not mentioned in the Encyclopædia
-Britannica, and but slightly treated in English
-works of reference, while he has been unjustly slighted
-by American writers of history. According to his
-own account, William Johnson was born in Smithtown,
-County Meath, near Dublin, Ireland, in 1715.<a id='r2'/><a href='#f2' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[2]</span></sup></a>
-His mother was Anne Warren, sister of the brothers
-Oliver and Peter, who became famous officers in
-the British Navy; and his father, Christopher Johnson,
-<span class='pageno' title='12' id='Page_12'></span>
-Esq. Writers and biographers enlarge upon
-the ancient and honourable lineage of his mother’s
-family, but say little about his father’s. To an
-American this matters less than to those who must
-have a long line of known ancestry, real, reputed, or
-manufactured.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>After some schooling at a classical academy, William
-was trained to a mercantile career. When about
-twenty-two years old, he fell in love with a lass whom
-his parents refused to permit him to marry. This
-obstacle, like a pebble that turns the course of the
-rivulet that is to become a great river, shaped anew
-his life. The new channel for his energies was soon
-discovered.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>His uncle, Capt. Peter Warren, R. N., who had
-just returned from a cruise, heard of his nephew’s
-unhappy experience, and made him the offer of a
-position promising both wealth and adventure. Land
-speculation was then rife; and Captain Warren, like
-many other naval officers, had joined in the rush for
-lucre by buying land in the fertile Mohawk Valley.
-This was in addition to land which was part of his
-wife’s dowry, so that his estate was large, amounting,
-it is said, to fifteen thousand acres. He appointed
-young Johnson his agent, to work his farm and sell
-his building-lots. The young Irishman at once responded
-to the proposition. He crossed the Atlantic,
-and promptly reported in New York.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Captain Warren, then about thirty years old, had
-married Susan, the oldest daughter of Stephen De Lancey;
-and it was probably to the old house, then thirty-eight
-<span class='pageno' title='13' id='Page_13'></span>
-years old, which still stands (in which Washington
-took farewell of his generals in 1783), that
-the young Irishman came. He was possessed of a
-fine figure, tall and strong, was full of ambition and
-energy, with a jovial temper, and a power of quick
-adaptation to his surroundings. In short, he was a
-typical specimen of that race in which generous impulses
-are usually uppermost, and one of the mighty
-army of Celtic immigrants who have helped to make
-of the American people that composite which so
-puzzles the insular Englishman to understand.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>New York and Albany people were already getting
-rich by inland as well as foreign trade, and the naval
-officer wished to invest what cash he could spare
-from his salary or prize money in a mercantile venture,
-to be begun at first on a modest scale in a
-frontier store. “Dear Billy,” as his uncle addressed
-him in his letters, was not long in discovering that
-the ambition of nearly every young man was to get
-rich, either in the inland fur or West India trade, so
-as to own a manor, work it with negro slaves, and
-join in the pomp and social splendour for which the
-colony was already noted. It is more than probable
-that the ambition to be rich and influential was strongly
-reinforced during his stay on Manhattan Island.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The journey north, made according to the regular
-custom, was by sloop up the Hudson, past the Palisades,
-the Highlands, the Catskills, and the Flats, to
-Albany. After a few days in the only municipality
-north of New York,—a log city with a few smart
-brick houses,—spent in laying in supplies, the young
-<span class='pageno' title='14' id='Page_14'></span>
-immigrant would pass through the pine-barrens, and
-after a day’s journey reach the State Street gate of
-palisaded Schenectady.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the house of the tapster, or innkeeper, he would
-probably stay all night. He would find the Street of
-the Martyrs (so named after the massacre of 1690),
-and of the Traders, together with Front, Ferry,
-Church, and Niskayuna Streets, lined with comfortable,
-one-storied, many-gabled dwellings, with here
-and there neat houses, all or partly of brick. Each
-house stood with its cosey bivalve door, shut at the
-bottom to keep out pigs and chickens and to keep
-in the babes, and open at the top to admit light and
-air. The scrupulously neat floors spoke of the hereditary
-Dutch virtue of cleanliness. On the table could
-be seen a wealth of plain but wholesome food, such
-as few farmer-folk in the old countries of Europe
-could boast of. The bill of fare would include the
-well-cured hams for which “the Dorp” was famous,
-all kinds of savoury products of the hog, besides every
-sort of bread, pie, cake, and plain pastry, baked to a
-shining brown in the ample ovens of stone or brick,
-which swelled like domes outside of the houses, at
-the rear of the kitchens. Savoury and toothsome were
-the rich “crullers” which Captain Croll, the good
-church-elder and garrison-commander of Rensselaerwyck,
-had invented during a winter-season of meat-famine.
-On many a house veered iron weathercocks,
-especially on the few brick fronts monogrammed
-with dates in anchors of iron; while on the new
-church, only four years old, but the third in the history
-<span class='pageno' title='15' id='Page_15'></span>
-of the growing town, glittered the cock of Saint
-Nicholas in gilt. It rested over a belfry which held
-a most melodious bell, cast at Amsterdam, in dear
-old “Patria,” in the rim of which, as well-founded
-tradition insisted, many a silver guilder, spoon, and
-trinket had been melted. Perhaps Johnson, like
-many a European and even New England militiaman,
-did not understand why the Dutch built their
-stone fortress-like churches at the intersection of
-two streets. Some even hinted at stupidity; but the
-Dutchmen, for the same reason that they loop-holed
-the walls, so located their chief public buildings at the
-centre of the village as to be able to sweep the cross
-streets with their gun-fire in case of an attack by
-French or Indians, or both.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In Schenectady, Johnson would find that many of
-the men were away in the Indian country, with their
-canoes and currency of strouds, duffels, and trinkets,
-trading for furs. He would soon learn that many
-could speak the Indian tongue, some of the younger
-men and girls being excellent interpreters; while he
-would notice that wampum-making, or “seewant,”
-for money, made by drilling and filing shells, was a
-regular and legitimate industry. Possibly the young
-churchman may have stayed over a Sunday, and in
-the large stone edifice, capable of seating over six
-hundred persons, heard, if he did not understand, the
-learned Domine Reinhart Erichzon preach. After
-the liturgy and psalms, read by the clerk or fore-reader,
-the domine, in gown and bands, ascended the
-wineglass-shaped pulpit to deliver his discourse.
-<span class='pageno' title='16' id='Page_16'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In any event, whether Johnson’s stay was long or
-short in the Dorp, we should see him making exit
-through the north gate, and either going landward
-along the Mohawk, which is hardly possible, or, as is
-more probable, loading his goods and outfit on one
-of the numerous canoes always ready, and rowing or
-being rowed up the river. The twenty-four miles or
-so of distance could be easily covered, despite the rifts
-and possible portages, in a single day. Evening would
-find him, either in camp on the new estate or hospitably
-lodged in some log-house of the Dutch or
-German settlers. He was now in the heart of what
-the Dutch have been wont to call the Woestina, or
-wilderness, but which was now too much settled to
-be any longer so spoken of,—the term beginning to
-be then, as it is now, restricted to a locality near
-Schenectady.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Warren’s Bush, or Warren’s Burg, was the name of
-the farm which the young Irishman was to cultivate.
-Warrensburg was the written name, but almost any
-new settlement was usually spoken of as “bush.” It
-lay on the south side of the Mohawk, some distance
-east of the point where the creek, fed by the western
-slopes of the Catskills, empties into the river, and was
-named Schoharie, from the great mass of driftwood
-borne down. No more fertile valleys than these,
-watered by the rain or melted snows of the Catskills
-and Adirondacks, exist. Besides the river-flats that
-were kept perennially fertile by nearly annual overflows
-and a top dressing of rich silt, the old maize-lands
-of the Mohawk were vast in extent, and all
-<span class='pageno' title='17' id='Page_17'></span>
-ready for the plough. The region west of Albany
-was then spoken of by the colonists as “the Mohawk
-country,” from the chief tribe of the Iroquois who
-inhabited it. Let us glance at the human environment
-of the new settler.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Besides a few small houses of white men, standing
-singly along the river, there were villages and fortified
-large towns of the Mohawks, called, in the common
-English term of the period, “castles.” The scattered
-lodges of the Indians were found near most of the
-settlements, such as Schenectady, Caughnawaga, Stone
-Arabia, or Fort Plain, and often their cabins were
-found inside the white men’s fortifications, as in Fort
-Hunter; but in the palisaded Indian towns, hundreds
-and even thousands were gathered together. All the
-white settlements along the Mohawk or Hudson were
-near the river, the uplands or clearings beyond the
-flats not being considered of much value. On the
-Hudson, besides Albany, were Half Moon and Saratoga,
-which latter stood, not over the wonderful ravine
-from which gushes the healing water of the
-mineral springs, but several miles to the eastward.
-Along the Mohawk were Schenectady, Crane’s Village,
-Fort Hunter, Warrensburg, a hamlet, Caughnawaga
-(or Fonda), Canajoharie, Palatine, German Flats, and
-Burnet’s Field, now called Herkimer. Over in Cherry
-Valley were, later on, Scottish settlers, and in Schoharie
-more Germans.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Besides Jellis Fonda at Caughnawaga (now Fonda),
-who was a great Indian trader, and afterward major
-of militia, Johnson’s most congenial neighbour was a
-<span class='pageno' title='18' id='Page_18'></span>
-fellow Irishman, John Butler. He had come out
-from the old country as a lieutenant of infantry in
-the ill-fated expedition for the reduction of Canada
-in 1711; when, through stormy weather and the ignorance
-of the pilots, the greater part of the fleet under
-Sir Hovenden Walker was destroyed in the St. Lawrence,
-and over a thousand men drowned. As one
-of the purchasers, with Governor Cosby and others,
-of a tract of sixty thousand acres of land, seven miles
-from the site, later called Johnstown, in which stood
-Johnson Hall, Lieutenant Butler cultivated and improved
-his portion. To each of his two sons, Walter
-and John, he gave a large farm, and both he and his
-sons were very influential among the Indians. The
-father served as lieutenant, holding the same rank
-for seventy years; and the two sons were afterward
-captains in the Indian corps, under Johnson, in the
-Lake George campaign. To this family the new
-settler, Johnson, became warmly attached; and the
-friendship remained unbroken until the coming of
-death, which the Arabs call the Severer of Friendships.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This line of settlements formed the frontier or line
-of outposts of civilization. On every side their frontagers
-were the Iroquois, or Indians of Five Nations,
-while right among them were the Mohawks. Only
-one English outpost faced Lake Ontario. This was
-the trading-station of Oswego. Here in 1722, the
-daring governor, William Burnet, aiming at the monopoly
-of the fur-trade, in defiance of the French,
-and in the face of the Seneca Indians’ protest, unfurled
-the British flag for the first time in the region
-<span class='pageno' title='19' id='Page_19'></span>
-of the Great Lakes. He built the timber lodge at
-his own expense, and encouraged bold young men,
-mostly from Albany and the valley settlements, to
-penetrate to Niagara and beyond. These commercial
-travellers—prototypes of the smart, well-dressed,
-and brainy drummers of to-day, and in no whit their
-inferiors in courage, address, and fertility of resource—went
-among the western Indians. They learned their
-language, and so opened the new routes of trade
-that within a twelvemonth from the unfurling of the
-British flag at Oswego there were seen at Albany the
-far-off lake tribes and even the Sioux of Dakota.
-Trade received such a tremendous stimulus that in
-1727 Governor Burnet erected a regular fort at Oswego,
-where, in 1757, a French traveller found sixty
-or seventy cabins in which fur-traders lived. A promising
-settlement, begun by the Palatine Germans at
-Herkimer, was called Burnet’s Field, or, on the later
-powder-horn maps, Fort Harkiman.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The fur-trade in our day calls for the slaughter
-annually of two hundred million land quadrupeds;
-drives men to ravage land and ocean, and even to rob
-the water animals of their skins; sends forty million
-peltries annually to London alone, and is still one of
-the great commercial activities of the world. It was
-relatively much greater in Johnson’s day; and to gain
-a master’s hand in it was already his ambition. It
-was the year 1738, the date of the birth of George
-III. of England, whom later he was to serve as his
-sovereign. Arriving in the nick of time, Johnson began
-at once the triple activities of settling his uncle’s
-<span class='pageno' title='20' id='Page_20'></span>
-acres with farmers, of opening a country store, and
-of clearing new land for himself. This latter was
-rapidly accomplished, Indian fashion, by girdling the
-trunks one year, thus quickly turning them into leafless
-timber, and planting either corn or potatoes the
-next season, in the now sunlighted and warm ground.
-Or the standing timber was cut down and by fire
-converted into potash, two tons to the acre, which
-was easily leached out, and was quickly salable in
-Europe.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Corn or maize was the crop which above all others
-enabled the makers of America to hold their own and
-live; and corn was the grain most plentifully raised
-in the Mohawk Valley, though wheat was an early
-and steady crop. Corn meal is still sold in England
-as “Oswego flour,”—a name possibly invented by
-Johnson, who became a large exporter of grain and
-meal.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>To be landlord’s agent, pioneer settler, farmer, and
-storekeeper all in one, Johnson needed assistance in
-various ways and resolved to have it. He had from
-the first come to stay for life and grow up with the
-country. He was probably in America less than a
-year before he took as his companion, Catharine, the
-daughter of a German Palatine settler named Weissenburg,
-or Wisenberg.<a id='r3'/><a href='#f3' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[3]</span></sup></a> Kate was the only wife Johnson
-<span class='pageno' title='21' id='Page_21'></span>
-ever had, and the only woman with whom he
-lived in wedlock. She is described as a sweet-tempered
-maiden, robust in health, fairly dowered with
-mental abilities, and with a good influence over her
-husband. No record of the marriage ceremony has
-yet been found; but the couple, if not joined in wedlock
-by some one of the Dutch or German clergymen
-of the Valley, as is most likely, had their wedding
-before the Rev. Thomas Barclay, an English Episcopal
-missionary. Mr. Barclay laboured at Fort Hunter,
-and in the little English church officiated for years,
-as well as at Albany and Schenectady; but the records
-of Fort Hunter have not survived the accidents
-of time. When in 1862 the dust of this maker of
-America was disturbed, and his bones sealed up in
-granite for more honourable burial, a plain gold ring
-was found, inscribed on the inside, “June. 1739. 16.”
-This date may have been that of his marriage with
-“Lady” Johnson, his own lawful wife, who probably
-needed no title to adorn the beautiful character which
-tradition bestows upon her. Johnson, when a baronet
-with laurelled brow, and a fame established on
-two continents; the head of a family in which were
-<span class='pageno' title='22' id='Page_22'></span>
-two baronetcies, father and son,—an honour unparalleled
-in American colonial history,—made a will,
-preserved in Albany, in which he desired the remains
-of his “beloved wife Catharine” interred beside him.
-Of Molly Brant, his later mistress, he spoke and
-wrote as his housekeeper; of the Palatine German
-lawfully wedded to him, as his beloved wife.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Doubtless, also, for the first years of married life,
-through her exemption from family cares, though
-these weighed lightly in early colonial days, in the
-absence of the artificial life of the cities, she was
-enabled to attend to the store, while her husband
-worked in the field, rode with grist to the mill, or
-traded with the Indians in their villages. Their first
-child, John, was not born until they had crossed the
-Mohawk River, and occupied Mount Johnson, in
-1742.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We can easily sum up the inventory of a country
-store on the frontier over one hundred and fifty years
-ago, whose chief customers were farmers, trappers,
-<span class='it'>bos-lopers</span> or wood-runners, hunters, and Indians. On
-the shelves would be arranged the thick, warm, woollen
-cloth called “duffel,” which made “as warm a coat as
-man can sell,” and the coarse shoddy-like stuff named
-“strouds;” in the bins, powder, shot, bullets, lead, gun-flints,
-steel traps, powder-horns, rum, brandy, beads,
-mirrors, and trinkets for the Indians, fish-hooks and
-lines, rackets or snow-shoes, groceries, hardware, some
-of the commonest drugs, and building articles.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In trading, a coin was rare. The money used was
-seewant, or wampum, but most of the business done
-<span class='pageno' title='23' id='Page_23'></span>
-was by barter; peltries, corn, venison, ginseng, roots,
-herbs, brooms, etc., being the red man’s stock in
-trade. The white settlers paid for their groceries and
-necessities of civilization in seewant, or wampum, potash,
-and cereals. One of the earliest in the collection
-of Johnson’s papers at Albany is a letter to “Dear
-Billy” from Captain Warren at Boston, suggesting a
-shipment in the spring, from the farm at Warrensburg,
-of grain and other produce to Boston by way
-of Albany.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Being of robust health, with a strong frame and
-commanding figure, jovial in disposition and easy in
-manners, Johnson was not only able to show habitual
-industry, but in the field-sports and athletic games to
-take part and make himself popular alike with the
-muscular young Dutch and Germans and with the
-more lithe red men. The famous castle or palisaded
-village of the Mohawks on the hill-slopes back of
-Auriesville, now visible to all passengers by railway,
-and marked by the shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs,
-was but a short distance to the westward. Here
-Johnson soon became known as a friend as well as
-an honest trader. His simple and masterly plan was,
-never to lie, cheat, or deceive, and never to grant
-what he had once refused. To the red men much
-of a white man’s thinking was a mystery; but truth
-was always simple, and as heartily appreciated as it
-was easily understood.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As early as May 10, 1739, we find this man of
-restless activity planning to locate a branch trading-house
-on the Susquehanna, two hundred miles to the
-<span class='pageno' title='24' id='Page_24'></span>
-south. Already he had seen the advantages and
-prospect of speedy wealth in the fur-trade, a privilege
-won years before by his Schenectady neighbours.
-He now entered diligently into it, employing a number
-of runners or bos-lopers, who scoured the woods
-and valleys populated with Indians, in his interest,
-diverting the trade from Albany to his own post.
-This was the beginning of jealous quarrels between
-him and the Albanians. That his eye was keenly
-open to every new advantage or possibility of progress,
-was seen in his buying as early as 1739, after
-one year’s residence in the valley, a lot of land across
-the Mohawk, on which ran a stream of water, the
-Chucktununda Creek, with abundance of potential
-mill-power. To ride horseback with bags fifteen
-miles to Caughnawaga every time meal was needed,
-was too much loss of time and energy. The German
-women had long carried bags of wheat and maize
-from Schoharie to Schenectady, traversing the distance
-on foot, bearing corn in coming and grist in
-returning, on their backs. There was a mill at Caughnawaga,
-and one owned by the Dutch Church at
-Schenectady, both sufficiently distant. Johnson saw
-at once in a mill ease and revenue. The Indian
-name of the stream, Chucktununda, is said to mean
-“stone roofs or houses,” and was applied to other watercourses
-with banks of overhanging rocks which formed
-shelter during rain. This coveted spot became later
-the famous “Mount” Johnson, on which the stone
-fortress-mansion still stands, at Akin, three miles
-west of Amsterdam and visible to all railway travellers
-<span class='pageno' title='25' id='Page_25'></span>
-as they fly between the great Lake City and New
-York.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The appearance of the Mohawk Valley, though still
-unchanged in its great cosmic features of sky, mountain,
-and main watercourses, was vastly different a century
-and a half ago. On its surface were many minor
-features quite different from those which to-day greet
-the eye of traveller, denizen, or palace-car inmate.
-Then the primeval forest, rich in game, covered hill
-and dale, except along the river-flats, where were
-great expanses of meadow in the wide level of the
-valley. Here were maize-fields surrounding the Indian
-villages for miles.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Owing, however, to the largeness of forest area, the
-streams were of greater proportions and much more
-numerous than at present. Fish were vastly abundant,
-and so tame as to be easily caught, even with
-the hand of Indian or white skilled in wood and
-water craft. Animal life was rich and varied to a degree
-not now easily imaginable or even credible, did
-not the records of geology, of contemporary chronicles,
-and the voices of tradition all agree on this point.
-Then the “wild cow” or bison, though rapidly diminishing,
-owing to the introduction of fire-arms, was
-still a source of fur and food. Besides the elk, deer
-were plentiful on the hills, often seen drinking at
-night and early in the morning at the river’s brink,
-and occasionally were killed inside of the new settlements.
-A splendid specimen of elk horns from a
-buck shot by Johnson on his own grounds, was presented
-by him to Chief Justice Thomas Jones, who
-<span class='pageno' title='26' id='Page_26'></span>
-wrote a loyalist history of New York during the Revolutionary
-War, and long adorned the hall of Fort
-Neck mansion on Long Island. Smaller fur-bearing
-animals were beyond the power of arithmetic. Wolves
-were uncomfortably numerous, active, and noisy. To
-their ceaseless nocturnal music there were slight
-pauses of silence, except when some gory battle-field
-or scalping-party’s raid or unusual spoil of hunters
-became the storm-centre, and gathered them together
-from a radius of many miles. Most notable of all the
-animals, in physical geography, in commerce, and
-for clothing, was the beaver. This amphibious creature
-of architectural instincts was the great modifier
-of the earth’s surface, damming up tens of thousands
-of the hill streams which fed the great rivers, and thus
-causing a vast surface of the land, otherwise dry, to
-be covered with water, while it greatly changed the
-appearance of the landscape. There are to-day thousands
-of grassy and mossy dells which even the inexperienced
-eye sees were once the homes of the beavers,
-while thousands of others have long since, under the
-open sun, become fertile meadows. The beaver, by
-yielding the most valuable of the furs, furnished also
-the standard of value in trade. The beaver as seen
-on the seal of the city of York, like the prehistoric
-<span class='it'>pecus</span>, or cattle, which made <span class='it'>pecu</span>niary value, or the
-salt of the ancient <span class='it'>sal</span>ary or rice in old Japan, was
-quoted oftener than coin.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Indian trails of New York were first obliterated
-by wagon-roads or metaled turnpikes, and then covered
-by iron rails and wooden ties. The flanged iron
-<span class='pageno' title='27' id='Page_27'></span>
-wheels have taken the place of the moccasin, as loco-motor
-and freight-carrier; but in Johnson’s time the
-valleys, passes, and portages or “carries” were all
-definitely marked, and generally easily visible, on account
-of the long tramping of inturned feet. There
-are places to-day on the flinty rock polished by long
-attrition of deer-leather soles; and wherever the natural
-features of the landscape point to the probable saving
-of linear space, there skilled search usually reveals
-the old trail. One of the first proofs of the genius of
-Johnson and the entrance in his mind of continental
-ideas was his thorough study of the natural highways,
-trails, and watercourses of the Iroquois empire, and
-the times and methods of their punctual migrations.
-He soon found that while late autumn, winter, and
-spring was their season for trapping and shooting
-their game, June, July, and August formed the period
-when the peltries were brought in for sale. In early
-autumn they went fishing, or their travelling-parties
-were on peaceful errands, such as attending those
-council-fires which filled all the atmosphere with
-blue haze. As a rule, the Indians avoided the
-mountains, and dwelt in the valleys and well-watered
-regions, where fish and game for food, osiers and
-wood fibres for their baskets, clay for their rude pottery
-abounded, and where pebbles of every degree of
-hardness were at hand, to be split, clipped, drilled,
-grooved, or polished for their implements of war,
-ceremony, and religion. In savage life, vast areas
-of the earth’s surface are necessary for his hunting
-and nomad habits. Agriculture and civilization,
-<span class='pageno' title='28' id='Page_28'></span>
-which mean the tilling and dressing of the earth,
-enable a tribe to make a few acres of fertile soil suffice,
-where one lone hunter could scarcely exist.
-The constant trenching upon the land of the wild
-hunter and fisherman, by the farmer and manufacturer,
-who utilize the forces of Nature, and the resistance
-of the savage to this process, make the story of
-the “Indian question.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Apart from the pretext of religion, equally common
-to all, the main object of French, Dutch, and English
-traders was fur, as that of the New England coast
-men was fish. The tremendous demand of Europe
-and China kept the prices of peltries high, and it was
-in this line of commercial effort that fortunes were
-most quickly made, most of the early profits being
-reckoned at twenty times the amount of outlay. Until
-1630 a strict monopoly of two trading-companies shut
-out all interlopers from the Indian country.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In 1639, at the foundation of Rensselaerwyck, trade
-was nominally thrown open to all. What was formerly
-done covertly by interlopers and servants of the company,
-became the privileges of every burgher. Though
-still rigidly denied to outsiders, traders’ shops soon
-sprung up along the muddy streets of the colony, and
-an immense business was done over the greasy counters.
-The gallon kegs of brandy, called ankers; a
-puncheon of beer; a pile of shaggy woollen stuffs, then
-called duffles, and now represented most nearly by
-Ulster or overcoat cloth; a still coarser fabric called
-strouds, for breech clouts and squaws’ clothes, with
-axes and beads, formed the staple of the cheaper
-<span class='pageno' title='29' id='Page_29'></span>
-order of shopkeepers. In the better class of dealers
-in “Indian haberdashery,” and in peltries, potash,
-and ginseng, the storehouses would have an immense
-array of all sorts of clothes, hats and shoes, guns,
-knives, axes, powder, lead, glass beads, bar and hoop
-iron for arrow-heads, and files to make them, red lead,
-molasses, sugar, oil, pottery, pans, kettles, hollow ware,
-pipes, and knick-knacks of all sorts. It was not long
-before the desire to forestall the markets entered
-the hearts of the Dutch as well as the French; and
-soon, matching the <span class='it'>courier du bois</span>, or hardy rangers
-of the Canadian forests, emerged the corresponding
-figure of the bos-lopers, or commercial drummers.
-This prototype of the present natty and wide-awake
-metropolitan, in finest clothes, hat, and gloves, with
-most engaging manners and invincible tongue, was a
-hardy athlete in his prime, able to move swiftly and
-to be ever alert. He was well versed in the human
-nature of his customers. Skilled in woodcraft, he
-knew the trails, the position of the Indian villages,
-the state of the tides, currents, the news of war and
-peace, could read the weather signs, the probabilities
-of the hair and skin crops, the fluctuations of the
-market, and was usually ready to advance himself by
-fair advantage, or otherwise, over his white employer
-or Indian producer. Rarely was he an outlaw, though
-usually impatient of restraint, and when in the towns,
-apt to patronize too liberally the liquor-seller.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In this way the market was forestalled, and the
-choicest skins secured by the Albany men, who knew
-how to select and employ the best drummers. So
-<span class='pageno' title='30' id='Page_30'></span>
-fascinating and profitable was this life in the woods,
-that agriculture was at first neglected, and breadstuffs
-were imported. The evil of the abandonment of industry,
-however, never reached the proportions notorious
-in Canada, where it sometimes happened that ten
-per cent of the whole population would disappear in
-the woods, and the crops be neglected. When, too,
-Schenectady, Esopus, and the Palatine settlements
-in the Mohawk Valley were fully established, the farmers
-multiplied, the acreage increased, and grain was
-no longer imported. It was, from the first, the hope
-and desire of the Schenectady settlers to break the
-Albany monopoly, and obtain a share of the lucrative
-trade. This was bitterly opposed for half a century,
-and many were the inquisitorial visits of the Albany
-sheriffs to Schenectady and the Valley settlements, to
-seize contraband goods; but usually, on account of
-the steady resistance of both magistrates and citizens,
-they who came for wool went home shorn. The foolish
-Governor Andros went so far as to lay upon the
-little village an embargo,—one of the silly precedents
-of the “Boston Port Bill,”—by a most extraordinary
-proclamation forbidding any wagons and carts to ply
-between the city of Albany and the Dorp of Schenectady,
-except upon extraordinary occasions; and only
-with the consent of the Albany magistrates could
-passengers or goods be carried to the defiant little
-Dutch town. All such official nonsense ultimately
-proved vain, and its silliness became patent even
-to the Albany monopolists; and Schenectady won the
-victory of free trade with the Indians.
-<span class='pageno' title='31' id='Page_31'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This point of time was shortly after the coming of
-Johnson, who thus arrived at a lucky moment; and
-at once entering to reap where others had sown, he
-became a man of the new era. He found the situation
-free for his enterprise, which soon became apparently
-boundless. He cultivated the friendship not
-only of the Indians, but of the white wood-runners,
-trappers, and frontiersmen generally; and by his easy
-manners, generosity, and strict integrity, bound both the
-red and the white men to himself. He was a “hail-fellow-well-met”
-to this intelligent class of men, and
-all through his wonderful career found in them a tremendous
-and unfailing resource of power. Johnson
-laid the foundations of permanent success, deep and
-broad, by the simple virtues of truth and honesty.
-He disdained the meanness of the petty trader. His
-word was kept, whether promise or threat. He refused
-to gain a temporary advantage by a sacrifice of
-principle, and soon the poorest and humblest learned
-to trust him. His word, even as a young man, soon
-became bond and law. The Indians, who were never
-able to fathom diplomacy, could understand simple
-truth. Two of the most significant gestures in the
-sign language of the Indians are, when the index finger
-is laid upon the mouth and moved straight forward,
-as the symbol of verity; and the same initial
-gesture expresses with sinuosities, as of a writhing
-serpent, symbolical of double dealing, prevarication
-or falsehood. The tongue of the truth-speaker was
-thus shown to be as straight as an arrow, while that
-of the liar was like a worm, or the crooked slime-line
-<span class='pageno' title='32' id='Page_32'></span>
-of a serpent. In this simple, effective way Johnson’s
-business enlarged like his land domains from year to
-year, while on knowledge of the Indians and their
-language, and of the physical features of the Mohawks’
-empire, he soon became an authority. As early as
-1743 he succeeded in opening a direct avenue of
-trade with Oswego, doing a good business not only in
-furs, but in supplying with provisions and other necessaries
-both the white trappers and petty traders who
-made rendezvous at the fort. He was now well
-known in Albany and New York, and soon opened
-correspondence with the wealthy house of Sir William
-Baker &amp; Co., of London, as well as with firms in
-Atlantic seaports and the West Indies.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>He prepared for a wider sphere of influence by improving
-his land north of the Mohawk River. He
-began the erection on it of a strong and roomy stone
-house,—one of the very few edifices made of cut stone
-then in the State, and probably the only one west of the
-Hudson River. This house is still standing, and kept
-in excellent repair by its owner and occupant, Mr.
-Ethan Akin. It is two and a half stories high; its dimensions
-are 64 by 34 feet; the walls, from foundation
-to garret, are two feet thick. There is not to-day a flaw
-in them, nor has there ever been a crack. The roof,
-now of slate and previously of shingles, was at first of
-lead, which was used for bullets during the Revolutionary
-War. Part of the house seems to have been
-sufficiently finished for occupancy by the summer of
-1742, for here, on the 5th of November, his son John
-was born. Around the house he planted a circle of
-<span class='pageno' title='33' id='Page_33'></span>
-locust-trees, two or three of which still remain. His
-grist-mill stood on Chucktununda Creek, which flowed
-through his grounds; and near it was the miller’s
-house. This branch of his business—flour manufacture—was
-so soon developed that cooperage was stimulated,
-and shipments of Johnson’s Mohawk Valley
-flour were made to the West Indies and to Nova
-Scotia. Grand as his stone dwelling was, a very patroon’s
-mansion,—and it is probable that one of
-Johnson’s purposes in rearing what was then so splendid
-a mansion was to impress favourably the Indians,—he
-became none the less, but even more, their
-familiar and friend. He joined in their sports, attended
-their councils, entertained the chiefs at his
-board, feasted the warriors and people in his fields,
-and on occasions put on Indian costume. In summer
-this would mean plenty of dress and liberal
-painting, but in winter, abundance of buckskin, a war-bonnet
-of vast proportions, and a duffel blanket. Yet
-all this was done as a private individual and a merchant,
-having an eye to the main chance. He as yet
-occupied no official position. His domestic life in
-these early days at the Mohawk Valley must have
-been very happy; and here were born, evidently in
-quick succession and probably before the year 1745,
-by which time the stone house was finished, his two
-daughters, Mary and Nancy. About sixty yards north
-of the mansion was a hill on which a guard-house
-stood, with a lookout ever on the watch. On account
-of this hill the place was often spoken of as
-“Mount” Johnson. In time of danger a garrison
-<span class='pageno' title='34' id='Page_34'></span>
-of twenty or thirty men occupied this point of wide
-view.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Despite his many cares, Johnson enjoyed reading
-and the study of science. He ordered books and
-periodical literature regularly from London. His scientific
-taste was especially strong in astronomy. To
-the glorious canopy of stars, which on winter nights
-make the mountain-walled valley a roofed palace of
-celestial wonders, Johnson’s eyes were directed whenever
-fair weather made their splendours visible. In
-autumn the brilliant tints of the sumach, dogwood,
-swamp-maple, sassafras, red and white oak, and the
-various trees of the order of <span class='it'>Sapindaceæ</span> filled the
-hills and lowlands with a glory never seen in Europe.
-His botanical tastes could be enjoyably cultivated, for
-in orchids, ferns, flowering plants, and wonders of the
-vegetable world, few parts of North America are
-richer than the Mohawk Valley.</p>
-
-<hr class='footnotemark'/>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_2'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div id='f2'><a href='#r2'>[2]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The young and charming Lord James Radcliffe, Earl of
-Derwentwater, the idol of the Jacobites, was beheaded 24th of
-February, 1716; that is, on the very day, it is claimed by Col.
-T. Bailey Myers, that Sir William Johnson was born, and the
-wild fervour of a Jacobite loyalty was still alive when Sir John
-was a boy.—<span class='sc'>De Peyster’s</span> <span class='it'>Life of Gen. John Johnson</span>, Introd.,
-p. xvi.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_3'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div id='f3'><a href='#r3'>[3]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mr. E. F. De Lancey, the well-known writer on American
-history and genealogy, knew personally the grandchildren of
-Sir William Johnson, and has embodied valuable information
-about him and them in his notes to Jones’s “History of New
-York during the Revolutionary War.” In his letter to the writer,
-dated March 28, 1891, he kindly sent a transcript from a
-letter in Mrs. Bowes’s own handwriting—“Information my
-father gave me when with him. Catharine Wisenberg, a native
-of Germany, married to Sir W. Johnson, Bart. in the U.
-States of America, died in 1759.” Mrs. Bowes was a daughter
-of Sir John Johnson, who was a son of Sir William Johnson.
-It is probable that the spelling Wisenberg is only the phonetic
-form of Weissenburg. The local gossip and groundless traditions,
-like those set down by J. R. Simms, are in all probability
-worthless.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='35' id='Page_35'></span><h1>CHAPTER III.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>THE SIX NATIONS AND THE LONG HOUSE.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The</span> military nerves of the continent of North
-America lie in the water-ways bounding, traversing,
-or issuing from the State of New York. Its heart is
-the region between the Hudson and the Niagara.
-In these days of steam-traction, when transit is
-made at right angles to the rivers, and thus directly
-across the great natural channels of transportation,
-New York may be less the Empire State than in the
-days of canoes and bateaux. Yet even now its
-strategic importance is at once apparent. In the old
-days of conflict, first between the forces of Latin and
-Teutonic civilization, and later between British king-craft
-and American democracy, it was the ground
-chosen for struggle and decision.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Before the European set foot on the American
-continent, the leading body of native savages had discovered
-the main features of this great natural fortress
-and place of eminent domain. Inventors of the
-birch-bark canoe, the red man saw that from this
-centre all waters of the inland ocean made by the
-great lakes, the warm gulf, and the salt sea, could be
-easily reached. With short land-portages, during
-which the canoe, which served as shelter and roof at
-<span class='pageno' title='36' id='Page_36'></span>
-night and house and vehicle by day, could be carried
-on the shoulders, the Indian could paddle his
-way to Dakota, to Newfoundland, or to Hudson’s Bay
-on the north, or the Chesapeake and the Mississippi
-and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. In his moccasins
-he could travel as far. From New York State
-the pedestrian can go into twenty States and into
-two thirds of the territory of the United States without
-leaving the courses of valleys. No other State
-can so communicate between the east and the west
-without overcoming one or more mountain ridges.
-The T-shaped Hudson-Mohawk groove in the earth’s
-crust unites the valleys east of Massachusetts. With
-such geographical advantages, added to native abilities,
-the Iroquois were able to make themselves the
-virtual masters of the continent of North America.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Here, accordingly, was built the Long House; that
-is, was organized the federation of the Five Nations.
-Like the Pharaohs, Sultans, Mikados, and European
-princes of the world which we call old, because
-of its long written history, these forest sovereigns
-named their government after their house. The
-common edifice of the Iroquois was a bark structure
-fifty or more feet long, and from twelve to twenty
-feet wide, with doors at either end. In each dwelling
-lived several families.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>So also, in the Great Long House, stretching from
-the Hudson to the Niagara, dwelt at first five families.
-The Mohawks occupied the room at the eastern end
-of the house, in the throat of the Mohawk Valley, the
-<span class='it'>schenectady</span>, or “place just outside the door,” being
-<span class='pageno' title='37' id='Page_37'></span>
-on the “mountain-dividing” or Hudson River. More
-exactly, the place of “Ye treaties of Schenectady” was
-at the mouth of Norman’s Kill, a little south of Albany.
-Here was the place of many ancestral graves, where
-multitudes of the dead lay, and where Hiawatha, their
-great civilizer, dwelt.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Of all the tribes the Mohawks were, or at least
-in England and the colonies were believed to be, the
-fiercest warriors. It was after them that the roughs
-in London in the early part of the eighteenth century
-were named, and the term was long used as a synonym
-with ferocious men. The tea-destroyers in
-Boston Harbor in 1774 also took this name. Next
-westward were the Oneidas, inhabiting the region
-from Little Falls to Oneida Lake. The Onondagas
-at the centre of the Long House, in the region between
-the Susquehanna and the eastern end of Lake
-Ontario, had the fireplace or centre of the confederacy.
-The Cayugas lived between the lake named
-after them and the Genesee Valley. The Senecas
-occupied the country between Rochester and Niagara.
-The evidence left by the chips on the floors of their
-workshops, show that their most ancient habitations
-were on the river-flats and at the edges of streams.
-Later, as game became scarcer, they occupied the
-hills and ledges farther back. On these points of
-vantage their still later elaborate fortifications of wood
-were built. As the rocks of New York make the Old
-Testament of geology, so the river-strands and the
-quarries are the most ancient chronicles of unwritten
-history, in times of war and peace.
-<span class='pageno' title='38' id='Page_38'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>How long the tribes of the Long House lived together
-under the forms of a federated republic, experts
-are unable to tell. It is believed that they were originally
-one large Dakota tribe, which became separated
-by overgrowth and dissensions, and later united, not
-as a unity, but as a confederation. The work of Dr.
