How my proper senses resisted the swoon that threatened them I do not know; but when the lynx, too, lifted a menacing and flattened head on human shoulders; and when the wolverine also stood out in human-like shadow against the foggy water, I knew that these ghostly things that stirred my hair were no hobgoblins at all, but living men. And the clogged current of my blood flowed free again, and the sweat on my skin cooled.
The furry ears of the wolf-man, pricked up against the vaguely lustrous background of the river, fascinated me. For all the world those pointed ears seemed to be listening. But I knew they were dead and dried; that a man's eyes were gazing through the sightless sockets of the beast.
From somewhere in the darkness the Mohican came gliding on his belly over the velvet carpet of the moss.
"Andastes," he whispered scornfully; "they wear the heads of the beasts whose courage they lack. Fling a stone among them and they will scatter."
As I felt around me in the darkness for a fragment of loose rock, the Mohican arrested my arm.
"Wait, Loskiel. The Andastes hang on the heels of fiercer prowlers, smelling about dead bones like foxes after a battle. Real men can not be far away."
We lay watching the strange and grotesque creatures in the starlight; and truly they seemed to smell their way as beasts smell; and they were as light-footed and as noiseless, slinking from bush to bush, lurking motionless in shadows, nosing, listening, prowling on velvet pads to the very edges of our rock escarpment.
"They have the noses of wild things," whispered the Mohican uneasily. "Somewhere they have found something that belongs to one of us, and, having once smelled it, have followed."
I thought for a moment.
"Do you believe they found the charred fragments of my pouch-flap? Could they scent my scorched thrums from where I now lie? Only a hound could do that! It is not given to men to scent a trail as beasts scent it running perdu."
The Mohican said softly:
"Men of the settlement detect no odour where those of the open perceive a multitude of pungent smells."
"That is true," I said.
"It is true, Loskiel. As a dog scents water in a wilderness and comes to it from afar, so can I also. Like a dog, too, can I wind the hidden partridge brood--though never the nesting hen--nor can a mink do that much either. But keen as the perfume of a bee-tree, and certain as the rank smell of a dog-fox in March--which even a white man can detect--are the odours of the wilderness to him whose only home it is. And even as a lad, and for the sport of it, have I followed and found by its scent alone the great night-butterfly, marked brown and crimson, and larger than a little bat, whose head bears tiny ferns, and whose wings are painted with the four quarters of the moon. Like crushed sumac is the odour of it, and in winter it hides in a bag of silk."
I nodded, my eyes following the cautious movements of the Andastes below; and again and again I saw their heads thrown buck, noses to the stars, as though sniffing and endeavouring to wind us. And to me it was horrid and unhuman.
For an hour they were around the river edge and the foot of the hillock, trotting silently and uneasily hither and thither, always seemingly at fault. Then, apparently made bold by finding no trace of what they hunted, they ranged this way and that at a sort of gallop, and we could even hear their fierce and whining speech as they huddled a moment to take counsel.
Suddenly their movements ceased, and I clutched the Mohican's arm, as a swift file of shadows passed in silhouette along the river's brink, one after another moving west--fifteen ghostly figures dimly seem but unmistakable.
"Senecas," breathed the Mohican.
The war party defiled at a trot, disappearing against the fringing gloom. And after them loped the Andastes pack, scurrying, hurrying, running into thickets and out again, but ever hastening along the flanks of their silent and murderous masters, who seemed to notice them not at all.
When they had gone, the Mohican aroused the Oneidas, and all night long we lay there behind the rocks, rifles in rest, watching the river.
What we awaited came with the dawn, and, in the first grey pallour of the breaking day, we saw their advanced guard; Cayugas and Senecas of the fierce war-chief Hiokatoo, every Indian stripped, oiled, head shaved, and body painted for war; first a single Cayuga, scouting swiftly; then three furtive Senecas, then six, then a dozen, followed by their main body.
Doubtless they had depended on the Andastes and advanced guard of Senecas for flankers, for the main body passed without even a glance up at the hilly ground where we lay watching them.
Then there was a break in the line, an interval of many minutes before their pack horses appeared, escorted by green-coated soldiers.
And in the ghostly light of dawn, I saw Sir John Johnson riding at the head of his men, his pale hair unpowdered, his heavy, colourless face sunk on his breast. After him, in double file, marched his regiment of Greens; then came more Indians--Owagas, I think--then that shameless villain, McDonald, in bonnet and tartan, and the heavy claymore a-swing on his saddle-bow, and his blue-eyed Indians swarming in the rear.
Lord, what a crew! And as though that were not enough to affront the rising sun, comes riding young Walter Butler, in his funereal cloak, white as a corpse under the black disorder of his hair, and staring at nothing like a damned man. On his horse's heels his ruffianly Rangers marched in careless disorder but with powerful, swinging strides that set their slanting muskets gleaming like ripples glinting athwart a windy pond, and their canteens all a-bobbing.
