the rendezvous of fighting men at fort dayton.
i shall not easily forget the early breakfast next morning, or the calm yet serious air with which my mother and two unmarried sisters went about the few remaining duties of preparing for my departure. for all they said, they might have been getting me ready for a fishing excursion, but it would be wrong to assume that they did not think as gravely as if they had flooded the kitchen with tears.
little has been said of these good women in the course of my story, for the reason that fate gave them very little to do with it, and the narrative is full long as it is, without the burden of extraneous personages. but i would not have it thought that we did not all love one another, and stand up for one another, because we kept cool about it.
during this last year, in truth, my mother and i had seen more of each other than for all the time before since my infancy, and in the main had got on admirably together. despite the affectation of indifference in her letter, she did not lack for pride in my being a major; it is true that she exhibited little of this emotion to me, fearing its effect upon my vanity, doubtless, but her neighbors and gossips heard a good deal from it, i fancy. it was in her nature to be proud, and she had right to be; for what other widow in the valley, left in sore poverty with a household of children, had, like her, by individual exertions, thrift, and keen management, brought all that family well up, purchased and paid for her own homestead and farm, and laid by enough for a comfortable old age? not one! she therefore was justified in respecting herself and exacting respect from others, and it pleased me that she should have satisfaction as well in my advancement. but she did ruffle me sometimes by seeking to manage my business for me--she never for a moment doubting that it was within her ability to make a much better major than i was--and by ever and anon selecting some valley maiden for me to marry. this last became a veritable infliction, so that i finally assured her i should never marry--my heart being irrevocably fixed upon a hopelessly unattainable ideal.
i desired her to suppose that this referred to some albany woman, but i was never skilful in indirection, and i do not believe that she was at all deceived.
the time came soon enough when i must say good-by. my carefully packed bags were carried out and fastened to the saddle. tall, slender, high-browed margaret sadly sewed a new cockade of her own making upon my hat, and round-faced, red-cheeked gertrude tied my sash and belt about me in silence. i kissed them both with more feeling than in all their lives before i had known for them, and when my mother followed me to the horse-block, and embraced me again, the tears could not be kept back. after all, i was her only boy, and it was to war in its deadliest form that i was going.
and then the thought came to me--how often in that cruel week it had come to fathers, husbands, brothers, in this sunny valley of ours, leaving homes they should never see again!--that nothing but our right arms could save these women, my own flesh and blood, from the hatchet and scalping-knife.
i swung myself into the saddle sternly at this thought, and gripped the reins hard and pushed my weight upon the stirrups. by all the gods, i should not take this ride for nothing!
"be of good heart, mother," i said, between my teeth. "we shall drive the scoundrels back--such as we do not feed to the wolves."
"ay! and do you your part!" said this fine old daughter of the men who through eighty years of warfare broke the back of spain. "remember that you are a van hoorn!"
"i shall not forget."
"and is that young philip cross--her husband--with johnson's crew?"
"yes, he is."
"then if he gets back to canada alive, you are not the man your grandfather baltus was!"
these were her last words, and they rang in my ears long after i had joined fonda and sammons at caughnawaga, and we had started westward to overtake the regiment. if i could find this philip cross, there was nothing more fixed in my mind than the resolve to kill him.
we rode for the most part without conversation along the rough, sun-baked road, the ruts of which had here and there been trampled into fine dust by the feet of the soldiers marching before. when we passed houses near the highway, women and children came to the doors to watch us; other women and children we could see working in the gardens or among the rows of tall corn. but save for now and then an aged gaffer, sitting in the sunshine with his pipe, there were no men. all those who could bear a musket were gone to meet the invasion. two years of war in other parts had drained the valley of many of its young men, who could not bear peace at home while there were battles at the north or in the jerseys, and were serving in every army which congress controlled, from champlain and the delaware to charleston. and now this levy for home defence had swept the farms clean.