-Cadwallader Colden, who in 1727 published his “History
-of the Five Nations,” has been too much relied
-upon by American and English writers. It was one of
-the very first works in English on local history published
-in the province of New York. Utterly ignoring
-the excellent writing of the Dutch scholars, Domine
-Megapolensis, De Vries, and the lawyer, Van der
-Donck, who wrote as men familiar with their subject
-at first hand; ignoring also the personal work of
-Arendt Van Curler,—Colden compiled most of his
-historic matter from French authors.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>According to the tradition of the Algonkin Indians
-of Canada, which Colden gives at length, the
-Iroquois were at first mainly occupied in agriculture,
-and the Algonkins in hunting. The various wars had
-developed in the Iroquois the spirit of war and great
-powers of resistance, so that they held their own
-against their enemies. Another of the many bloody
-campaigns was to open on the shores of the lake
-named after Champlain, when Europeans appeared
-on the scene, and trustworthy history begins. Champlain,
-it seems, did not desire to join in the Indian
-feuds, but was compelled to do so in order to retain
-the friendship of the Hurons. This first use of fire-arms
-in Indian warfare meant nothing less than revolution
-<span class='pageno' title='39' id='Page_39'></span>
-in politics, in methods of war, in the influence
-of chiefs, and in other elements of Indian civilization.
-What gunpowder began, alcohol completed.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This much seems certain, that at the opening of
-the seventeenth century the whole continent was a
-dark and bloody ground, in which war was the rule
-and peace the exception; in which man hunted man
-as the beasts and fishes destroy and devour one another.
-The Iroquois, speaking substantially one language,
-were as an island in a great Algonkin ocean.
-Unlike mere fishermen and hunters they were agriculturists,
-and many hundred square miles were planted
-with their maize, squashes, pumpkins, beans, tobacco,
-and other vegetables, edible or useful. They were
-able to store up corn for long campaigns and to brave
-a season of famine. The streams furnished them with
-fish, and they hunted the deer, elk, bison, and smaller
-animals for flesh or furs; but their noblest game was
-man. To kill, to scalp, to save alive for torture, to
-burn his villages and houses, to wreak vengeance on
-his enemies, was rapture to the savage.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Before they knew gunpowder, the Iroquois, equipped
-with flint weapons and clothed in bark armour, often
-fought in the open field and with comparative personal
-exposure. Their battles were by masses of men who
-were led by chiefs, and their tactics and strategy resembled
-those of white men before the introduction of
-fire-arms. One famous field in the open ground near
-Schenectady was long pointed out in Indian tradition
-as the place where the great battle between the Iroquois
-and the Algonkins had been fought before the
-<span class='pageno' title='40' id='Page_40'></span>
-coming of the whites. For the defence of their villages
-they built palisades with galleries for the defenders
-to stand on, and with appliances at hand to put
-out fires, or to repel assaults and drive off besiegers.
-Theirs was the age of stone and wood; but their civilization
-was based on agriculture, which made them
-superior to that of their neighbours, whom they had
-compelled to be tributary vassals.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The apparition of the white man and the flash of
-Champlain’s arquebus, vomiting fire and dealing death
-by invisible balls, changed all Indian warfare and civilization.
-Gunpowder wrought as profound a revolution
-in the forests of America as in Europe. Bark or
-hide shields and armour were discarded; bows and arrows
-were soon left to children; the line and order of
-battle changed; fighting in masses ceased; the personal
-influence of the chiefs decreased, and each
-warrior became his own general. Individual valour
-and physical strength and bravery in battle counted
-for much less, and the dwarf was now equal to the
-giant.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>An equally great revolution in industry took place
-when the stone age was suddenly brought to a close
-and the age of metals ushered in. The iron pot and
-kettle, the steel knife, hoe, hatchet, and the various
-appliances of daily life made more effective and durable,
-almost at once destroyed the manufacture of stone
-and bone utensils. The old men lost their occupation,
-and the young men ceased to be pupils. This
-loss of skill and power was tremendous and far-reaching
-in its consequences; and its very suddenness transformed
-<span class='pageno' title='41' id='Page_41'></span>
-independent savages into dependents upon
-the white man. In time of famine or loss of trade,
-or interruption of their relations with the traders
-caused by political complications, the sufferings of
-the Indians were pitiable.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Champlain’s shot dictated the reconstruction of Indian
-warfare; but the Iroquois took to heart so
-promptly the lesson, that the Algonkins north of the
-St. Lawrence were able to profit little by their temporary
-victory. Full of hate to the French for interfering
-to their disadvantage, the Mohawks at once
-made friends with the Dutch.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Both Hudson and Champlain had visited Mount
-Desert Island, and thence separating had penetrated
-the continent by the great water-ways, both reaching
-the heart of New York within a few miles of each
-other. While the French founded Quebec, and settled
-at Montreal, the Dutch made a trading settlement
-on the Hudson at Norman’s Kill, Tawasentha. This
-“place of many graves” and immemorial tradition
-was the seat of their great civilizer and teacher, Hiawatha,
-who had introduced one phase of progress. It
-was now destined to be the gateway to a new era of
-change and development. As in Japan, at the other
-side of the globe, at nearly the same time white men,
-gunpowder, and Christianity had come all together.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was not out of disinterested benevolence that the
-confederate savages sought the friendship of the Hollanders.
-They came to buy powder and ball, to arm
-themselves with equal weapons of vengeance, and to
-protect themselves against the French.
-<span class='pageno' title='42' id='Page_42'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>But if Champlain was a mighty figure in the imagination
-of the red man of the Mohawk Valley, there
-was coming a greater than he. This new man was to
-impress more deeply the imagination of all the Iroquois,
-and his name was to live in their language as long
-as their speech was heard on the earth. Champlain was
-a bringer of war; “Corlaer” was an apostle of peace.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Arendt Van Curler is a perfectly clear figure in the
-Indian tradition, and in the history and documentary
-archives of the Empire State. Having no descendants
-to embalm his name in art or literature, he has
-not had his monument. Yet he deserves to have his
-name enrolled high among the makers of America.
-The ignorance, errors—and there is a long list of
-them—of writers on American and local history concerning
-Arendt Van Curler, have been gross and inexcusable.
-It were surely worth while to know the
-original of that “Corlaer” after whom the Indians
-named, first the governors of New York, and later
-the governors of English Canada, and finally Queen
-Victoria, the Empress of India. To the Iroquois mind,
-Corlaer was the representative of Teutonic civilization.
-Other governors of colonies and prominent figures
-among the pale-faces, they called by names coined
-by themselves, just as they named their own warriors
-from trivial incidents or temporary associations. Even
-the King of Great Britain was only their unnamed
-“Father;” but as our ablest American historian, Francis
-Parkman, has said: “His [Van Curler’s] importance
-in the eyes of the Iroquois, and their attachment
-to him are shown by the fact that they always used
-<span class='pageno' title='43' id='Page_43'></span>
-his name (in the form of Corlaer) as the official designation
-of the governor of New York, just as they
-called the governors of Canada, Onontio, and those
-of Pennsylvania, Onas. I know of no other instance
-in which Iroquois used the name of an individual
-to designate the holder of an office. Onontio
-means ‘a great mountain;’ Onas means ‘a quill or
-pen;’ Kinshon, the governor of Massachusetts, ‘a
-fish.’ ”<a id='r4'/><a href='#f4' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[4]</span></sup></a></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Rev. I. A. Cuoq, in his “Lexique de la Langue
-Iroquoise,” also remarks that the title Kora, the present
-form of [Van] Curler, given even yet to the kings
-and queens of England and to the English governors
-of Canada, is a purely Iroquois creation; while that
-of Onontio, used of the French king and governors,
-was given for the first time to Montmagny, the successor
-of Champlain. Quite differently from their
-method in the case of Van Curler, they translated,
-with the aid of the French missionaries, Montmagny’s
-name, rendering it freely by Onontio, which means,
-strictly speaking, “the beautiful mountain,” rather than
-“the great mountain.” The term Onontio was used
-until the end of the French dominion in America,
-whereas Kora [or Corlaer] is still in vogue; Queen
-Victoria being to the Canadian Indians Kora-Kowa, or
-the great Van Curler.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As first-cousin of Kilian Van Rensselaer, Arendt
-Van Curler, a native of the country near Amsterdam,
-but probably of Huguenot descent, reached America
-in 1630, and became superintendent and justice of
-<span class='pageno' title='44' id='Page_44'></span>
-the colony at Rensselaerwyck. From the very first
-he dealt with the Indians in all honour, truth, and justice.
-He was a man of sterling integrity, a Dutch
-patriot, and a Christian of the Reformed faith, but
-also a man of continental ideas, a lover of all good
-men, and a Catholic in the true sense of the term.
-He rescued from death and torture the Christian prisoners
-in Mohawk villages; and his first visit into, or
-“discovery” of the Valley as far as Fonda in September,
-1642, was to ransom Father Jogues. His description
-of “the most beautiful land on the Mohawk
-River that eye ever saw,” and the journal of his journey,
-probably sent with his letter of June 16, 1643,
-to the Patroon, form the first written description of
-the Valley. He mastered the vernacular of the savages,
-visited them at their council-fires, heard their
-complaints, dealt honestly with them, and compelled
-others to do the same. The first covenant of friendship,
-made in 1617, between the Dutch and the Iroquois,
-and its various later renewals, he developed
-into a policy of lasting peace and amity. The scattered
-links of friendship between the Dutch and the
-confederacy of Indians he forged into an irrefragable
-chain, which, until the English-speaking white men
-went to war in 1775, was never broken. In 1663 he
-saved the army of Courcelles from starvation and
-probably destruction. Winning alike the respect of
-the French in Canada, and of their enemies, the Mohawks,
-he was invited to visit the governor, Tracy, in
-Quebec. On his journey thither in 1667, he was
-drowned in Lake Champlain near Rock Regis, the
-<span class='pageno' title='45' id='Page_45'></span>
-boundary-mark between the Iroquois and Algonkin
-Indians. This lake, like the Mohawk River, and the
-town of Schenectady which he founded, the Indians
-and Canadians called Corlaer.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Rarely, if ever, was a council held in Albany or at
-Johnson’s house or at the Onondaga fireplace, that
-Corlaer’s name was not mentioned, and their “covenant
-chain” with him referred to under the varied
-figures of rhetoric.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Van Curler’s policy was continued and expanded
-by Peter Schuyler, a son of Van Curler’s warm personal
-friend, Philip Schuyler. As the Iroquois in
-speaking never closed the lips, but used the orotund
-with abundance of gutturals, they were unable to pronounce
-properly names in which labial consonants
-occurred. They could not say Peter; so they called
-their friend “Quider.” The policy of Johnson was
-simply a continuation and expansion of that of these
-two Hollanders, Van Curler and Schuyler. There
-was no name of any white man that Johnson heard
-oftener in the mouths of the Indians than that of Corlaer;
-and yet, in the index of seventy thousand references
-to the Johnson manuscripts in Albany there is
-no reference to this founder of the Dutch policy of
-peace with the Indians.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In their political and social procedures, in public
-discourse, and in the etiquette of councils, no denizens
-of European courts were more truly bond-slaves
-to etiquette and custom than these forest senators.
-In certain outward phases of life—especially noticed
-by the man of hats, boots, and clean underclothing—the
-<span class='pageno' title='46' id='Page_46'></span>
-Indian seems to be a child of freedom, untutored
-and unsophisticated. In reality he is a slave compared
-to the enlightened and civilized man. He is
-by heredity, training, and environment fettered almost
-beyond hope. His mind can move out of predestined
-grooves only after long education, when a new
-God, new conceptions, induced power of abstract reasoning,
-and an entirely new mental outlook are given
-him. First of all, the savage needs a right idea of
-the Maker of the universe and of the laws by which
-the creation is governed; and then only does his mental
-freedom begin. So far from being free from prescribed
-form, he is less at liberty than a Chinese
-or Hindu. His adherence to ceremonial runs into
-bigotry. The calumet must be smoked. The opening
-speech must be on approved models. The wampum
-belts are as indispensable in a treaty as are seals
-and signatures in a Berlin conference or a Paris treaty.
-To challenge tradition, to step out of routine, to think
-for himself, and to act according to conviction, is
-more dangerous and costly to him than to one who
-has lived under the codes of civilization.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>To gain his almost invincible influence over these
-red republicans of the woods, Johnson, like his previous
-exemplars, had to let patience have her perfect work.
-He had to stoop to them in order to lift them up.
-He even learned to outdo them in ostentation of
-etiquette, in rigid adherence to form, in close attention
-to long speeches without interruption, in convincing
-eloquence, in prolixity when it was necessary
-to subdue the red man’s brain and flesh by the power
-<span class='pageno' title='47' id='Page_47'></span>
-of the tongue, and in shine and glitter of outward
-display. Like a shrewd strategist, this typical Irishman
-knew when to exercise his native gift of garrulity
-in talking against time, and when also to condense
-into fiery sentences the message of the hour.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>One chief reason, however, why the Iroquois preferred
-to talk with him more than with the average
-colonial grandee, was because they were not when
-before him at the mercy of interpreters. Despite the
-fact that time was of little value to the savage, it
-was rather trying to an Indian orator, after dilating
-for an hour or two in all the gorgeous eloquence of
-figurative language, to the manifest acceptance of his
-own kinsmen at least, to have an interpreter render
-the substance of his oration in a few sentences. Unaccustomed
-to abstract reasoning, the Indian was
-perforce obliged to draw the images of thought entirely
-from the environment of his life on land and
-water. Hence his speech superabounded with metaphors.
-He thoroughly enjoyed the discourse of one
-of his pale-faced brothers whose flowery language,
-while insufferably prolix to his fellow-whites, ran on
-in exuberant verbosity. In such a case, as Johnson
-soon learned to know, the sons of the forest felt complimented
-and flattered. Rarely was a speaker interrupted.
-Extreme rigidity of decorum was the rule
-at their councils. On great and solemn occasions the
-women were called as witnesses and listeners to hold
-in their memory words spoken or promises given.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>There were other resources of human intercourse
-besides words. The wampum strings that reminded
-<span class='pageno' title='48' id='Page_48'></span>
-one of rosaries, or the belts made of hundreds and thousands
-of black and white shells, served as telegrams, letters
-missive, credentials, contracts, treaties, currency,
-and most of the purposes in diplomacy and business.
-The principal chief of a tribe had the custody of these
-archives of State. A definite value was placed upon
-these drilled, polished, and strung disks or oval cylinders
-of shell. The Dutch soon learned to make a
-better fabric than the Indian original, and they taught
-the art to the other colonists. Weeden, in his
-“Economic History of New England,” has shown
-how great an aid to commerce this, the ancient money
-of nearly all nations, proved in the early days when
-coined money was so scarce. The belts used as newsletters,
-as tokens of peace or war, as records of the
-past, or as confirmations of treaties, were often generous
-in width and length, beautifully made, and fringed
-with coloured strings. Schenectady was a famous
-place of wampum or seewant manufacture; and Hille
-Van Olinda, an interpreter, received in 1692 two
-pounds eight shillings for two great belts. Two others
-of like proportions cost three pounds twelve shillings. A
-large quantity of this sort of currency was always carried
-by the French to win over the Indians to their side.
-The same commercial and diplomatic tactics were also
-followed by the English, and especially by Johnson.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Iroquois had also a rude system of heraldry.
-A traveller over the great trails or highways, or along
-the shores of the great water-ways most often traversed,
-would have seen many tokens of aboriginal art.
-The annals of the Jesuit missionaries and of travellers
-<span class='pageno' title='49' id='Page_49'></span>
-show that besides the hideously painted or carved
-manitou or idols found at certain well-known places,
-the trees and rocks were decorated with the totem
-signs. The wolf, the bear, the tortoise, were the living
-creatures most frequently seen in effigy on tent, robes,
-or arms. Or they were set as their seal and sign-manual
-on the title-deeds of lands bartered away, which
-the white man required as proofs of sale and absolute
-alienation, though often the red man intended only
-joint occupancy. In the Iroquois Confederacy there
-were eight totem-clans, which formed an eight-fold
-bond of union in the great commonwealth. Less important
-symbols were the deer, serpent, beaver, stone
-pipe, etc. In their drawings on trees or rocks there
-were certain canons of art well understood and easily
-read. A canoe meant a journey by water; human
-figures without heads, so many scalps; the same holding
-a chain, as being in alliance and friendship; an
-axe, an emblem of war, etc. A rude fraternity, with
-secrets, signs, and ceremonies,—the freemasonry of the
-forest,—was also known and was powerful in its influence.
-In family life, inheritance was on the female
-side; and on many subjects the advice of the women
-was sought and taken, and as witness-auditors they
-were a necessity at solemn councils, as well as made
-the repository of tradition.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Exactly what the religion of the Indians was it
-would be hard to say. To arrange their fluctuating
-and hazy ideas into a system would be impossible.
-Whatever the real mental value of their words “manitou”
-and “wakan,” or other terms implying deity,
-<span class='pageno' title='50' id='Page_50'></span>
-or simply used to cover ignorance or express mystery,
-it is evident that the blind worship of force was the
-essence of their faith. Living much nearer to the
-animal creation than the civilized man, they were
-prone to recognize in the brute either a close kinship
-or an incarnation of divine power. Extremes meet.
-The current if not the final philosophy of the scientific
-mind in our century, and that of the savage, have
-many points in common. All animated life was linked
-together, but the red man saw the presence of the
-deity of his conception in every mysterious movement
-of animate or inanimate things. Even the rattlesnake
-was the bearer of bane or blessing according as it was
-treated. Alexander Henry, the traveller from Philadelphia,
-relates that on meeting a snake four or five
-feet long, which he would have killed, the Iroquois
-reverently called it “grandfather,” blew their tobacco
-smoke in puffs toward it to please the reptile, and
-prayed to it to influence Colonel Johnson “to take
-care of their families during their absence, to show
-them charity, and to fill their canoes with rum.”
-When, afterward, they were on the lake and a storm
-arose, Henry came very near being made a Jonah to
-appease the wrath of the rattlesnake-manitou, but fortunately
-the tempest passed and it cleared off.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Indians invented the birch or elm bark canoe,
-the racket or snow-shoe, the moccasin, all of which
-the white frontiersmen were quick to utilize when
-they saw their value. They also taught the settlers
-the use of new kinds of food, and how to get it from
-the soil or the water. To tread out eels from the
-<span class='pageno' title='51' id='Page_51'></span>
-mud, catch fish with the hand or with fish-hooks of
-bone, and to till the ground, even in the forest, for
-maize, squashes and pumpkins, were lessons learned
-from the red man. Frontier and savage life had
-many points in common, and not a little Indian blood
-entered into the veins of Americans. There were hundreds
-of instances of women as well as men rescued
-from their supposed low estate as captives who preferred
-to remain with the Indians in savage life. Often
-white settlers were saved from death by starvation by
-friendly red men or half-breeds; while half the plots
-of the savages failed because of the warnings given by
-friendly squaws, or boys who were usually not full-blooded.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Great changes took place within the Iroquois Confederacy
-after the advent of the white man. His
-fire-arms, liquor, fences, and ideas at once began to
-modify Indian politics, hunting, social life, and religion.
-The unity of interests was broken, and division
-and secession set in, as steady currents, to weaken
-the forest republic. Large numbers of the Iroquois
-emigrated westward to live and hunt in Ohio and beyond,
-and joined the Ottawa confederacy. Others
-left in bands or groups, and made their homes in
-Pennsylvania, Virginia, or the Southwest, to get away,
-if possible, from the white man’s fences and fire-water.
-Others followed their religious teachers into Canada,
-and made settlements there. These losses were only
-in a measure made good by the addition to the Long
-House of a whole tribe from the South, the Tuscaroras,
-whose ancestral seats had been in the Carolinas.
-<span class='pageno' title='52' id='Page_52'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>North Carolina was one of the majority of the
-original thirteen States first settled by a variety of colonists,—French,
-German, Swiss, Scottish, and Irish,
-as well as English. At first red and white men lived
-at peace; but soon the inevitable “question” came,
-and the Indians imagined that they could show themselves
-superior to the pale-faces. Making what white
-historians call a “conspiracy,” but striking what they
-believed to be a blow for home and freedom, they
-rose, and in one night massacred in or near Roanoke
-alone one hundred and thirty-seven of the white
-settlers. Their murderous act at once drew out
-the vengeance of Governor Craven of South Carolina,
-who sent Col. John Barnwell, an Irishman, who
-marched with a regiment of six hundred whites and
-several hundred Indian allies. Without provision
-trains, but subsisting as Indians do in a wilderness
-unbroken by villages, farms, or clearings, Barnwell
-struck the Tuscaroras in battle, and reduced their
-numbers by the loss of three hundred warriors. Pursuing
-them to their fortified castle, he laid siege and
-compelled surrender. By successive blows, this “Tuscarora
-John,” by death or capture, destroyed one
-thousand fighting men, and compelled the remainder
-of the tribe to leave the graves of their fathers, and
-emigrate northward. Only a remnant reached New
-York. The Tuscaroras joined the Iroquois Confederacy
-in 1713, and the federated forest republic then
-took upon itself the style and title of the Six Nations.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Nearly a century afterward, when the Iroquois Confederacy
-was a dream, and the Southern Confederacy
-<span class='pageno' title='53' id='Page_53'></span>
-beginning to be woven of the same stuff, the descendant
-of “Tuscarora John,” who had added a new
-tribe to the Long House, gave at Montgomery, Alabama,
-the casting vote that made Jefferson Davis
-President of a new one in the many forms of federation
-on the North American continent. About the
-same time the great English historian, Freeman, neglecting
-for the nonce the distinction between history
-and prophecy, began his work on the “History of
-Federal Government, from the Achaian League to the
-Disruption of the United States of America,” only one
-volume of which was published, the events of 1863–1865
-compelling the completion of the work to be
-indefinitely postponed.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>How far the various attempts of the red man to
-combine in federal union for common strength or
-defence, and especially those in the stable political
-edifice in New York, were potent in aiding the formation
-of the American Commonwealth, is an interesting
-question worthy of careful study. That it was not
-without direct influence upon the minds of those constructive
-statesmen like Franklin, Hamilton, Madison,
-Monroe, who came so numerously from States nearest
-the Long House, and most familiar with Iroquois
-politics, cannot be denied. The men of the English-speaking
-colonies which had been peopled from continental
-and insular Europe, were inheritors of classic
-culture. They naturally read the precedents furnished
-by Greece and Rome; but they were also
-powerfully affected by the living realities of the federal
-republics of Holland and Switzerland, as well as
-<span class='pageno' title='54' id='Page_54'></span>
-in the aristocratic republic of Venice, while in the one
-nearest England many of them were educated. It is
-not too much to affirm, however, that the power of
-this great example at home, on the soil and under
-their eyes, was as great in moulding opinion and consolidating
-thought in favour of a federal union of
-States, as were the distant exemplars of the ancient
-world, or in modern Europe. Though we give him
-no credit, and spurn the idea of political indebtedness
-to the red man, with almost the same intolerant
-fierceness that some of the latter-day New England
-Puritans deny obligations to the Dutch Republic that
-sheltered and educated their fathers, yet our government
-is in a measure copied from that of the forest
-republicans, whose political edifice and conquests
-shaped the history and civilization of this continent.
-In still retaining the sonorous names given to our
-mountains, valleys, and rivers, and in transferring
-these to our ships and men-of-war; in giving the
-effigy of the Indian a place on our municipal coats of
-arms and seals of State, we are proving that in our
-memory at least of the aboriginal dwellers on the
-soil they are not wholly forgotten. These graphic
-symbols are, indeed, but shadows; but beyond all
-shadow is substance.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>While the white man’s gunpowder and bullets, war,
-diseases, fire-water, and trade wrought profound
-changes for better or worse, usually the latter, the
-Indians were not stolid or unreceptive to his religion.
-Both the Roman and the Reformed teachers won
-many disciples in the Long House. Almost as soon
-<span class='pageno' title='55' id='Page_55'></span>
-as the learned Domine Megapolensis arrived at Fort
-Orange, he began to learn the language of the Mohawks.
-He was soon able to preach to them and to
-teach their children. This was three years before
-John Eliot began his work in Massachusetts. The
-pastors at Schenectady did the same, translating portions
-of the Bible and of the liturgy of the Netherlands
-Reformed Church, and of the Book of Common
-Prayer. The missionary efforts of the Dutch Christians
-soon bore definite and practical results. The
-Reformed Church records show large numbers of Indians
-baptized or married or buried according to
-Christian rites. There are also frequent instances of
-adult communicant membership in the Mohawk, Hudson,
-Raritan, and Hackensack Valleys. Hundreds of
-Indian children were trained in the same catechetical
-instruction, and in the same classes with those of the
-whites. As a general rule, the Hollanders and other
-peoples from the Continent lived in kindness and
-peace with their red brethren. The occasional outbreaks
-of the savages in massacre, fire, and blood
-were not by those of New York, but from Canada.
-The Indians were set on like dogs by the French,
-who stimulated the thirst for blood by political and
-religious hatreds; and the English repaid in kind.
-Rarely was the peace broken between the people of
-New Netherlands and New York except by causes
-operative in, and coming from Europe.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The first Roman Catholic who entered the bounds
-of the State of New York was Isaac Jogues, who was
-captured by the Mohawks while ascending the St.
-<span class='pageno' title='56' id='Page_56'></span>
-Lawrence River. One of the sweetest spirits and
-noblest characters that ever glorified the flesh he
-dwelt in, Isaac Jogues was brought captive into the
-Mohawk Valley to be reserved for fiendish torture.
-Ransomed by Arendt Van Curler, and assisted to
-France by Domine Megapolensis, these three men of
-the Holy Catholic Church became ever after true
-friends. The surface discords of church names were
-lost in the deeper harmonies of their one faith and
-love to a common Saviour. Bressani was later assisted
-in like manner. Returning willingly, by way of
-Quebec, after his fingers, once chewed to shapeless
-lumps between the teeth of the Mohawks, had been
-kissed by nobles and ladies in the court at Versailles,
-Jogues reached, four years later (1647), the scene of
-his martyrdom and nameless burial. His severed
-head, mounted upon one of the palisades of the Indian
-castle, was set with its face to Canada, whence
-he came, in insult and defiance.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Nevertheless, the French Jesuit missionaries, with
-unquailing courage and fervent faith, persevered; and
-Poncet, Le Moyne, Fremin, Bruyas, and Pierron
-passed to and fro through Albany to continue the
-work in what they had already named as the Mission
-of the Martyrs. In 1667 St. Mary’s Chapel was
-established at the Indian village which stood on the
-site of Spraker’s Basin. In 1669 St. Peter’s Chapel
-was built of logs on the sand-flats at Caughnawaga
-near Fonda, by Boniface. Here in 1676 the Iroquois
-maiden Tegawita—the White Lily of the Mohawks,
-the now canonized saint—was baptized by
-<span class='pageno' title='57' id='Page_57'></span>
-James de Lamberville. From 1642 to 1684 was the
-golden age of early missions of the Roman form of
-the Christian faith in New York. Then it was abruptly
-brought to a close, not because of Indian animosity or
-Protestant opposition, but by the Roman Catholic
-Governor Dongan in the interests of British trade.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Perhaps this interruption was not wholly dictated
-by greed, but was strongly influenced by political interests.
-This fact must be noted. When Catharine
-Ganneaktena, an Erie Indian woman adopted into the
-Oneida tribe, was led to serious thought by Bruyas, to
-whom she taught the language in 1668, and with her
-Christian husband was persecuted by the pagans, the
-couple left for Montreal. Here she was baptized and
-confirmed by Bishop Laval. Instructed by Raffeix,
-who was somewhat of a statesman, Catharine invited
-several of her family in New York to Canada, and
-early in 1670 they founded the Indian village of La
-Prairie, where members of the Iroquois Confederacy
-might come to settle. According to the code
-of laws established in this Christian community, every
-one must renounce belief in dreams, polygamy, and
-drunkenness. This settlement was destined to be a
-powerful influence, not only in the Christianization of
-the Indians, but upon the politics of New York. In
-1674, the wife of Kryn, “the great Mohawk,” who
-had conquered the Mohegans, became a Christian, and
-her husband abandoned her. Happening in his wanderings
-to visit the Christian village of La Prairie,
-Kryn was impressed with the peace and order reigning
-in it, and after a time became a Christian.
-<span class='pageno' title='58' id='Page_58'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Returning to his home on the Mohawk, Kryn told
-what he had seen, and persuaded forty of his fellows
-from Caughnawaga (now Fonda, New York) to follow
-him. They reached La Prairie on Easter Sunday,
-1676. From this time forth Kryn was an active missionary,
-on one occasion talking over a whole party
-of sixty Mohawks sent by Dongan on a raid against
-the French, and converting four of them to Christianity.
-He also persuaded the Oneidas and Onondagas
-to keep peace with the French, and in this was aided
-by the remarkable influence of Garakonthie, the Christian
-protector of “the black coats.” It was Kryn
-who led, and it was these “praying Indians” from
-Canada who with the French were sent by Frontenac
-to destroy Schenectady in 1690; and it was he who
-just before the attack harangued them to the highest
-pitch of fury. His especial pretext for revenge was
-the murder of sixty Canadian Indians by the Iroquois
-about six months previously.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>For many years La Prairie was the gathering-place
-of seceders from the confederacy who had adopted
-the religion of their French teachers. In 1763 the
-village had three hundred fighting men; during the
-Revolution the number increased, and at present the
-Indian reservation at Caughnawaga, about twenty
-miles from Montreal, contains about thirteen hundred
-Roman Catholic Indians. These facts explain why
-the Mohawks and others of the confederacy had so
-many relatives fighting for the French, and why the
-political situation in New York, until the fall of
-French dominion, was so complex. As a rule, the
-<span class='pageno' title='59' id='Page_59'></span>
-Iroquois preferred the more sensuous religion of the
-French, while eager also for the strouds, duffels, guns,
-and blankets of the Dutch. Under Gallic and British
-influences, their hearts were as often divided as their
-heads were distracted. They were like tourists from
-Dover to Calais, when in the choppy seas which seethe
-between the coasts of England, France, and Holland.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In 1684 Jean de Lamberville, the last Jesuit settler
-in New York among the Iroquois, departed for Canada
-amid the lamentations of the Onondagas who
-escorted him. In a few generations all traces of the
-work of the French missionaries had vanished from
-the Mohawk Valley. In our days, when under the
-farmer’s plough or labourer’s pickaxe, the earth casts
-out her dead, the copper rings with the sign of the
-cross tell the touching story of the Indian maiden’s
-faith. Under the eloquent pen of John Gilmary Shea
-the thrilling story of labour and martyrdom glows.
-The Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs at Auriesville
-shows that even modern piety can find fresh stimulus
-in recalling the events which have made the Mohawk
-Valley classic ground to devout pilgrims as well as to
-the scholar and patriot.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>For over a century—from 1664 until 1783—the
-diplomatic, military, and eleemosynary operations of
-British agents and armies among the Iroquois were
-actively carried on. These were prolonged and costly,
-and had much to do with making the enormous public
-debt of England, still unpaid. The effect was to
-affect powerfully the imagination of the British public.
-It was not merely the fiction of Cooper which created
-<span class='pageno' title='60' id='Page_60'></span>
-the tendency of the Englishman just landed at Castle
-Garden to look for painted and feathered Indians on
-Broadway. The author of “Leatherstocking” did
-but stimulate the imagination already fed by the narratives
-of returned veterans. Thousands of soldiers,
-who had heard the war-whoop in forest battles, told
-their stories at British hearthstones until well into this
-century. They, with Cooper, are responsible for the
-idea that forests grow in Philadelphia. The fear still
-possessing English children that American visitors,
-even of unmixed European blood, may turn red or
-black, is one prompted by tradition as well as by
-literary fiction.</p>
-
-<hr class='footnotemark'/>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_4'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div id='f4'><a href='#r4'>[4]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Letter to the writer, Feb. 7, 1890.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='61' id='Page_61'></span><h1>CHAPTER IV.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>THE STRUGGLE FOR A CONTINENT.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>For</span> the possession of the North American continent
-two nations, France and England, representing
-the two civilizations, Roman and Teutonic, which
-dominate respectively Southern and Northern Europe,
-contended. France, in America, embodied the Roman
-or more ancient type of civilization, in which
-government and order were represented by the priest
-and the soldier, while the people had little or nothing
-to do with the government, except to obey. External
-authority was everything; inward condition, little or
-nothing. The French system was not that of real colonization,
-but of military possession; and the desired
-form of social and political order was that based on
-monarchy and feudalism. In the despotism of a Church
-subordinate to a ruler in Italy, and of a State represented
-by a monarch, the individual was lost, and the people’s
-function was simply to submit and pay taxes. They
-were taught to look upon their privileges and enjoyments
-as the gifts of the sovereign and of the Church.
-Authority emanated from the government, which represented
-God, and represented Him infallibly.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The English colonists, whose leaders had been
-largely trained in the Dutch Republic, represented
-the best elements of Teutonic civilization, those of
-<span class='pageno' title='62' id='Page_62'></span>
-English blood being more English than the Englishmen
-left behind, and more Teutonic than the Germans.
-Most of the principles and institutions wrought
-out in the experience of the colonists, especially those
-now seen to be most peculiarly American, were not of
-British, but of continental origin. New England was
-settled mostly by immigrants who had left England
-before 1640; and nearly all their leaders had come by
-way of Holland, receiving their political and military
-education in the United States of Holland, and under
-its red, white, and blue flag.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The strong hereditary instincts of Germanic freedom
-were best represented in the seventeenth century
-by the Hollanders, who in the little republic
-had long lived under democratic institutions. Nearly
-all the leading men who settled New England had
-come to America after a longer or shorter stay in
-Holland, where they imbibed the republican ideas
-which they transported as good seed to America. The
-Pilgrims, who were the first settlers of Massachusetts;
-many of the Puritans who came later to Boston and
-Salem; the leaders of the Connecticut Colony,—Hooker,
-Davenport, and many of their company,—had
-all been in Holland. The military commanders—Miles
-Standish, John Smith, Samuel Argall, Lyon
-Gardiner, Governor Dudley, and others—had been
-trained in the Dutch armies. Thus it came to pass
-that while the makers of New England were English
-in blood and language, their peculiar institutions were
-not of England, but directly borrowed from the one
-republic of Northern Europe.
-<span class='pageno' title='63' id='Page_63'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Middle States were all settled under the Netherlands
-influences. Even in New York, where through
-the patroon system semi-feudal institutions very much
-like those of aristocratic England had begun, the innate
-love of liberty in the people ultimately broke
-through these as a seed through its shell. The full
-growth was the typical American State of New York,
-whose constitution possessed more of the features of
-the National Constitution of 1787 than any other of
-the original thirteen States. Feudalism and its ideas
-were thus for the most part left behind or soon outgrown.
-The Church, even when united with the State,
-as was the case in some of the colonies, was of democratic
-form. The system of landholding and registry,
-the town-meeting, and the written and secret ballot,—all
-Germanic ideas,—with many customs and
-practical political ideas brought from Holland, made
-the people free, developed the individual man, and
-gave the colonies a reserve of strength and endurance
-impossible in Canada.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In their plan of strategy, the French idea was to
-limit the English domain within and east of the Alleghany
-Mountains by a chain of forts stretching from
-Quebec along the Great Lakes, down the Ohio and the
-Mississippi to New Orleans. This was a scheme of
-magnificent distances, involving enormous energy and
-expense, especially while the English held the seacoast
-and bases of supplies. It was evident that for
-any hope of success in their mighty territorial scheme
-the aborigines must be secured as allies. In this work
-the priest could do more than the soldier. Hence
-<span class='pageno' title='64' id='Page_64'></span>
-the zeal and energy of the spiritual orders were invoked,
-and put under tribute to the grand design of
-Gallicizing America.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>On the other hand, to overcome the plans of the
-French, there must be that which could neutralize the
-wiles of the Jesuit as well as the ability of the soldier.
-In every war between France and England, Americans
-must bear a part; and until the ultimate question
-should have been decided, the Indian held, on this
-continent, the balance of power. Neutrality to red
-or white man was impossible. The spring, the dominating
-idea of diplomacy and war in Europe was this
-doctrine of the balance of power; but in America it
-was less a speculative notion than a practical reality.
-The American Indian would be the decisive element
-until one or other of the two nations and civilizations
-became paramount.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A fresh disturbance of this doctrinal stability in
-European politics occurring near the middle of the
-eighteenth century, at once caused the scales to oscillate
-in America, gave the French the first advantage,
-and compelled William Johnson to follow up
-Van Curler’s work, and to be the most active agent
-and influence among the Mohawks which had been
-felt since the death of “Brother Corlaer.” This series
-of episodes is called in Europe “The War of the
-Austrian Succession.” It was begun by Frederick the
-Great of Prussia, against Maria Theresa of Austria.
-In America it is known in history as the “Old French
-War.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The “Old” French War (not that of 1753) was
-<span class='pageno' title='65' id='Page_65'></span>
-declared by Louis XV., March 15, 1744. The news
-was known all along the Canada borders by the end
-of April. The tidings travelled more slowly in the
-English language; and it was the middle of May, after
-the French had attacked the English garrison at
-Canso and compelled it to surrender, before the startling
-facts aroused the colonies. Already the Indian
-hatchets had been sharpened, and the plan of raid
-and slaughter well made, when the governor of New
-York, relying on the Indians as the great breakwater
-against the waves of Canadian invasion, called a council
-of the chiefs of the confederated Six Nations at
-Albany, which met June 18, 1744.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The settlers soon found that, in this as in previous
-wars, the French and Canadian Indians were the more
-aggressive party, while the military authorities of New
-York relied on a defensive policy. The governor,
-George Clinton,—not the ancestor of the Clintons in
-the United States, but the sixth son of the Earl of
-Lincoln,—had arrived in September, 1743. He was
-an old sea-dog, an ex-admiral, who knew as much
-about civil government as one of his powder-monkeys
-on shipboard. It seemed to be the policy of the
-British Government to send over decayed functionaries
-and politicians who were favourites at court, but
-in every way unfitted for the great problems of state
-in the complex community whose borders were on
-Canada, where French power was intrenched. Too
-many of these nominees of the Crown considered it to
-be their first duty to build up their private fortune.