Then, hunched on his horse, rode old John Butler--squat, swarthy, weather-roughened, balancing on his saddle with the grace of a chopping block; and after him more Rangers crowding close behind.
Behind these, quite alone, stalked an Indian swathed in a scarlet blanket edged with gold, on which a silver gorget glittered. He seemed scarce darker than I in colour; and if he wore paint I saw none. There was only a scarlet band of cloth around his temples, and the flight-feather of the white-crested eagle set there low above the left ear and slanting backward.
"Brant!" I whispered to the Sagamore; and I saw him stiffen to very stone beside me; and heard his teeth grate in his jaws.
Then, last of all, came the Keepers of the Eastern Gate, the flower of the warriors of the Long House--the Mohawks.
They passed in the barbaric magnificence of paint and feather and shining steel, a hundred lithe, light-stepping warriors, rifles swinging a-trail, and gorgeous beaded sporrans tossing at every stride.
An interval, then the first wary figure of the lurking rear-guard, another, half a dozen, smooth-bore rifles at a ready, scanning river and thicket. Every one of them looked up at our craggy knoll as they glided along its base; two hesitated, ran half way up over the rock escarpment, loitered for a few moments, then slunk off, hastening to join their fellows.
After a long while a single Seneca came speeding, and disappeared in the wake of the others.
The motley Army of the West had passed.
And it was a terrible and an infamous sight to me, who had known these men under other circumstances to see the remnant of the landed gentry of Tryon County now riding the wilderness like very vagabonds, squired by a grotesque horde of bloody renegades.
To what a doleful pass had these gentlemen come, who lately had so lorded it among us--these proud and testy autocrats of County Tryon, with their vast estates, their baronial halls, their servants, henchmen, tenantry, armed retainers, slaves?
Where were all these people now? Where were their ladies in their London silks and powder? Where were their mistresses, their distinguished guests? Where was my Lord Dunmore now--the great Murray, Earl of Dunmore and Brent Meester to unhappy Norfolk! And, alas, where was the great and good Sir William--and where was Sir William's friend, Lady Grant, and the fearless Duchess of Gordon, and the dark and lovely Lady Johnson, and the pretty ladies of Guy Johnson, of Colonel Butler, of Colonel Claus? Where was Sir John's pitifully youthful and unfortunate lady, and her handsome brother, crippled at Oriskany, and the gentle, dark-eyed sister of Walter Butler, and his haughty mother? All either dead or prisoners, or homeless refugees, or exiles living on the scant bounty of the Government they had suffered for so loyally.
The merciless Committee of Sequestration had seized Johnson Hall, Fort Johnson, Guy Park, Butlersbury; Fish House was burned; Summer House Point lay in ashes, and the charming town built by Sir William was now a rebel garrison, and the jail he erected was their citadel, flying a flag that he had never heard of when he died.
All was gone--gone the kilted Highlanders from the guard house at the Hall; gone the Royal Americans with all their bugle-horns and clarions and scarlet pageantry; gone the many feathered chieftains who had gathered so often at Guy Park, or the Fort, or the Hall. Mansions, lands, families, servants, all were scattered and vanished; and of all that Tryon County glory only these harassed and haggard horsemen remained, haunting the forest purlieus of their former kingdoms with hatred in their hearts, and their hands red with murder. Truly, the Red Beast we hunted these three years through was a most poisonous thing, that it should belch forth such pests as Lord George Germaine, and Loring, and Cunningham, and turn the baronets and gentry of County Tryon into murdering and misshapen ghouls!
When the sun rose we slung pack and pulled foot. And all that day we travelled without mischance; and the next day it was the same, encountering nothing more menacing than peeled and painted trees, where some scouting war-party of the enemy had written threats and boasts, warning the "Boston people" away from the grizzly fastnesses of the dread Long House, and promising a horrid vengeance for every mile of the Dark Empire we profaned.
And so, toward sundown, the first picket of General Sullivan's army challenged us; and my Indians shouted: "Nai Tioga!" And presently we heard the evening gun very near.
Signs of their occupation became more frequent every minute now; there were batteaux and rafts being unloaded at landing places, heavily guarded by Continental soldiery; canoes at carrying places, brush huts erected along the trail, felled trees, bushes cut and lying in piles, roads being widened and cleared, and men everywhere going cheerily about their various affairs.