we had late dinner, i remember, at the house of stout old peter wormuth, near the palatine church. both he and his son matthew--a friend of mine from boyhood, who was to survive oriskany only to be shot down near cherry valley next year by joseph brant--had of course gone forward with the palatine militia. the women gave us food and drink, and i recall that matthew's young wife, who had been gertrude shoemaker and was general herkimer's niece, wept bitterly when we left, and we shouted back to her promises to keep watch over her husband. it is curious to think that when i next saw this young woman, some years later, she was the wife of major john frey.
it was a stiff ride on to overtake the stalwart yeomen of our regiment, which we did not far from a point opposite the upper canajoharie castle. the men had halted here, weary after their long, hot march, and were sprawling on the grass and in the shade of the bushes. the sun was getting low on the distant hills of the little falls, and there came up a refreshing stir of air from the river. some were for encamping here for the night; others favored going on to the falls. it annoyed me somewhat to find that this question was apparently to be left to the men themselves, colonel visscher not seeming able or disposed to decide for himself.
across the stream, in the golden august haze, we could see the roofs of the mohawks' village--or castle as they called it. some of the men idly proposed to go over and stampede or clear out this nest of red vermin, but the idea was not seriously taken up. perhaps if it had been, much might have been changed for the better. nothing is clearer than that molly brant, who with her bastard brood and other mohawk women was then living there, sent up an emissary to warn her brother joseph of our coming, and that it was upon this information he acted to such fell purpose. doubtless if we had gone over and seized the castle and its inmates then, that messenger would never have been sent. but we are all wise when we look backward.
by the afternoon of the next day, august 3, the mustering at fort dayton was complete. no one of the thirty-three companies of tryon county militia was absent, and though some sent barely a score of men, still no more were to be expected such as the little army was, it must suffice. there were of more or less trained militiamen nearly six hundred. of artisan volunteers, of farmers who had no place in the regular company formations, and of citizens whose anxiety to be present was unfortunately much in excess of their utility, there were enough to bring the entire total up to perhaps two-score over eight hundred. our real and effective fighting force was about half-way between these two figures--i should say about seven hundred strong.
it was the first time that the whole tryon militia had been gathered together, and we looked one another over with curiosity. though called into common action by a common peril, the nearness of which made the mohawk valley seem a very small place and its people all close neighbors, the men assembled here represented the partial settlement of a country larger than any one of several european monarchies.
as there were all sorts and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of head-gear and equipment, all fashions of faces. there were germans of half a dozen different types, there were dutch, there were irish and scotch presbyterians, there were stray french huguenots, and even englishmen, and here and there a yankee settler from new england. many there were who with difficulty understood each other, as when the scotch campbells and clydes of cherry valley, for example, essayed to talk with the bush-germans from above zimmerman's.
notable among the chief men of the communities here, so to speak, huddled together for safety, was old isaac paris, the foremost man of stone arabia. he should now be something over sixty years of age, yet had children at home scarce out of the cradle, and was so hale and strong in bearing that he seemed no less fit for battle and hardship than his strapping son peter, who was not yet eighteen. these two laid their lives down together within this dread week of which i write. i shall never forget how fine and resolute a man the old colonel looked, with his good clothes of citizen make, as became a member of the state senate and one of the committee of safety, yet with as martial a bearing as any. he was a frenchman from strasbourg, but spoke like a german; no man of us all looked forward to fighting with greater appetite, though he had been always a quiet merchant and god-fearing, peaceful burgher.
colonel ebenezer cox, a somewhat arrogant and solitary man for whom i had small liking, now commanded the canajoharie regiment in place of herkimer the brigadier-general; there were at the head of the other regiments stout colonel peter bellinger, the capable and determined colonel jacob klock, and our own colonel frederick visscher. almost all of the committee of safety were here--most of them being also officers in the militia; but others, like paris, john dygert, samson sammons, jacob snell, and samuel billington, coming merely as lookers-on. in short, no well-known whig of the valley seemed absent as we looked the gathering over, and scarcely a familiar family name was lacking on our lists, which it was now my business to check off.
whole households of strong men marched together. there were nine snells, all relatives, in the patriot ranks; so far as i can remember, there were five bellingers, five seebers, five wagners, and five wollovers--and it may well be five of more than one other family.