-Nevertheless, it was Clinton—who had probably been
-<span class='pageno' title='66' id='Page_66'></span>
-influenced by his fellow-sailor, Captain Warren—who
-summoned William Johnson, the trader, into public
-life.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Despite the superiority of the British fleet, the
-French moved more quickly, and were first in America
-with reinforcements. The open water-way from
-Canada into the heart of New York was the military
-nerve of the continent. It made the Hudson and
-Mohawk Valleys the objective point of the French
-invaders. The war, though not yet declared, was to
-last five years, and, as we shall see, developed all the
-inherent energies of Johnson, the young Irishman, who
-had already shown powers of leadership. The military
-policy of the French was to keep the English
-frontier in a state of ceaseless alarm, by small parties
-of stealthy savages striking their blows unexpectedly
-all along the line from Oswego to Hoosic. The story
-of the numberless petty raids is well told in Drake’s
-“Particular History;” but in some cases the details are
-now extant only in written accounts found in the
-Johnson papers, in church records, in family Bibles,
-and on tombstones in Mohawk Valley and in New
-England.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson soon found himself where the Robinson
-Crusoe of poetry wished to be,—“in the midst of
-alarms;” but his temper rose into the heights of unshakable
-calm as the dangers increased. Invited,
-with his wife and three infant children, to come and
-live in Albany till the war was over, he declined, and
-remained at Mount Johnson, losing no opportunity to
-win, to keep, and to increase his influence over the
-<span class='pageno' title='67' id='Page_67'></span>
-Iroquois. His abilities and power were, as we have
-seen, brought to the notice of the new governor, indirectly
-through his uncle, but immediately through
-the introduction of Chief Justice De Lancey, a brother
-of his uncle’s wife. In the month of April, 1745,
-William Johnson received a commission as one of the
-justices of the peace in the county of Albany, which
-then extended from Coeymans to Herkimer.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>At this point the strictly private life of Johnson
-ended, and his political career began. The situation
-of Mount Johnson was within easy reach of all important
-places in the province which were likely to be
-the seat of war. An easy day’s ride on horseback
-would bring him to Albany, whence, by either land or
-water, the country was opened northward to Crown
-Point, or southward to New York. Thence, over a
-cross route by way of Saratoga Springs, a strong man
-well mounted could, by hard riding, reach Mount
-Johnson from the foot of Lake George in a day and
-part of a night. Westward also, by river or land
-route, there was easy access to all the tribes of the
-Long House and to all the Mohawk Valley settlements.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson’s uncle, Captain Warren, had by the capture
-of a privateer distinguished himself at sea, and
-receiving promotion to the grade of Commodore, was
-ordered to command the naval forces for the reduction
-of Louisburg. By his energy and ability strict
-blockade was maintained while the American citizen
-soldiery under Pepperell tightened the coils of investment.
-When the “Vigilante,” a French frigate
-laden with reinforcements in men and provisions, had
-<span class='pageno' title='68' id='Page_68'></span>
-been decoyed and captured, the fortress was surrendered.
-Warren became an admiral; and Pepperell, a
-merchant like Johnson, was made a baronet,—the
-former one day, the latter one month, after receipt of
-the news in England.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Chronology was in this case a key to English jealousy
-of the colonists, whose growing strength and
-republicanism monarchical Britain feared. The joy of
-the Americans was excessive. It culminated in Boston,
-where “Louisburg Square” still preserves the
-name. The gladness on this side of the Atlantic
-equalled the astonishment, flavoured with jealousy,
-which fell upon Europe. One would have thought
-that it would salt wholesomely the inborn contempt
-which the regular officers of the king’s troops felt toward
-provincial fighters, but it did not; and Braddock,
-Loudon, Abercrombie, and their foolish imitators
-were yet numerously to come. Indeed, this success
-of provincial Americans induced a jealousy that was
-to rankle for a generation or more in British breasts,
-to the serious disadvantage of both Great Britain and
-the colonies, as we shall soon see.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile, Indian affairs were in a critical condition,
-and the signs of danger on the frontier were
-ominous. For reasons not here to be analyzed, there
-were bad feelings between the Iroquois and the Albany
-people. Rumours of the purpose of the English to
-destroy the Indians were diligently kept in circulation
-by both lay and clerical Frenchmen. Those who
-wore canonicals and those who wore regimentals were
-equally industrious in fomenting dissatisfaction. The
-<span class='pageno' title='69' id='Page_69'></span>
-uneasiness of the Mohawks was so great that they sent
-several chiefs to confer with their brethren, the Caughnawaga
-Indians, in Canada. It was generally believed
-that the French would attack Oswego. There
-is also evidence that attempts were made to kidnap
-Johnson, against whom, as a relative of Admiral Warren,
-as one of the captors of Louisburg, and as the
-man who especially influenced the Iroquois in favour
-of the English, the French had an especial grudge.
-It was known that from the fort at Crown Point scalping
-parties issued at intervals; but mere rumours
-turned into genuine history when Longmeadow, Massachusetts,
-was attacked and burned by French Indians.
-On Nov. 17, 1745, the poorly fortified Dutch
-village of Saratoga on the Hudson was attacked by an
-overwhelming force of over six hundred French and
-Indians. After easy victory the place was given over
-to the torch, and the sickening story of the massacre
-of Schenectady was repeated.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In French civilization the priest and the soldier
-always go together. They are the two necessary figures,
-whether in Corea, Africa, Cochin China, or
-Canada. The soldier, Marin, was in this case led by
-the priest, Picquet. Besides the massacre, in which
-thirty persons were killed and scalped, sixty were
-made prisoners; and the whole fertile farming country,
-blooming with the flower and fruit of industry, was
-desolated for many miles. Many of the captives were
-negroes, and a majority of the whole number died of
-disease in the prisons of Quebec. One of the best
-accounts of this massacre—meagre in details—is contained
-<span class='pageno' title='70' id='Page_70'></span>
-in a letter to Mr. Johnson from Mr. Sanders, of
-Albany. It was nine days after this event that Johnson
-received the urgent letter inviting him to move
-for safety to Albany.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A line of fire and blood, ashes and blackness, was
-now being drawn from Springfield to Niagara. All
-men were under arms, and each was called to watch
-every third night. No house was safe, except palisaded
-or built of logs for defence. The forts were
-repaired and garrisoned. The bullet moulds were
-kept hot, and extra flints, ramrods, and ammunition
-laid out all ready, while weary sentinels strained ear
-and eye through each long, dark night.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Out from the gateway of Crown Point, like centrifugal
-whirlwinds of fire, swept bands of savages, who
-swooped down on the settlements. Almost under the
-shadow of the palisades of Albany, Schenectady, and
-the villages along the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys,
-men were shot and their scalps taken to decorate
-Canadian wigwams. The little “God’s Acre” in
-every settlement on the Mohawk began to fatten with
-victims who had died out of their beds. Perhaps none
-of these ancient sleeping-places has been reverently
-emptied in order to consign their memorials of once
-active life to more enduring public honour in the
-modern cemeteries, but the number of perforated
-skulls surprises the beholder. In these mute witnesses
-to the disquiet of the past, he reads the story of
-ancestral danger and suffering. The devout frontiersman
-made his way to church on the Lord’s Day with
-his loaded gun on his shoulder, its flint well picked
-<span class='pageno' title='71' id='Page_71'></span>
-and its pan well primed. He took his seat at the end
-of the pew, only after sentinels had been posted and
-arms made ready for instant use. Slight wonder was
-it that the effects of all-night vigils, and the unusual
-posture of repose in a pew, rather than the length of
-the Domine’s sermon, induced sleep even in meeting.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Most of the churches were loop-holed for defence,
-and even in the few old houses occasionally found
-with projecting second floor, we see an interesting
-survival of the old days, when from both church and
-dwelling a line of gun-barrels might at any hour decorate
-the eaves with gargoyles spouting fire and death.
-Away from the villages, the farmers, building a block-house
-on some commanding hill, and if possible over
-a well or spring, kept a sentinel on the roof while they
-laboured in the fields. Horn in hand, the watcher
-surveyed the wide stretches of valley, or scrutinized
-the edges of the clearing, to give warning of the approach
-of skulking red or white murderers. Yet human
-nerves would weary, and after constant strain for
-months with no near sign of danger, vigilance would
-often relax at the very moment when the enemy
-opened fire and raised his yell. Men would laugh to-day
-at warnings, while, perhaps, the boys in play
-would set up mock sentinels at the gateways, who on
-the morrow would be scalped or be bound and on
-their way to Canada.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The twofold plan of campaign decided on in England
-was the old one first formulated by Leisler in
-1690, looking to the invasion and subjugation of
-Canada, attempted again in 1711, when a German
-<span class='pageno' title='72' id='Page_72'></span>
-regiment in New York was raised for the purpose, and
-which was frustrated by the disaster to the British fleet.
-The land and naval forces of New and Old England
-were now to make rendezvous at Louisburg, and move
-up the St. Lawrence to Quebec, while the provincial
-militia of the middle and lower colonies, combined
-with the Iroquois if possible, should capture the French
-fort, St. Frederick, at Crown Point, and the city of
-Montreal.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The disastrous inaction of King George and the
-London lords, arising probably from jealousy of the
-provincials, and the rumours of a great French fleet
-under D’Anville to be sent against New England,
-caused the abandonment of the expedition to Quebec.
-This, however, was not known by submarine electric
-cable; and meantime New York politics, at which we
-must now glance, had become interesting.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Two friends, the Chief-Justice De Lancey and Governor
-Clinton, quarrelled over their cups at a convivial
-gathering, and this took place just after the latter had
-renewed the former’s commission for life. Happening,
-too, on the eve of the great council of the Six
-Nations, which Clinton had summoned at Albany, just
-when that town was pestiferous with small-pox and
-bilious fever, the outlook for successful negotiations
-was not very promising. Messrs. Rutherford, Livingston,
-and Dr. Cadwallader Colden were the only members
-of his council who came with Clinton, while of
-the expected Indians only three had arrived. These,
-for the two scalps with the blood hardly dried on the
-hair, were rewarded with strouds and laced coats, and
-<span class='pageno' title='73' id='Page_73'></span>
-sent to drum up recruits, while the governor waited a
-month for the tardy, suspicious, and sullen savages to
-appear before him.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Matters looked dark indeed. Yet when Mohawk
-runners, despatched by Johnson on a scouting expedition
-to Crown Point, arrived, bringing news of French
-preparations for a descent upon Schenectady and the
-Valley, and possibly upon Albany, the governor was
-unable to see the imminent danger. He still waited;
-he still believed wholly in the defensive policy, and
-seemed satisfied, because for the fort on the Hudson
-at Saratoga, now Easton, a sum equal to about eight
-hundred dollars had been voted by the Assembly.
-This sum enabled the colonial engineers to build a
-palisade one hundred and fifty feet long, with six redoubts
-for barracks, all of timber, and to mount on
-platforms twelve cannon of six, twelve, and eighteen
-pound calibre. In this way the summer was wasted
-in waiting; for the Indians came not, and Clinton’s
-ambition to be a powerful diplomatist with the Indians
-was for the present baffled.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Believing this was a matter between French and
-English alone, strongly inclining to neutrality, and
-diligently persuaded thereto by the French Jesuits, the
-Iroquois sulked at home. Not only did they flatly
-refuse to meet the governor, but some of the chiefs
-went openly over to the French.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile the white settlers were, according to
-Johnson’s report, abandoning their farms along the
-Mohawk, and concentrating in the block-houses or
-palisaded towns. Besides having sent Indian scouts
-<span class='pageno' title='74' id='Page_74'></span>
-to the Champlain country, Johnson wrote urgent letters
-to Clinton stating the case, and asking him to
-open his eyes to the facts. To protect Johnson’s
-stores of eleven thousand bushels of grain, while
-standing his ground, the governor sent a lieutenant
-and thirty men. Another militia company was despatched
-to the upper Mohawk Castle. Having done
-these things, Clinton, who had as early as the 4th of
-August officially notified Governor Shirley of Massachusetts
-that he would proceed against Crown Point
-with the warriors of the Five Nations, was at his wits’
-end. He had alienated Colonel Schuyler and the
-members of the Board of Indian Commissioners,
-mostly faithful and trusted men well known in the
-provinces. In the quarrel of the governor with De
-Lancey, these ranged themselves on the side of the
-chief justice.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It is too clumsy an attempt at explanation of the
-difficulty between the king’s agent, Clinton, and the
-Board of Indian Commissioners, to ascribe the causes
-chiefly or entirely to the “rascality” of the commissioners,
-who “abused their office for private peculation,”
-or to the ambition of De Lancey. It is not
-necessary in one who appreciates the great abilities of
-Johnson to describe him as a white lily of honesty and
-purity. English authors, the Tory historians of the
-Revolution, and the prejudiced writers of American
-history, who reflect their own narrowness and
-sectional views, take delight in maligning the character
-of the men of colonial New York simply because
-they were Dutch. As matter of unsentimental fact,
-<span class='pageno' title='75' id='Page_75'></span>
-there is much to be said on both sides. The people of
-New York were not anxious to send the Indians on
-the war-path, nor to furnish white soldiers to guard
-their squaws and pappooses while they were away from
-their villages. They were not at all persuaded of the
-superior honesty either of the governor or his advisers
-and appointees. The greater facts are also clear,
-that the New York Assembly was vigilantly jealous of
-the people’s liberties, and was determined at all hazards
-to limit the royal prerogative as far as possible.
-Since his quarrel with De Lancey, the governor had
-shown excessive zeal in maintaining the rights of the
-king. On the other hand, most of the steps necessary
-to make New York an independent state had, as
-the British Attorney-General Bradley declared, already
-been taken by his Assembly, which of twenty-seven
-members had fourteen of Dutch descent. These men
-were determined to teach the king’s agent that he
-must bow to the will of the people, who were more
-important than king and court, and make no advance
-in monarchical ideas. They saw that the governor
-was under the close personal influence of Cadwallader
-Colden, a radical Tory, who they suspected prepared
-most of Clinton’s State papers; and they set themselves
-in array against this intermeddler on royalty’s behalf.
-Again the petty jealousy which burned steadily in all
-the colonies made these Dutchmen enjoy paying back
-the New Englanders in their own coin some of the slights
-and insults of the past. The former had long looked
-down in contempt on the settlers of New Amsterdam,
-and their sons now repaid them in kind, and were on
-<span class='pageno' title='76' id='Page_76'></span>
-the whole rather glad to snub Shirley and to annoy
-Clinton for so deferring to the wishes of the latter.
-Clinton seemed lacking in tact, and was unable to
-conciliate the members of the Board of Indian Commissioners,
-who one and all, led by Schuyler, resigned.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In a word, Clinton had begun his administration by
-trying to bully and drive the Dutchmen. Now, those
-who know the men of this branch of the Teutonic race
-have always found by experience that when their hearts
-are won they are easily led. All attempts to drive
-them, however, usually result as Alva’s and Philip’s
-plans resulted in the Netherlands, where three hundred
-thousand Spaniards were buried; or as in South
-Africa, where Dutch boers hold their own against
-British aggression. It took Clinton some years to
-learn the lesson, but it was the same experience of
-failure and retreat.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>At his wits’ end, Governor Clinton turned to the man
-for the hour. William Johnson was offered the appointment
-of Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and at
-once accepted. Thus, at thirty-one years, opened in
-full promise the splendid career of the Irish adventurer.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>While no man in the province or continent comprehended
-more clearly the gravity of the situation,
-no one better understood all the elements in the case,
-the ground of faith in the immediate improvement
-of affairs, and the ultimate supremacy of the British
-cause. Johnson was a man of continental ideas.
-Without losing an instant of time he at once set himself
-to the task of getting hold of the chief men of the
-Six Nations. He first sent wampum belts to the Pennsylvanian
-<span class='pageno' title='77' id='Page_77'></span>
-Indians and the Esopus tribe, asking their
-co-operation with the Albany Council. He put on
-Indian dress, and for weeks gave himself up to their
-pastimes. Sparing not paint, grease, ochre, feathers,
-games, or councils, he arrayed himself as one of their
-own braves. He encouraged them to get up war-dances,
-in order to excite their martial spirit. He was
-speedily successful in turning the tide of opinion in one
-whole canton of the Confederacy in favour of attending
-the Albany Convention.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was probably about this time that Johnson was
-formally adopted into the Mohawk tribe, made a chief,
-and received that name which was ever afterward his
-Indian title. This habit of the Iroquois, of especially
-and significantly naming prominent personages, is still
-in vogue. When some Dakota Indians visited Boston
-in 1889, after seeing Charlestown and Bunker Hill
-Monument, they called on Governor Brackett, and
-named him the “Great Rock in the Clouds.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The title which the Mohawks gave their new white
-chief and leader in 1746, was, according to the anarchic
-and unscientific spelling of the time, War-ragh-i-yah-gey.
-The term may be translated “Chief Director of
-Affairs.” It may with economy of vocables be spelled
-Wa-ra-i-ya-gé.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Other matters contributed to this success, and utilized
-the work of others. Conrad Weiser, the Pennsylvanian
-German interpreter, had been recently
-among the tribes as far as Ohio, influencing them in
-favour of the English. A happy accident—the coming
-of a delegation of Chickasaws from the West and
-<span class='pageno' title='78' id='Page_78'></span>
-South to invade Canada, and to invite the Senecas to
-take part and pilot them—awoke this most western
-division of the Iroquois Confederacy to the importance
-of the accession. The simultaneous offers of alliance
-and aid by other scattered tribes led to a complete
-change of views. In a word, the Senecas resolved to
-sit at the Albany caucus. With the tribes at each end,
-the west and the east of the Long House, thus in substantial
-accord, Johnson directed the Mohawks to
-send out runners to the whole confederation. Thus
-the work of winning over the other few tribes, at least
-so far as attendance at Albany was concerned, proved
-to be comparatively easy.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Even the feuds and quarrels which at the time
-divided the Long House seemed to work for Johnson’s
-fame and the English cause. For some reason in
-Iroquois politics, occult to a white man, the house
-was divided against itself: the Senecas, Onondagas,
-and Mohawks composed one great faction; the Oneidas,
-Cayugas, and Tuscaroras formed the other and
-weaker. The latter tribe from the Carolinas, which
-had joined the Confederacy a generation before, in
-1712, were far from being won over so as to take up
-arms for the English. When the fighting braves and
-counselling old men came to pow-wow with the large
-faction, the first thing done by them was to give the
-Mohawks, especially, a vigorous scolding for having
-acted so presumptuously and independently without
-taking council of the whole Confederacy. After lively
-debate and rejoinder, it was agreed by all to go to
-Albany, but with the river between the factions on
-<span class='pageno' title='79' id='Page_79'></span>
-their journey. So, along the banks of the Mohawk
-the delegates of the Confederacy marched as far as
-Schenectady, when quitting the river, the trail across
-country and to Norman’s Kill was followed. All but
-three of the Mohawk chiefs had been won to the
-English side. Of these, two of the Bear-totem clan
-lived at the upper castle at Canajoharie, and the third
-of the Tortoise-totem clan at the lower castle on the
-hill near Schoharie Creek. These dignitaries were
-finally persuaded by Rev. Mr. Barclay, then living
-among the Mohawks, and the famous Dr. Cadwallader
-Colden, who knew the Indians well, and later became
-the historian of the Six Nations.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was a decisive moment in the history of America
-when on the 8th of August, 1746, the two rival divisions
-marched down old Patroon Street, the Clinton
-Avenue of to-day, and into State Street to Fort Frederick.
-Leading the Mohawk band in all the paraphernalia
-of Indian dress and decoration, with abundant
-ochre and plumes, was the pale-faced man, Johnson,
-who could whoop, yell, leap, dance, run, wrestle, play
-racket, and eat dog-hash—drawing the line at the
-cannibal feast,—with the best champions in any of
-the six tribes. The double column moved past Fort
-Frederick, where now stands the Episcopal Church,
-the Indians firing their guns and the fort its ordnance.
-Then the gates of the sallyport swung open, and in
-the largest room of the fort the red men squatted and
-were served with food.</p>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='80' id='Page_80'></span><h1>CHAPTER V.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>A CHAPTER IN THE STORY OF LIBERTY.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>When</span> the conference opened, August 19, Dr.
-Cadwallader took the place of Governor Clinton, who
-was down with fever. The two delegates from Massachusetts,
-Mr. Nelles and Colonel Wendell, were also
-present, but none from Connecticut appeared. Colden’s
-speech was a bubble of rhetoric, fairly dazzling
-with the prismatics of a lively imagination. It rehearsed
-facts, fancies, and prophecies appropriate to
-the situation. The colossal but purely mythical
-preparations supposed to be made in Great Britain,
-in the reality of which the sailor-governor himself
-heartily believed, were duly set forth. Then the
-wrongs suffered by the Indians at the hands of the
-“perfidious” French were detailed, until the braves
-were stirred in eye and nostril, and the chiefs grunted
-out, “Yo-hay! yo-hay!” (“Do you hear! do you believe!”),
-and general applause in Indian fashion followed
-as the interpreter finished each sentence. The
-war spirit was further roused by flatteries which fell
-like oil on the flames, kindling the fiercest enthusiasm.
-After the usual promises of gifts and equipment, with
-assurance of reward and booty in the future, the
-orator wound up by narrating the murder of some
-<span class='pageno' title='81' id='Page_81'></span>
-white men, their brothers, even since their arrival in
-Albany, and calling upon his hearers for immediate
-and permanent revenge.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Taking it all in all, this speech of Clinton and Colden’s
-is a fair sample of the lies, false promises, and
-irresponsible assertions on which the red man has
-been fed, from the first coming of the whites, to the
-battle with the Sioux, near Pine Ridge Agency, in
-January, 1891. The proper peroration of the speech,
-according to Indian etiquette, was the casting down
-of a wampum war-belt with verbal assurances and in
-symbolic intent that the British would live and die
-with their brethren the Iroquois. When this was
-done, a war-whoop was raised that must have been
-heard in every cabin and iron-monogrammed brick-house
-in the colony and manor.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>On that very day, as was soon afterward learned,
-the French were at Fort Massachusetts,<a id='r5'/><a href='#f5' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[5]</span></sup></a> which had
-been built by Col. Ephraim Williams. It stood in
-the meadows east of Williamstown, under the shadow
-of old Greylock, beyond the present town of North
-Adams. After two days’ siege the brave garrison surrendered
-and were led away to Canada. The French
-<span class='pageno' title='82' id='Page_82'></span>
-lost forty-seven men. The fort was afterward, in
-1747, rebuilt, and was the scene of more than one
-attack by the enemy.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The council-fire was then raked up, so that the
-braves might have time to sleep, smoke, and deliberate
-for reply. When the council re-opened on the
-24th, the governor was present, and the first orator at
-the rekindled fire was an Onondaga chief. After the
-usual efflorescence of forest rhetoric, he promised in
-the name of the Seven Nations—a small army of
-eight hundred braves from Detroit and the Lake
-country, the Missesagues, having temporarily joined
-the confederates for the common purpose—to dig
-up the hatchet against the French and their allies.
-They further agreed to roast alive any French priest
-who came among them. The next day was devoted
-to distributing the presents sent from the king and
-the governors of Virginia and Massachusetts; the new
-tribe, Missesagues, receiving one fourth. On the 26th
-the kettle was hung over the fire, and a great war-dance
-held, in which, after unusual smearings of paint,
-the weird, wild, and guttural, but pathetic songs were
-sung. After a few private interviews with the chiefs,
-and further tickling of their palms with presents and
-their stomachs with fire-water, the council-fire was put
-out by separation and scattering. Part of the Valley
-Indians remained in Albany, in token of their loyalty
-to the English, while most of them returned to their
-castles to organize war-parties. Unfortunately an
-epidemic of the small-pox broke out at this time all
-along the Valley, carrying off hundreds of the Indians,
-<span class='pageno' title='83' id='Page_83'></span>
-among whom were the two delegates from the
-Missesagues.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Other councils were held with lesser bodies of Indians;
-and Johnson, despite the raging of the small-pox
-among the Valley Indians, endeavoured to keep
-the savages on the war-path toward Canada; but little
-was accomplished during the summer. While the
-coming French fleet was destroyed by storm, Johnson
-increased his fortune by being appointed government
-contractor for Oswego, and his fame by being commissioned
-by Clinton as Colonel of militia. The only
-campaign in 1747 was one of paper and ink, Shirley
-and Clinton being the chief combatants. There were
-also raids and fights on the New England borders, but
-little took place that needs to be chronicled here.
-Clinton and De Lancey kept up their quarrels; the
-former warning Johnson of his illustrious relative,
-venting his wrath on the Dutch legislators, and taking
-high-handed vengeance on Judge Daniel Horsmanden.
-This champion of the Assembly and people, and one
-of the ablest jurists in the province, was most obnoxious,
-politically, to the king’s representatives. He was
-also personally offensive as being the co-worker with
-Chief-Justice De Lancey.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>On the 12th of September Horsmanden was suspended
-from service as a member of the council.
-The fact was published in the journal; but no reason
-was given for this, except that the governor announced
-that he would explain his action to the king.
-Horsmanden was also removed from his other positions,—as
-commissioner to meet the representatives
-<span class='pageno' title='84' id='Page_84'></span>
-of the other colonies, and as judge and recorder of
-the city. This act of the governor’s still further
-irritated the “stubborn Dutchmen,” whose hostility
-now turned into a war to the knife. Even though
-savages were ravaging the suburbs of New York, it is
-doubtful whether they would have been turned from
-their determination to fight absolutism, in the person
-of Clinton. When the governor announced the return
-of Johnson from his fruitless search after the
-enemy at Crown Point, the temper of the Assembly
-was not improved. They were tired of having the
-praises of Johnson sounded in their ears. They still
-refused, in the face of Johnson’s contract, while still
-in force, to furnish extra guards for the fulfilment of
-his stipulation in provisioning Oswego. They also
-adhered to their determination not to yield to the
-governor’s demands, so long as he thwarted their
-purposes. In affirming their former resolutions, they,
-nevertheless, offered to indemnify Johnson if through
-accident he became a loser by fulfilling his contract.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile, the governor held counsel with the
-New England commissioners, and despite the remonstrances
-of the members, bluffed off his little Parliament
-until October 5. The frontier was still
-exposed. It was hard to get volunteers for Oswego,
-largely owing to the abominable drunkenness of the
-officers there, and the lack of good discipline. Two
-companies from Colonel Schuyler’s regiment were
-therefore drafted for the purpose. It being practically
-impossible to maintain the weak force at Saratoga,
-this post, which had been named Fort Clinton, was
-<span class='pageno' title='85' id='Page_85'></span>
-burned by order, and the ordnance and stores removed
-to Albany. In this unpleasant state of affairs Colonel
-Johnson was summoned to New York, and on October
-9 was examined by the committee of the Executive
-Council. He exposed the grave state of affairs, in
-that the Indians had been kept from hunting for a
-whole year, and were now destitute. Unless something
-were speedily done, he felt he must abandon
-Mount Johnson and his interests in the Mohawk Valley.
-He even imagined that his leaving would be the
-general signal for an exodus of all the white people
-from the Mohawk basin. He recommended the erection
-of forts both in the Seneca and the Oneida districts.
-He believed that these measures, with plenty
-of presents, and the ferreting out of the miscellaneous
-rumsellers who debauched the Indians, would
-make safe the northern frontier and save the colony.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Clinton’s message to the Assembly, October 6,
-was presented with high praises of Johnson, a vindication
-of himself, and an exhortation to act promptly
-and liberally, as the Iroquois sachems were waiting
-with Johnson in the city to see what would be done
-in their behalf. The conquest of Crown Point was
-still in view; and men, money, and supplies were asked
-for. It was intimated that the Crown (the mother
-country) had already done its full part, and that the
-colonies should now do theirs.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Still the Assemblymen, who thought the Indians
-ought to have been allowed to go on their hunting,
-ought to have been kept friendly, but not stirred up
-to fight the French or be sent to Canada, and ought
-<span class='pageno' title='86' id='Page_86'></span>
-to have stayed in New York to guard their own old
-men and squaws instead of having white men drafted
-to do it, distrusted the servant of the king and the
-tool of Colden, and doubted the fitness of the governor’s
-appointees to office. They questioned the wisdom
-of the governor’s general policy; and they intimated,
-with only too good reason, that the money
-so freely distributed for the Indians was not properly
-and publicly accounted for. They voted promptly
-all that was necessary for the expedition against
-Canada. They fully realized the necessity of holding
-firm the loyalty of the Six Nations; and to
-keep it, they offered at once to vote the sum of
-eight hundred pounds, provided the persons chosen
-to distribute the people’s money were such as they
-approved of. In regard to the forts on the distant
-frontier, so near Canada, they considered that the
-other colonies should share the expense of permanently
-guarding the king’s dominions.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In answer to these defiant resolutions, which practically
-impeached the governor, Clinton sent a curt and
-insulting note of less than one hundred words. The
-Dutchman’s ire now blazed fiercely. After the significant
-ceremony of locking the door and laying the
-key on the table, they proceeded to issue a manifesto,
-marshalling in review the whole proceedings since
-June 6, 1746. They censured him for removing the
-former commissioners of Indian affairs, and for practically
-making Dr. Colden the real administrator of
-affairs in the cabinet, and Colonel Johnson in the
-field. They sneered at the pretensions and vanity of
-<span class='pageno' title='87' id='Page_87'></span>
-the governor in his constant boasting of what he
-claimed to have done. They charged him with treating
-the people of the colony with contempt, and with
-insulting them by vile epithets. They complained of
-the many brief and inconvenient adjournments to
-which he had needlessly subjected them. Especially
-were they enraged in their feelings at the deference
-paid, at their expense, to the commissioners from Massachusetts
-and Connecticut. They claimed that they
-ought to have been kept in session, in order that they
-might have been advised with, and their opinions consulted
-from time to time as to the matters under
-consideration.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In this last point, especially, the Dutch blood was
-roused; for although in monarchical England the power
-of making treaties is vested in the sovereign, yet in the
-Dutch Republic, then a living reality before their eyes,
-the States-General, like the United States Senate,
-shared with the Stadtholder or President the right of
-treaty-making, and had the power of veto upon all
-compacts. Even in Great Britain, the exercise of the
-treaty-making power by the king was subject to parliamentary
-censure, and ministers negotiating a disadvantageous
-treaty were liable to impeachment. This
-right had been several times exercised in the sixteenth
-and even in the fifteenth century.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The address wound up by this declaration: “No
-treatment your Excellency can use toward us, no inconveniences
-how great soever that we may suffer in
-our own persons, shall ever prevail upon us to abandon,
-or deter us from steadily preserving the interest
-of our country.”
-<span class='pageno' title='88' id='Page_88'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A committee waited upon the governor on the 9th
-of October, to present the address; but the angry
-executive would not hear it, nor receive a copy, and
-three days later replied with all the artillery of rhetoric
-and abuse which he and his secretary were able to
-load into the document. It was as full of vituperation
-as a carronade of later day was of langrage shot.
-As to their complaint that the money intended for Indian
-presents was not honestly distributed, he charged
-the House with telling “as bold a falsehood as ever
-came from a body of men.” He was in no way accountable
-to the Assembly for the manner in which
-he distributed the money of the Crown. He charged
-them with violating both the civil and military prerogatives
-of the king. “Nor will I,” he said, “give
-up the least branch of it [the military prerogative]
-on any consideration, however desirous you may be
-to have it, or to bear the whole command.” He
-also asserted, with some attempt at humour, that their
-farce of locking the door and placing the key upon
-the table—a symbolic act charging breach of privilege
-upon the executive—was a high insult to King
-George’s authority, and in so far, an act of disloyalty.
-He charged that they were assuming the rights and
-privileges of the House of Commons, and renouncing
-their subjection to the Crown and Parliament. He
-had his Majesty’s express command not to suffer
-them to bring some matters into the House, nor to
-debate upon them; and he intimated that he had
-a right to stop proceedings when they seemed to
-him improper or disorderly. After a tirade upon
-<span class='pageno' title='89' id='Page_89'></span>
-their insolence and unbecoming conduct, his peroration
-was a warning not to infringe upon the royal
-prerogative.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Safety-valves having thus been opened through
-the ink-bottles, the war of words ceased, and both
-governor and legislators proceeded to diligence in
-business. In expectation that Massachusetts and
-Connecticut would bear their quota of expense, the
-governor was requested, October 15, to carry out
-his plan of sending gunsmiths and other mechanics
-to live among and assist the tribes of the Confederacy
-westward of the Mohawks. Four days after,
-however, news came from England ordering the disbanding
-of all the levies for the expedition to Canada.
-This was disheartening alike to the governors
-and the people of the colonies; but some compromise
-measures were amicably agreed upon between Clinton
-and the Assembly.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Peace, in New York City at least, seemed almost
-at hand, when Clinton again attempted folly in trying
-to muzzle the press. The Assembly had ordered
-Parker, the public printer, to publish the address and
-remonstrance of the Assembly, in which they asserted
-the rights of the people. The governor commanded
-him to desist. Parker stood by the people and their
-Assembly, as against the king and his foolish governor.
-After Cosby’s ignominious failure to restrain
-the liberty of the press by imprisoning Zenger, this
-act of Clinton’s seemed like that of a madman or a
-man who had no memory. The Assembly ordered
-Parker to print their manifests, and to furnish each
-<span class='pageno' title='90' id='Page_90'></span>
-member with two copies, “that their constituents
-might know it was their firm resolution to preserve
-the liberty of the press.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In a word, all this wrangle between colonial governor
-and Assembly was really the cause of popular
-liberty against monarchy, of ordered freedom under
-law against despotism. It was part of the chequered
-story of liberty, in which the people of New York
-were in no whit behind those of any of the colonies,
-but rather led them. Clinton, by his blunders, and
-Colden, by his toryism, helped grandly forward the
-American revolution, while the names of Parker and
-Zenger belong with those of the promoters of order
-and freedom. When on the 25th day of November,
-1747,—significant date, for on that day, only thirty-six
-years later, King George’s troops and mercenaries
-evacuated that very city of New York, in which
-Clinton had illustrated the folly of monarchy,—after
-addressing, or rather berating, the people’s representatives,
-he concluded his address with the significant
-words:—</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“Your continued grasping for power, with an evident
-tendency to the weakening of the dependency
-of the province on Great Britain, accompanied by such
-notorious and public disrespect to the character of
-your governor, and contempt of the king’s authority
-intrusted with him, cannot longer be hid from your superiors,
-but must come under their observation, and is
-of most dangerous example to your neighbours.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was, indeed, true that New York was setting
-what was in the eyes of the Tories a most dangerous
-<span class='pageno' title='91' id='Page_91'></span>
-example to her neighbours. Most of the people of
-this colony were descendants of those who had come
-from the Dutch Republic, where the taxation without
-consent had been resisted for centuries, and where
-resistance to monarchy and feudal ideas had been exalted
-into a principle. It was this determined spirit,
-reinforced by the lovers of liberty, whether of Huguenot,
-Irish, Scottish, or Welsh blood, or men from the
-mother country who believed that the rights of Englishmen
-were still theirs, that made New York lead all
-the thirteen original colonies in outgrowing the colonial
-spirit. New Yorkers first took the steps which
-must logically and actually lead to separation from
-the transatlantic country, whose language was indeed
-spoken in America, but by colonists who had continued
-the institutions not of monarchical England,
-but of republican Holland.</p>
-
-<hr class='footnotemark'/>
-
-<div class='footnote'>
-<table summary='footnote_5'>
-<colgroup>
-<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/>
-<col span='1'/>
-</colgroup>
-<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'>
-<div id='f5'><a href='#r5'>[5]</a></div>
-</td><td>
-
-<p class='pindent'>I visited the site of Fort Massachusetts, March 12, 1891.
-Though long ago levelled by the plough, the spot has been
-marked by Prof. Arthur Latham Perry, of Williams College,
-who planted the handsome elm-tree which now flourishes there.
-The sword, watch, and many other interesting relics of Colonel
-Williams, moulded or rusted, from Fort Massachusetts, from
-the battle-grounds of Lake George, Bloody Pond, and other
-places famous in colonial warfare, are carefully preserved in the
-college cabinet. A monument with the names of the garrison
-should mark the site of Fort Massachusetts.</p>
-
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='92' id='Page_92'></span><h1>CHAPTER VI.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>A TYPICAL FRONTIER FIGHT WITH INDIANS.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>To reorganize</span> the demoralized militia of the northern
-counties, Governor Clinton in November offered
-the command of the entire frontier to Johnson, who
-after due consideration accepted. Besides having the
-confidence of the people, among whom he was personally
-popular, Johnson, being backed by the Executive
-Council, was able to do the work expected of
-him, and bring about much needed reform, especially
-in improving the quality of the officers and the general
-discipline. The able-bodied men of the Mohawk
-Valley, mostly Dutch and German, with a few English,
-Irish, and Scots, were organized into nine companies
-of militia. Each village or settlement had its company
-of one hundred men, the most westward being
-at German Flats. Schenectady had two companies,
-and at Albany there were several; while all the farmers
-living in the open country, between forts or palisaded
-villages, were likewise enrolled.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson’s wealth as farmer, fur-trader, army-contractor,
-and salaried officer was now steadily increasing.
-Even the victualling of Oswego ceased to be a losing
-enterprise, since the Assembly, in February, 1748,
-voted two hundred pounds to reimburse him for the
-<span class='pageno' title='93' id='Page_93'></span>
-extraordinary charges to which he had been put. The
-same Assembly, however, voted one hundred and fifty
-pounds to Mr. Horsmanden, whom Clinton had arbitrarily
-deposed from the Council, and also appointed
-an agent to reside in London to represent them and
-act with them and for the people against the governor.
-In this the Dutch legislators were following a precedent
-which their fathers had established, in having
-agents to represent them to the States-General in
-Holland, and which they continued under English
-rule, when they sent Peter Stuyvesant to the Court of
-King Charles II. in 1667.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The expedition to Canada being wholly given up, it
-was necessary to conciliate the Indians with presents.
-In April, Johnson set out to Onondaga, the central
-council-fire of the Iroquois Confederacy, to meet the
-delegates of all the tribes, in order to ascertain their
-temper and invite them to a great council at Albany.
-His other purposes in going were to circumvent the
-schemes of Joncaire the French Jesuit, and talk the
-Indians into giving their permission to have forts
-erected in their country. As usual, he was not too
-squeamish in the use of means to accomplish his purpose.