We encountered the cattle-guard near to a natural meadow along a tiny binikill, and they gave us an account of how Brant had fallen upon Minisink and had slain more than a hundred of our people along the Delaware and Neversink. And I saw my Indians listening with grim countenances while their eyes glowed like coals. As soon as we forded the river, we passed a part of Colonel Proctor's artillery, parleyed in a clearing, where a fine block-fort was being erected; and there were many regimental wagons and officers' horses and batt-horses and cattle to be seen there, and great piles of stores in barrels, sacks, skins, and willow baskets.
As we passed the tents of a foot regiment, the 3rd New Hampshire Line, one of their six Ensigns, Bradbury Richards, recognized me and came across the road to shake my hand, and to inform me that a small scout was to go out to reconnoitre the Indian town of Chemung; and that we would doubtless march thither on the morrow.
With Richards came also my old friend Ezra Buell, lately lieutenant in my own regiment, but now a captain in the 3rd New York Continentals, and a nephew of that Ezra Buell who ran the Stanwix survey in '69 and married a pretty Esaurora girl while marking the Treaty Line.
"Well!" says Ezra, shaking my hand, and: "How are you lazy people up the river, and what are you doing there?"
"Damming the lake," said I, "whilst you damn us for making you wait."
Bradbury Richards laughed, saying that they themselves had but just come up, admitting, however, that there had been some little cursing concerning our delay.
"It has been that way with us, too," said I, "but it is the rebel 'Grants' we curse, and the Ethan Allens and John Starks, and treacherous Green Mountain Boy's, who would shoot us in the backs or make a dicker with Sir Henry sooner than lift a finger to obey the laws of the State they are betraying."
"So hot and yet so young!" said Buell, laughing, "and after a long trail, too--" glancing at my Indians, "and another in view already! But you were ever an uncompromising youngster, Loskiel."
"Your regiment has marched for Canajoharie," I said. "When do you go a-tagging after it?"
"This evening with the headquarter's guide, Heoikim, and the express rider, James Cooke. Lord, what a dreary business!"
"Better learn the news we have concerning your back trail before you start. Ask Captain Franklin to mention it to the General."
"Certainly," said Buell. "I would to God my regiment were ordered here with the rest of them, I'm that sick of the three forts and the scalping-party fighting on the Schoharie."
"It's what you are likely to get for a long while yet," said I. "And now will you or Richards guide me and my party to headquarters?"
"Will you mess with us?" said Richards. "I'll speak to Colonel Dearborn."
I said I would with pleasure, if free to do so, and we walked on through the glorious sunset light, past camp after camp, very smoky with green fires. And I saw three more block-houses being builded, and armed with cannon.
The music of Colonel Proctor's Artillery Regiment was playing "Yankee Doodle" near headquarters as we sighted the General's marquee, and the martial sounds enthralled me.
One of the General's aides-de-camp, a certain Captain Dayton, met us most politely, detained my Indians with tobacco and pipes, and conducted me straight to the General, who, he assured me, happened to be alone. Having seen our General on various occasions, I recognized him at once, although he was in his banyan, having, I judged, been bathing himself in a small, wooden bowl full of warm water, which stood on the puncheon flooring near, very sloppy.
He received me most civilly and listened to my report with interest and politeness, whilst I gave him what news I had of Clinton and how it was with us at the Lake, and all that had happened to my scout of six--the death of the St. Regis and the two Iroquois, the treachery of the Erie and his escape, the murder of the Stockbridge--and how we witnessed the defile of Indian Butler's motley but sinister array headed northwest on the Great Warrior Trail. Also, I gave him as true and just an account as I could give of the number of soldiers, renegades, Indians, and batt-horses in that fantastic and infamous command.
"Where are your Indians?" he asked bluntly.
I informed him, and he sent his aide to fetch them.
General Sullivan understood Indians; and I am not at all sure that my services as interpreter were necessary; but as he said nothing to the contrary, I played my part, presenting to him the stately Sagamore, then the Grey-Feather, then the young warrior, Tahoontowhee, who fairly quivered with pride as I mentioned the scalps he had taken on his first war-path.
With each of my Indians the General shook hands, and on each was pleased to bestow a word of praise and a promise of reward. For a while, through medium of me, he conversed with them, and particularly with the Sagamore, concerning the trail to Catharines-town; and, seeming convinced and satisfied, dismissed us very graciously, telling an aide to place two bush-huts at our disposal, and otherwise see that we lacked nothing that could be obtained for our comfort and good cheer.
As I saluted, he said in a low voice that he preferred I should remain with the Mohican and Oneidas until the evening meal was over. Which I took to indicate that any rum served to my Indians must be measured out by me.
So that night I supped with my red comrades in front of our bush-huts, instead of joining Colonel Dearborn's mess. And I was glad I did so; and I allowed them only a gill of rum. After penning my report by the light of a very vile torch, and filing it at headquarters, I was so tired that I could scarce muster courage to write in my diary. But I did, setting down the day's events without shirking, though I yawned like a volcano at every pen-stroke.