the men of the different settlements formed groups by themselves at the first, and arranged their own separate camping-places for the night. but soon, as was but natural, they discovered acquaintances from other parts, and began to mingle, sitting in knots or strolling about the outer palisades or on the clearing beyond. the older men who had borne a part in the french war told stories of that time, which, indeed, had now a new, deep interest for us, not only in that we were to face an invading force greater and more to be dreaded than was bellêtre's, but because we were encamped on historic ground.
from the gentle knoll upon which the block-house and stockade of fort dayton were now reared we could see the site of that first little palatine settlement that had then been wiped so rudely from the face of the earth; and our men revived memories of that dreadful night, and talked of them in a low voice as the daylight faded.
the scene affected me most gravely. i looked at the forest-clad range of northern hills over which the french and indian horde stole in the night, and tried to picture their stealthy approach in my mind. below us, flowing tranquilly past the willow-hedged farms of the german flatts settlers, lay the mohawk. the white rippling overcast on the water marked the shallow ford through which the panic-stricken refugees crowded in affright in the wintry darkness, and where, in the crush, that poor forgotten woman, the widow of an hour, was trampled under foot, swept away by the current, drowned!
how miraculous it seemed that her baby girl should have been saved, should have been brought to mr. stewart's door, and placed in the very sanctuary of my life, by the wilful freak of a little english boy! and how marvellous that this self-same boy, her husband now, should be among the captains of a new and more sinister invasion of our valley, and that i should be in arms with my neighbors to stay his progress! truly here was food enough for thought.
but there was little time for musing. after supper, when most of the rest were free to please themselves, to gossip, to set night-lines in the river against breakfast, or to carve rough initials on their powder-horns in emulation of the art-work displayed by the ingenious petrie boys, i was called to the council held by general herkimer in one of the rooms of the fort. there were present some of those already mentioned, and i think that colonel wesson, the massachusetts officer whose troops garrisoned the place, was from courtesy also invited to take part, though if he was there he said nothing. thomas spencer, the seneca half-breed blacksmith, who had throughout been our best friend, had come down, and with him was skenandoah, the war-chief of the oneidas, whom dominie kirkland had kept in our interest.
the thing most talked of, i remember, was the help that these oneidas could render us. general schuyler had all along shrunk from the use of savages on the continental side, and hence had required only friendly neutrality of the oneidas, whose chief villages lay between us and the foe. but these indians now saw clearly, that, if the invasion succeeded, they would be exterminated not a whit the less ruthlessly by their iroquois brothers because they had held aloof. in the grim code of the savage, as in the softened law of the christian, those who were not for him were against him. so the noble old oneida war-chief had come to us to say that his people, standing as it were between the devil and the deep sea, preferred to at least die like men, fighting for their lives. skenandoah was reputed even then to be seventy years of age, but he had the square shoulders, full, corded neck, and sharp glance of a man of forty. only last year he died, at a great age--said to be one hundred and ten years--and was buried on clinton hill beside his good friend kirkland, whom for half a century he had loved so well.
there were no two opinions in the council: let the oneidas join us with their war-party, by all means.
after this had been agreed upon, other matters came up--the quantity of stores we should take, the precedence of the regiments, the selection of the men to be sent ahead to apprise gansevoort of our approach. but these do not concern the story.
it was after this little gathering had broken up, and the candles been blown out, that general herkimer put his hand on my shoulder and said, in his quaint german dialect:
"come, walk with me outside the fort."
we went together across the parade in the growing dusk. most of those whom we passed recognized my companion, and greeted him--more often, i am bound to say, with "guten abend, honikol!" than with the salute due to his rank. there was, indeed, very little notion of discipline in this rough, simple militia gathering.
we walked outside the ditch to a grassy clearing toward the flatts where we could pace back and forth without listeners, and yet could see the sentries posted at the corners of the forest enclosure. then the honest old brigadier laid open his heart to me.
"i wish to god we were well out of this all," he said, almost gloomily.
i was taken aback at this. dejection was last to be looked for in this brave, stout-hearted old frontier fighter. i asked, "what is wrong?" feeling that surely there must be some cause for despondency i knew not of.