-He wrote from Albany, April 9, 1748, to
-Captain Catherwood: “I shall leave no stone unturned
-to accomplish what I go at, either by fair or foul
-means; for if they are obstinate—I mean the Onondagas—I
-shall certainly talk very harsh with them,
-and try what that will do.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Leaving Mount Johnson with a guard of fifty men,
-with Captain Thomas Butler and Lieutenant Laurie as
-<span class='pageno' title='94' id='Page_94'></span>
-officers, he set off, in bateaux heavily laden with presents
-and provisions, up the Mohawk. To move these
-loaded boats against the current, by punting, pushing,
-pulling, sailing, or floating their way along, was slow
-work, but was safely accomplished. Some of the Indians
-had come with pleasant remembrances of the
-courtesy of Mount Johnson. They felt deeply that
-sort of gratitude which has been defined as a “lively
-sense of favours to come.” Having arrived some
-days before, and waited with attenuated rations, they
-were ravenous when Johnson and his stores arrived
-on April 24. After a salute of fire-arms and the
-unfurling of a British flag, three bark houses were
-assigned to the company, while Johnson was escorted
-to a large new lodge in which the mats were fresh and
-clean. That night a feast was given to the Indians
-out of the stores brought, all business being deferred
-until next day.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>With all formality of pipes and tobacco, splendour
-of Indian and civilized costume, the council opened
-next morning. It was a contest of tongues, and one
-garrulous Irishman was here to enter the lists and
-to pit himself, with seemingly interminable prolixity
-of speech and the fixed ammunition of Indian rhetoric,
-against a host of tireless tongues. With plenty of talk
-to fill their ears and abundance of good things to
-tickle their stomachs, Johnson succeeded in strengthening
-the covenant of Corlaer; and the issue of the
-council was, on the whole, all that, even to Johnson,
-could be expected. In reporting results, Johnson suggested
-to the governor that proper regulation of the
-<span class='pageno' title='95' id='Page_95'></span>
-sale of rum among the Indians was the first thing to
-be considered.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Clinton, while happy in knowing that the Iroquois
-would come to the Albany council, was brooding over
-the tendency everywhere manifest in the colonies to
-assert their independence. Johnson’s full report of
-the tongue-victory at the Onondaga council was laid
-before the Assembly, June 21. The governor added,
-that to hold the Indians loyal to the English it would
-be necessary to prosecute the expedition against Crown
-Point, and at once make arrangements for exchange
-of prisoners. In this latter suggestion, and with that
-recommending a severe enactment against rumsellers,
-the Assembly at once concurred. A few days after
-came news of the treaty of peace at Aix-la-Chapelle.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson, by unremitting exertion, had succeeded in
-securing the largest attendance of Indians that had
-ever assembled in Albany. They came from all the
-tribes of the Confederacy and from the lake region
-westward, besides remnants of New England and Hudson
-River Indians. Many of these Indians had never
-seen a civilized town, and greatly enjoyed the regular
-meals and other comforts of civilization, while interested
-in studying houses with chimneys, carpets, glass
-windows, and other things unknown to forest life.
-Great preparations had been made to receive them
-and to keep them in the best of humour. What with
-the clerks, quartermasters, interpreters, and others of
-the official class, the militia and the citizens, the farming
-folk who had flocked into the city to see the
-sights, in addition to villagers from the region around,
-<span class='pageno' title='96' id='Page_96'></span>
-Albany had never before beheld so large a population,
-nor shown such picturesque activity in her streets. In
-the oldest city in any of the colonies north of the
-municipality on Manhattan Island, these few days in
-the month of July were long remembered.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The eighteenth day of July had come; and all the
-Indians expected, hundreds in number, had already
-arrived, and were beginning to think “Brother Corlaer”
-was as dilatory as his war operations had all along
-been. Governor Shirley and the Massachusetts commissioners,
-however, had come; and all lay down at
-night expecting the great palaver would be but a day
-or two off. But before Clinton was to arrive, they
-were to learn how near the enemy was even at that
-moment.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the evening exciting news was brought them
-from Schenectady. A battle had been fought between
-a party of Canadian Indians and the militia and villagers
-just beyond Schenectady, in which twenty whites
-had been killed and a number taken prisoners. The
-drums at once beat to quarters, and Captain Chew with
-one hundred militiamen and two hundred of the Indians,
-told off from those in convention, marched at
-once in pursuit. The Indians from Albany expected
-to head off the raiders, and hence went along the
-usual trails to Canada; but this time the Canada
-savages had retreated along the Sacandaga road and
-creek, “by a different road from what they used
-to go,” as Onnasdego, an Onondaga sachem, said to
-Clinton in his oration a few days afterward. Johnson
-remained in Albany attending to his horde of
-<span class='pageno' title='97' id='Page_97'></span>
-guests; while Captain Chew and his band made vain
-pursuit. On the 22d, the day of the opening of the
-council, he received a letter from Albert Van Slyck,
-dated “Schonaictaiday, July 21st, 1749,” giving a brief
-detail of the bloody affray. Van Slyck was an honest
-Dutch farmer, whose defective powers in English composition
-were in contrast with his courage; and his
-Dutch-English account is difficult to make certain
-sense of, especially in its blotted, time-stained, and
-torn condition in the Johnson manuscripts at Albany;
-but, except some entries in the family Bibles of people
-in or near the town, this is the only known contemporaneous
-writing by one who was in the fight.
-It is not mentioned even in Parkman’s “Montcalm and
-Wolfe,” nor in the colonial or more recent histories, except
-Drake’s, though sometimes referred to inaccurately.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Further, it was difficult, until 1752, for an intelligent
-Hollander or American of Holland descent, whose ancestors
-since 1581 had adopted the calendar of Christendom
-to keep the run of English chronology, which
-was eleven days behind the rest of the world. For
-over a century and a half, England was very much in
-the condition of Russia of the present day, as compared
-with the rest of Europe. The English used
-“the old style,” or the calendar of Julius Cæsar, while
-the continental nations made use of the modern or
-Gregorian calendar. It may be that this explains
-why Van Slyck dated his letter one year ahead, 1749,
-instead of 1748.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Van Slyck’s letter describes an event which for a
-generation formed a leading topic at the evening firesides
-<span class='pageno' title='98' id='Page_98'></span>
-of the people of Schenectady, and of many in
-Connecticut. The tremendous loss in men, chiefly
-heads of families, that fell upon this frontier town is
-almost unknown to history; yet the fight at Beechdale
-was one of the most stubbornly contested little battles
-of the Old French War. Instead of being “an autumnal
-foray” upon a party of woodmen, it was a
-stand-up, hand-to-hand fight by the Schenectady men
-against savages who were consummate ambuscaders,
-and well versed in all the arts of woodcraft and the
-tricks most likely to confound raw militiamen.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The battle-field lies on the Toll Farm, three miles
-west of Schenectady, and is visible from the car-windows
-to the right of a train on the New York Central
-Railroad going westward. A company of Schenectady
-men were at Maalwyck, a place not far from the town,
-on the north side of the river. Messrs. Dirk Van
-Voast and Daniel Toll, with Toll’s negro slave, Ryckert,
-left their comrades to find their horses which had
-strayed off. A few minutes after they had left, firing
-was heard in the direction in which they had gone, by
-the Van Slyck brothers, Adrian and Albert, one of
-whom was afterward in the fight and wrote the meagre
-account which is now among the Johnson papers.
-They at once sent a messenger, their negro slave, to
-Schenectady to give the alarm, which was doubtless
-sounded out from the belfry of the strong fortress-church
-by the Widow Margarita Veeder, the <span class='it'>klok-luider</span>
-or bell-ringer at that time. The summons
-came first before noon. The negro delivered his
-message, bidding the men go out to Abraham De
-<span class='pageno' title='99' id='Page_99'></span>
-Graaf’s house at Beukendal, where Van Slyck would
-meet them.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>At this time there was a company of New England
-militia in the town under the command of Captain
-Stoddard, who was then absent, his place being filled
-by Lieut. John Darling. The militiamen were from
-Connecticut, and were raw levies unused to Indian
-warfare. They started off accompanied by five or six
-young men and Daniel Van Slyck, another brother of
-the writer. The party numbered about seventy men
-in all. Another company of armed men, whose number
-is not stated, left for the scene of conflict a few
-minutes later, to see if they could find or see Daniel
-Toll.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Toll and Van Voast, after leaving the Van Slycks at
-Maalwyck, had reached a place two miles away, near
-the house of De Graaf, and called in Dutch, Poopendaal,
-or later, Beukendal or Beech Dale. Within or
-beyond the dale, was a well-known place on hard
-clayey soil, full of deer-licks at which the deer used to
-come to lick the salt. At this <span class='it'>kleykuil</span>, or clay-pit, the
-two men imagined they heard, about ten o’clock, the
-sound of horses’ hoofs stamping on the hard ground,
-but with a regularity that seemed very suspicious.
-Approaching warily nearer, they discovered that the
-noise came from a party of Indians playing quoits.
-Almost as soon as the two white men came in sight,
-they were fired on by the savages, who had seen their
-coming. Toll was instantly killed, and Van Voast
-was wounded and made prisoner. The black man,
-Ryckert, fled toward Schenectady.
-<span class='pageno' title='100' id='Page_100'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The wily savages now prepared to ambuscade the
-party which they knew would soon appear from Schenectady.
-For this purpose they laid a sensational trap
-in a field, somewhat off from the path and in a defile
-near the creek, which was surrounded with forest and
-bush. Taking the dead body of Mr. Toll, they set it
-up against a fence and tied a live crow in front of the
-corpse. This curious sight of a wild crow flying up
-and down before an apparently living man they knew
-would at once excite the attention, especially of the
-impulsive and unwary young men who, as they supposed,
-would be the first on the field. The sequel
-proves they were not disappointed.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Lieutenant Darling and his Connecticut men
-marched out, cautiously searching for the enemy, but
-seeing no trace of any. At Mr. Simon Groot’s unoccupied
-house they found Adrian Van Slyck, who with a
-few men had arrived and learned from the negro boy
-Ryckert, that his master, Mr. Toll, had been shot.
-Though nearly paralyzed with fear, he offered to
-point out the place where he fell. The negro was
-furnished with a horse, and acted as pilot to the advance
-party of about forty men. Soon after they
-had gone, Ackes Van Slyck arrived and remained
-with his men near the house.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Pretty soon the strange phenomenon of a crow playing
-near a man arrested their attention, and they at
-once marched into the trap to see the curious sight.
-Very soon they discovered that the man was a corpse,
-and the crow was tied to it with a string. At this moment
-when nearly all were in the defile along the creek,
-<span class='pageno' title='101' id='Page_101'></span>
-and off their guard, the crash of the enemy’s guns
-enlightened them as to the situation. They found
-themselves in a ravine or hollow curved like a horseshoe,
-and nearly surrounded on both sides by woods,
-from which puffs of white smoke and flashes of fire
-were issuing from unseen enemies. Eight or ten of
-the whites were at once stretched dead on the clay
-ground, and then the yelling savages leaped out of
-cover with knife and hatchet.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The militiamen soon broke and ran, but the Schenectady
-men bravely stood their ground. It took a
-moment to deliver their fire, and then with musket
-clubbed or thrown aside, the fighting became, for a
-few minutes, a series of desperate encounters between
-white and red man, in which it happened more than
-once that both buried their knives in each other.
-After the battle the bodies of Glen, De Graaf, and
-other noted Indian fighters were found alongside their
-dead enemies with whom they had wrested in deadly
-struggle. In this hand-to-hand fight twelve of the
-party of whites were killed, and five made prisoners;
-Lieutenant Darling’s company losing seven men, who
-were shot dead, and six missing.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Adrian Van Slyck and a company of New York
-militiamen now reached the scene, where the little
-band of whites were found behind trees and stumps
-holding the enemy at bay; Lieutenant Darling having
-been killed at the first fire, Ackes Van Slyck was directing
-the fight. No sooner had the New York
-reinforcements got into the line of Indian fire, than
-they all fled in the most cowardly manner. Adrian
-<span class='pageno' title='102' id='Page_102'></span>
-Van Slyck and the two or three Schenectady men
-who stood by him in this part of the field were shot
-down.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The rest of the original party of whites now retreated
-out through the western entrance of the vale, and
-joined by Albert Van Slyck and a few men from
-the village, reached the house of Abraham De Graaf
-near by. This substantial edifice—still standing, but
-used as a dried-apple bleacher when the writer visited
-it—was not then occupied, but was new and strong,
-and stood on commanding ground. The fact of its
-being empty shows the condition of affairs; the people
-who lived in isolated farm-houses being at this
-time gathered almost wholly in palisaded villages or
-other fortified places.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Hastily entering, they barred the door, and reaching
-the second story, tore off all the boards near the
-floor and eaves, and prepared for a stubborn defence.
-With their keen marksmanship they kept the
-enemy at bay, completely baffling the savages, who
-peppered the house in vain. While this siege was
-going on, the two Indian lads left in charge of Dirk
-Van Voast, eager to see the fight, tied their prisoner
-to a tree, and climbing up the slope of the ravine,
-became absorbed in the firing. Van Voast succeeded
-in reaching his knife, cut the thongs binding him,
-and ran off to Schenectady, meeting another squad of
-armed men from the village hastening to the scene.
-These were led by Jacob Glen, and Albert Van Slyck,
-the writer describing the event.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Van Slyck had hoped to gather enough men to get
-<span class='pageno' title='103' id='Page_103'></span>
-out and surround the Indians so as to capture the
-whole band; but Garret Van Antwerp, fearing lest the
-town would be left without a garrison in case of attack,
-would suffer no more to leave the palisades. However,
-this last reinforcement reached the battle-ground
-in time to drive off the savages, who were fighting the
-previously sent party from behind trees, and to save
-the bodies of Adrian Van Slyck and the dead men
-near him from being scalped and stripped. Seeing
-this last party approaching, the savages drew off, retreating
-up the Sacandaga road. All the whites, including
-the last comers, the scattered out-door fighters
-behind trees, and the little garrison in the house, now
-united. They proceeded at once to count up their
-loss, and to gather up the dead men and load them on
-wagons for burial in Schenectady.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>What the loss of the Indians was in this battle, as
-in most others, the white men were never able to find
-out. Except at the scene of the first firing and ambuscade,
-Indian corpses were not visible. The first
-purpose of the redskins, as soon as the opening fury
-of battle slackened, was to conceal their loss. To run
-out from cover, even in the face of the fire, and draw
-away the corpses of their friends, was their usual habit,
-and to this they were thoroughly trained. Exposure
-in such work was more cheerfully borne than in regular
-combat, though usually the dead body was reached
-by cautious approach, and with as much concealment
-as possible in the undergrowth. A noose at
-the end of a rope was skilfully thrown over the head
-of the corpse, and the end of the rope carried back
-<span class='pageno' title='104' id='Page_104'></span>
-into cover. As skilfully as a band of medical students
-or resurrectionists can put a hook under the
-chin of a corpse and hoist it up from under the
-coffin-lid half sawed off, the savages in ambush would
-draw the body of their fallen comrade out of sight,
-to be quickly concealed or buried. Indian fighters
-often told stories of dead men apparently turning
-into snakes and gliding out of sight. Owing to this
-habit of the Indians, it was very difficult to arrive
-at the exact execution done by the white man’s
-fire. As most of the Schenectady men were trained
-Indian fighters, the loss of the savages was probably
-great.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This was a sad day for Schenectady. One third
-of the white force engaged were dead or wounded.
-Twenty corpses—twelve of them Schenectady fathers,
-sons, or brothers, and eight Connecticut men—were
-laid on the floor of a barn, near the church, which
-is still standing. The sorrowing wives, mothers, and
-sisters came to identify the scalped and maimed
-dear ones. Thirteen or fourteen men were missing,
-while the number of wounded was never accurately
-known. In the Green Street burying-ground, east of
-the “Old Queen’s Fort,” the long funeral procession
-followed the corpses, while Domine Van Santvoord
-committed dust to dust.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Many are the touching traditions of sorrow connected
-with this “Beukendal massacre.” So it, indeed,
-appeared to the people of Schenectady, because
-of so many of their prominent men thus suddenly
-slain. To them it was in some sense a repetition of
-<span class='pageno' title='105' id='Page_105'></span>
-the awful night of Feb. 8, 1690. Yet, instead of
-its being a massacre, it was a stand-up, hand-to-hand
-fight in Indian fashion, and a typical border-battle.
-In the superb and storied edifice of “The
-First Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Schenectady,
-in the county of Albany,”—so called in the old
-charter given by King George II., and so rich in
-the graphic symbols of “the church in the Netherlands
-under the Cross,” as well as of local history,—a
-tablet epitomizing the history of the church in its
-five edifices was set in its niche after the two hundredth
-anniversary of the founding of the church, celebrated
-June 21, 1880. It is “in pitiful remembrance
-of the martyrs who perished in the massacres of February
-9th, 1690, and July 18th, 1748.” From the
-rear church window one may still look, in 1891, on
-the barn on the floor of which the bodies were brought
-and laid for identification on the day when the sturdy
-Dutch-American Albert Van Slyck signed his letter
-to “Coll. William Johnson at Albany,” “your Sorrowfull
-and Revengfull friend on those Barbarous Enemys,
-and am at all Times on your Command.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Clinton, accompanied by his satellite, Dr. Colden,
-and some other members of his council, arrived in
-Albany, July 20. The next day, after those necessary
-ceremonies to which the Indians are as great
-bond-slaves as their civilized brethren, the council
-fairly opened. A great palaver ensued, and talk flowed
-unceasingly for hour after hour, until many ears
-needed rest even more than the few busy tongues.
-The governor wound up his long address by referring
-<span class='pageno' title='106' id='Page_106'></span>
-to the battle of Beukendal, so recent and so
-near by.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>After three days of smoke and thought, a wordy
-warrior from Onondaga replied for the Confederacy
-in prolix detail. The day was closed with a dance
-by the young braves, and the king’s health was drunk
-in five barrels of beer.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>On the following day the River Indians spoke,
-expressing gratitude for favours past, and asserting
-that if they had been present when news of the Schenectady
-battle reached Albany, they would have
-cheerfully joined in pursuit, even to the gate of Crown
-Point.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>By this time it was no longer possible to suppress
-the news of peace in Europe, and the poor savages
-who had been goaded into digging up the hatchet and
-neglecting their hunting, and who were thirsting for
-revenge, were now left in the lurch, and told to go
-quietly home. Nevertheless, most of the colonists
-were satisfied with the result of the council, and Johnson’s
-popularity increased. The Iroquois were pleased
-when they found that both Shirley and Clinton were
-about to send back all the French prisoners to Canada,
-and to ask for the return of both the white, red,
-and black captives, who had been carried away from
-their homes south of the St. Lawrence.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Lieutenant Stoddard and Captain Anthony Van
-Schaick went to Canada, and into the Indian country;
-but their success was not gratifying. Only twenty-four
-prisoners accompanied Lieutenant Stoddard
-when he left Canada, June 28, 1750. The white boys
-<span class='pageno' title='107' id='Page_107'></span>
-and girls who had nearly or wholly forgotten their
-old home and kin, and had been adopted into the
-tribes, declined, or were forced to decline, going
-back. Occasionally white women had abjured their
-religion, and in other cases the red squaws threatened
-sure death to the adopted captives should they
-try to return, even at the French governor’s orders.
-With the Indians, however, exchange was more easy,
-though the savages were unable to understand the delays
-of diplomacy between Clinton and Gallissonière;
-and to pacify them, Johnson was often at his wits’
-end. However, by his personal influence, by visits of
-condolence, by social participation in their games and
-feasts, by persistent patience, public eloquence, private
-persuasion, and the frequent use of money and
-other material gifts, he won fresh laurels of success.
-In spite of the diplomacy of La Gallissonière, the
-ceaselessly active Jesuit priests, French cunning and
-strategy on the one hand, and English and Dutch
-weakness and villany on the other, he held the whole
-Iroquois Confederacy loyal to the British Crown. The
-greatness of Johnson is nobly shown in thus foiling
-the French and all their resources.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This year, amid manifold commercial, military, and
-domestic cares, he entertained the famous Swedish
-botanist, naturalist, and traveller, Peter Kalm, with
-whose name the evergreen plant <span class='it'>Kalmia</span> is associated.
-He had come at the suggestion of Linnæus to investigate
-the botany and natural history of North America.
-He arrived at Fort Johnson with a letter from
-Dr. Colden, who was as fond of physical science as he
-<span class='pageno' title='108' id='Page_108'></span>
-was of his Toryism. After dispensing courtly hospitality,
-Johnson furnished him with a guide to Oswego
-and Niagara, and a letter to the commandant at the
-former place. Kalm’s “Voyage to North America”
-was translated and published in London in 1777, and
-the map accompanying it is of great interest. After
-him was named that family of evergreens in which is
-found the American laurel, <span class='it'>Kalmia latifolia</span>, which has
-been proposed as the national flower of the United
-States.</p>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='109' id='Page_109'></span><h1>CHAPTER VII.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>AT THE ANCIENT PLACE OF TREATIES.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The Old French War</span>, or the War of the Austrian
-Succession, was foolishly begun in Germany, and foolishly
-ended in Europe, Asia, and America. The peace
-which came without honour settled nothing as regarded
-the questions at issue in America. In reality
-this treaty guaranteed another American war.
-Louisburg was again handed over to the French in
-exchange for Madras. All prisoners in the three continents
-were to be released without ransom, and a
-return of all conquered territory and property was
-agreed to. The balance of power now rested level
-on its fulcrum, ready for some fly’s weight to tilt it
-and cause the scale-pans to bounce.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In what part of the world first? With unspeakable
-disgust the raw troops and scarred veterans, and the
-people generally of the colonies, received the news.
-Not a few thought it was time to think of not only
-fighting their own battles, but of making their own
-treaties. The continental or American spirit, already
-a spark, was fanned almost to a flame.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile, in home politics, New York was steadily
-advancing in the pathway that was to merge
-into the highway of national independence. To a
-<span class='pageno' title='110' id='Page_110'></span>
-New England writer, accustomed to the unbridled
-laudation of his own State and ancestry as those who
-led the Teutonic-American colonies in the struggle
-for liberty, the doings in the New York Assembly may
-seem “teapot-tempest politics.” To those less prejudiced,
-it is a noble chapter in the story of freedom,
-when they see an ultra-Tory British governor fast relegated
-to a position of impotence, though backed by
-the able Tory, Cadwallader Colden, while the people’s
-will is manifested in persistent limitation of the royal
-prerogative.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This was the state of affairs in May, 1750, when,
-on the death of Philip Livingston, Col. William
-Johnson was appointed to a seat in the governor’s Executive
-Council. The Livingstones were sturdy men
-of Scottish descent, descended from a Presbyterian
-minister who had been banished for non-conformity.
-Like so many of the founders of America, the Pilgrim
-Fathers and most of the chief settlers of Connecticut,
-Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
-the Carolinas, and Georgia, he reinforced his democratic
-ideas by some years’ residence in the Dutch
-Republic, living gladly under the red, white, and blue
-flag of the United States of Holland. The Livingstones
-in America married into families of Dutch
-descent, and thereby were still further imbued with
-Republican ideas. Robert and Philip had been secretaries
-of Indian affairs, and had thus gained great favour
-and influence over the Iroquois. Of their descendants,
-one was a signer of the Declaration of Independence,
-and others were officers in the Revolutionary
-<span class='pageno' title='111' id='Page_111'></span>
-army, while others are even yet adorning the annals
-of freedom, progress, and order.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Clinton was, no doubt, very glad to have, in place
-of a Livingstone, one who was so loyally devoted to
-the Crown, and so good a personal friend as Johnson
-near him, Johnson, however, was not sworn in and
-seated until 1751.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The state of affairs was growing worse and worse,
-and Clinton the foolish had attempted to stay the tide
-of democracy by having no Assembly called for two
-years. When, however, it met on Sept. 4, 1750,
-Johnson’s bills for six hundred and eighty-six pounds,
-for provisions sent to Oswego, were cheerfully paid;
-but the vote was so made that the governor’s claims
-were, as he thought, invaded. However, for good
-reasons, and fearing the loss of trade, he submitted.
-Could Johnson’s invaluable services have been acknowledged
-without also making recognition of Clinton’s
-pretensions, the Assembly would have been more
-liberal. The remarks and strictures of the biographer
-and eulogist of Johnson about the Dutch traders of
-Albany, and “the love of gain so characteristic of that
-nation” (<span class='it'>sic</span>) seem strange when the same love of
-gain was, and is, equally characteristic of Englishman,
-Yankee, Scotsman, Huguenot, and Quaker. No one
-will justify the members of the New York Colonial
-Assembly in all their acts, especially those which were
-clearly contemptible; but we cannot see that Johnson,
-Clinton, or the English loved either lucre or
-liquor any less than the Albany Dutchmen. Indeed,
-it was the well-founded suspicion that Clinton was
-<span class='pageno' title='112' id='Page_112'></span>
-using his office largely to recoup his broken fortunes
-that made the representatives resist him at every
-point. Johnson, however, finding that the Assembly
-and the governor could never be reconciled, and that
-his first bill of two thousand pounds would be likely,
-under existing circumstances, to remain unpaid, resigned
-his office of Superintendent of Indian Affairs.
-To his Iroquois friends he announced this step by
-sending wampum belts to all the chief fortified towns
-of the Confederacy.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Neither war nor peace had settled the question of
-the boundary lines between the French and English
-possessions in America. The French claimed the
-Ohio and Mississippi Valleys by right of prior discovery
-by La Salle and others. The English based their
-ownership on occupation by the Iroquois or their
-vassals, and because the Five Nations were allies of
-Great Britain. Both parties now began anew to occupy
-the land. The race was westward through the
-Ohio Valley to the Mississippi. The starting-points
-were from tidewater Virginia and from Montreal.
-Not on parallel lines, but toward the apex of a triangle,
-and straight toward collision, the movement
-began. The Ohio Company was formed with a grant
-of six hundred thousand acres by the English Government,
-chiefly to speculators in Virginia. George
-Washington was one of the first to be smitten with
-the fever of speculation, and to the end of his days
-he made investments in the Western lands as eagerly
-as many do now in Western farm mortgages.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>La Gallissonière instructed Celoron de Bienville, one
-<span class='pageno' title='113' id='Page_113'></span>
-of the four famous brothers of a remarkable family,
-to occupy definitely the Ohio Valley in the name of
-Louis XIV., King of France. Like a sower going
-forth to sow, Bienville went in a canoe with a sack
-full of leaden plates, depositing one in the soil at the
-mouth of every important tributary, so as to publish
-to the world that from the source of the Ohio to its
-mouth, the country watered by it belonged to France.
-Up to 1891 several of these plates have been dug up,—coming
-thus to resurrection like faint memories of
-vanished dreams.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>While thus the lines of empire were once more
-drawn between Celt and Teuton, the same masters
-again held the key to the situation,—the Iroquois.
-To win these over to French alliance or vassalage, all
-the arts of peace were now to be employed by the
-ablest intellects employing the strongest forces of religion,
-education, diplomacy, cunning, and material
-gifts. France with her compact military and religious
-system in America was a unity. Soldier, priest, and
-semi-feudal tenant were parts of one machine moved
-by one head. With the unity of a phalanx and the
-constrictive power of a dragon, she expected to crush
-to atoms, or at least coop up between mountains and
-sea, the English colonies. The heterogeneous collection
-of people from north continental and insular
-Europe, of many languages and forms of religion,
-dwelling between the Merrimac and the Everglades,
-were held together only by the one tie of allegiance
-to the British Crown.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Francis Picquet, priest, soldier, and statesman, saw
-<span class='pageno' title='114' id='Page_114'></span>
-the necessity of securing the loyalty of the Six Nations;
-and receiving the French Governor’s assent,
-established himself at La Presentation, on the St.
-Lawrence River, between Oswego and Montreal, a
-fort and a chapel. Ostensibly his mission was the
-conversion of the Iroquois. No more strategic point
-could have been selected. Whether for peace, war,
-trade, voyaging, or education and general influence,
-the site was supremely appropriate. When Johnson
-heard of the man called, according to which side of
-the border his name was spoken, “Apostle of the Iroquois”
-or “Jesuit of the West,” he was alarmed, especially
-when he learned that this lively hornet, Joncaire,
-was busy in fomenting trouble among the tribes
-in the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi. Before
-long, this Jean Cœur had succeeded in reviving between
-the Iroquois and western tribes and the Catawbas
-an old feud. Very soon Clinton received word
-from Gov. James Glenn, of South Carolina, that the
-Senecas were on the war-path and murdering the
-Catawbas. In this action the Senecas were repeating
-one of the numerous southern raids to which their
-grandfathers had been addicted, and one of which
-Col. John Washington, ancestor of George, assisted
-to repel. At Johnson’s suggestion, Clinton now invited
-all the tribes composing the Confederacy or in
-alliance with the Iroquois to meet at the ancient
-place of treaties,—the ground on which now stands
-the new Capitol at Albany,—while Clinton himself
-called upon the governors of all the colonies to form
-a plan of union for uniting the tribes and resisting
-<span class='pageno' title='115' id='Page_115'></span>
-French aggression. On the 28th of June, 1751, the
-tribes met in Albany, again to renew the covenant
-first confirmed by Arendt Van Curler. There were
-present delegates from Connecticut, Massachusetts,
-and South Carolina, and Indians from the Great
-Lakes, besides six Catawba chiefs and representatives
-of the Six Nations.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The first point made by the Iroquois was that
-Colonel Johnson should be reappointed Superintendent
-of Indian Affairs. They begged leave to try to
-influence him by sending a string of wampum to him
-at Mount Johnson. They despatched a swift footman
-to his house. A man is a finer animal than a horse,
-and, in the long run, swifter and more enduring.
-They chose two human soles rather than four horse’s
-hoofs for their messenger. Johnson met the wampum-bearer
-at Schenectady; but when at Albany, despite
-the eloquence of Clinton and the Indians, he firmly
-declined serving again while his salary depended upon
-the Assembly. He now took the oath of office and
-his seat in the governor’s Council. He retained this
-dignity while he lived.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The great council formally opened on the 6th of
-July, 1751. Besides the usual eloquence there was
-much singing, with ceremonial dances and enjoyment
-of that aboriginal custom and product,—the pipe and
-tobacco. The sucking and actual whiffing of the calumet,
-the metaphorical burying of the hatchet and
-planting of the tree of peace, signified that war was
-over between the Southern and Northern Indians.
-The confederates living above the not yet made Mason’s
-<span class='pageno' title='116' id='Page_116'></span>
-and Dixon’s line clasped hands across the bloody
-chasm with the Southerners, and peace again reigned
-from Pilgrim Land to the Salzburger Germans in
-Ogelthorpe’s country. The “late unpleasantness” was
-past. After the usual drinking of fire-water and distribution
-of presents, the council adjourned, and the
-Indians went home.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>While the Pennsylvania traders were establishing
-posts on the Ohio, under British authority, the French
-were also busy. Early in September, from a French
-deserter, Johnson learned the startling news that a
-great fleet of canoes manned by twelve hundred
-Frenchmen and two hundred Adirondack Indians, had
-passed Oswego, bound for the Ohio. News also arrived
-by a Cayuga chief that at Cadaracqui a large
-French man-of-war was being built for the reduction
-of Oswego. This fort was then in command of Lieutenant
-Lindsay, founder of the Scottish settlement at
-Cherry Valley.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson was in New York attending to his duties as
-a member of the Council, when the harassing news
-was received. In addition to the anxiety this caused
-him, he was selected by Clinton to do what proved to
-be a disagreeable task to himself, and in the eyes of
-the people’s representative a repulsive one. Indeed
-it seemed to them to be doing the governor’s dirty
-work. When the House sent to the Council an act
-for paying several demands upon the colony, it pleased
-Clinton and the Council to demand vouchers, and
-Johnson was sent to the Assembly to request them.
-The offended and angry representatives of the people
-<span class='pageno' title='117' id='Page_117'></span>
-declared that the demand was extraordinary and unprecedented,
-and declined to consider the request
-until the first of May. The Council, angry in turn,
-sent Johnson back with a bill of their own originating,—in
-clear violation of right precedent and propriety,
-“applying the sum of five hundred pounds for the
-management of Indian affairs and for repairing the
-garrison at Oswego.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As might be expected, this bill was not allowed even
-a second reading, but a motion was at once passed
-“that it was the great essential and undoubted right
-of the representatives of the people of this colony to
-begin all bills from raising and disbursing of money,”
-and that the bill of the Council should be rejected.
-In an address to the governor it was intimated that
-the one thousand pounds recently voted for entertaining
-the Indians at the council at Albany had been used
-for other purposes than the public good. After four
-days of foolish resistance, the governor, knowing he
-was unable to make headway when so clearly in the
-wrong, passed all the bills. Then, gratifying a personal
-spite at the expense of the public, he dissolved
-the Assembly.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>All this was what those who think the story of
-American liberty was fought out chiefly in New England
-would call the “teapot-tempest politics of the
-New York Assembly.” Yet here was the great principle
-upon which republican government is founded,
-and for which Holland revolted against Spain, and the
-American colonies against England; “our great example,”
-as Franklin declared, being the Dutch republic.
-<span class='pageno' title='118' id='Page_118'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Dutch had, centuries before, beyond the dikes
-of Holland, developed and fought for the doctrine of
-“no taxation without consent;” and Clinton, Colden,
-and their coadjutors were clearly in the wrong.
-Further, the representatives were right in hinting that
-Clinton and his flatterers were too anxious to improve
-their own fortunes, and to make the people pay for
-their needless junketings enjoyed in the name of public
-service. Those who read the local history of the
-Hudson and Mohawk Valleys know how burdensome
-to the people was the silly and costly pageantry of
-royal governors on their travels.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson, probably with his eyes needfully opened,
-on reaching his home after the dissolution of the Assembly,
-found the outlook for the ultimate occupation
-of the mid-continent by the English rather gloomy.
-The French held the frontier of New York on its three
-strategic lines,—Crown Point, La Presentation, and
-Niagara. They were now planning to plant a mission,
-which should mean a fort and a church, at Onondaga
-Lake, near which had perhaps been—if we so interpret
-the inscription on the Pompey stone—a Spanish
-settlement once destroyed by the Senecas. Even if
-the stone, inscribed with the symbols and chronology
-of Christendom, were that of a captive, it is a mournful
-but interesting relic.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>When Johnson heard the news, the Jesuits had already
-succeeded in winning the consent of the chiefs
-even at this ancient hearth of the Iroquois Confederacy.
-Such a move must be checkmated at once.
-Despite the raw and inclement weather of late autumn,
-<span class='pageno' title='119' id='Page_119'></span>
-and his desire for rest and reading, Johnson determined
-on a journey with its attendant exposure. He
-set out at once for Onondaga. Summoning the chief
-men, he asked them, as a proof of their many professions
-of friendship, to give and deed to him the land
-and water around Onondaga Lake, to the extent of
-two miles in every direction from the shores, for which
-he promised a handsome present. Unable to resist
-their friend, the sachems signed the deed made out
-by Johnson, who handed over money amounting to
-three hundred and fifty pounds, and left for home.
-Writing to Governor Clinton, he offered the land to the
-Government of New York at the price he had paid.
-Thus were the designs of the French again foiled.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>With the country at peace, and himself released
-from the responsibility of Indian affairs, Johnson began
-to indulge himself more and more in literary pursuits,
-the development of the Mohawk Valley, the
-moral and intellectual improvement of the Indians, and
-the social advantage of the white settlers. He had
-already a pretty large collection of books from London
-in his mansion, but he sent an order, August 20, 1752,
-to a London stationer for the “Gentlemen’s Magazine,”
-the “Monthly Review,” the latest pamphlets,
-and “the newspapers regularly, and stitched up.”
-He persuaded many of the Mohawks to send their
-children to the school at Stockbridge, Mass., founded
-by John Sergeant in 1741, and served after his death
-by America’s greatest intellect, Jonathan Edwards.
-His uncle, the admiral, had already given seven hundred
-pounds to the support of this school. Johnson’s
-<span class='pageno' title='120' id='Page_120'></span>
-correspondence was with the Hon. Joseph Dwight,
-once Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives,
-who had married Mr. Sergeant’s widow, and
-was deeply interested in Indian education.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In 1753 Rev. Gideon Hawley, who had taught the
-children of the Mohawks, Oneidas, and Tuscaroras at
-Stockbridge, was sent from Boston to establish a mission
-school on the Susquehanna River, west of Albany.
-Visiting Mount Johnson, the young missionary was received
-by the host in person at the gate. He spent a
-night enjoying the hospitality, and left with Johnson’s
-hearty godspeed. Hawley was able to pursue his
-work quietly until the breaking out of the war in 1756.
-After serving as chaplain to Col. Richard Gridley’s
-regiment, he spent from 1757 to 1807, nearly a half-century
-of his long and useful life, among the Indians
-at Mashpee, Mass.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson was also in warm sympathy with the efforts
-of Dr. Eleazar Wheelock, who since 1743, when he
-began with Samson Occum, a Mohegan Indian, had
-been steadily instructing Indian youths at Lebanon,
-Conn. “Moor’s Indian Charity School,” as then
-called, was set upon a good financial basis when in
-1776 Occum and Rev. Nathaniel Whitten crossed
-the ocean, and in England obtained an endowment of
-ten thousand pounds; William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth,
-being president of the Board of Trustees. At
-this school, among the twenty or more Indian boys,
-Joseph Brant, sent by Johnson, was educated under
-Dr. Wheelock. Later the Wheelock school was transferred
-to Hanover, N. H., and named after Lord Dartmouth.
-<span class='pageno' title='121' id='Page_121'></span>
-On the college seal only, the Indian lads are
-still seen coming up to this school instead of attending
-Hampton in Virginia, or Carlisle in Pennsylvania.
-However, ancient history and tradition, after long
-abeyance, were revived when, in 1887, a full-blooded
-Sioux Indian, Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman, was
-graduated from Dartmouth’s classic halls.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Various other attempts were made by Johnson, especially
-during the last decade of his life, to interest
-the British authorities in Church and State in the
-spiritual improvement of the Indians. The evidences
-of his good intentions and generous purposes are seen
-in his correspondence. Interesting as they are, however,
-they bore little fruit, owing to the outbreak of
-the Revolution which divided both the red and the
-white tribes. The baronet built a church for the
-Canajoharie Indians, and supported religious teachers
-for a while at his own expense. In 1767, being a
-man above his sect, he would have had the Indian
-school, which grew into Dartmouth College, removed,
-and established in the Mohawk Valley. Sectarian influence
-and ecclesiastical jealousies at Albany prevented
-his plan from being carried out. The Valley
-was thus without a college, until Union, founded and
-endowed almost entirely by the Dutchmen of Schenectady,
-was established in 1786, free from sectarian
-control, as its name implies. Under Eliphalet Nott’s
-presidency of sixty-two years, its fame became national,
-and within its walls have been educated some
-of the most useful members of the aboriginal race
-called, by accident, Indians.
-<span class='pageno' title='122' id='Page_122'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Admiral Warren died in Dublin, July 29, 1752,
-of fever; and Johnson received the news shortly before
-setting out to attend the Executive Council in
-New York, which met in October.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Fortunately for the Commonwealth, Governor Clinton
-had taken other advice than that so liberally
-furnished in the past by the particular member so
-obnoxious to the Assembly; and his opening message
-was commendably brief, being merely a salutation,
-which was as briefly and courteously returned. Now
-that the Tory firebrand was “out of politics” for a
-while, peace once more reigned. An era of good
-feeling set in, and harmony was the rule until Clinton’s
-administration ended. A new Board of Indian Commissioners
-was chosen, by a compromise between the
-governor and his little parliament. Plans for paying
-the colonial debt, for strengthening the frontier, and
-for establishing a college were all carried out.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Oswego was the watch-house on the frontier. In
-the early spring of 1753 the advance guard of a
-French army left Montreal to take possession of the
-Ohio Valley. Descried alike by Iroquois hunters at
-the rapids of the St. Lawrence and by the officers
-at Oswego, the news was communicated to Johnson
-by foot-runners with wampum and by horseback-riders
-with letters. Thirty canoes with five hundred
-Indians under Marin were leading the six thousand
-Frenchmen determined to hold the domain from
-Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Whether troubled the more by the encroachments
-of the warlike French, or by the English land-speculators
-<span class='pageno' title='123' id='Page_123'></span>
-and enterprising farmers who were now clearing
-forests and settling on their old hunting-grounds, the
-Indians could scarcely tell. Dissatisfied at having lost
-officially their friend Johnson, disliking the commissioners,
-seeing what they considered as their property,
-the Ohio, invaded by the French, while the New York
-Government seemed to be inert or asleep, they sent
-a delegation to lay their complaints before the governor
-and Council in New York. There they roundly
-abused the whole government, and threatened to break
-the covenant chain. As matter of fact, the trouble
-concerning land patents arose out of transactions settled
-before Clinton’s time, which could not at once be
-remedied in curt Indian fashion. All legal land alienations
-in New York were, after the custom originating
-in Holland, and thence borrowed by the American
-colonists and made a national procedure in all the
-United States, duly registered; and into these examination
-must be made. Both house and governor,
-however, agreed in choosing Johnson as the man for
-the critical hour, and requested him to meet the tribes
-at the ancient council-fire at Onondaga. Johnson,
-hearing that the Iroquois had broken faith and again
-attacked the Catawbas in the Carolinas, hastened
-matters by summoning one tribe, the Mohawks, to
-meet him at his own home.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Again the stone house by the Mohawk became the
-seat of an Indian council, and was enveloped in clouds
-of tobacco smoke. Johnson, compelling them to
-drink the cup mingled with upbraiding and kindness,
-while bountifully filling their stomachs from his
-<span class='pageno' title='124' id='Page_124'></span>
-larder, sent them away in good humour, and most
-of them burning with loyalty. Besides thus manifesting
-his singular power over the Mohawk savages, he
-met the representatives of the United Confederacy
-at Onondaga, September 9. The result of the ceremonies,
-the eloquence, the smoke, and the eating
-was that the confederates, though sorely puzzled to
-know what to do between the French and the English,
-promised loyalty to the brethren of Corlaer. They
-would, however, say nothing satisfactory concerning
-the Catawbas, some of whose scalps, and living members
-reserved for torture, even then adorned their
-villages.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Governor Clinton had grown weary of the constant
-battle which he was, probably with the stolid ignorance
-of many men of his time and class, fighting against the
-increasing power of popular liberty. He saw it was
-vain to resist the spirit which the Dutch, Scots, and
-French Huguenots had brought into New York with
-them, or inherited from their sires, and he longed for
-a rest and a sinecure post in England. He liked
-neither the New York people nor the climate. When
-therefore his successor, Sir Danvers Osborne, arrived
-on Sunday, October 7, Clinton hailed the day as one
-of the happiest of his life. He shortly after sailed
-for home, to spend the remainder of his years in a
-post for which he was better fitted,—the governorship
-of Greenwich Hospital. He died in 1761, fourteen
-years before the breaking out of the war which his
-own actions had strongly tended to precipitate. His
-son, Sir Henry, led the British regulars and mercenaries
-<span class='pageno' title='125' id='Page_125'></span>
-who were bluffed in North Carolina, driven off at
-Fort Moultrie, and finally won victory at Long Island.
-He failed to relieve Burgoyne, fought the drawn battle
-at Monmouth, captured Charleston, dickered with
-Arnold, left Cornwallis in the lurch, and returning
-baffled to England, shed much ink in defending himself
-against his critics. Another family of Clintons
-shed high lustre on the American name and the Empire
-State. One added another river parallel to the
-Mohawk, flowing past Johnson’s old home, and joining
-the waters of the Great Lakes to those of the
-Hudson and the Atlantic, making the city of New
-York the metropolis of the continent.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Sir Danvers Osborne’s career in America was a
-short tragedy in three acts. It lasted five days. He
-came to be ground as powder between the upper millstone
-of royal prerogative and the nether disk of
-popular rights. He came from an aristocratic and
-monarchical country, whose government believed that
-it was the source of power to the people, to colonists
-whose fathers had been educated mostly under a republic,
-where it was taught that the people were,
-under God, the originators of power. Charged with
-instructions much more stringent than those given to
-his predecessor, he was confronted in the town-hall
-by the city corporation, whose spokesman’s opening
-sentence was that “they would not brook any infringement
-of their liberties, civil or religious.” On meeting
-his Council for the first time, he was informed
-that any attempt to enforce the strict orders given him
-and to insist upon an indefinite support, would be
-<span class='pageno' title='126' id='Page_126'></span>
-permanently resisted. That night the unfortunate
-servant of the king took his own life. He committed
-suicide by hanging himself on his own garden
-wall.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>De Lancey, the chief-justice, was now called to the
-difficult post of governor, and to the personally delicate
-task of serving King George and his former associates,
-whom he had so diligently prodded against
-Clinton, Colden, and Johnson. This was especially
-difficult, when the Assembly found, in the instructions
-to Sir Danvers Osborne, how diligently the late governor
-and his advisers had slandered and misrepresented
-them to the British Government. The good results
-of a change in the executive were, however, at once
-visible, and the Assembly promptly voted money for
-the defence of the frontier, for the governor’s salary,
-for his arrears of pay as chief-justice, for Indian presents,
-for his voyage to Albany, and indeed, for everything
-reasonable. They added a complaint against
-Clinton, and a defence of their conduct to the Crown
-and Lords of Trade, which De Lancey sent to
-London.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The clouds of war which had gathered in the Ohio
-Valley now broke, and M. Contrecœur occupied Fort
-Du Quesne. George Washington began his career on
-the soil of the State of Pennsylvania, in which his
-longest marches, deepest humiliations, fiercest battles,
-and most lasting civil triumphs were won; and on the
-4th of July, 1754, honourably surrendered Fort Necessity.
-The French drum-beat was now heard from
-Quebec to Louisiana. The English were banished
-<span class='pageno' title='127' id='Page_127'></span>
-behind the Alleghanies, and their flag from the Ohio
-Valley.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was now vitally necessary that the colonies should
-form a closer union for defence against French aggression
-and the inroads of hostile savages. The Iroquois
-tribes had been able to unite themselves in a stable
-form of federalism. Why could not the thirteen
-colonies become confederate, and act with unity of
-purpose? Besides so great an example on the soil
-before them, there was the New England Confederation
-of 1643, which had been made chiefly by men
-trained in a federal republic. Both the Plymouth
-men and many of the leaders of New England had
-lived in the United States of Holland, and under the
-red, white, and blue flag. There they had seen in
-actual operation what strength is derived from union.
-<span class='it'>Concordia res parvæ crescunt</span> (“By concord little
-things become grand”), was the motto of the Union
-of Utrecht, familiar to all; but in New York the republican
-motto <span class='it'>Een-dracht maakt Macht</span> (“Union makes
-strength”) needed no translation, for its language was
-the daily speech of a majority of the people.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It seemed now, at least, eminently proper that the
-Congress of Colonies should be in the state settled
-first by people from a republic, and at Albany, the
-ancient place of treaties, and at the spot in English
-America where red and white delegates from the
-north, east, west, and south can even now assemble
-without climbing or tunnelling the Appalachian chain
-of mountains.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>By direction of the Lords of Trade, the governments
-<span class='pageno' title='128' id='Page_128'></span>
-of all the colonies were invited to meet at Albany,
-so that a solemn treaty could be at one time
-made with all the Indian tribes, by all the colonies, in
-the name of the king.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>For treaty-making with the Iroquois, the most
-powerful of all the Indian tribes, there was only
-one place,—Albany. Dinwiddie, of Virginia, vainly
-wanted it at Winchester, Va., while Shirley, of Massachusetts,
-jealous of New York, and a genuine politician,
-wished to keep himself before the voters, and to come
-after the elections were over. His party was more
-than his province or the country. As the Indians had
-already, according to orders from England, been notified,
-the New York Assembly declined to postpone
-time or place.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In Albany the streets were cleaned and repaired by
-order of the City Council, and the delegates were
-given a public dinner at the municipal expense. The
-Congress met in the City Hall on the 19th of June,
-1754, twenty-five delegates from nine colonies being
-present; and whether in personal or in representative
-dignity formed the most august assembly which up to
-this time had ever been held in the Western World.
-The colonies were named in the minutes according
-to their situation from north to south. All were
-represented, except New Jersey, the Carolinas, and
-Georgia.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The business proper began when Johnson read a
-paper, which was the official report of the Board of
-Commissioners on Indian Affairs, in which the political
-situation was exposed. In it propositions were
-<span class='pageno' title='129' id='Page_129'></span>
-made to build forts in the Onondaga and Seneca
-countries, with a missionary in each place; to forbid
-the sale of rum, and to expel and keep the Frenchmen
-out of the Indian castles. The speech, prepared as
-the voice of the Congress, was delivered June 28 to
-the Indians who were present, and who had to be
-urged by the governor to attend. After various conferences
-and much speech-making on either side,
-including an address by Abraham, a scorching philippic
-by King Hendrick,—both Mohawk sachems
-and brothers,—and the distribution of gifts, the Indians
-went home apparently satisfied. To the edification
-of delegates from some of the colonies, where
-Indians were deemed incapable of understanding truth
-and honour, they found that Governor De Lancey and
-Colonel Johnson treated them as honest men who understood
-the nature of covenants. Whereas the laws
-of Joshua and Moses had been elsewhere applied only
-too freely to Indian politics by the elect of Jehovah, the
-New York authorities really believed that the Ten
-Commandments and the Golden Rule had a place in
-Indian politics.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Other questions of vital interest to the colonies
-were discussed. On the fifth day of the session of
-the Congress, while waiting for the Indians to assemble,
-a motion was made and carried unanimously that
-“a union of all the colonies” was absolutely necessary
-for their security and defence. A committee of
-six was appointed to prepare plans of union, and from
-the ninth day until the end of the session this important
-matter was under debate. On the 9th of July
-<span class='pageno' title='130' id='Page_130'></span>
-the Congress voted “That there be a union of his
-Majesty’s several governments on the continent, so
-that their councils, treasure, and strength may be employed
-in due proportion against their common enemy.”
-On the 10th of July the plan was adopted,
-and ordered to be sent to London for the royal
-consideration.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>How far this Albany plan of union, which looked to
-a Great Council of forty-eight members meeting at
-Philadelphia under a President-general, resembled or
-foreshadowed the National Constitution of 1787, we
-need not here discuss. Certain it is, that though the
-exact plan proposed was rejected, both by the colonies
-and by Great Britain, the spirit of the movement
-lived on. Between the year 1754 and that of 1776
-was only the space of the life of a young man. Between
-the “Congress”—the word in this sense was
-a new coinage, dating from the meeting of colonial
-delegates in Albany, after the burning of Schenectady
-in 1690—in the State House at Albany and the one
-in Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia, the time was even
-less. Certain it is that the assembly of representatives
-of the colonies at Albany in 1690 was the first
-occasion of the popular use of the word “Congress”
-as now used, and usually written with a capital,
-while that in 1748 made it a word of general acceptance
-in the English language. Before that time and
-meeting it had other significations not so august; but
-while these have fallen away, the other and chief signification
-in English remains. Further, from this time
-forth the “Continental”—that is, the American as
-<span class='pageno' title='131' id='Page_131'></span>
-distinct from the British, the independent as discriminated
-from the transatlantic—idea grew. In common
-speech, the continental man was he who was
-more and more interested in what all the colonies did
-in union, and less in what the king’s ministers were
-pleased to dictate. More and more after the Albany
-Congress Wycliffe’s idea prevailed,—that even King
-George’s “dominion was founded in grace” and not
-on prerogative. More and more the legend on the
-coins, “Georgius Rex Dei Gratia,” faded into the
-nature of a fairy tale, while the idea grew that the governments
-derive their authority from the consent of
-the governed. To those wedded to the idea that religion
-can live only when buttressed by politics, that
-a church owes its life to the state, this increase of
-democratic doctrines was horrible heresy, portending
-frightful immorality and floods of vice. A State without
-a King, a Church without politically appointed
-rulers and the support of public taxation, a coin without
-the divine name stamped on it, were, in the eyes
-of the servants of monarchy, as so many expressions
-of atheism. Not so thought the one member of the
-Albany Congress who lived to sign the Declaration of
-Independence and the National Constitution of 1787,—Benjamin
-Franklin, who incarnated the state
-founded politically by Penn; nor the Quaker, Stephen
-Hopkins, of Rhode Island, who lived to put his sign-manual
-to Jefferson’s immortal document, July 4,
-1776.</p>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='132' id='Page_132'></span><h1>CHAPTER VIII.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>THE BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>By the movements</span> in Western Pennsylvania, the war
-had already broken out, though the diplomatists on the
-transatlantic side had not yet said so. By the first
-week in May, the raids on the northern border began
-by the destruction of Hoosic, within ten miles of Fort
-Massachusetts. The half-naked or starving refugees
-reaching Albany furnished a vivid object-lesson of
-reality. Under Johnson’s vigilance and activity, the
-people in the forts, block-houses, and palisaded villages
-were kept on guard night and day. In this work
-he was ably seconded by Governor De Lancey. Politics
-make strange bed-fellows; and the late critic and
-opponent, now that he occupied the seat of the person
-whom he had, largely out of party spirit, opposed,
-became a warm friend of his friend Johnson,
-the untiring frontiersman.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>When in New York, Feb. 28, 1755, Johnson learned
-of the official declaration of war, and the sailing from
-Cork, Ireland, of General Braddock with one thousand
-regulars, bound for Alexandria, Va.; and to this place
-Johnson with Governor De Lancey made a journey.
-At the council held by the five royal governors, expeditions
-against Nova Scotia, Crown Point, Niagara,
-<span class='pageno' title='133' id='Page_133'></span>
-and Fort Du Quesne were planned. Johnson was
-again made Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and appointed
-as major-general to command the forces for
-the reduction of Crown Point.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The story of the success of one of these expeditions
-and the failure of two of them under Braddock and
-Shirley, is known to all. We may now glance at that
-under Johnson. After a great council held in June,
-attended by eleven hundred of all ages and sexes,
-to the devastation of Johnson’s larder, King Hendrick
-and many hundred fighting men promised to be
-ready for war. After various delays, the motley army
-gathered from the colonies left Albany August 8, 1755,
-and on the 28th Johnson reached the Lake of the
-Holy Sacrament. A true courtier, he changed the
-name given by Isaac Jogues, which had superseded
-the Indian term, Andiatarocte; and in honour of his
-sovereign George, and “to ascertain his undoubted
-right there,” called the beautiful water by the name
-it still bears. The modern fanciful name “Horicon”
-seems to be nothing more than a printer’s mistake,
-glorified by a romancer.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Parkman’s magic pen has drawn the picture of the
-movements of Dieskau, the German, and his French
-and Indian forces opposed to the provincial army, and
-has brilliantly described the camp and forces at Lake
-George, when, on the morning of Sept. 8, 1755, the
-Canadians, Indians, and French, numbering fifteen
-hundred, being, unknown to the English, only an
-hour’s march distant, one thousand men sallied out
-from the camp to capture Dieskau and his forces.
-<span class='pageno' title='134' id='Page_134'></span>
-The spirit of Braddock seemed to be still in the air;
-and the men—New England and New York militia—sallied
-out jauntily, expecting easy victory, but in reality
-to what proved “the bloody morning scout.”
-They were led by Col. Ephraim Williams—whose will,
-creating what is now Williams College, had been made
-a few days before at Albany—and by Lieutenant-Colonel
-Whiting. In three divisions the little army
-marched out and soon disappeared from view in the
-forest, just before nine o’clock <span class='sc'>a. m.</span> The two columns,
-French and English, were thus approaching
-each other in a narrow road, like trains on a single
-track in a tunnel.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Not knowing what the issue might be, Johnson
-made preparation for all risks. He at once ordered
-trees felled and laid lengthwise. With these and the
-wagons, bateaux, and camp equipage, he constructed
-a rough line of defence, which faced all along the one
-side of the camp which an assaulting party might be
-reasonably expected to attack,—that is, on that side of
-the rough quadrangle which was parallel to the lake.
-At that portion fronting the road, he planted three of
-his heaviest pieces of cannon, one thirty-two and two
-eighteen-pounders. Another was posted a little way
-round to the left, while five howitzers of smaller calibre,
-with the mortars, one of thirteen-inch, and four
-of smaller calibre, were stationed to throw shell in
-the morasses and woods on the flanks. The superb
-artillerist, Major William Eyre, with a company of British
-sailors, served the guns.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The situation then was as follows: Colonel Williams’s
-<span class='pageno' title='135' id='Page_135'></span>
-party was marching southward along the stump-embossed
-road cut by Johnson’s axemen a few days before.
-After advancing two miles he halted for the
-other divisions to come up, and then moved in a solid
-body. With what seems incredible carelessness, neglecting
-to send out scouts, they moved on, Braddock-like,
-unsuspicious of danger, imagining that the French
-were miles away.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>On the contrary, Dieskau’s scouts had watched their
-departure from the camp, and quickly reported the
-news to the German baron. He at once ordered his
-regulars to halt, and sent the Canadians and Indians
-into the forest, three hundred paces ahead, with orders
-to lie flat on the ground behind trees, rocks, and bushes,
-and make no noise or sign until the regulars had fired,
-when all were to rise and surround the English.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Here, then, was a horseshoe ambuscade in a swampy
-spot. It was another case of “the fatal defile.” The
-regulars were, to the party approaching them, invisible,
-for they lay behind a swell of ground. All was as silent
-as the grave when the head of Colonel Williams’s
-line entered the trap. Had it not been for the treachery
-of the Indians, or the warning signal of the French
-Iroquois to their kindred, given by the discharge of a
-gun,—though it may be possible that this unexpected
-shot was an accident,—the English would have been
-nearly annihilated. But before the party had passed
-the calks of the horseshoe at the ends of the ambuscade,
-the war-whoop and the countless puffs of smoke
-and whistling bullets told the whole story. The silent
-wilderness at once became hell.
-<span class='pageno' title='136' id='Page_136'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Colonel Williams at once took in the situation, and
-mounting a rock to direct his men, ordered them
-to spread out on the hill to the right. He was soon
-shot through the head. Hendrick had fallen at the
-first fire. The Americans were rallied by Nathan
-Whiting, and retreated stubbornly, contesting the
-ground rod by rod, and firing from behind trees and
-rocks at the Canadians and Indians, who followed the
-same tactics. Where they met reinforcements sent
-out by Johnson, their firing was more steady and
-destructive.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was near Bloody Pond that Lieutenant Cole and
-the three hundred men sent out from camp by Johnson
-met them, and ably covered their retreat, so that
-the wounded were brought in, and the main body
-reached the camp in good order about ten o’clock.
-Le Gardeur, the officer to whom Washington had surrendered
-a few months before, commanded the Canadian
-Indians in this battle, and was slain. The savages,
-seeing the English out of the way for the present,
-at once fell back to scalp and plunder the slain
-Americans. Dieskau ordered them off, refusing to let
-them stop and thus lose time. Though obeying, they
-were angry and insubordinate, and later in the day
-sneaked out of the fight, to return like dogs to their
-vomit of war. Dieskau ordered the bugles to sound
-the assembly, and re-formed his forces, hoping by a
-rush on Johnson’s camp to capture it at once. Unfortunately
-for him, he had to reckon with Indians and
-bush-rangers instead of with trained soldiers.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Once inside the camp, the Massachusetts men were
-<span class='pageno' title='137' id='Page_137'></span>
-ranged on the right, the Connecticut men on the left,
-with the New York and New Hampshire men between.
-Five hundred troops were posted on the
-flanks in reserve. Lying down flat on their stomachs
-behind the hastily thrown up barricade, they lay
-awaiting the enemy, whom they expected at a double-quick
-pace.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Everything now depended on the steadiness of the
-militia. The officers threatened death to all who
-flinched from the foe. All eyes were bent on the
-woods in front, and especially down the road whence
-they expected to see the regulars rush on them with
-levelled bayonets. Could raw provincials, commanded
-by a fur-trader and a lawyer, face the veterans of
-Europe?</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Three long, cold iron noses poked out at them
-were too much for Dieskau’s Indians. The black-mouthed
-cannon, intercepting with their round circles
-a charming view of the blue lake ahead, took
-away the courage of the bush-rangers, and both reds
-and whites scattered and took to the woods. To the
-exasperation of Dieskau, all his life used to regular
-military formations, his great host melted away from
-his sight in the undergrowth and behind trees;
-where, now creeping forward, now squatting or lying,
-they began a dropping fire in the front and on the
-flanks of the Americans. In traditional European
-style, the French regulars, in white uniforms and
-with glittering bayonets, marched up and delivered
-their volleys from double ranks.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Platoon-firing was then the orthodox method of
-<span class='pageno' title='138' id='Page_138'></span>
-war. The long, thin lines of battle which now obtain
-in the field, and which the Americans taught to
-Europe, were not then known to men accustomed to
-the cleared land and level fields of the Low Countries,
-and of Europe generally. Soon moving forward into
-the clearing, and deploying to double width, the regulars
-fired by platoons of three lines,—the first file
-of men kneeling down, and the rear, or third file,
-delivering their volleys over the shoulders of those of
-the second line in front. Aiming too high and being
-too far off for the effective range of flint-lock smooth-bores,
-the result of their general miss was to arouse
-the spirits of the Americans, even to gayety. After
-the first hour their nerves became more steady, and
-they aimed with deadly effect, while the irritated and
-excited veterans fired too high to do much execution.
-When the cannon served by the sailors under Major
-Eyre began to tear their ranks with round shot and
-canister, the great gaps made among the white coats
-cheered the provincials still more. Gallantly dressing
-up, they endeavoured for many minutes to present
-an orderly front; but, finally, Dieskau had to break
-from the road, and moving to the right in the face of
-a murderous fire, began the attack on the three regiments
-of Colonels Williams, Ruggles, and Whitcomb.
-Here for another hour they stood their ground manfully,
-in the face of a fire whose rapidity and accuracy
-were the astonishment of Dieskau, who bravely led his
-troops until struck down.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The commanders on either side in this battle were
-wounded, and had to retire in favour of others. Johnson,
-<span class='pageno' title='139' id='Page_139'></span>
-shortly after the first volley of the French regulars,
-was struck by a ball in the thigh which made a
-painful flesh wound. The ball broke no bones, but
-was never extracted, and the lacerated nerves troubled
-him more or less all his life thereafter. He retired to
-his tent, and Gen. Phineas Lyman took command,
-cheering his men, and exposing himself with reckless
-bravery both behind and outside the barricade. In
-fact, this battle of Lake George was Lyman’s battle,
-and was largely Lyman’s victory.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Dieskau had bravely led his men during several
-hours, but while giving an order to his Indians to
-move farther to the left, he approached so near the
-intrenchments that he received, from an American
-standing behind a tree, his first wound. Ordering
-the Chevalier de Montreuil to take command, and to
-order retreat if necessary, then to do his best, and
-to send men to remove him, Dieskau crawled near a
-tree and sat with his back against it. One Canadian
-sent to remove him was picked off by an American,
-and fell across the baron’s wounded knee. The other
-went off for assistance; but soon after his disappearance
-the retreat was sounded. A renegade Frenchman,
-on the American side, then approached within
-twelve paces of the German baron, and deliberately
-shot him, the bullet traversing his hips. Dieskau had
-received, in all, five wounds.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Blodget, a sutler in Johnson’s army, stood like a war-correspondent
-on the hill near by, watching the fighting.
-He was thus enabled to make a sketch of the
-battle, which he published as a cheap print, “with a
-<span class='pageno' title='140' id='Page_140'></span>
-full though short history,” some weeks afterward, in
-Boston. Even the wagoners, in the intervals between
-carrying to Surgeon Williams the wounded who lay on
-the ground behind the log-house, took their part in
-fighting; each probably doing as much execution as
-the average farmer’s boy. For, despite the hot fire so
-long maintained, the number of killed and wounded
-on the enemy’s side, except among the French regulars
-whose white uniform made them easy targets,
-was not very great. It was not easy to hit men ensconced
-behind trees or stumps, or occasionally rising
-in the smoke above the underbrush, while the enemy
-could, during most of the time, see only here and
-there a head. The Mohawks in the camp were
-mostly useless, except to keep up yelling while their
-white brothers fought beyond the breastworks; and
-they enjoyed seeing how the pale faces fought. Nevertheless,
-about forty of their number lost their lives
-during the day in ambuscade and battle.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>While this attack of the regulars on the right was
-progressing, the French Canadians and the Abenaki
-Indians boldly attempted to flank the left of the
-camp, many of them even going away round toward
-the lake, and clustering in a morass where the musketry
-fire could not well reach them. Fortunately,
-however, Johnson had posted a field-piece advantageously
-on the extreme left of his front, which now
-harassed the squatting Indians, while on those in the
-marsh the mortars and howitzers were trained. Although
-the howitzers split and became useless, the
-mortars did well; and some shells skilfully dropped
-<span class='pageno' title='141' id='Page_141'></span>
-drove the lurking enemy away, and completely relieved
-this flank of danger.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Brave as were the Americans behind the rude barricade,
-they did not excel the French regulars, who
-fought until they were nearly annihilated. It was well
-into the afternoon when they were deserted by hundreds
-of French forest-rangers and Canadian Indians,
-who, seeing no hope of winning the day, skulked
-away to the scene of the morning’s ambuscade,—the
-one set to plunder, and the other to scalp the slain.
-About four o’clock so many of the white-coated regulars
-were prone on the ground and so few in action, all
-their officers being disabled, while the fire of the
-others had slackened, that the Americans began to
-get out of their breastworks, and to fight in the
-woods. This made the French give way so visibly
-that the whole of Lyman’s force rushed out on the
-enemy with their hatchets and clubbed muskets, pushing
-them out of ambush into full retreat. This onset
-took place between four and five o’clock <span class='sc'>p. m.</span>, and
-resulted in completely driving the enemy off the field.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The fighting was not yet over, for the third battle
-on this eventful day was yet to take place. Hearing
-the distant firing, Colonel Blanchard, of Fort Lyman,
-sent out a party of two hundred and fifty men under
-command of the brave Captain McGinnis, who, with
-his Schenectady men, led the van. Warily approaching
-the place of the morning’s ambuscade, with
-scouts ahead, they succeeded in getting between the
-piled-up baggage of the French army and a vidette of
-five or six men who were keeping a lookout on a hill.
-<span class='pageno' title='142' id='Page_142'></span>
-Moving farther up the road, they found a party of
-three hundred French and Indians, consisting of those
-who had plundered the slain, and of other remnants
-of the beaten army, who were eating cold rations out
-of their packs. They sat along Rocky Brook and the
-marshy pond. McGinnis and his men approached
-stealthily until within firing distance, and then, after a
-volley, charged like tigers upon their prey.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the fight which ensued the Americans contested
-against heavy odds; but although their brave captain
-was mortally wounded, he directed their movements
-till the firing ceased, and the third battle of this
-eventful day resulted in victory. Not till the next
-evening did the scattered band of Dieskau’s army
-meet, exhausted and famished, at the place where
-they had left their canoes.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The next day the marshy pool, in places reddened
-with the blood of the slain, thrown into it to save burial,
-was given the name—which it ever afterward
-kept—of “Bloody Pond.” When the writer saw it,
-in 1877, the sunbeams danced merrily on its dimpled
-face, as the snow-white and golden pond-lilies were
-swayed by the morning’s breeze, rippling the water’s
-surface, while yet held at anchor beneath. In this
-threefold battle the Americans lost most heavily in
-the “bloody morning scout” at the ambuscade,—their
-total being two hundred and twenty killed, and
-ninety wounded. The well-plied tomahawks, after the
-surprise in the woods, and the poisoned bullets of the
-French Canadians accounted for the disproportionate
-number of the dead over the wounded. Among the
-<span class='pageno' title='143' id='Page_143'></span>
-officers were Colonel Williams, Major Ashley, Captains
-Keys, Porter, Ingersoll, and twelve others.
-Captain McGinnis died in the camp two days afterward.
-Of the Indians, beside Hendrick, thirty-eight
-were slain. On the French side the loss must have
-been fully four hundred, or probably one third of
-those actually engaged.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In this battle farmers and traders prevailed over
-European troops, trained woodcraftsmen, and fierce
-savages. The honours of the command belong equally
-to three men. The credit of the defences, and the
-excellent disposition of marksmen, artillery, and reserves,
-belongs to Johnson, who, unfortunately, was
-wounded in the hips in the first part of the battle, and
-had to leave the field for shelter. The command then
-devolved upon Gen. Phineas Lyman, who deserves
-equal honour with Johnson. The Connecticut general,
-cool and alert, displayed the greatest courage,
-and was largely influential in securing the final result.
-To McGinnis belongs the credit of winning a victory,—the
-second of the day, in what may be called the
-third battle of this eventful 8th of September. Nevertheless,
-such are the peculiarities of the military
-mind, that Johnson never mentioned Lyman’s name
-in his official despatch. For this reason, and because
-they unjustly suspected cowardice in Johnson during
-the battle, and because they saw comparatively little
-of him before and after it, withal being sectional and
-clannish in their opinions, Johnson was extremely unpopular
-with the New England soldiers. Their judgments
-have mightily influenced the accounts of the
-<span class='pageno' title='144' id='Page_144'></span>
-threefold battle of Lake George as found in the
-writings of New England annalists and historians.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson was at once rewarded by being made a
-baronet, with the gift of five thousand pounds, while
-Lyman received the ordinary stipend of his rank,—another
-ingredient in Johnson’s unpopularity in the
-Eastern colonies.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Three days after, the Iroquois allies waited on Johnson
-and informed him that, according to custom, after
-losing comrades in battle, they must return home
-to cheer their people, and protect their castles against
-the Abenaki Indians, from whom they feared an attack.
-It was in vain that Johnson tried to show them that
-the campaign had hardly begun, and to persuade them
-to alter their purpose. They insisted on going away,
-promising, however, to come again soon with fresh
-zeal.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Dissensions and jealousies between the troops of
-the various colonies now broke out. Both the generals
-commanding, and the new governor, Hardy, thought
-that a strong fort should be built to command the
-water-way to Canada, by way of Lake George.
-Though as important for the defence of New England
-as of New York, the Eastern officers and men could
-not see the need of a fort here, and the work dragged.
-When finished, it was called by the courtier, Johnson,
-Fort William Henry, after the king’s grandson, and
-had a notable history. Meanwhile, owing to remissness
-of contractors, the petty jealousies of the officers
-and militia of five or more colonies, and the overcautiousness
-of Johnson, nothing aggressive was done.
-<span class='pageno' title='145' id='Page_145'></span>
-Late in November, the fort being finished, the unpopular
-duty of garrisoning it devolved upon a medley of
-six hundred men from the various colonies. The
-army was disbanded, and the levies marched home.
-Johnson resigned his commission, and returned to
-Mount Johnson about the middle of December. About
-ten days later he was in New York, enjoying, as well
-as his wound would allow, the parade and illumination
-of the city in his honour; while Dieskau languished in
-the Schuyler mansion in Albany, waiting for some of
-his many wounds to heal; and Lyman received modest
-honours at home. The patent of Johnson’s baronetcy
-was dated Nov. 27, 1755. He invested the four
-thousand nine hundred and forty-five pounds eighteen
-shillings and sixpence which came into his hands, in
-three per cent bank annuities.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>His coat-of-arms consisted of a heart-shaped shield
-held and flanked on either side by an Indian equipped
-with feathers, medal, quiver, and bow. On the shield
-are three fleurs-de-lis; and on the convex band across
-the shield, two shells, and between them a smaller
-heart, on which lies an open hand supine. Above the
-shield a hand grasps a dart. The motto is <span class='it'>Deo
-Regique Debeo</span>. The full inscription of the blazon
-in the language of heraldry is given in the standard
-books which treat of the British peerage.</p>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='146' id='Page_146'></span><h1>CHAPTER IX.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>BRITISH FAILURES PREPARING FOR AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The</span> versatile Johnson, turning from military to civil
-duties, remained in New York during the whole of the
-month of January, 1756. The men then in control of
-the British government, with their usual obtuseness,
-sent another sailor to do the work of a statesman.
-Sir Charles Hardy, after appointing October 2 as a
-day of public thanksgiving for the victory at Lake
-George, celebrated it himself by starting on a visit to
-Albany. He proposed to effect such a resumption of
-active military operations as would secure the main
-object of the great expedition,—the capture of Crown
-Point. His presence, however, was fruitless, and he
-returned to New York, November 26. Then, on the
-2d of December, he met his little Parliament, and told
-them all about the victory of General Johnson or
-Baron Dieskau. The stolid Dutchmen and others
-were unable, as the Indian orators would say, “to see
-it in that light.” They could not do other than anticipate
-the verdict of the critical scholarship of this
-generation, for they looked upon the whole affair as
-“a failure disguised under an incidental success.”
-Further, instead of hearing that the English flag
-<span class='pageno' title='147' id='Page_147'></span>
-waved over Crown Point, and that English cannon
-guarded the narrows of Lake Champlain, they were
-asked to pay for Fort William Henry and Fort George,
-both of which were but an ordinary day’s horseback-ride
-from Albany. At the same time Sir Charles demanded
-in King George’s name a permanent revenue, with
-which to pay governors, judges, and the general expenses
-of the government.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>To the first proposition, to pay their share of expense
-for forts in which all the colonies were interested, the
-Assembly at once responded favourably. To the second
-they gave a flat refusal, declaring that the idea of
-a permanent revenue was in direct opposition to the
-public sentiment of the colony.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>On the same day on which the Assembly met, Governor
-Shirley arrived in New York. Being, by the
-death of Braddock, the king’s chief military representative
-in America, he summoned a congress of colonial
-governors to meet in New York December 12. With
-his usual extraordinary mental activity, he was full of
-schemes, one of which was a midwinter campaign
-against Ticonderoga. The congress approved of it;
-but the hard-headed members of the Assembly, the
-people generally, and Johnson, did not. With all admiration
-for the fussy politician, who planned superbly
-on paper, but somehow failed in the field, they had a
-sincere respect, which was, however, tempered by excellent
-common-sense.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>As for Shirley and Johnson, they seemed always
-unable to work harmoniously together, the latter resenting
-what he believed to be the needless interference
-<span class='pageno' title='148' id='Page_148'></span>
-of the other. Shirley found Johnson more
-than a match for him in the rather acrid correspondence
-conducted in New York during January. Living
-but a few rods apart, the liveried coloured servants of
-these colonial dignitaries kept their soles warm in
-carrying despatches. In jealousy of each other, the
-two gentlemen were as incompatible as Siamese twins,
-their only common ligament being loyalty to the
-Crown. Johnson was determined to get and hold his
-commission from the Crown, and not be subject to
-colonial governors or assemblies. He laid the whole
-matter before the Lords of Trade, and aided by his
-friends at Court, secured a flattering verdict in his
-favour. In July, 1756, there came to him from his
-Majesty’s Secretary, Fox, a commission as Colonel,
-Agent, and sole Superintendent of all the affairs of the
-Six Nations, and other Northern Indians, with an annual
-salary of six hundred pounds. By orders from
-the same august source, the Northern colonies were
-prohibited from transacting business with the Indians,
-so that the whole matter was settled in Johnson’s
-hands.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Being now well intrenched in his office and authority,
-Johnson, with his usual versatility and vigour,
-turned from the duties of the desk and council-room
-to the activities of the field. The frontiers of New
-Hampshire had been harassed during the winter by
-prowling bands of savages, but the French now attempted
-a more ambitious raid. Warned by Indian
-runners, who had made the first part of their journey
-on snow-shoes from Fort Bull at the Oneida “carry,”
-<span class='pageno' title='149' id='Page_149'></span>
-he at once sent ammunition to the garrison of thirty
-men. On skates from Montreal to Fort Presentation,
-and thence on snow-shoes to the Oneida portage, the
-party of nearly three hundred Frenchmen, after ten
-days of gliding and stepping, appeared before the
-wooden fort, March 27. Their demand for surrender
-was met by a volley, which in return was answered by
-a charge, a crushing in of the gate, and a massacre of
-all but five of the garrison. Among the military
-stores destroyed were two tons of powder. About the
-same time the ship-carpenters at Oswego became the
-prey of raiding Indians from Niagara, who returned
-with three prisoners and twelve scalps. Forays were
-made by Canadian savages, even into Ulster and
-Orange Counties, within a day’s horse-ride of New
-York.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The winter was unusually mild, which caused the
-utter abandonment of Shirley’s expedition to Crown
-Point; while the numerous petty successes of the
-French and Indians turned the faces of the vacillating
-members of the Iroquois cantons toward Canada as
-the winning side.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Yet strange as it may seem, the New York Assembly
-was slow in voting supplies. The ultra-loyalists who
-supported Hardy, who was backed by the king and
-his council, now vented their maledictions upon the
-“foreigners” who made the cosmopolitan population
-of the province, and their representatives in the
-Assembly. All this seems strange to the average historiographer,
-especially to the copyist of loyalist or
-other writers who rely on such men as Colden, Smith,
-<span class='pageno' title='150' id='Page_150'></span>
-Jones, Washington Irving, and the like, for their ideas
-of Colonial New York and her people. There was
-good reason for the stubbornness of the legislators.