"i am wrong," he said, simply.
"i do not understand you, brigadier."
"say rather that they, who ought to know me better, do not understand me."
"they? whom do you mean?"
"all these men about us--isaac paris, ebenezer cox the colonel of my own regiment, fritz visscher, and many more. i can see it--they suspect me. nothing could be worse than that."
"suspect you, brigadier! it is pure fancy! you are dreaming!"
"no, i am very much awake, young man. you have not heard them--i have! it has been as much as flung in my face to-day that my brother hon-yost is a colonel with johnson--up yonder."
the little man pointed westward with his hand to where the last red lights of day were paling over the black line of trees.
"he is with them," he said, bitterly, "and i am blamed for it. then, too, my brother hendrick hides himself away in stone arabia, and is not of us, and his son is with the tories--up yonder."
"but your brother george is here with us, as true a man as will march to-morrow."
"then i have a sister married to dominie rosencranz, and he is a tory; and another married to hendrick frey, and he is a tory, too. all this is thrown in my teeth. i do not pass two men with their heads together but i feel they are talking of this."
"why should they? you have two other brothers-in-law here in camp--peter bellinger and george bell. you imagine a vain thing, brigadier. believe me, i have seen or heard no hint of this." "you would not. you are an officer of the line--the only one here. besides, you are schuyler's man. they would not talk before you."
"but i am valley born, valley bred, as much as any of you. wherein am i different from the others? why should they keep me in the dark? they are all my friends, just as--if you would only believe it--they are yours as well."
"young man," said the general, in a low, impressive voice, and filling and lighting his pipe as he slowly spoke, "if you come back alive, and if you get to be of my age, you will know some things that you don't know now. danger makes men brave; it likewise makes them selfish and jealous. we are going out together, all of us, to try what, with god's help, we can do. behind us, down the river, are our wives or our sweethearts; some of you leave children, others leave mothers and sisters. we are going forward to save them from death or worse than death, and to risk our lives for them and for our homes. yet, i tell you candidly, there are men here--back here in this fort--who would almost rather see us fail, than see me win my rank in the state line."
"i cannot credit that."
"then--why else should they profess to doubt me? why should they bring up my brothers' names to taunt me with their treason?"
alas! i could not tell. we walked up and down, i remember, until long after darkness fell full upon us, and the stars were all aglow--i trying my best to dissuade the honest brigadier from his gloomy conviction.
to be frank, although he doubtless greatly exaggerated the feeling existing against him, it to a degree did exist.
the reasons for it are not difficult of comprehension. there were not a few officers in our force who were better educated than bluff, unlettered old honikol herkimer, and who had seen something of the world outside our valley. it nettled their pride to be under a plain little german, who spoke english badly, and could not even spell his own name twice alike. there were at work under the surface, too, old trade and race jealousies, none the less strong because those upon whom they acted scarcely realized their presence. the herkimers were the great family on the river from the little falls westward, and there were ancient rivalries, unexpressed but still potent, between them and families down the valley. thus, when some of the herkimers and their connections--a majority, for that matter--either openly joined the enemy or held coldly apart from us, it was easy for these jealous promptings to take the form of doubt and suspicions as to the whole-hearted loyalty of the brigadier himself. once begun, these cruelly unjust suspicions rankled in men's minds and spread.
all this i should not mention were it not the key to the horrible tragedy which followed. it is this alone which explains how a trained indian fighter, a veteran frontiersman like herkimer, was spurred and stung into rushing headlong upon the death-trap, as if he had been any ignorant and wooden-headed braddock.
we started on the march westward next day, the 4th, friendly indians bringing us news that the van of the enemy had appeared on the evening of the 2d before fort stanwix, and had already begun an investment. we forded the river at fort schuyler, just below where utica now stands, and pushed slowly forward through the forest, over the rude and narrow road, to the oneida village of oriska, something to the east of the large creek which bears the name oriskany.
here we halted a second time, encamping at our leisure, and despatching, on the evening of the 5th, adam helmer and two other scouts to penetrate to the fort and arrange a sortie by the garrison, simultaneous with our attack.