-The fact is, that the people of the province of New
-York were mostly descendants of the sturdy Republicans
-who had fought under William the Silent. They
-believed that the encroachments of monarchy—that
-is, one-man power—were more dangerous than the
-raids of hostile Indians. The Dutch, Germans,
-Scots, Irish, Huguenots, were almost a unit in their
-democratic ideas. This province, unlike others of
-the original thirteen, was not settled by people of
-aristocratic England, in which a republic, once begun,
-had gone to pieces inside of twelve years, but by men
-long trained in self-government and in a republic.
-Even their forms of church life were as nurseries for
-the training of men in democratic principles. To the
-loyalist historian, Jones, a Presbyterian seems to be a
-synonym for rebel, of whatever name or strain of
-blood. Congregationalists, fed on the rhetoric and
-oratory of Forefathers’ Day, find it hard to believe that
-the democratic idea in Church and State flourished
-anywhere outside of New England. The New York
-men were determined at all hazards—even the hazards
-of savage desolation—to resist any further
-trenching upon their rights by King George, or his
-subservient Parliament, or his bullying governor.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>England had sent over, after Clinton, another illiterate
-sailor to enforce a fresh demand,—even the
-passage of a law for settling a permanent revenue on
-a solid foundation; said law to be indefinite and without
-<span class='pageno' title='151' id='Page_151'></span>
-limitation of time. The descendants of the Hollanders
-who had long ago, even against mighty Spain,
-settled the principle of no taxation without consent,
-and had maintained it in a war of eighty years, were
-resolved to fight again the same battle on American
-soil. They now set themselves resolutely to resist
-the demands of the Crown, and this whether Indians
-were in Orange County or at Niagara. Despite the
-protests of such incorrigible Tories as Smith, Colden,
-and others in the Executive Council, the people’s
-representatives persevered.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It is needless to say that the Assembly gained their
-point, and that the greatest and most lasting victory
-of the people in the long story of American liberty
-was won. A few months after, at the autumn session,
-the joyful news reached New York that the Crown
-had virtually repealed the instructions to Sir Danvers
-Osborne, which had made the colonists of New York
-set themselves in united array of resistance to “their
-most gracious sovereign.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The war had thus far been carried on without profession
-or declaration. The diplomatists of London and
-Versailles had been as polite and full of smooth words
-as if profound peace reigned. The English were following
-their old trade of piracy, and had captured
-hundreds of French vessels, and imprisoned thousands
-of French sailors. The French, on the other hand,
-were doing with England as they did with China in
-1885, when they bombarded cities, treacherously got
-behind forts in the Pearl River, and killed thousands
-of Chinese, while all the time professing to be at
-<span class='pageno' title='152' id='Page_152'></span>
-peace. At length the British went through the formality
-of declaring war, May 17. On the French
-side, the necessary parchment, red tape, and seals were
-prepared, and the official ink flowed two years after
-blood had flowed like water.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Now at last, in Pitt, England had a premier who
-knew something about the geography of America;
-and “geography,” as Von Moltke teaches, “is half of
-war.” William Pitt thought the time had come for
-intelligent and active operations looking to the conquest
-of North America by the English. His first selection
-of men, however, was not particularly wise or
-evident of genius. Listening to the word of Johnson,
-and others in New York, he removed Shirley from the
-chief command, and sent out, successively, Colonel
-Webb, General Abercrombie, and Lord Loudon,—all
-of them, as it proved, failures.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The three men appointed were alike in their supercilious
-contempt for American militia and officers, and
-were all destined, through their ignorant pride, to disgust
-Americans with English ways, and steadily to determine
-them toward independence. Abercrombie,
-on his arrival, at once began to cast firebrands of discontent
-among the colonial troops by nullifying the
-intelligent and well-laid plans of Shirley, and promulgating
-the exasperating order that all regular officers
-were to be over those in the colonial service of the
-same rank. General Winslow fortunately succeeded
-in dissuading the Britisher from his madness, before
-desertions and threatened resignations became too
-numerous; but with the compromise that the imported
-<span class='pageno' title='153' id='Page_153'></span>
-soldiers should garrison the forts while the Americans
-went to the front. In other words, the provincials
-were to see and do the severest service. Abercrombie
-further showed his obstinacy and ignorance of affairs
-by billeting ten thousand soldiers on the citizens of
-Albany, instead of at once advancing to Oswego. He
-thus unwittingly helped to create that sentiment against
-the outraging of American homes by the forced presence
-of soldiers which, later, found expression for
-all time in the amendment to the Constitution of the
-United States. Abercrombie wasted the whole summer
-at Schenectady, which now became the headquarters
-of the armies. It was determined to build forts
-at all the portages between this town and Oswego, as
-well as at South Bay, to protect Fort Edward. While
-the boat-yards along the Mohawk River were in full
-activity, and stores were being collected, he employed
-his men part of the time in teaching the people of
-Albany and Schenectady how to build earthworks in
-European style, in digging ditches, and in putting up
-heavier stockades around the two towns.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>One of the good things done by Parliament at this
-time was the formation of the Royal American Regiment
-of four battalions, each a thousand strong. Of
-the fifty officers commissioned, nearly one third were
-Germans and Swiss. Most of the rank and file were
-Palatine and Swiss-Germans in America, who enlisted
-for three years. None of the officers could rise above
-the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and the Earl of Loudon
-was appointed first colonel-in-chief. Loudon was succeeded
-in 1757 by Abercrombie, and in 1758 by Lord
-<span class='pageno' title='154' id='Page_154'></span>
-Amherst. Until the Revolutionary War, this cosmopolitan
-regiment did noble service under Stanwix,
-Bouquet, Forbes, Prideaux, Wolfe, and Johnson.
-From 1757 to 1760 we find one or more battalions
-of the regiment in active service in the various parts
-of New York. The famous Rev. Michael Schlatter,
-the organizer of the German Reformed Church in
-Pennsylvania, was the regimental chaplain. On the
-15th of June, 1756, the forty German officers who
-were to raise the recruits arrived, one of the ablest
-being Colonel Bouquet. This Swiss officer, with the
-Germans, at Bushy Run in Pennsylvania largely retrieved
-the disasters caused by Braddock’s defeat, and
-restored the frontiers of Pennsylvania to comparative
-safety and comfort.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>While Abercrombie, who was one of those military
-men whose reliance is less upon the sword than the
-spade, was digging ditches in Albany, Johnson was arranging
-for a great Indian council at his house on the
-Mohawk. He had in view the double purpose of
-winning the Delawares and other Pennsylvania tribes
-from war against the English colonists, and of inducing
-all the Northern Indians to join in the expedition
-against the French posts on Lake Ontario. Braddock’s
-defeat had been the signal for the Delawares,
-under the direct influence of the French, to break the
-peace of more than seventy years, and to scatter fire
-and blood in Pennsylvania, from the Monongahela to
-the Delaware. The solemn treaty of Penn—which
-Voltaire, with more wit than truth, declared was
-“never sworn to and never broken”—was now a thing
-<span class='pageno' title='155' id='Page_155'></span>
-of the past. The wampum was unravelled, and the
-men with hats and the men with scalp-locks were in
-deadly conflict. While the Friends remained at their
-Philadelphia firesides, the German and Scotch settlers
-on the frontier bore the brunt of savage fury. When
-public action was taken, it was in the double and contradictory
-form of peace-belts of wampum sent by the
-Friends, and a declaration of war by Governor Morris.
-In this mixed state of things it was hard for Johnson
-to know what to do. Through his influence the Iroquois,
-uncles and masters, had summoned by wampum
-belts their nephews and vassals to the great
-conference which was opened at his house in February,
-1756. To prepare for this, Johnson had made a
-journey to the council-fire of the Confederacy at Onondaga,
-arriving June 15. There he succeeded in neutralizing
-in part the work done by the French, and
-obtained an important concession. The Iroquois
-voted to allow a road to be opened through the very
-heart of their empire to Oswego, and a fort to be
-built at Oswego Falls.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>These severe exertions cost Johnson a fit of sickness;
-but on the 7th of July he met the Iroquois, Delawares,
-and Shawanese at his house. After the usual
-consumption, on both sides, of wampum, verbosity,
-and rum, all the Indians were won over to the English
-cause. The covenant chain of peace was renewed,
-the war-belts were accepted by the sachems,
-and medals hung around their necks by Johnson
-himself. The Delawares had “their petticoats taken
-off,”—or, in other words, they were no longer squaws
-<span class='pageno' title='156' id='Page_156'></span>
-in the eyes of the Iroquois, but allies, friends, and men.
-Without detracting from Johnson’s reputation, it is
-probable that the possession by many of the Delawares
-of the rifles made by the Pennsylvania Swiss and
-Germans, which gave them such an advantage over
-Dutch and English smooth-bores, had much to do
-with winning the respect of the Iroquois.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Through Johnson’s influence two councils were held
-in Pennsylvania, at Easton, when the Delawares under
-their great chief, Teedyuscung, met delegations of
-the Iroquois and Governor Denny. Teedyuscung had
-for his secretary “the Man of Truth,” Charles Thompson,
-master of the Friends’ Free School in Philadelphia.
-The proceedings lasted nine days; Denny by
-his tact being able “to put his hand in Teedyuscung’s
-bosom and draw out the secret” of his uneasiness.
-The council was adjourned to Lancaster in the spring
-of 1757, when, however, the Delaware chief failed to
-appear. Nevertheless peace was obtained on the
-Pennsylvania borders, the credit for which was claimed
-by the Senecas.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>To turn now to the field of war, we find that Governor
-Shirley had organized a corps of armed boatmen,
-and had sent them under Colonel Bradstreet to
-Oswego. Bradstreet was successful in thus provisioning
-the forts with a six months’ store for five thousand
-men. After his brilliant exploit he was attacked on
-his way back, three leagues from the fort, by De Villiers
-with eleven hundred men. Despite the sudden
-fury of the attack, Bradstreet beat off the enemy with
-loss, only a heavy rain preventing his gaining a greater
-<span class='pageno' title='157' id='Page_157'></span>
-victory. Reaching Albany, he urged General Abercrombie
-to march at once to the forts. A large expedition
-under Montcalm was already on its way to
-remove these, the chief obstacles to their plans of empire.
-Johnson in person seconded Bradstreet’s appeal,
-urging that if Oswego fell, the Iroquois would be
-sure to join the French. Abercrombie stupidly refused
-to move until Lord Loudon’s arrival, and the
-golden opportunity was lost.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This slow-minded personage, Lord Loudon, the
-Scotsman, reached Albany on the 29th of July; but
-correct ideas as to the situation percolated into his
-brain with difficulty. Indeed, as with Sydney Smith’s
-proverbial joke about the Scotchman’s skull, it seemed
-necessary to perform a surgical operation in order to
-show him how needful it was to march at once to
-Oswego, notwithstanding that Montcalm with his host
-was daily approaching.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>While Loudon was fooling away his time in jealousy
-of the provincial militia, and sending a force in the
-wrong direction at Crown Point, Montcalm with three
-thousand troops and plenty of cannon, part of which
-had been captured from Braddock, settled himself
-before Oswego. Of the three forts garrisoned by
-Shirley’s and Pepperell’s regiments of New England
-men, only one was able to stand a protracted siege.
-All assembled in this fort, Ontario, and fought
-gallantly until Colonel Mercer was cut in half by a
-cannon-shot. Then a panic ensued. The one hundred
-women in the fort begged that the place should
-be surrendered, and the white flag was shortly afterward
-<span class='pageno' title='158' id='Page_158'></span>
-hoisted. The forts were burned, and the place
-left a desolation, in which the priest, Picquet, set up
-a lofty cross, and beside it the arms of France. The
-French were now masters of Lake Ontario, and of the
-passages by land and water to the Ohio, and free to
-attack the Lake George forts. They found themselves
-enriched to the extent of sixteen hundred prisoners,
-one hundred and twenty cannon, six ships of war,
-three hundred boats, three chests of money, besides
-a great quantity of provisions and the stores of war.
-The destruction instead of the occupation of the forts
-was a master stroke of policy in favor of conciliating
-the Six Nations.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In this affair Montcalm showed the nobility of his
-nature in protecting, at the hazard of his life, the prisoners
-from massacre. When the Indians, filled with
-rum, had turned into devils, and were sinking their
-hatchets in the brains of the unarmed, Montcalm, as
-the eyewitness John Viele of Schenectady on his return
-testified before Johnson, ordered out his troops
-and fired on the brutes. Six of the drunken savages
-were shot dead. The murdering ceased at once, and
-there was no massacre.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Loudon the lazy had finally awaked to the situation,
-and sent General Webb with twelve hundred men to
-reinforce Oswego. At the Oneida portage Webb
-heard of the surrender, and hoping to delay the French
-who were advancing, as he supposed, on Albany, he
-had some trees chopped down to delay their boats.
-He then hastily retreated to the fort at German Flats.
-Johnson, at Albany, heard the news August 20, and
-<span class='pageno' title='159' id='Page_159'></span>
-under Loudon’s orders, with two battalions of the
-Valley militia and a corps of three hundred Indians,
-hastened to reinforce Webb. Remaining in camp fifteen
-days, until hearing of the removal of the French,
-he dismissed the militia and returned home.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>So passed another year of failure. John Campbell,
-Scotsman, otherwise called Earl of Loudon, had been
-sent out as the representative of Lord Halifax and of
-the Lords of Trade. Having decided to unite all the
-colonies under military rule, and force them to support
-a standing army, they selected this man, who
-was strong in the idea of colonial subordination, but
-was vacillating, incapable, vain, wasteful, and lazy.
-His first winter campaign consisted chiefly in scolding
-Shirley, and making the Massachusetts governor the
-scapegoat for his own shortcomings; in disgusting the
-people of New York by billeting his officers upon
-them; and in both New York and Boston diligently
-hastening the separation of the colonies from Great
-Britain by making a fool of himself generally.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>With the regulars in winter quarters, the militia
-dismissed to their homes, the whole frontier, except in
-the Lake George region, open and exposed, five of
-the Six Nations practically alienated from the English
-and already making terms with the French, the
-outlook was dark.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>However, the Mohawks were faithful; and Johnson
-took heart, believing he could yet win and hold the
-Iroquois. Sending his captains, the two Butlers, and
-Jellis Fonda to the various castles, and to the fireplace
-of the Confederacy at Onondaga, he appointed a great
-<span class='pageno' title='160' id='Page_160'></span>
-council to meet, June 10, 1757. Meanwhile he
-sent the Mohawks out upon the war-path, and had
-the satisfaction of hearing of the repulse of the French
-and the safe defence of the Fort William Henry which
-he had built two years before at Lake George. Major
-William Eyre, the ordnance officer who had served
-the guns so efficiently at the battle of Lake George
-against Dieskau’s regulars, was in command of the
-fort, with four hundred men. The commander of the
-American rangers, with Eyre, was John Stark. The
-long and dreary winter was nearly over, and Saint
-Patrick’s Day was at hand. The French knew as
-well that the Irish soldiers would be drunk on the
-18th of March, as Washington knew that the Hessians
-would be unfit for clear-headed fighting the day
-after Christmas. Fortunately, through the thoughtfulness
-of the future hero of Bennington, his own
-rangers were kept sober by enforced total abstinence,
-and the Irish had the rum and drunkenness all to
-themselves. The French force of fifteen hundred
-regulars, wood-rangers, and savages came down the
-lakes on the ice, dragging, each man, his sledge containing
-provisions, arms, and various equipments,
-among which were three hundred scaling-ladders.
-They began a furious attack at sunrise on the 18th,
-expecting easy victory; but Eyre used his artillery
-with such deadly effect that despite four separate
-attacks within twenty-four hours, the expedition ended
-in total failure. Seized with a panic, the besiegers
-fled, leaving their sledges and much valuable property
-behind, besides their dead.
-<span class='pageno' title='161' id='Page_161'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson first heard of this event in a letter from
-Colonel Gage,—him who married an American
-wife, and afterward occupied Boston with the redcoats,
-only to be compelled to leave it at the request
-of Washington, his old comrade-in-arms on
-Braddock’s Field. It is a curious coincidence that
-Colonel Gage has unwittingly furnished Yankee Boston
-with a public holiday in honour of Ireland’s patron,
-Saint Patrick,—which the Irish majority in the Boston
-City Council first inaugurated in 1890, under the
-disguise of “Evacuation Day.” The date which the
-Frenchmen chose for their approach to Fort William
-Henry was the date also on which Gage, in 1775,
-sailed away to the land whence the Canadians had
-come in 1757.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson’s tremendous energies now shone forth.
-He at once summoned the Mohawk Valley militia,
-and sent his trusty interpreter, Arent Stevens, to rouse
-the Mohawks. The meeting-place was at his house.
-The news came on Sunday the 24th; and on Monday,
-at daylight, the column of twelve hundred
-militia and the Indians were on the march which
-in less than four days brought them to Fort William
-Henry.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Finding the enemy gone, Johnson allowed his men
-two days’ rest, and was about to start homeward,
-when hearing that the French meditated a blow on
-the frontier village of German Flats, he kept in the
-saddle all night, reaching home at four <span class='sc'>a. m.</span> Fortunately
-the news was not confirmed; but he nevertheless
-ordered the militia to Burnet’s Field, and made
-<span class='pageno' title='162' id='Page_162'></span>
-his headquarters there. This energetic action had a
-good effect upon the Iroquois who had been invited
-to the grand council at Fort Johnson, as his house
-was now called, and on the 10th of June the proceedings
-were duly opened. The result of the ten days’
-conference was that the neutrality of the Senecas,
-Cayugas, and Onondagas was secured; while the three
-other tribes—the Oneidas, Tuscaroras, and Mohawks—were
-heartily enlisted to fight for the English against
-the French.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Summer passed away in Johnson’s despatching Indian
-parties to Canada; in Governor Hardy’s returning
-to the more congenial quarter-deck, exchanging
-civil for naval life; in Loudon’s making a grand
-failure at Louisburg, as usual blaming the colonial
-officers and troops for his own blunders; and in the
-shameful loss of Fort William Henry through the cowardice
-of General Webb.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson had warned Webb of the coming of Montcalm
-with nearly eight thousand men, including a body
-of Indians said to be gathered from forty-one tribes.
-On the 1st of August, while holding a council with the
-Cherokees at his house, he received news from General
-Webb that Montcalm was moving down upon
-Colonel Monro, who with two thousand men occupied
-the fort and adjoining camp. Johnson at once adjourned
-the council, and summoning the militia and
-Mohawks, quickly reached Fort Edward, and begged
-to be sent to reinforce Monro. The double-minded
-Webb at first consented, and then ordered him back.
-Within sound of the cannon, Webb held back his
-<span class='pageno' title='163' id='Page_163'></span>
-whole force, and sent Monro a note advising him to
-surrender. Only when his ammunition was nearly exhausted,
-his heavy cannon burst, three hundred of his
-men killed or wounded, many others helpless with
-small-pox, and the outlook hopeless, did Monro surrender.
-As usual, the Indians, many of them from
-tribes utterly unused to any control, got at the rum-barrels,
-and were converted into devils, whom Montcalm
-in vain endeavoured to control, until after they had
-butchered scores of Monro’s unarmed people, including
-women and children. The fort and barracks were
-burned, and on great heaps of the fuel thus obtained
-the bodies of the slain were given cremation.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Webb, almost scared out of his wits, would have
-moved southward to West Point, but that Lord Howe,
-who had arrived with reinforcements, calmed him.
-Almost as a matter of course, the blame was laid by
-the British officers and regulars on the provincial
-troops. This military bigotry, and the inveterate
-prejudice of the regulars against volunteers had a
-tremendous effect in making the native-born militia
-suspect that they could some day do without the supercilious
-and conceited king’s servants. They saw
-that most of the hard fighting had been done by militiamen
-at the front, who, notwithstanding the immense
-resources of Great Britain, were not properly supported
-at the right time. They were tired of being
-led to the slaughter by fussy, incompetent, and often
-cowardly commanders. They noted, also, that the
-regulars were mostly kept in garrison, while the militia
-were sent to the front, where, usually in battle with the
-<span class='pageno' title='164' id='Page_164'></span>
-Indians, the Americans stood their ground, fighting
-behind trees, while the handsomely uniformed regulars
-were flying to the rear. Further yet, the regulars
-stationed in the forts in the Mohawk Valley were
-so arrogant and conceited as to look—as the average
-Englishman is so apt to do—upon the Dutchmen
-and Germans as a sort of inferior cattle. The
-consequence was that they were practically useless as
-defenders.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson was so heartily disgusted with the state of
-affairs that it is probable that his sickness in October
-and November was a direct result of exposure in camp,
-and distraction of mind. He knew that the French
-would now at the first opportunity strike the western
-frontier. He therefore wrote to Abercrombie in September,
-to reinforce the Valley forts and send scouts
-and rangers to German Flats. All such warnings, however,
-were like “an east wind in an ass’s ears.” Abercrombie
-and his men drilled, drank, swore, gambled,
-dug ditches, and caricatured the Dutch people in
-church, and otherwise amused themselves in Albany.
-At German Flats the long strain of duty in watch and
-ward resulted in the inevitable reaction; and when
-the danger was greatest and nearest, the nerves relaxed,
-the midnight lantern went out, and the sentinel
-and people alike slept. The friendly Oneidas informed
-the Germans, fifteen days in advance, of the enemy’s
-movements. A week later, a chief came in person to
-warn them; but the people took it as a joke, laughed in
-his face, and sent no word to Johnson. Tired of hearing
-the cry of “wolf,” they neglected to provide for their
-<span class='pageno' title='165' id='Page_165'></span>
-sheep. Despite the fort, the block-houses, and the
-militia company of one hundred men, the blow fell.
-Fortunately the minister and some of his people heeded
-the friendly warning of the Oneidas, and the day before
-the attack, crossed the river to a place of safety.
-Those left were infatuated until the last moment.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was on the morning of Nov. 13, 1757, that the
-Canadian, Belletre, and his three hundred white and
-red savages surrounded the doomed village, raised the
-yell, and began the attack. The people were dazed.
-After some fitful musketry-firing, the Indians succeeded
-in setting the houses on fire, and in tomahawking and
-scalping the people as they rushed out of the flames.
-One of the block-houses was surrendered by the head
-man of the village, who asked for quarter. Numbers of
-the people were killed as they ran out to the fording-place
-of the river to escape to the opposite side, or
-were shot while in the water. The settlement was
-totally destroyed. Of the three hundred people, a
-sixth were killed and one half taken prisoners; the
-remainder escaped, or had already fled to Fort Herkimer.
-The abundant live-stock was destroyed or driven
-off, and the place left in ashes. All this was done almost
-under the eyes of the commander of Fort Herkimer,
-but a short distance off, across the Mohawk
-River. Having a small garrison, he, though fully
-warned by Oneida Indians of the coming blow, was
-unable to send assistance, and perhaps anticipated an
-attack on his own post.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The people of Stone Arabia and Cherry Valley were
-excited, and prepared to leave these places when the
-<span class='pageno' title='166' id='Page_166'></span>
-escaped refugees brought the news. Lord Howe,
-with his reinforcements, though too late for action,
-prevented the depopulation of the settlements.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The sage Lord Loudon heard of this latest disaster
-while in Albany, and his conduct was characteristic.
-Eager to find a victim on whom to vent his rage and
-to bear his own and his officers’ shortcomings, he
-blamed the Iroquois, and even proposed to make war
-against them. It was, probably, only by the active
-persuasion of Johnson that he was turned from his
-madness.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Imagination vainly seeks to picture the results had
-Loudon, the grand master of Great Britain’s resources,
-even begun his folly, and broken the peace league
-which Van Curler had made, Schuyler extended, and
-Johnson perfected. Had he practically betrayed his
-country by turning the whole Indian power of the
-continent over to the French, the history of this country
-would have been vastly different from that we
-know. Had Johnson done nothing else than prevent
-this, he would deserve a high place among the
-Makers of America.</p>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='167' id='Page_167'></span><h1>CHAPTER X.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>THE HEAVEN-BORN GENERAL.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>It is hard</span> for Americans to realize that the French
-and Indian War was more costly to Great Britain than
-was the War of the American Revolution. As matter
-of fact, the British Government sent a larger total of
-soldiers and sailors, and spent more blood and treasure
-in defending the colonies and in wresting North
-America from the French, than in endeavouring to
-coerce the revolted colonies. Though in the various
-attempts at the reduction of Canada, no large armies
-like those of Burgoyne or Cornwallis were lost by surrender,
-yet the number of men slaughtered in siege
-and battle was greater, and the expeditions being in
-the wilderness were much more costly. To throw a
-bomb into the Niagara fort was like dropping a globe
-of silver; to fire canister, like scattering a Danæan
-shower of guineas; while every effective bullet required
-an outlay of pounds, as well as of shillings and
-pence.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Before the decision of the long controversy between
-Latin and Teutonic civilization in America, at the fall
-of Quebec, another terrible disaster, caused largely by
-British arrogance and contempt of American experience,
-remains to be recorded. This time it was
-<span class='pageno' title='168' id='Page_168'></span>
-to be linked not with the name of Braddock or
-Loudon, but with that of Abercrombie.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Under the quickening touch of the master-hand of
-Pitt, who knew the topography of America, and had
-appointed the “young madman” Wolfe to supersede
-Loudon, Louisburg, Ticonderoga, and Fort Du
-Quesne were chosen as points of attack. Of the three
-expeditions planned, Abercrombie was chosen to lead
-that which was to move to Canada by the great water-way
-of Eastern New York.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We need not here repeat the oft-told story of the
-capture of Louisburg by Amherst and Wolfe; or that
-of the fall of Fort Du Quesne, which Washington
-named Pittsburg. Tremendous enthusiasm was kindled
-in the colonies at the news of these successes.
-In England, when the stands of French colours, after
-being carried through the streets of London and laid
-at the feet of King George, were hung up in St.
-Paul’s Cathedral, the whole nation took fresh courage,
-and believed final victory near. The name of the
-dashing and spirited Wolfe was on every tongue;
-though the other heroes were not forgotten. In New
-England the names of the successful British leaders
-were made monumental in geography. Such places
-as Wolfboro, Amherst, Boscawen, and many others on
-the map, almost as numerous as the grains shaken
-from a pepper-box, testify to popular gratitude and
-enthusiasm.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A different story is that of Abercrombie’s expedition.
-For the reduction of the French fortress on
-Lake Corlaer, or Champlain, the largest army ever
-<span class='pageno' title='169' id='Page_169'></span>
-gathered on the continent was encamped on the
-shores of Lake George. Of the sixteen thousand men
-about three fifths were brilliantly uniformed British
-regulars. For the first time the pavonine dress of the
-bare-legged Highlanders was seen on large bodies of
-men on this side of the Atlantic. Among the American
-militia officers were Stark, Putnam, Bradstreet,
-and Rogers. The following of Sir William Johnson
-was three hundred Indians. In over one thousand
-boats, with banners and music, the host moved down
-the lake, making a superb pageant. In the first skirmish
-in the woods between Lake George and Ticonderoga,
-the gallant Lord Howe was killed. With
-Howe, fell the real head and leading mind of the expedition
-for the capture of Fort Carillon, or Ticonderoga.
-Without waiting for his artillery, which, being
-loaded on rafts, came more slowly, Abercrombie, on
-the morning of July 8, ordered an attack on the French
-abattis which had been made by Montcalm, two
-hundred yards in front of the fort itself.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This movement was against the advice of John
-Stark, who saw in the Frenchman’s line of defence a
-solid breastwork of logs. He knew, also, that the
-trees, cut down and laid with their branches outward
-over the space of three hundred feet in front of the
-breastwork, would throw the attacking platoons and
-columns out of order. With Braddock-like contempt
-for a provincial captain’s advice, Abercrombie, forgetting
-how the rude brushwood defence at Lake
-George had enabled the militia to repulse Dieskau’s
-regulars, ignored the hints given by Stark. Taking
-<span class='pageno' title='170' id='Page_170'></span>
-care to remain safely at the saw-mills, some distance
-in the rear, Abercrombie sent forward his men in four
-columns.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was but a few minutes before all formations were
-hopelessly lost in the jungle of brushwood. When
-Highlanders, rangers, British, and Yankees were well
-entangled, sheets of fire issued from a line of heads
-behind the log breastwork, while the French artillery
-also played bloody havoc. Abercrombie, hearing of
-the initial disaster, left the saw-mills and made off
-with himself to the boat-landing; thence, issuing his
-orders for attacks on the left, the right, and the centre.
-For five hours, without flinching, the victims of military
-incompetence furnished food for French powder,
-and then broke into disorderly retreat. The whole
-army followed their commander, and, when at the
-boats, would have sunk them in their mad rush, but
-for the coolness and firmness of Colonel Bradstreet.
-It is said that the French found, stuck in the mud, five
-hundred pairs of shoes.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Highlanders—old retainers of the Stuarts, but
-organized by Pitt to fight for the Guelphs—lost in this
-battle one half of their number. The total loss of the
-English was nearly two thousand men. Montcalm,
-the skilful soldier, covered himself with glory. The
-Indians under Johnson, being on the top of a hill,
-took no part in the fight, though active as spectators.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Abercrombie retreated to the site of Fort William
-Henry at the head of Lake George. The wildest rumours
-of the advancing victorious French army now
-prevailed at Albany and in the Valley; but Johnson
-<span class='pageno' title='171' id='Page_171'></span>
-did much to allay fear and restore confidence by
-sending out the militia, doubling the guards, and garrisoning
-the forts and block-houses. Largely through
-his earnest appeals, in person, to Abercrombie, General
-Stanwix was sent with a large force to build a
-spacious fort at the one place where direct boat navigation
-between Schenectady and Oswego is interrupted.
-This portage of four miles—reduced to one mile by
-ditching and clearing out the streams—was between
-the Mohawk River and Wood Creek, and made a
-point of highest strategic importance. The fort—which
-was built and named Fort Stanwix—had afterward
-a notable military history.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>From this point Colonel Bradstreet, having obtained
-by a bare majority in a council of war permission to
-attack Fort Frontenac, which for three years he had
-longed to do, set out with twenty-seven hundred
-militia, eleven hundred of whom were from New York.
-Johnson, who had sent Capt. Thomas Butler with
-forty-two Indians, received from him, under date of
-August 28, 1758, the joyful news of Bradstreet’s complete
-victory, which, all considered, compensated for
-the disaster of Abercrombie. It cleared Lake Ontario
-of all French shipping, and was in relative influence
-and importance fully equal to Perry’s victory on Lake
-Erie, over half a century later. None rejoiced more
-than the sons and grandsons of the victims of the
-Schenectady massacre of 1690, which had been instigated
-by Frontenac, after whom the fort had been
-named.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>During this year Johnson was unusually active with
-<span class='pageno' title='172' id='Page_172'></span>
-the Indians, in holding their loyalty to the British
-side or in maintaining their neutrality. Many gatherings
-were held at his own house. In the great
-council held at Easton, Penn., in October, 1758, five
-hundred Indians were present, including delegates
-from all the Six Nations, the Shawanese, Miamis, and
-Moheganders. The principal figure was Teedyuscung,
-who insisted on his people being treated with
-the same dignities accorded to the Iroquois. Indeed,
-if the explanation of the Delawares be accepted, they
-had, in times long before, and at the earnest request
-of the Indians both north and south of them, voluntarily
-and by solemn treaty assumed a subordinate
-position as warriors and refrained from war, in order
-to preserve peace, trade, and the general good of
-the whole community of red men. They claimed,
-however, that it was Iroquois overreaching in diplomacy
-and even downright treachery, that made
-them seem to “accept the petticoat” and become
-“squaws.” It is certain that Teedyuscung made it
-the aim of his life to secure for his people the respect
-of the Iroquois and their equality with the proudest of
-the red men. The Easton council lasted nineteen
-days, and was productive of harmony both between
-the Indians and the whites, and among the varied
-tribes themselves. The one who contributed most to
-this gratifying success was not Johnson, but the honest
-German and Moravian, Christian Post, who from his
-home in the Wyoming Valley had made a journey
-and mission of peace, alone, among the tribes in the
-Ohio Valley.
-<span class='pageno' title='173' id='Page_173'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>When Sir Jeffrey Amherst reached America as commander-in-chief
-of the British forces, he came at
-once, with his four regiments at Albany, to reinforce
-Abercrombie. He found at Lake George, by the
-end of May, twelve thousand New York and New
-England militia. Johnson at once urged upon him
-the importance of capturing Niagara, the port between
-the two great lakes. Amherst agreed to the proposal,
-and warmly seconded it. In place of the stockade
-which the French from the time of La Salle had maintained,
-there was now a formidable fort. To Sir William
-Prideaux was assigned the work of reducing this
-Western stronghold; and Johnson, in order to assist
-him, called a council at Canajoharie to enlist the Mohawks,
-Senecas, and other Indians in the expedition.
-After the usual eloquence and expenditure of war-belts
-of wampum, Johnson led into the field seven
-hundred warriors, whose painted faces showed they
-were on the war-path. The Swegatchie braves also
-swelled this following, so that on arriving at Niagara
-he wrote to William Pitt, Oct. 24, 1760, that his Indian
-force numbered nine hundred and forty-three
-men.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>By the 7th of July Prideaux with thirty-two hundred
-men, including Johnson’s Indians, began siege operations.
-On the twelfth day he was killed in the
-trenches by the bursting of a shell from a coehorn
-mortar. This left the command to Johnson, who renewed
-operations with greater vigour, and by the 22d
-breached the wall sufficiently for assault.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>While active in the trenches with hot shot, bombs,
-<span class='pageno' title='174' id='Page_174'></span>
-and canister, Johnson did not forget to keep out his
-scouts and rangers. From them he learned that the
-French officer D’Aubrey was advancing to the relief
-of the garrison with twelve hundred men whom he
-had gathered from all the four French posts on the
-lakes. Leaving a force to continue the bombardment,
-Johnson marched out with infantry and grenadiers,
-having the Indians on his flanks, and attacked
-the advancing French with vigour. In this battle the
-Indians fought like genuine soldiers, and threw the
-French into disorder. Seeing this, the charge of the
-regulars and militia was made with such force and fury
-that in less than an hour the fight was over, and a
-splendid victory for the English was the result.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Returning to camp and trench, Johnson sent Major
-Harvey to Captain Pouchot, the French commander,
-to tell of the defeat of D’Aubrey, and to advise capitulation,
-especially while it was possible to restrain the
-Indians. Pouchot yielded; and the surrender of the
-whole force of over six hundred took place the next
-morning. Johnson wisely had ready an escort for
-the French prisoners, and not one of them lost his
-scalp or was rudely treated by the Iroquois. While
-the women and children were sent to Montreal, the
-men were marched by way of Oswego to New York,
-to fill English prisons. The manner in which Johnson
-restrained the savages was in marked contrast
-to the butcheries allowed, or only with great difficulty
-prevented, by the French under similar circumstances.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson’s victory at Niagara broke the chain of
-French forts along the great valleys and water-ways
-<span class='pageno' title='175' id='Page_175'></span>
-from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the delta of
-the Mississippi. One after another the French deserted
-the other forts, except Detroit; and General
-Stanwix at once occupied them or their ruins. Leaving
-Colonel Farquar at Niagara with a garrison of
-seven hundred men, Johnson came to Oswego, there
-meeting General Gage, who had been appointed to
-succeed Prideaux. Gage, perhaps irritated that the
-provincial fur-trader or “Heaven-born general” had,
-instead of himself, won the most brilliant of victories,
-refused to allow Johnson to advance and destroy the
-French forts at La Galette and Oswegatchie, or Ogdensburg.
-Finding that Gage, despite his advice and
-that of Amherst, meant to do nothing of importance
-until the next year, Johnson, after meeting the chief
-men of the Ottawa and Mississagey Indian tribes, returned
-home. He was now the most popular man in
-the province; while his name in England was joined
-with that of his fellow-tradesman, Clive, as a “Heaven-born
-general.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>At his home Johnson learned that the French had
-at last abandoned Ticonderoga and Crown Point, but
-by concentrating at the northern end of Lake Champlain
-and fortifying their position, blocked the British
-advance to Montreal. Amherst was therefore obliged
-to rest for the winter; having first rebuilt the great
-fortresses, constructed Fort George near the site of
-old Fort William Henry, and cut a road from the New
-York lakes into the heart of New England. Critics
-of the over-cautious Amherst say he should have
-pushed on and helped Wolfe to conquer Quebec earlier.
-<span class='pageno' title='176' id='Page_176'></span>
-However, after so many mistakes and disasters
-arising from rashness, such a man as Amherst was,
-perhaps, necessary. Wolfe, however, succeeded, and
-on the Plains of Abraham won America for Teutonic
-civilization, finding the path of glory a short one to
-the grave.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Montreal still remained to the French; and when,
-the winter over, it was resolved to attack this last
-stronghold from three points, Amherst with the main
-army assembled at Schenectady was to proceed by
-way of Oswego down the “ocean river” of Lake Ontario
-and the St. Lawrence, General Murray was to
-ascend the river from Quebec, while Colonel Haviland
-was to advance by way of Lake Champlain.
-The colonial militia came in slowly; but by the 12th of
-June Amherst left Schenectady with twelve thousand
-men; while Johnson, arriving at Oswego July 25,
-led the first detachment of six hundred Iroquois
-fighting men. His influence was however so great
-that before embarking on Lake Ontario he had, from
-the tribes formerly neutral, won over seven hundred
-more warriors. He also sent runners with wampum
-belts to nine tribes of Indians living near Montreal.
-These, on his arrival at Fort Levi, at once declared
-their neutrality. It was thus from the danger of eight
-hundred hostile warriors, familiar with every square
-rod of land and water, that Amherst’s army was saved.
-Passing through the dangerous Lachine Rapids with
-the loss of but forty-six men out of his ten thousand,
-he reached Montreal. So perfectly was the plan of
-campaign carried out, that Amherst and Murray appeared
-<span class='pageno' title='177' id='Page_177'></span>
-on opposite sides of the city on the same day.
-Haldiman soon appeared from the south, and thus the
-three English columns became practically one army
-within twenty-four hours. The city surrendered on
-the 8th of September, 1760, and the French power in
-America fell.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>So fully were the Indians kept in hand by Johnson,
-that no atrocities were committed by them, nor the
-enemy’s people or country in any way harmed by their
-presence. In this campaign, in which the talents of
-Johnson shone with conspicuous brilliancy, his military
-career culminated.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The only French post of importance now remaining
-was Detroit. To carry out the terms of the capitulation,
-and to plant the red flag with the double
-cross in the remote Western posts, Captain Rogers, the
-celebrated ranger, was sent westward on the 12th of
-September. At Presque Isle, about a month later,
-Johnson’s deputy, Croghan, and interpreter, Montour,
-with a force of Iroquois to serve as scouts, joined him.
-Passing safely through the country under the influence
-of Pontiac, having an interview with the great sachem
-on the site of Cleveland, they reached Detroit, November
-29. There, in the presence of hundreds of Indians,
-heretofore the allies of France, the garrison marched
-out and laid down their arms; the great chief, Pontiac,
-being one of the witnesses of the memorable sight.</p>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='178' id='Page_178'></span><h1>CHAPTER XI.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>DECLINE OF THE INDIAN AS A POLITICAL FACTOR.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>With</span> the change of dominion in North America
-came a change in the ruler of Great Britain. King
-George II. died October, 1760; but this made no
-alteration in the relations of Sir William Johnson to
-the Crown. On the contrary, his sphere of influence
-was enlarged by his having charge of Indian affairs in
-Canada, and indeed in all the regions north of the
-St. Lawrence, in what is now called British America.
-In October, 1760, a new commission as Superintendent
-of Indian Affairs, valid during the king’s
-pleasure, was issued and duly received. At the request
-of General Amherst, Johnson now made a journey
-to Detroit to regulate matters, and settle various
-questions which had arisen in consequence of a change
-of masters.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Now that the contest so long, equally or unequally,
-waged by the two forces was over, and but one people
-were masters of the situation, there was no more
-balance of power. The Indian had lost his place at
-the fulcrum. As a political factor, he was suddenly
-reduced to an ally only, with the strong probability of
-soon becoming first a vassal and then a cipher. No
-son of the forest saw this more clearly than Pontiac,
-<span class='pageno' title='179' id='Page_179'></span>
-who, in the long line of red men who have vainly
-fought against destiny, from King Philip to Tecumseh
-and from Black Hawk to Sitting Bull, stands pre-eminent
-in genius and power as well as in the tragedy of
-failure.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson made the western journey accompanied
-by Capt. John Butler, his secretary and prospective
-son-in-law Lieut. Guy Johnson, and a body-guard of
-Oneida Indians. A long line of boats carried the
-provisions and the Indian goods intended for gifts.
-Johnson’s object was to learn everything possible
-about the country recently held under French dominion,
-and about the Indians living in it. At Fort Stanwix,
-where the portage required several days to be
-spent in unloading and reloading on account of land
-transit, Colonel Eyre reached him with a letter from
-General Amherst communicating startling news. Apparently
-under the instigation of the Senecas, behind
-whom was Pontiac, all the tribes from Nova Scotia
-to the Illinois were being plied by wampum belts
-and messages, and a plot to murder the English garrisons
-was being hatched. Owing to the warnings
-given to the garrisons by Captain Campbell, the plot
-was, for the time at least, postponed. Johnson accordingly
-called a council at Onondaga, and directly
-charged the Senecas with dissimulation. He gave
-them to understand that only by their appearance in
-friendly council at Detroit would his suspicions be
-allayed and their own safety secured.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A change in Johnson’s domestic arrangements made
-about this time probably still further increased the
-<span class='pageno' title='180' id='Page_180'></span>
-prestige which he had so long enjoyed among the red
-men. His wife Catharine died in 1759, and for a
-while he illustrated in his own life the injury to morals
-which war, especially when successful, usually
-causes. He lived with various mistresses, as tradition
-avers, but after a year or two of such life dismissed
-them for a permanent housekeeper,—Mary Brant,
-the sister of Joseph Brant. According to the local
-traditions of the Valley, Johnson first met the pretty
-squaw, when about sixteen years old, at a militia
-muster. In jest, she asked an officer to let her ride
-behind him. He assented, returning fun for fun. To
-his surprise she leaped like a wild-cat upon the space
-behind the saddle, holding on tightly, with hair flying
-and garments flapping, while the excited horse
-dashed over the parade-ground. The crowd enjoyed
-the sight; but the most interested spectator was Johnson,
-who, admiring her spirit, resolved to make her
-his paramour.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>From this time forth Mollie Brant, the handsome
-squaw, was Johnson’s companion. Her Indian name
-was Deyonwadonti, which means “many opposed to
-one.” She was a granddaughter of one of the Mohawk
-chiefs who had visited London a generation or two
-before, when “Quider,” or Peter Schuyler, had shown
-the King of Great Britain some of his American allies.
-Mary Brant was undoubtedly a woman of ability, and
-with her Johnson lived happily. She presided over
-Fort Johnson, and later at Johnson Hall. She became
-the mother of a large brood of Johnson’s “natural”
-children; and as “the brown Lady Johnson,” white
-<span class='pageno' title='181' id='Page_181'></span>
-guests and visitors always treated her with respect.
-With this new link to bind the Iroquois to him, the
-colonel’s influence was deepened far and wide
-throughout the Indian Confederacy. To strengthen
-his ascendancy over the minds of the Indians, Johnson
-seemed to hesitate at nothing.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The dangerous journey to Detroit was duly made,
-and after being waited on by friendly deputies of the
-Ottawa Confederacy, the great council was held on
-the 19th of September. Here, before the representatives
-of many Indian nations from the four points of
-the compass, he made a great speech, smoked the
-pipe of peace in the name of their Great Father the
-King, and distributed the presents. The ceremonies
-wound up with a grand dinner and ball to the people
-of Detroit. The return was safely made, and home
-was reached October 30.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>During the winter of 1761, spent by Johnson in
-New York in pursuance of his civil duties, Dr. Cadwallader
-Colden, the incorrigible Tory, who was now
-lieutenant-governor, distinguished himself in further
-encroaching upon the liberties of the people, by trying
-to make the judiciary dependent on the Crown.
-Instead of the judges being appointed to hold office
-during good behaviour, Colden wanted them to serve
-at the pleasure of the king. In other words, he would,
-by making the king’s will the term of office, reduce
-the bench of judges to be the instrument of the royal
-prerogative. A lively discussion in the press was carried
-on by William Livingston, John Scott, and William
-Smith, as champions of the people, who contended
-<span class='pageno' title='182' id='Page_182'></span>
-vigourously for the principle so long regnant in the
-Dutch, and now prominent in the American republic,—the
-supremacy of the judiciary. Remembering too
-well how servile were the English judges who held
-office at the pleasure of the Plantagenets, the Stuarts,
-and even of Cromwell, the people of New York
-fought stoutly for their rights and the republican principle.
-When Colden desired an increase of salary
-for the Boston lawyer who acted as chief-justice, the
-Assembly flatly refused to grant it. The salary of the
-obnoxious Chief Justice Benjamin Pratt was finally paid
-out of the royal quit-rents of the province. Colden
-wrote to the Board of Trade prophesying the dire results
-of the doctrine—embodied in the preamble to
-the Constitution of the United States only twenty-six
-years later—that all authority is derived from the
-people. This is the doctrine on which republics are
-founded.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Largely due to Johnson’s influence was the passing
-by the Assembly of an act for the better survey and
-allotment of lands in the province. At the English
-conquest of 1664 the excellent Dutch customs of
-land survey, measurement, registry, and allotment
-had been changed for the tedious forms of English
-common law. In consequence, there was much confusion
-in regard to claims and boundaries. Large
-tracts of land had been granted by the British Government,
-under letters patent, in which the exact quantity
-of land given away was not stated, nor the correct
-boundaries named. Further, the popular methods of
-measurement in vogue—such as by counting off the
-<span class='pageno' title='183' id='Page_183'></span>
-steps made by a grown man, or by using horse-reins
-or bridles in lieu of a surveyor’s chain—were not
-calculated to insure accuracy. Not only were constant
-trespassings made, both with honest and dishonest
-intent, upon the king’s domain,—that is, the lands
-of the Indians,—but there were frequent troubles
-about the division of the great patents. The lawyers
-held that when the boundaries were uncertain, the
-title was void. The only way to settle the many disputes
-was to have all the patents and tracts accurately
-surveyed by the king’s surveyor-general, and done in
-so scientific a manner that his lines should be final;
-while the names of the patentees, the size of the
-patent, and the year when patented, should be matter
-of public knowledge. The good fruits of this piece of
-legislation were the removal of much of the irritation
-felt by the Indians, and the prevention of further
-encroachments on the royal lands.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In a word, close approximation was made to the
-methods followed in the Republic of Holland for centuries,
-and established in the New Netherlands by the
-first settlers from the Fatherland. After the Revolution,
-under the Surveyor-General of the United States,
-Simeon De Witt, a Hollander by descent, and familiar
-with the Dutch methods, this system, enlarged and
-improved, became that of the whole nation from the
-Atlantic to the Pacific. It is this system, lying at the
-basis of the land laws of the United States, which so
-won the encomium of Daniel Webster in his great
-address at Plymouth, when he said that our laws
-relating to land had made the American Republic.
-<span class='pageno' title='184' id='Page_184'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Some time afterward, the Mohawks, who had forgotten
-the covenants of the past, thereby showing the
-worthlessness of mere tradition or unsupported assertions
-freshly fabricated, claimed that “the great flat,”
-or large tract of fertile land near Schenectady, had
-not been purchased of them, but had been lent to
-the Dutch settlers simply as pasture-land. On their
-making complaint to Johnson, the documents were
-called for, and duly produced by the magistrates of
-Schenectady. The deed of sale to Van Curler and
-his fellow-settlers, made in Fort Orange, July 27, 1661
-(“Actum in de fort<sup>ss</sup> Orangie den 27<sup>e</sup> July A. 1661”),
-was first produced. On it were the signatures or
-marks of the sachems Cantuquo, Aiadne, and Sonareetsie,
-with the totem-signs of the Bear, Tortoise, and
-Wolf. Other papers of later date were shown, which
-set more definite boundaries to the patent of eighty
-thousand acres. Johnson declared the Schenectady
-men in the right. The Indians, with perfect confidence
-in Johnson as arbitrator, went to their bark
-houses satisfied.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>From this time forth until the end of his life, a large
-part of Johnson’s time was occupied in the settlement
-of land disputes between whites and Indians. Ceasing
-to be any longer a political factor in the future development
-of the continent, the Indian’s course was steadily
-downward. Having exhausted the benefit of his service,
-the British and colonial governments were both only
-too ready to ignore the red man’s real or supposed
-rights. Steadily the frontiers of civilization were
-pushed forward upon the broad and ancient hunting-grounds
-<span class='pageno' title='185' id='Page_185'></span>
-of the West. In the old and thickly settled
-domain of the Iroquois, it was now scarcely possible
-for an Indian to chase deer without running into a
-fence or coming unexpectedly upon a clearing where
-the white man stood, gun in hand, to warn off intruders.
-The saw-mills of the pale-face spoiled the primeval
-forests, choked the trout-streams with sawdust,
-and killed the fish, even as his traps and ploughed land
-drove off the game. Henceforth, though Johnson’s
-business with the Indians was greater than ever before,
-it was largely matter of laborious detail and settled
-routine. Important as was his work to the perfecting
-of the results attained by the annulling of
-French pretensions, it would be monotonous to tell
-the whole story. His toil was necessary to the uniformity
-desirable in all the king’s dominions, yet it
-lacked the picturesque element dominant in his early
-life, and need not here be set forth. We may take
-notice only of the most important of his labours as
-examiner of claims, as advocate for the right, and as
-judge and decider.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>After inviting the sachems of the Six Nations to
-assemble at his house to hear his report of the Detroit
-Council, he examined into the famous Kayaderosseras
-or Queensborough patent of several hundred thousand
-acres granted in 1708. This patent was one of several
-which the Mohawks claimed were fraudulently
-obtained. Johnson heard both sides fully, and decided
-that the Indian claim was the correct one, and
-that the white man was in the wrong. The result was
-that the alleged owner gave full release. In the matter
-<span class='pageno' title='186' id='Page_186'></span>
-of the lands on the Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania,
-but claimed by Connecticut, the Iroquois were so excited
-that they sent a delegation of five chiefs to Hartford.
-These were led by Guy Johnson, and bore a
-letter from Sir William. The Connecticut people held
-tenaciously to their claim, and were about to settle, to
-the number of three hundred families, in the Wyoming
-Valley. In the speech of the Onondaga orator at
-Hartford, after rehearsing the story of the covenant
-with Corlaer, and denouncing men like Lydius and
-Kloch, who fraudulently obtained the Indians’ land,
-he declared the Six Nations would resist, even unto
-blood, the loss of their Susquehanna lands. Governor
-Fitch heartily agreed with the Iroquois, and so actively
-seconded the royal order that the proposed settlement
-was, at least, postponed.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson predicted in a letter to Amherst, March
-30, 1763, “the dangerous consequences which must
-inevitably attend the settlement of these people in the
-Wyoming Valley.” The Susquehanna Company persevered,
-however, and at the council held at Fort
-Stanwix succeeded in getting from some of the chiefs—after
-Johnson had been warily approached with bribes
-to take the vice-presidency of the company—a title-deed
-to the lands. Into this beautiful valley, twenty-one
-miles long, and now one of the richest and most
-lovely in all Pennsylvania, forty families from Connecticut
-settled in 1769. The unsleeping vengeance of
-the Senecas did not find its opportunity until 1778.
-Then, led by Butler and his Tories, the awful massacre
-was perpetrated which has furnished the poet Campbell
-with his mournful theme.
-<span class='pageno' title='187' id='Page_187'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>During the great conspiracy and war of Pontiac,
-Johnson was ceaselessly active in measures tending to
-holding the loyalty of the Indians. The Senecas, always
-the most wayward, because most easily influenced
-by the French, and more susceptible to Indian arguments,
-at first espoused the cause of Pontiac. The
-baronet had no sooner heard of this than he called a
-council of all the Six Nations at German Flats, and
-secured a tremendous advantage to the cause of civilization,
-by winning them over to neutrality. He sent
-Captain Claus with the same end in view to Caughnawaga,
-or the Sault St. Louis. At this place, formerly
-called La Prairie, whence had so often issued in the
-old days, from 1690 and onward, scalping-parties on
-the English and Dutch settlements, Claus met the
-Caughnawaga, St. Francis, and other tribes of Indians,
-thus cutting off another possible contingent for
-Pontiac. So successful was Claus, that these Canadian
-tribes not only sent deputies to dissuade the Western
-braves, but also warned them that in case of hostilities
-they would fight for the king with their English
-brethren.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Not knowing what roving bands of Western savages
-might make sudden raids, Johnson ordered out the
-Valley militia, despatched Indian scouts to Crown
-Point, built a stockade of palisades around Johnson
-Hall, and armed his own tenants and the people of
-Johnstown. The two stone towers or block-houses
-flanking the Hall were mounted with cannon,—the
-weapons most objectionable to savages, one of them
-being a piece captured at Louisburg, and presented
-<span class='pageno' title='188' id='Page_188'></span>
-by Admiral Warren. Seeing that the Mohawk Valley
-was thus so guarded, the Western braves, though harrying
-the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, kept
-out of New York. Indeed it seems not too much to
-assert that the influence of Johnson over the Indians
-east of Detroit was the chief cause of the failure of
-Pontiac’s great plot. Angry with this one man because
-of his power to thwart their designs, the followers
-of Pontiac intended to penetrate to Johnstown and
-take his life. Hearing of their purpose, the Mohawks,
-coming in a great delegation to their Great Brother,
-offered to serve as his body-guard.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Pontiac’s attempt to recover this continent to barbarism
-failed, but the scattered war continued for
-years. Half of the warriors of the Seneca castles were
-out on the war-path with the Delawares and Shawanese;
-and against these Johnson sent out many a war-party
-from Johnson Hall, selecting his men from
-among the most loyal of the Iroquois. These three
-tribes were already in possession of a large number of
-rifles which Swiss hunters of the chamois and German
-skilled artisans made at Lancaster and other places in
-Pennsylvania. Being thus more effectively armed and
-able to move with less ammunition, they were also less
-dependent on the white man,—a condition of things
-which Johnson viewed with alarm. We find him
-writing to the Lords of Trade, requesting that traffic in
-such deadly weapons should be prohibited. Colonel
-Bouquet, the gallant Swiss officer, avenged Braddock’s
-defeat by his brilliant victory at Bushy Run; and the
-Moravian Indians in Pennsylvania were ruthlessly
-<span class='pageno' title='189' id='Page_189'></span>
-slaughtered by wild beasts in white skins who wore
-the clothes of civilization. All this was part of
-“Pontiac’s War.”</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>“War is hell,” as Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
-insisted in our own days; and the barbarities in
-Johnson’s times seemed to have made devils of both
-white and red men. We find Johnson again making
-himself a trader in scalps by offering out of his own
-private pocket fifty dollars apiece for the heads of the
-Delaware chieftains. In a word, he continued a policy
-becoming obsolete in other colonies. He thus
-encouraged the retention by the British Government,
-long after the Revolution had broken out, of a custom
-worthy of Joshua and his Hebrews in Canaan, or of
-the pagan Anglo-Saxons in Celtic Britain, but not of
-Christian England or of modern America. Was he
-encouraged to do this by his squaw wife, Mollie
-Brant?</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Teedyuscung was no more; but his son, Captain
-Bull, was an active warrior. The famous Delaware
-chief had perished in the flames of a house in which
-he was lying in a drunken stupor. An incendiary and
-hostile savage had been bribed by enemies to do the
-vile deed. Captain Bull, while on his way to surprise
-a white settlement, was himself surprised, July 26,
-1764, by the interpreter, Montour, now become a
-captain, who led a band of two hundred Oneidas and
-Tuscaroras. The Delawares were all captured and
-taken by way of Fort Stanwix to Johnson Hall. Those
-who were not adopted into the Confederacy found
-their way into the jails of New York. Joseph Brant,
-<span class='pageno' title='190' id='Page_190'></span>
-leading another party of Iroquois into the country of
-the head-waters of the Susquehanna, surprised other
-Delaware braves, killed their chief, and burned seven
-villages.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The result of these successes was to cow and terrify
-the Senecas, who came to Johnson Hall and made
-peace. General Gage vigourously pressed operations
-against the hostile tribes, and sent Bradstreet westward.
-As a reinforcement, Johnson persuaded over
-five hundred of the Confederate Iroquois to join Bradstreet.
-He then went himself to Niagara, arriving July
-8, 1764, to hold a grand council with all the Indians
-favourable to the English cause, from Dakota to Hudson
-Bay, and from Maine to Kentucky. Besides a
-treaty of peace with the Hurons, the earth-hunger of
-the pale-faces was temporarily satisfied by a cession of
-land along the lakes, accompanied with the promise
-of protection to navigation. The Senecas also ceded,
-not for private use, but to the Crown, a strip of land
-eight miles wide between Lakes Erie and Ontario, bisected
-by the Niagara River. They made a promise
-of the islands in the river to Johnson himself, who
-immediately transferred them to the British Government.
-A considerable number of white prisoners
-were delivered up. In this policy of possibly mistaken
-kindness, in which the change of life to those
-who had forgotten their old home and friends and
-had become habituated to Indian life, was like a resurrection,
-there were many incidents like those upon
-which Cooper has founded his romance of “The Wept
-of the Wish-ton-wish.” Johnson’s advertisement to
-<span class='pageno' title='191' id='Page_191'></span>
-friends of the captives is one of the pathetic curiosities
-in the American journalism of the eighteenth
-century.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>After interviews between Johnson’s agent, Croghan,
-and Pontiac, arrangements were made for the amicable
-dwelling together of the two races. Johnson had
-proposed to the Lords of Trade in London that the
-territory west of the Ohio River should be forever
-reserved to the Six Nations as a hunting-ground.
-Another great council was held at his house April
-27, at which over nine hundred Indians, including
-one hundred and twenty Senecas, the Delaware chiefs
-Squash-Cutter and Long-Coat, were present. The
-various conferences lasted nearly a month, resulting in
-a fresh treaty of peace with the Western Indians.
-They covenanted to allow the boundary to be made,
-protect traders, allow the passage of troops, deliver up
-murderers to the nearest garrison, and endeavour to
-win over the Illinois tribes. Later, Croghan, the
-agent of Johnson, visited Detroit, on the way collecting
-the white captives delivered up, and meeting the
-penitent Pontiac, who of his own accord made overtures
-of peace and accompanied Croghan. On the
-17th of August, at Detroit, he met the Ottawas, Pottawatamies,
-and Chippewas, and in one of several conferences
-presented Johnson’s road-belt to “open the
-path of the English from the rising to the setting sun.”
-Ten days later, on the 27th, with Pontiac and the
-tribes of the great Ottawa Confederacy, the war-hatchet
-was buried, the tree of peace planted, and the
-calumet of peace smoked. Pontiac even gave a promise
-<span class='pageno' title='192' id='Page_192'></span>
-to visit Johnson at Oswego to ratify the peace thus
-made. The road being cleared for the passage of the
-troops, Captain Sterling, with one hundred Highlanders
-from Fort Pitt, received possession, October 10, of
-Fort Chartres, and the French flag was hauled down.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>True to his promise, Pontiac met Johnson at Oswego
-July 23. Amid every possible accessory of
-impressive display and ceremony, the sacramental
-wampum, the sacred promises of peace and tokens of
-friendship were exchanged. Then Pontiac and his
-braves moved out in their canoes over Lake Ontario
-to the west and to obscurity. Henceforth the way of
-Teutonic civilization was cleared, and the march to
-the Pacific began. As we write in 1891, the centre
-of population is near Chicago.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In October, 1768, the great council called for the
-purpose of making a scientific frontier met at Fort
-Stanwix. This great concourse, not only of Indians,
-but of the governors and other distinguished men of
-Pennsylvania and New Jersey, makes one of the historical
-pictures in the story of America well worth
-the artist’s interpretation on canvas. Johnson, being
-at this time heartily interested in the welfare of St.
-George’s Episcopal Church, built next to the British
-barracks in Schenectady, in which he was a frequent
-worshipper, profited by the presence and happy mood
-of so many prominent men. He took up a collection,
-and secured sixty-one pounds and ten shillings
-for the little stone church on whose spire in Ferry
-Street still veers the gilded cock of St. Nicholas, the
-symbol of vigilance and of the resurrection.
-<span class='pageno' title='193' id='Page_193'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Of the Six Nations and other tribes, thirty-two
-hundred individuals were present to witness the bartering
-away of their birthright for such pottage as the
-pale-faces had to tempt these Esaus of the wilderness.
-For ten thousand pounds, unlimited rum, and after
-due exchange of eloquence and wampum, they sold
-to the king the ground now occupied by Kentucky,
-Western Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania. Fort
-Stanwix was dismantled. The Indians moved out of
-Eastern New York, and the next year Daniel Boone
-led that great emigration of white men from the
-Southern Atlantic coast which resulted in the winning
-of the West. Boone’s was a movement for the
-annihilation of savagery, the extinction of Latin, and
-the supremacy of Teutonic civilization in North America,
-parallel to that rolling westward from New England,
-New York, and Pennsylvania.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>This was the last of the most important meetings
-and negotiations of Johnson with the men who claimed
-by hereditary right to occupy the continent. Though
-afterward full of toilsome detail, and busy in conference,
-in hearing complaints, and securing the performance
-of stipulations, Johnson’s constructive career
-as Superintendent of Indian Affairs virtually closed
-at Fort Stanwix.</p>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='194' id='Page_194'></span><h1>CHAPTER XII.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>LIFE AT JOHNSON HALL.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The</span> last ten years of Johnson’s life were among
-the busiest of his career. War matters occupied but
-a portion of his time. His greater works were those
-of peace, his chief idea being the development in
-civilization of the region watered by the Mohawk and
-its tributaries. The story of his life now concerns
-itself with the location of settlers; the education of
-the Indians; the building of schools, churches, and
-colleges; the improvement of land and live-stock;
-the promotion of agriculture, and of the arts and
-comforts of life. In a word, none more than he
-carried out the command to replenish the earth and
-possess it.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Fortune seemed to have no frowns for this one
-of the chief Makers of America. Popular with his
-neighbours, and appreciated on the other side of the
-ocean, his rewards were many. Besides the gift of
-five thousand pounds accompanying the title of baronet,
-the king, in June, 1769, made over to him the
-famous “royal grant” of sixty-six thousand acres on
-the north side of the river between the East and
-West Canada creeks, the present town of Little Falls
-being in the southern centre. This large piece of
-<span class='pageno' title='195' id='Page_195'></span>
-territory had been given him by the Mohawks in
-1760, as a token of their gratitude and appreciation,
-Johnson making return for the gift in a sum amounting
-to over twelve thousand dollars. As no private
-person could, under the proclamation of 1763, obtain
-in any way so large a tract of land, the possession
-was made sure by being given under the royal seal
-and approbation as a token of his services.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was, however, as early as 1763 that Johnson
-chose the site on which to found the village of Johnstown,
-and to erect Johnson Hall,—as a letter dated
-May 8, 1763, to Mr. Samuel Fuller, of Schenectady,
-the architect and builder, shows. Like his former
-house on the Mohawk, this edifice, so famed in romance
-and history, still stands, though outwardly
-somewhat altered in appearance by the addition of
-modern roofs, bay-windows, portico, and verandas.
-Only one of the two square towers or houses which
-flanked the main edifice still remains.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The writer visited the Hall in July, 1890, being
-pleasantly received by the present owner and occupant,
-Mrs. John E. Wells, and allowed to see the spacious
-rooms which, upstairs and down, flanked the
-superb, wide hall-ways which extend from front to rear
-doors. The missing block-house was burned by accident
-in May, 1866. Between the cellar of the mansion
-and those of the block-houses an underground
-passage formerly existed, in which my informant often
-played, until within a few years ago. A circle of
-Lombardy poplars planted round the Hall, once
-formed a striking feature of the landscape,—for
-<span class='pageno' title='196' id='Page_196'></span>
-these prim sentinels made a strange cordon to the
-Indians and those accustomed only to the American
-forest trees. Only four survivors on the east front of
-the house remain,—the small arc of a grand circle.
-Of an old walnut-tree planted by Johnson himself,
-and lovingly preserved as an historical relic, only the
-vine-covered and flower-adorned trunk was left, in
-which a squirrel was nimbly enjoying itself. The
-Hall faces the east, the ground sloping to the left.
-The mansion has been in the possession and occupancy
-of the Wells family for over a century.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Passing to the village, a half-mile to the east, I
-visited the church built by Johnson. Its walls are of
-the famous graywacke stone which underlies the Mohawk
-Valley, and which is so widely utilized in edifices.
-A fire in 1836 that emptied the building of
-nearly everything, and left only the walls, was the
-occasion for rebuilding. When this was done, in
-1838, the site was so changed that the grave of Johnson
-under the altar was left outside the new building,
-and the exact site of it lost to memory. For several
-years it may be said that the very spot where lay the
-dust of this Maker of America was forgotten. In
-1862 the rector, Rev. Charles H. Kellogg, took
-measurements, sunk a shaft, and discovered the brick
-vault. Only a few fragments of the mahogany coffin
-remained,—the leaden coffin enclosing it having been
-cut up during the Revolutionary War for making bullets.
-The skull and a few bones left, together filled
-but a quarter of a bushel. It is not stated whether
-the bullet which remained in the wound in Johnson’s
-<span class='pageno' title='197' id='Page_197'></span>
-body when he died was found; but the dated gold
-ring was, and is carefully kept. The relics of once
-animated earth were enclosed in a hollowed granite
-block, and re-deposited with solemn ceremonies by
-Bishop Horatio Potter, a few feet east of the church,
-in a space of the churchyard which has no other
-tombs in it. The unmarked mound, eight feet square
-and six inches high, barely discoverable by a passerby,
-had no other decoration than the thin grass which
-manages to live between the shade of two buildings.
-The action of St. Patrick’s Lodge of Free and Accepted
-Masons which Johnson founded—his son being the
-last Provincial Grand Master of the upper district of
-the Province of New York—is still awaited. Either
-the Masons, or others who honour Johnson’s memory,
-should set up a worthy memorial of the great man who
-has stamped his name so ineffaceably on the history
-of America.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the neat village itself are many things to remind
-one of its founder. The chief hotel is named after
-the baronet. A number of autograph letters and relics
-are in possession of private persons. Documents
-in the handwriting of Johnson are in the Masonic
-Lodge which he founded in the parlour of Johnson
-Hall in 1772. The gold ring found in 1836 with his
-dust, and inscribed with the date of an important
-event, and possibly with the age of his bride, is here.
-Nor far away, the cradle of black walnut in which
-Mollie Brant rocked her children is preserved as a
-relic. In an old innkeeper’s book the first entry is
-that of the great man’s name, who ordered the first
-<span class='pageno' title='198' id='Page_198'></span>
-glass of grog. Besides the evidences of ordinary
-human life and infirmity, one cannot go very far in
-the Mohawk Valley, or in those of the lowlands which
-hold the tributaries to the river flowing through it, or
-in the collateral ones on higher levels, but the fruits
-of a rich and busy life abound.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson, though belonging to the Church of England,
-was willing to help men who were of the
-Churches of Holland or of Germany. He assisted
-all Christians to have houses of worship,—at Fort
-Hunter, Canajoharie, Burnet’s Field, especially; but
-in other towns and villages tokens of his presence
-are to be seen. He helped financially the Lutheran
-and Reformed Germans, and the Dutch congregations,
-and provided the Indians with missionaries and
-churches. With Domine Samuel Kirkland, who laboured
-among the Iroquois for over forty years, and
-was the founder of the town of Kirkland and of Hamilton
-College, Johnson was on friendly and sympathetic
-terms. He greatly honoured the young man’s character,
-and appreciated his labours; and the two frequently
-corresponded. During one winter while secluded in
-Cherry Valley, Kirkland was saved from starvation by
-the Indians, who gathered ginseng, for which they
-bought provisions in Albany. The root having been
-just discovered on this continent by a French Jesuit
-in Vermont, early in the century, already formed one
-of the staples of American commerce with China.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>While it is absurd to say that Johnson first “discovered”
-the fertility of the Mohawk Valley, it is unquestionably
-true that he greatly stimulated advance in
-<span class='pageno' title='199' id='Page_199'></span>
-agriculture. Under his encouragement many of the
-Mohawk Indians became happy and prosperous farmers.
-When the officers and men under the leadership
-of Sullivan, the New Hampshire general of Irish descent,
-invaded the country of the Six Nations in 1778,
-they were amazed at the evidences of Indian thrift,
-and at the wide areas of richly cultivated land.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>These being the piping times of peace, Johnson
-built a handsome summer-house at Broadalbin, in
-Fulton County, where he entertained lavishly. Having
-a healthy interest equal to that of the Englishman in
-out-door sports, he also erected on the south bank of
-the Sacandaga Creek a lodge, which has given the
-place the name it still holds,—the Fish House. The
-building, which was of wood painted white, with the
-doors and mouldings painted green, was comfortably
-furnished. It was frequently occupied in summer,
-often with gay company from New York or Albany.
-An orchard, vegetable-garden, well of spring water,
-sheds for horses and cattle, with poultry and stock,
-enabled the lord of Johnson Hall, with the assistance
-of his favourite negro slaves from the Manor, to dispense
-lavish hospitality to his friends from Albany,
-Schenectady, the Valley settlements, or even from
-Manhattan Island. Coming himself on such occasions,
-in his later years, in a coach and six, it was no
-infrequent sight to see the like equipages numerous in
-the grounds of the Fish House. For days together,
-gayety and bustle filled the grounds, while pleasure-parties
-of both sexes in the boats tempted to their
-hooks the finny spoil. Excellent gunning was also provided
-<span class='pageno' title='200' id='Page_200'></span>
-in autumn for the gentlemen in the sunken lands
-and low-lying coves along the Sacandaga, wild ducks
-and geese being the chief game. Oftener, however,
-instead of visiting Europeans or fashionable society
-nearer home, the baronet would be accompanied by
-his cultured Irish friend and family physician, Dr.
-Patrick Daly, and by his favourite musician, Billy. Nor
-is it likely that tradition wrongs him in frequently
-furnishing him with other room-mates, since chastity
-was not the shining virtue of Sir William Johnson.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Simms, the gossipy annalist of Schoharie, who
-seemed incapable of writing history or holding himself
-to a narrative without meandering off into theology,
-politics, or preaching, has much to say about Sir William
-Johnson. Though gathering a valuable harvest,
-his sheaves need to be well threshed out before using.
-He has set down in sober print much tittle-tattle
-which New England historians, as usual when writing
-about New York, have only too freely copied.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>We see that the household at the Hall and in the
-quarters was almost as cosmopolitan as New York
-itself. Simms tells us that Johnson’s bouw-master, or
-head farmer, was an Irishman named Flood. He
-looked after the ten or fifteen negro slaves who lived
-with their families in cabins on the other side of the
-Cayudutta Creek, opposite the Hall. They dressed
-much like Indians, but wore coats. His private secretary,
-after Wraxall, Croghan, and others, was a Mr.
-Lafferty,—a good lawyer withal, who attended also to
-Johnson’s legal business. The family physician, named
-Daly, was a companionable and cultivated gentleman.
-<span class='pageno' title='201' id='Page_201'></span>
-Billy, a dwarf about thirty years of age, was a master of
-the violin, and the presiding genius of the numerous
-balls given in the Hall when “persons of quality”
-were guests, or at the village when the tenantry or
-other citizens had their merry-makings. The gardener
-kept the grounds “as neat as a pin,” and from
-May to November smiling with flowers. The butler,
-Frank, was an active young German; and the chief
-body-guard was Pontiac, a sprightly, well-disposed
-lad of part Indian blood. He was named after the
-great conspirator, and was often with Johnson when
-away from home. Two of the waiters,—probably
-brothers,—named Bartholomew, were short, thick-set
-white men. Across the road from the Hall were the
-blacksmith and the tailor, who did little work outside
-of the “royal” or “patroon’s” household. The numerous
-progeny and employees of Johnson furnished
-them with almost constant occupation. One of the
-most important characters was the schoolmaster, Wall,
-an Irishman with a rich brogue. His specialty was
-the teaching of manners and rudiments of English
-to the children of the tenantry and Johnson’s half-breed
-bastards. It may be well imagined that the
-training given by Wall was rather to fit his pupils for
-proper subordination than to be self-reliant patriots.
-In front of the schoolhouse stood the whipping-post
-and the stocks, for which truant boys, drunken louts,
-wife-beaters, and other transgressors, actual and potential,
-were supposed to have due respect.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Holidays and out-door merry-makings were frequent.
-The many-sided lord of the manor seemed
-<span class='pageno' title='202' id='Page_202'></span>
-most in his natural element when providing or participating
-in the athletic sports, Irish games and frolics
-with which he amused Indians and whites, old and
-young. Himself ever jovial and fond of fun, he entered
-into the performances with an enthusiasm that
-was magnetic. The greasy pole with a coin or other
-prize on the top was set up for the nude Indian children
-to attempt to climb. The pig with its tail likewise
-anointed was set free to be caught by him or
-her who could. Tradition tells how, in one case, an
-old Indian squaw beat every one in the race, and
-finally, having caught up a handful of sand, had literally
-the grit to hold on and win the race. Sack, hurdle,
-and three-legged races were also favourite amusements.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Besides all this out-door activity and healthy occupation,
-there was plenty of amusement indoors. The
-numerous guests who came from all quarters and at
-all times made Johnson Hall more like a grand hotel
-than the private house of a gentleman. From April,
-after the ice in the Mohawk had burst, as it often did,
-with a sound like cannon, and floated out to the Hudson
-and to the sea, and the spring floods were over,
-until the autumnal splendours of crimson and gold
-filled the Valley, the house rarely lacked guests. Indian
-chiefs and warriors came at all times; but in
-summer the paint and feathers of forest fashions were
-replaced by those from beyond sea. The rouge,
-powder, patches, wigs, perukes, silken gowns and
-stockings, silver-buckled shoes, and ruffled cuffs and
-shirt-fronts from London, or patterned after Piccadilly
-prints, filled the Hall with brilliant colour.
-<span class='pageno' title='203' id='Page_203'></span>
-With musical instruments, a well-filled library, and the
-last new novel on the drawing-room table, the guests
-could easily amuse themselves on a rainy day; while in
-fair weather saunterings over the grounds of their host,
-or drives or rides in the beautiful country around, made
-the daylight hours fly pleasantly. Then, in full dress
-for the evening dinner, the night soon passed in feasting,
-drinking, and exchanging news, with chat, gossip,
-and smoke; and more than one of the hours of morning
-arrived before the concourse broke up.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Such a course of life was kept up for years, until the
-hospitality of Johnson Hall became a proverb, and its
-revelry, we must add, passed into a byword. Despite
-his constant out-door life and otherwise good habits,
-it is more than probable that such luxurious living
-long persisted in explains why the baronet never saw
-his sixtieth year.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In practical farming and in horticulture Johnson took
-great delight, and in his intervals of leisure did much,
-both by personal example and by neighbourly conference
-with the farmers, to improve crops and live-stock.
-He was a regular correspondent of the Society for the
-Promotion of Arts in England, and of the American
-Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. Agriculture
-was one of the themes most often discussed in his
-letters. He sent frequently to London for choice
-varieties of seeds, and delighted to see how they fared
-in our climate and soil. Of horses and other fine
-stock he was very fond, and to him is due the credit
-of the introduction of sheep and blooded stallions.
-He also credits himself with first raising hay, and thus
-<span class='pageno' title='204' id='Page_204'></span>
-stimulating the development of improved breeds of
-cattle. While thus on his table lay the last reviews
-and best periodical literature of London; while in his
-library the European scholars, professors from Harvard
-and Yale, and English ladies from London drawing-rooms,
-would all find books to their taste, the pursuit
-of science indoors and out was carried on with ardour
-by the lord of the manor himself.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In attendance upon the county fair at Fonda during
-the summer of 1890, the writer was struck with
-the variety and excellence of the live-stock, as well as
-with the richness of the agricultural products of Montgomery
-County. This county, with Saratoga and others
-adjoining, has had marked influence upon the development
-of the region westward. Not a few of the fine
-specimens of horses and cattle are descendants of the
-denizens of the Johnson farm of pre-Revolutionary days.
-Certainly Johnson was one of the benefactors of the
-race, who made many blades of grass grow where none
-grew before. Not the least of his good offices was in
-prevailing upon the British Government to relax the
-illiberal laws which prevented the agricultural development
-of the Mohawk Valley. Much of England’s
-troubles with her colonies arose from her determination
-to keep the American part of her domain as a
-close market for exclusively British products, and thus
-to compel the Americans to buy only those goods
-which were manufactured in England or came from
-British ports. In thus attempting to nip in the bud
-all flowering of the native genius of the people, she
-succeeded in hampering, but not wholly repressing,
-<span class='pageno' title='205' id='Page_205'></span>
-American manufactures. Johnson, as we have seen,
-was able to get removed the restriction against raising
-wool. Peter Hasenclever, a Palatine German, who
-owned land next to Johnson’s royal patent, started an
-iron foundry, and though himself failing after long and
-earnest efforts, unable to surmount the numberless
-difficulties, gave a great stimulus to the development
-of the iron industry in Northern and Eastern New
-York. Philip Schuyler set up a flourishing flax-mill.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson lived to see the fearful results of the determination
-of the lucre-loving British lords to force their
-products upon Americans at all hazards. He regretted
-these violations not only of human rights in general,
-but of Englishmen’s rights in particular; though not
-so outspoken as he might have been. The Americans,
-while willing to be customers to the greatest nation of
-shopkeepers, were resolved not to be considered as
-buyers, and victims of monopoly only. Johnson fortunately
-died before the covetousness, avarice, and
-arbitrary thick-headedness of Great Britain, which had
-forced the slave-trade, hampered commerce, and
-paralyzed foreign commerce and home manufactures,
-compelled the colonists to rebuke her pretensions by
-an appeal to arms.</p>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='206' id='Page_206'></span><h1>CHAPTER XIII.<br/> <span class='sub-head'>JOHNSON’S FAMILY; LAST DAYS; EUTHANASIA.</span></h1></div>
-
-<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>While</span> the brown Lady Johnson, Mollie Brant, presided
-over the mansion, and her dusky brood attended
-the manor school, the daughters of Johnson and of
-Catharine Wisenberg were trained under the care of a
-governess who made them familiar with the social
-graces of London and the polite accomplishments and
-standard literature of England. Mary Brant, though
-not only an Indian, but a Mohawk Indian in spirit,
-was to her dying day, in the old English and Hebrew
-sense of the word, a virtuous woman. She had the
-virile qualities of worth, excellence, and abilities, and
-not only managed her household to the satisfaction of
-her lord, but kept herself well informed and interested
-in the two worlds in which lived the people of the
-Long House and those of Christendom. More than
-one English lady visiting at the Hall was surprised to
-find this Iroquois woman so cultivated, refined, and
-alert, not only with womanly intuition, but equipped
-with information as to the life and thoughts in which
-they and their husbands moved.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson was happy in the careers of his children
-born in wedlock, so far as he lived to witness them.
-His first-born child, John, was the especial pride of
-<span class='pageno' title='207' id='Page_207'></span>
-his father, though he never won the regard of his
-neighbours. He had the misfortune to be the son of
-a great man, and to be constantly compared with his
-father. He was educated under Domine Vrooman
-and other clergymen of the Dutch Reformed and Anglican
-Churches. He often accompanied his father
-on his journeys, notably the adventurous one to Detroit
-in 1761. Later he was placed in command of
-three hundred Iroquois; but these unfortunately deserted
-their commander, who had not the power, like
-his father, to sweeten the rigours of discipline by magnetic
-personality and system. He had considerable
-experience in the field with the militia, but never won
-much personal popularity. Visiting England to complete
-his education, he was presented at court, and
-knighted at St. James’s, Nov. 22, 1765. He later
-became a member of the Assembly, being pitted
-against Colonel Schuyler, who rightly or wrongly—more
-probably the latter—imagined the father to be
-prodding the son or using him for a cat’s-paw.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>On the 29th of June, 1773, Sir John was married
-to Miss Mary Watts, of New York City, the wedding
-being at the bride’s house. The bridal tour was a
-trip up the Hudson River when Nature was dressed in
-her glorious summer robes. A stay at Albany marked
-by brilliant social attentions, and the ride up the
-loveliest of valleys, completed the journey. Johnson
-Hall was then embosomed in a wealth of foliage and
-flowers, and bright with the pageantry which manor
-life could on special occasions display. Sir John, on
-the death of his father, succeeded to an estate which,
-<span class='pageno' title='208' id='Page_208'></span>
-with the exception of that of the founder of Pennsylvania,
-was probably the largest ever held by a private
-individual in America. At the request of the Indians
-to Johnson, and of the latter to the king, Col. Guy
-Johnson was made Superintendent of Indian Affairs,
-assisted by Colonel Claus; but Sir John succeeded to
-the office of major-general of the militia. To tell the
-story of his Tory career in the Revolution is no part
-of our plan. “The Life and Misfortunes and Military
-Career of Brig.-Gen. Sir John Johnson, Baronet,” has
-been ably written by Gen. J. Watts De Peyster. In
-this book a list of Sir William Johnson’s descendants
-are given.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson usually called Anne, his first daughter,
-Nancy, and often wrote to her while away from home.
-A son of one of the Palatine Germans, Daniel Claus,
-a noted Indian fighter, captain of militia, and a man
-of considerable culture in German, English, and the
-Iroquois languages, and withal a favourite of Sir William,
-fell in love with Miss Nancy, and married her in
-July, 1762. The nuptials were celebrated at Johnson
-Hall with great rejoicing. Claus assisted his
-father-in-law and Joseph Brant in translating and preparing
-the Book of Common Prayer in the Mohawk
-language. In thus following up and completing the
-work of Domine Barnhardus Freeman, of Schenectady,
-a manual of devotion was prepared for the Mohawks
-which was in use until near the second half of the
-present century. As colonel of militia, Claus saw long
-and varied service in New York, Canada, and the
-West.
-<span class='pageno' title='209' id='Page_209'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Mary Johnson, the baronet’s second daughter, married
-in March, 1763, her cousin Guy, a nephew of
-Sir William and his private secretary. Guy Johnson
-was later an active member of the Assembly from
-Tryon County, and was always a helpful assistant of
-his uncle. Their daughter Mary became wife of Sir
-Colin Campbell, and mother of Gen. Sir Guy Campbell.
-Guy Johnson’s career in devastating the valleys
-of New York during the Revolution is too well
-known to need repetition here.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The absorption of Johnson’s mind in his multifarious
-labours and in the interests of the community in
-which he lived, scarcely gave him time to study carefully
-the great political movements leading to the
-Revolution. The time had now come when the continued
-folly of the king and Parliament acting as irritant
-and stimulant upon people in whom a love of
-freedom was inborn, was to result in independence.
-The long training in the border wars had educated a
-generation of soldiers who did not fear to meet either
-the mercenaries or the regulars of Great Britain,
-while also well able to profit by the mistakes of the
-king’s agents, and to organize government for themselves.
-On the civil side, the people of New England,
-led and trained by Congregational clergymen
-rather than by lawyers, were educated into the idea
-of resistance to the king and Parliament on grounds
-of abstract right. In the Middle and Southern States
-regularly educated publicists and lawyers trained in
-England were much more numerous. The continued
-invasion by the king of their rights as Englishmen
-<span class='pageno' title='210' id='Page_210'></span>
-was their theme; and resistance was made, and final
-victory expected, not by revolution, but through the
-right application of the law and tradition which had
-been so often violated. In many of the colonies a
-well-grounded fear lest a politically organized church
-should be forced upon them, as well as hatred of England’s
-avaricious policy of holding the colonies as a
-close market, had also their influence in bringing about
-separation.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson, too busily occupied to follow every step
-of the movements, yet sympathized with the people,
-even while sincerely loyal to the Crown. As member
-of the Council in New York City, he witnessed not
-only the frequent turbulent expressions of the populace,
-but also saw from the firm temper of the Assembly
-signs of the coming danger. While John
-Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, and Samuel Adams, of
-Massachusetts, were discussing the political situation
-and the principles at stake, the people of New York
-showed by their acts their constant determination to
-resist all invasion of their rights by either the king or
-his agent. The governor, Sir Henry Moore, who dissolved
-the Assembly in 1769, found out quickly that
-the members were re-elected by overwhelming majorities.
-His sudden death called to the office of acting
-governor, for the third time, Dr. Cadwallader Colden.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In the following March the political sky, already
-full of the portents of a coming storm, gathered a
-deeper blackness when the fact became known that
-the House of Commons in London had refused to receive
-the representative of the New York Assembly.
-<span class='pageno' title='211' id='Page_211'></span>
-In spite of prophetic warnings and wise cautions in
-Parliament, the determination to make merchandise
-of the colonies stupefied and debauched the conscience
-of the average lord and commoner of commercial
-England, as the opium question in China
-stupefies and debauches it yet. The government was
-as much determined on a war with the American colonies,
-and for much the same purpose, as so many of
-Great Britain’s later wars have been waged,—for the
-sake of maintaining trade. Of the twenty-five or
-thirty wars, even during Victoria’s reign, the majority
-have been for the purpose of forcing trade and making
-money. In a word, the war of King George and
-his Parliament in 1775 against the colonies was a
-shopkeeper’s war for a market. “British interests”
-then, as now, meant trade and profits. Johnson felt
-the injustice of the British Government’s acts when he
-wrote in 1769: “Whatever reason or justice there
-may be in the late steps, there is a probability of their
-being carried farther than a good man can wish.”
-Nevertheless, Sir William was wisely non-committal
-on the burning question.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Sons of Liberty in New York became active
-and turbulent, and made the lives of ultra-loyalists,
-like Colden, a burden. The royal troops had been
-by his orders summoned to New York City, after he
-had been driven to take refuge in the fort on the outbreak
-of violence when the stamps arrived from England.
-These soldiers were now the targets of scorn,
-especially after the Assembly had refused indemnity
-to Colden, who kept on recommending them to supplicate
-<span class='pageno' title='212' id='Page_212'></span>
-the paternal tenderness of their gracious sovereign
-George. After concurring in the spirited
-resolutions of the Legislatures of Virginia and South
-Carolina, the Assembly had also defeated a cunning
-scheme to win from them a vote of money to support
-the king’s military forces.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The hatred between the soldiers and the Sons of
-Liberty burst into flame at the battle of Golden
-Hill, Jan. 18, 1770, in New York City, when the first
-blood of the American Revolution was spilled. The
-Sons of Liberty had erected an emblem of their freedom
-and hereditary rights. The liberty-pole, and
-their meetings with speeches under it, were survivals
-of the old custom of their Teutonic ancestors, who
-met in the folk moot under the chosen oak-trees in the
-forests of Germany before Christendom began. The
-liberty-pole with its spars was obnoxious to the redcoats,
-who with saw and gunpowder tried to destroy it.
-The citizens resisted, but the unarmed and unorganized
-mob broke before the charge of armed men with
-bayonets. Having finally succeeded in sawing the
-pole into kindling-wood, the military piled the fragments
-before the doors of the tavern where the Sons
-of Liberty met.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The citizens were now thoroughly roused, and on
-the 18th a riot broke out, in which clubs and cutlasses
-were used, and in which the soldiers were worsted;
-though several citizens were wounded, and one of
-them, a sailor, died. When at Golden Hill, or John
-Street, between Cliff Street and Burling Slip, the riot
-was stopped by the arrival of British officers, who
-<span class='pageno' title='213' id='Page_213'></span>
-ordered their men back to camp. Conspicuous in
-the affrays of next day were the sailors, who in revenge
-for the death of their comrade clubbed the
-soldiers and drove them out of the streets into their
-barracks. On the 5th of February a new liberty-pole
-was erected on ground purchased for the purpose,
-and it remained until 1776.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>The Sons of Liberty succeeded in carrying out the
-non-importation act so vigourously that the market
-became empty of goods used as presents to the Indians.
-Johnson was in danger of becoming seriously
-embarrassed. The Cherokees, who in January, 1770,
-intended to go to war with the tribes in the West and
-Southwest, wanted the Six Nations to join them.
-These at once resolved first to ask the advice of
-Johnson, who appointed a council at German Flats,
-hoping to win the Cherokees away from their purpose.
-Johnson was obliged to write to the chairman
-of the Sons of Liberty to get permission to receive or
-purchase a package invoiced to him which they held
-in bond, promising to use the goods only for the
-Indians. The request was cheerfully granted, and the
-goods delivered.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>In company with Dr. Shuckburgh, who composed
-or introduced the tune of “Yankee Doodle,”
-Johnson met the Indians, half famished as they were
-on account of the failure of crops through caterpillars.
-The result of the council was that the Cherokees gave
-up their proposed war, and the treaty of Fort Stanwix
-was ratified in detail.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Perhaps it was from this incident that the New
-<span class='pageno' title='214' id='Page_214'></span>
-Yorkers prepared to dress themselves as Mohawk Indians,
-and tumble the tea into the waters of the East
-River, when it should come. On the 9th of July, hearing
-that all taxes, except upon tea, had been removed,
-the Committee of One Hundred agreed to receive all
-imports except tea. Johnson’s storehouses were now
-well stocked with imported Indian goods. Indian
-trade, which had come almost to a standstill, was resumed,
-much to the joy of all the Six Nations. The
-red men could not comprehend the white man’s politics,
-or realize that the love of money was the root of
-the evil of war also. They could not understand that
-titles of nobility, commissions in the army, stars, garters,
-decorations, and things most noble were peddled
-by government and purchased by money.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>So rebellious a spirit as that manifested in New
-York must be rebuked, and so the king and his counsellors
-chose as the proper man to curb it, the infamous
-William Tryon. This Irishman had been an army
-officer, but through his wife’s influence obtained the
-post of lieutenant-governor of North Carolina in
-1764; becoming governor in 1765. He was the fit
-tool of the kind of a king and parliament that ruled
-England at this time. Living while at Newbern,
-N. C., in amazing luxury, at the cost of the oppressively
-taxed colonists, he delighted in scorning their
-remonstrances and in crushing out their liberties.
-Goaded to desperation, the Sons of Liberty, after five
-years of vain petition for redress, met to the number
-of nearly two thousand on the banks of the Alamance
-River. Tryon marched out from his “palace” with
-<span class='pageno' title='215' id='Page_215'></span>
-an army of one thousand regular British troops, infantry,
-cavalry, and artillery, to suppress them. On
-the 15th of May, 1771, the Regulators, or Sons of
-Liberty, sent Tryon a message offering to lay down
-their arms if he would redress their grievances. Tryon
-advanced with the idea of scattering the patriots before
-the reinforcements coming from all parts of the
-province should encourage the Regulators. When
-within a hundred yards of the patriot ranks, his officers
-read the riot act. It was met by shouts of defiance.
-Tryon then ordered his men to fire. They hesitated.
-Rising in his stirrups, Tryon in a rage cried out,
-“Fire—on them, or on me,” at the same time discharging
-his pistol and felling a victim. In the two
-hours’ musketry battle which ensued, the ammunition
-of the poorly armed patriots being soon exhausted, the
-decisive victory of Tryon was obtained when the artillery
-was ordered up, and the unequal contest decided
-by rounds of grape and canister. Twenty of the
-Sons of Liberty were left dead on the field, the
-wounded being carried off. Of Tryon’s men, sixty
-were killed or wounded.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Although practically unknown to popular American
-history, this was the first battle of the American Revolution.
-For a few weeks Tryon held high revel of
-execution and devastation in North Carolina, and was
-then, in the height of his glory, transferred to New
-York; the Earl of Dunmore, who from Oct. 18,
-1770, had served for a few months on Manhattan
-Island, being ordered to Virginia.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Tryon, who reached New York July 8, 1772, soon
-<span class='pageno' title='216' id='Page_216'></span>
-became known among the New York Sons of Liberty
-as “Bloody Billy.” Before the Assembly he made a
-conciliatory speech attributing his butchery in North
-Carolina to the special favour of a kind Providence.
-With consummate address and flattery, and the adroit
-distribution of ministerial patronage, he managed to
-hoodwink the Assembly. Backed by the order of the
-British Government that his salary should be paid out
-of the revenue, and becoming thus independent of the
-colony, he was well fitted to be the king’s tool. To
-the amazement of the patriots like Schuyler, and of
-other colonies, the Legislature of New York seemed
-to have reversed its former record, and to have
-become hopelessly subservient.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Local affairs were meanwhile well attended to.
-Early in January, 1772, Sir William Johnson, who had
-long believed with Philip Schuyler that a division of
-Albany County should be made, forwarded a petition
-from the people in all parts of the county. After
-considerable discussion a bill was passed by which the
-old county of Albany was divided into three counties,—Albany,
-Tryon, and Charlotte. All the civil officers,
-except one who had been nominated by Johnson, were
-appointed, and the county-seat of Tryon County was
-fixed by the Government at Johnstown. At Johnson’s
-suggestion, Tryon County was divided into the townships
-of Mohawk, Stone Arabia, Canajoharie, Kingsland,
-and German Flats.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnstown now became the centre of bustle and
-activity. New roads were laid out, and a jail and
-county court-house built; while new settlers came in
-<span class='pageno' title='217' id='Page_217'></span>
-by scores to select lots and build houses. In the midst
-of his pressing local occupations, Johnson, who had
-been elected a trustee,—his name standing first on
-the list of Queen’s, now Rutgers College, chartered
-Nov. 10, 1766,—received an invitation to visit New
-Brunswick, N. J. He was obliged to decline to attend.
-The college went into operation in 1771; but
-its sessions were soon interrupted, both professors
-and students entering the patriot army when the war
-broke out.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Remaining at home, he entertained at the Hall, in
-July, Governor Tryon and his wife. Tryon, as avaricious
-as he was murderous, had come into the Valley
-under pretence of holding a council with the Indians
-to redress their grievances against Klock and others.
-In reality his purpose was speculation in land; and the
-use of his office, like that of so many royal governors
-of New York, was to swell his private purse, while
-taking advantage of his high position. Although the
-Indians rehearsed their troubles, and Tryon listened,
-they obtained from the governor, who was too busy
-with his money-making schemes, no satisfaction.
-After reviewing the militia at Johnstown, Burnet’s
-Field, and German Flats, fourteen hundred men in
-all, and purchasing a large tract of land north of the
-Mohawk, Tryon returned to New York. His name
-was not suffered to remain on the map of New York;
-for Tryon County before many years became one of
-the first of the nineteen counties in the United States
-named after General Montgomery. Shortly afterward
-Tryon appointed Johnson major-general of the
-Northern Department.
-<span class='pageno' title='218' id='Page_218'></span></p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>At a council with the chief sachems of the Confederacy
-of the Six Nations held at his house, at the
-order of Lord Dartmouth, Johnson obtained from
-them their assent to the purchase of twenty-three
-thousand acres north of the Ohio, by the Ohio Company.
-After telling the chiefs that as a mark of the
-king’s friendship to them Fort Pitt was to be demolished,
-the sachems agreed to the settlement of what
-grew to be the State of Ohio.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Just at the time when Sir William Johnson was in
-the midst of the most varied activities, and was the
-most popular and influential man in the whole province
-of New York, his physical strength failed. For
-several years the inroads upon his constitution had
-warned him to seek the rest from labours and from
-social indulgence which seemed impossible to him.
-For the last ten years before his death he had suffered
-at intervals from dysentery, which often kept him an invalid
-in bed for weeks. During these periods of weakness
-the unextracted bullet received at Lake George
-in 1755 irritated his nerves, and made his wound very
-painful. Even when recovered from the attacks of
-the disease which threatened to be chronic, active exercise
-was frequently impossible for a long time afterward.
-This suffering, though so grievous to himself,
-was providentially turned to the advantage of millions.
-It was the occasion of the revelation to the world of
-the health-giving waters of Saratoga Springs. With a
-touching solicitude for his personal good, the Mohawks
-had called his attention to the remedial value
-of the High Rock Spring, to which they always turned
-<span class='pageno' title='219' id='Page_219'></span>
-aside in their wanderings or hunts eastward. On the
-22d of August, 1767, Sir William left the Hall, and
-was borne to these springs by his devoted Mohawks.
-He travelled in a boat to Schenectady, and on their
-shoulders in a litter to Saratoga. A halt over night
-was made at Ballston Lake in the cabin of an Irishman
-named Michael McDonald. Reaching the springs by
-way of the Indian trail next day, his faithful bearers
-built a bark hut, and tenderly cared for him during
-the five days he was able to spend there,—for pressing
-letters soon called him home. The Adirondack
-air charged with ozone, and the cleansing and healing
-waters greatly benefited him. After his return, when
-this fact was known, others followed his example.
-Known for ages to the aborigines, its line of fame
-went out through all the earth; and gradually the
-evolution of the most famous watering-place in America
-followed. It is noteworthy that a camp of the
-red men is still found at Saratoga Springs.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Stone, in his biography of Johnson, calls attention
-to the coincidence that while Johnson was recovering
-at Saratoga, Dieskau was dying at Suresnes near Paris.
-Both had been leaders of the opposing forces, and
-both had been wounded at Lake George twelve years
-before. Arriving on the 4th of September, he was in
-time to hail his knighted son, John, just home from
-Europe. Had the vital nerve of an electric cable
-thrilled under the ocean, Johnson would have heard,
-four days later, of the decease of his illustrious
-antagonist.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Other trips for the sake of health were made to the
-<span class='pageno' title='220' id='Page_220'></span>
-sea-shore at New London, Conn.; but owing to the
-fact of his being so often overworked, he was frequently
-prostrated in summer by his old enemy.
-When Cresap’s war broke out in 1774, he was almost
-discouraged. Chief Logan’s relatives—the Delaware
-chief Bald Eagle, and the Shawanese sachem Silver
-Heels—had been murdered by white men, who were
-too eager to improve red men off the face of the
-earth. The treaty of Fort Stanwix had not only been
-trampled under foot by the whites, but the murderers
-of Silver Heels had, perhaps unwittingly, but certainly
-in accordance with Indian interpretation, committed
-a symbolical act which was not private, but national
-and declarative. It meant war. After the white
-murderer had shot Bald Eagle, who was alone on the
-river, he scalped the chief, and propping his body
-upright in his canoe, sent him adrift down the
-stream. No note of a congress or decree of a royal
-court could be to the red man more distinctly a declaration
-of war than was the bloody freight which this
-boat bore to the Indians.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>To the Six Nations the murder of Logan, their kinsman,
-was a direct insult and irritating challenge; yet
-instead of rushing to massacre, they came to their
-friend Johnson to ask his counsel. For weeks before
-the congress which he called to meet at his
-house, July 7, 1774, he was in constant correspondence
-with his agents in the Ohio and Illinois country.
-As fast as the chiefs arrived, he persuaded them
-privately to refrain from war, and to trust in him to
-obtain justice. Six hundred Indians, many of them
-<span class='pageno' title='221' id='Page_221'></span>
-from great distances, were impatiently waiting at
-Johnson Hall while the war raged on the borders of
-Virginia. Though Johnson was sick with dysentery,
-he took no thought of self. From a sick-bed he rose
-to attend the council. After preliminaries, the meeting
-on the 9th of July, 1774, was addressed by an
-eloquent Seneca chieftain. Fortunately, God’s day
-of rest intervened; but on Monday—the last of Johnson’s
-days on earth—his answer was given. For
-two hours, on a hot day and in the glare of a July
-sun, with all his old-time fire of eloquence, this friend
-of the red man spoke in grave discourse. His diction
-was fiery, rhetorical, impassioned at times; but
-he spoke judicially on the problem in hand, pleading
-that they should not rush into war, but await
-the course of law. Six hundred dark faces, unrippled
-with emotion, were fixed intently with burning
-but immovable eyes, and with the gravity of statues,
-on the speaker during the long discourse. Then after
-the peroration, pipes and tobacco were passed around,
-and the conference broke up, that the auditors might
-prepare, through their orator, a reply.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Johnson never heard the Indians’ rejoinder. A
-few minutes after the conclusion he was taken with
-relapse. Supported to his library, he soon became
-unconscious, and before sunset was dead.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>It was euthanasia. Past all call to decide between
-Indian tribe and tribe, between white murderers and
-red, between serving conscience and king, between
-following the colonies for freedom under law or supporting
-arbitrary despotism under the fiction of power
-<span class='pageno' title='222' id='Page_222'></span>
-by the grace of God, Johnson rested from his labours.
-He was one of the Makers of America, building
-grander than he knew. His place in history is sure.
-Had he lived a decade later!—but here we enter
-the region of conjecture, the ground forbidden to
-history.</p>
-
-<div><span class='pageno' title='223' id='Page_223'></span><h1><span class='gesp'>INDEX</span>.</h1></div>
-
-<div class='lgl' style=''> <!-- rend=';' -->
-<p class='line'>Abercrombie, General, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>-<a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>-<a href='#Page_171'>171</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Akin, N. Y., <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Alamance, N. C., <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>-<a href='#Page_216'>216</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Albany, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>-<a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>-<a href='#Page_131'>131</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Albany County, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Algonkin Indians, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Amherst, Lord, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>-<a href='#Page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Auriesville, N. Y., <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Barclay, Rev. Thomas, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Barnwell, Col. John, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Beavers, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Beukendal, battle at, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>-<a href='#Page_108'>108</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Bible, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Bloody Pond, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Book of Common Prayer, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Boone, Daniel, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Boston, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Bouquet, Colonel, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Braddock, General, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Bradstreet, Colonel, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Brant, Joseph, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Brant, Mary, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Broadalbin, N. Y., <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Butler, John, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Butler, Thomas, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Butler, Walter, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Calendars, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Canajoharie, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Captives, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>-<a href='#Page_191'>191</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Catawba Indians, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Caughnawaga, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;<span class='it'>See</span> Fonda.</p>
-<p class='line'>Cayuga Indians, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Champlain, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Cherokee Indians, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Cherry Valley, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Clinton, Gov. George, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>-<a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>-<a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Clinton, Sir Henry, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Chucktununda creek, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Church edifices, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>-<a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Claus, Captain, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Colden, Dr. Cadwallader, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Confederacies, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Congress, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>-<a href='#Page_131'>131</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Connecticut, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Cooper, J. F., <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Corlaer, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;<span class='it'>See also</span> Van Curler, Arendt.</p>
-<p class='line'>Courcelles, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Cresap’s war, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Crown Point, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Crullers, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Cuoq, Rev. I. A., <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Dartmouth College, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>De Lancey, E. F., <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>De Lancey, Gov. James, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>De Lancey, Stephen, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>De Lancey, Susan, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Delaware Indians, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>-<a href='#Page_191'>191</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>De Peyster, Gen. J. W., <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Detroit, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>-<a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>De Witt, Simeon, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Dieskau, Baron, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>-<a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Domines in the Dutch Church, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Dorp. <span class='it'>See</span> Schenectady.</p>
-<p class='line'>Drummers, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Dutch Republic. <span class='it'>See</span> Holland.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Eastman, Dr. C. A., <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Easton, Penn., 156, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Edwards, Jonathan, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Eliot, John, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Eyre, Major William, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Fish House, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Fonda, Major Jellis, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Fonda, N. Y., <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;<span class='it'>See</span> Caughnawaga.</p>
-<p class='line'>Fort Bull, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Fort Frontenac, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Fort George, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Fort Hunter, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Fort Massachusetts, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Fort Plain, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Fort Stanwix, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Fort William Henry, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>France, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Franklin Benjamin, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Freeman, Domine, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Freeman, E. A., <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>French ideas, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>-<a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Fur trade, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>-<a href='#Page_30'>30</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Gage, General, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>German Flats, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>-<a href='#Page_166'>166</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Germans, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>-<a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>-<a href='#Page_155'>155</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Ginseng, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Golden Hill, Battle of, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Governors, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>:</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Andros, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Burnet, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Cosby, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Craven, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Denny, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Dinwiddie, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Dongan, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Dunmore, Lord, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Fitch, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Glen, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Hardy, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Hunter, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Moore, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Morris, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Nicholson, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Osborne, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>-<a href='#Page_126'>126</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Shirley, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>-<a href='#Page_149'>149</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Tryon, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>-<a href='#Page_217'>217</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Hamilton, James Alexander, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Hartford, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Hasenclever, Peter, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Hawley, Rev. Gideon, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Heidelberg Catechism, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Hendrick, King, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Herkimer, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Holland, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>-<a href='#Page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Horicon, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Horsmanden, Judge, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Howe, Lord, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Indians, antiquities, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;councils, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;dislike of artillery, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;effect on British imagination, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;etiquette, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;fire-arms, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;government, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;half-breeds, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;heraldry, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;industry, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;in executive council, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;in politics, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;inventions, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;money, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;oratory, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;religion, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>-<a href='#Page_60'>60</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;stratagems, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;sports and games, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;totems, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;warfare, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>-<a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>-<a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>-<a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Interpreters, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Iroquois, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>-<a href='#Page_41'>41</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>-<a href='#Page_60'>60</a>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Johnson, Guy, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Johnson Hall, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>-<a href='#Page_205'>205</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Johnson, Mary, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Johnson, Nancy, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Johnson, Sir John, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>-<a href='#Page_208'>208</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Johnson, Sir William, adoption as chief, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;agriculture, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;ancestry, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;arrival in America, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;baronet, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;birth, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;captures Niagara, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>-<a href='#Page_175'>175</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;character, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;children, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>-<a href='#Page_208'>208</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;coat-of-arms, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;colonel, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;councils, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>-<a href='#Page_82'>82</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;disagrees with Shirley, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;education, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;education of the Indians, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>-<a href='#Page_121'>121</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;fortifies his house, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;freemason, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;his housekeeper, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;his wife, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>-<a href='#Page_23'>23</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;his houses, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>-<a href='#Page_196'>196</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;in executive council, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;introduces fine cattle, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;in Indian costume, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;journey to Mohawk Valley, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>-<a href='#Page_16'>16</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;journey to Detroit, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Lake George campaign, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>-<a href='#Page_145'>145</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;literary tastes, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;major-general, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;manuscripts, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;marriage, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;money, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Mount Johnson, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;offers reward for scalps, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;oratory, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;patience, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;pleasures, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>-<a href='#Page_204'>204</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;protects Frenchmen, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;public life, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;shoots an elk, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;resignation of office, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;royal grant, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;superintendent, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>-<a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;tomb, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;trade, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>-<a href='#Page_34'>34</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;wampum, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;work, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;wounded, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Jogues, Isaac, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Johnstown, N. Y., <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a>, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Joncaire, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Jones, Thomas, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Judges, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Kalm, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Kings:</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;Charles II., <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;George II., <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;George III., <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Kirkland, Domine, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Kryn, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Lake Champlain, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Lake George, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Land Patents, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>-<a href='#Page_184'>184</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>La Prairie, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>La Presentation, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Leisler, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Livingston, Philip, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Livingston, William, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Loudon, Lord, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Lyman, Col. Phineas, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Maize, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Manor system, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>McGinnis, Capt. William, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>-<a href='#Page_143'>143</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Megapolensis, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Middle States, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Mohawk Indians, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>-<a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Mohawk Valley, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>-<a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Montcalm, General, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Montgomery County, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Montmagny, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>New England, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>New England militia, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>-<a href='#Page_145'>145</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>New York Assembly, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>-<a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>-<a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>New York Colony and State, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Niagara, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>-<a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Norman’s Kill, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>North Carolina, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>-<a href='#Page_216'>216</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Nott, Dr. Eliphalet, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Ogdensburg, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Ohio Company, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Ohio Valley, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Oneida Indians, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Onondaga Indians, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Onontio, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Osborne, Sir Danvers, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>-<a href='#Page_126'>126</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Oswego, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>-<a href='#Page_158'>158</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Ottawa Indians, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Palatines. <span class='it'>See</span> Germans.</p>
-<p class='line'>Parker, the printer, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>-<a href='#Page_91'>91</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Parkman, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Pennsylvania, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Picquet, Francis, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Pitt, William, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Pompey Stone, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Pontiac, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Quebec, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Rifles, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Royal American Regiment, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Rutgers College, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Sacandaga, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>-<a href='#Page_103'>103</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Saratoga, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Saratoga Springs, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Schenectady, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>-<a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>-<a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>-<a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Schoharie, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Schuyler, Peter (Quider), <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Schuyler (2d), <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Schuyler, Philip, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Seneca Indians, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Sergeant, John, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Shea, J. G., <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Simms, J. R., <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Sioux Indians, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Six Nations. <span class='it'>See</span> Iroquois.</p>
-<p class='line'>South Carolina, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Spraker’s Basin, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Stevens, Arent, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Stuyvesant, Peter, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Taxation, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>-<a href='#Page_216'>216</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Teedyuscung, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Ticonderoga, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Toll farm, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>-<a href='#Page_108'>108</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Trade, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>-<a href='#Page_32'>32</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Tuscarora Indians, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>-<a href='#Page_53'>53</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Union College, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Van Curler, Arendt, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;education, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;first visits Mohawk Valley, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;founds Schenectady, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;name given by Indians, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;ransoms Jogues, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>;</p>
-<p class='line'>&ensp;&ensp;work, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Van Slyck, Albert, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>-<a href='#Page_108'>108</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Victoria, Queen, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Vrooman, Domine, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Wampum, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>-<a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Warren, Admiral Peter, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Warrensburg, N. Y., <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Washington, George, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Webb, General, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Webster, Daniel, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Wheelock, Dr. Eleazar, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Whiting, Gen. Nathan, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Williams, Col. William, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a>-<a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Winslow, General, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Wisenburg, Catharine, wife of Sir William Johnson, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>-<a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Wolfe, General, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>Wyoming Valley, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>.</p>
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-<p class='line'>Zenger, John Peter, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>.</p>
-</div> <!-- end rend -->
-
-<hr class='pbk'/>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:4em;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.5em;'>MAKERS OF AMERICA.</p>
-
-<hr class='tbk103'/>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='it'>The following is a list of the subjects and authors so
-far arranged for in this series. The volumes will
-be published at the uniform price of $1.00, and
-will appear in rapid succession</span>:—</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Christopher Columbus</span> (1436–1506), and the Discovery
-of the New World. By <span class='sc'>Charles Kendall
-Adams</span>, President of Cornell University.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>John Winthrop</span> (1588–1649), First Governor of
-the Massachusetts Colony. By Rev. <span class='sc'>Joseph H.
-Twichell</span>.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Robert Morris</span> (1734–1806), Superintendent of Finance
-under the Continental Congress. By Prof. <span class='sc'>William
-G. Sumner</span>, of Yale University.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>James Edward Oglethorpe</span> (1689–1785), and the Founding
-of the Georgia Colony. By <span class='sc'>Henry Bruce</span>,
-Esq.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>John Hughes, D.D.</span> (1797–1864), First Archbishop of
-New York: a Representative American Catholic.
-By <span class='sc'>Henry A. Brann</span>, D.D.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Robert Fulton</span> (1765–1815): His Life and its Results.
-By Prof. <span class='sc'>R. H. Thurston</span>, of Cornell University.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Francis Higginson</span> (1587–1630), Puritan, Author of
-“New England’s Plantation,” etc. By <span class='sc'>Thomas W.
-Higginson</span>.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Peter Stuyvesant</span> (1602–1682), and the Dutch Settlement
-of New York. By <span class='sc'>Bayard Tuckerman</span>,
-Esq., author of a “Life of General Lafayette,”
-editor of the “Diary of Philip Hone,” etc., etc.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Thomas Hooker</span> (1586–1647), Theologian, Founder of
-the Hartford Colony. By <span class='sc'>George L. Walker</span>,
-D.D.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Charles Sumner</span> (1811–1874), Statesman. By <span class='sc'>Anna
-L. Dawes</span>.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Thomas Jefferson</span> (1743–1826), Third President of the
-United States. By <span class='sc'>James Schouler</span>, Esq., author
-of “A History of the United States under the
-Constitution.”</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>William White</span> (1748–1836), Chaplain of the Continental
-Congress, Bishop of Pennsylvania, President of
-the Convention to organize the Protestant Episcopal
-Church in America. By Rev. <span class='sc'>Julius H. Ward</span>,
-with an Introduction by Right Rev. Henry C. Potter,
-D.D., Bishop of New York.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Jean Baptiste Lemoine</span>, <span class='it'>sieur</span> de Bienville (1680–1768),
-French Governor of Louisiana, Founder of New
-Orleans. By <span class='sc'>Grace King</span>, author of “Monsieur
-Motte.”</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Alexander Hamilton</span> (1757–1804), Statesman, Financier,
-Secretary of the Treasury. By Prof. <span class='sc'>William
-G. Sumner</span>, of Yale University.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Father Juniper Serra</span> (1713–1784), and the Franciscan
-Missions in California. By <span class='sc'>John Gilmary Shea</span>,
-LL.D.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Cotton Mather</span> (1663–1728), Theologian, Author, Believer
-in Witchcraft and the Supernatural. By Prof.
-<span class='sc'>Barrett Wendell</span>, of Harvard University.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Robert Cavelier</span>, <span class='it'>sieur</span> de La Salle (1643–1687), Explorer
-of the Northwest and the Mississippi. By
-<span class='sc'>Edward G. Mason</span>, Esq., President of the Historical
-Society of Chicago, author of “Illinois” in the
-Commonwealth Series.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Thomas Nelson</span> (1738–1789), Governor of Virginia,
-General in the Revolutionary Army. Embracing a
-Picture of Virginian Colonial Life. By <span class='sc'>Thomas
-Nelson Page</span>, author of “Mars Chan,” and other
-popular stories.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>George and Cecilius Calvert, Barons Baltimore of
-Baltimore</span> (1605–1676), and the Founding of the
-Maryland Colony. By <span class='sc'>William Hand Browne</span>,
-editor of “The Archives of Maryland.”</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Sir William Johnson</span> (1715–1774), and The Six Nations.
-By <span class='sc'>William Elliot Griffis</span>, D.D., author
-of “The Mikado’s Empire,” etc., etc.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Sam. Houston</span> (1793–1862), and the Annexation of
-Texas. By <span class='sc'>Henry Bruce</span>, Esq.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Joseph Henry, LL.D.</span> (1797–1878), Savant and Natural
-Philosopher. By <span class='sc'>Frederic H. Betts</span>, Esq.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='hang'><span class='bold'>Ralph Waldo Emerson.</span> By Prof. <span class='sc'>Herman Grimm</span>,
-author of “The Life of Michael Angelo,” “The Life
-and Times of Goethe,” etc.</p>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:2em;margin-top:1em;'>DODD, MEAD, &amp; COMPANY,</p>
-<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:0em;font-style:italic;'>753 and 755 Broadway, New York.</p>
-
-<hr class='pbk'/>
-
-<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:4em;margin-bottom:2em;font-size:1.2em;'>TRANSCRIBER NOTES</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.
-Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been
-employed.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious
-printer errors occur.</p>
-
-<p class='pindent'>A cover was created for this eBook and is placed in the
-public domain.</p>
-
-<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
-
-<p class='noindent'>[The end of <span class='it'>Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations</span>,
-by William Elliot Grifis.]</p>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations, by
-William Elliot Griffis
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