Captains Franklin and Buell, in high spirits, came just as I finished, desiring to learn what I had to say of the road to Otsego; but when I informed them they went away looking far more serious than when they arrived.
A few minutes later I saw the scout march out, bound for Chemung--a small detachment of the 2nd Jersey, one Stockbridge Indian, and a Coureur-de-Bois in very elegant deerskin shirt and gorgeous leggins. Captain Cummins led them.
As they left, Captain Dayton arrived to take me again to the General. There was a throng of officers in the marquee when I was announced, but evidently by some preconcerted understanding all retired as soon as I entered.
When we were alone, the General very kindly pointed to a camp stool at his elbow and requested me to be seated; and for a little while he said nothing, but remained leaning with both elbows on his camp table, seeming to study space as though it were peopled with unpleasant pictures.
However, presently his symmetrical features recovered pleasantly from abstraction, and he said:
"Mr. Loskiel, it is said of you that, except for the Oneida Sachem, Spenser, you are perhaps the most accomplished interpreter Guy Johnson employed."
"No," I said, "there are many better interpreters, my General, but few, perhaps, who understand the most intimate and social conditions of the Long House better than do I."
"You are modest in your great knowledge, Mr. Loskiel."
"No, General, only, knowing as much as I do, I also perceive how much more there is that I do not know. Which makes me wary of committing myself too confidently, and has taught me that to vaunt one's knowledge is a dangerous folly."
General Sullivan laughed that frank, manly, and very winning laugh of his. Then his features gradually became sombre again.
"Colonel Broadhead, at Fortress Pitt, sent you a supposed Wyandotte who might have been your undoing," he said abruptly. "He is a cautious officer, too, yet see how he was deceived! Are you also likely to be deceived in any of your Indians?"
"No, sir."
"Oh! You are confident, then, in this matter!"
"As far as concerns the Indians now under my command."
"You vouch for them?"
"With my honour, General."
"Very well, sir.... And your Mohican Loup--he can perform what he has promised? Guide us straight to Catharines-town, I mean?"
"He has said it."
"Aye--but what is your opinion of that promise?"
"A Siwanois Sagamore never lies."
"You trust him?"
"Perfectly. We are blood-brothers, he and I."
"Oho!" said the General, nodding. "That was cunningly done, sir."
"No, sir. The idea was his own."
General Sullivan laughed again, playing with the polished gorget at his throat.
"Do you never take any credit for your accomplishments, Mr. Loskiel?" he inquired.
"How can I claim credit for that which was not of my own and proper plotting, sir?"
"Oh, it can be done," said the General, laughing more heartily. "Ask some of our brigadiers and colonels, Mr. Loskiel, who desire advancement every time that heaven interposes to save them from their own stupidities! Well, well, let it go, sir! It is on a different matter that I have summoned you here--a very different business, Mr. Loskiel--one which I do not thoroughly comprehend.
"All I know is this: that we Continentals are warring with Britain and her allies of the Long House, that our few Oneida and Stockbridge Indians are fighting with us. But it seems that between the Indians of King George and those who espouse our cause there is a deeper and bloodier and more mysterious feud."
"Yes, General."
"What is it?" he asked bluntly.
"A religious feud--terrible, implacable. But this is only between the degraded and perverted priesthood of the Senecas and our Oneidas and Mohicans, whose Sachems and Sagamores have been outraged and affronted by the blasphemous mockeries of Amochol."
"I have heard something of this."
"No doubt, sir. And it is true. The Senecas are different. They belong not in the Long House. They are an alien people at heart, and seem more nearly akin to the Western Indians, save that they share with the Confederacy its common Huron-Iroquois speech. For although their ensigns sit at the most sacred rite of the Confederacy, perhaps not daring in Federal Council to reveal what they truly are, I am convinced, sir, that of the Seneca Sachems the majority are at heart pagans. I do not mean non-Christians, of course; they are that anyway; but I mean they are degenerated from the more noble faith of the Iroquois, who, after all, acknowledge one God as we do, and have become the brutally superstitious slaves of their vile and perverted priests.
"It is the spawn of Frontenac that has done this. What the Wyoming Witch did at Wyoming her demons will do hereafter. Witchcraft, the frenzied worship of goblins, ghouls, and devils, the sacrifice to Biskoonah, all these have little by little taken the place of the grotesque but harmless rites practiced at the Onon-hou-aroria. Amochol has made it sinister and terrible beyond words; and it is making of the Senecas a swarm of fiends from hell itself.
"This, sir, is the truth. The orthodox priesthood of the Long House shudders and looks askance, but dares not interfere. As for Sir John, and Butler, and McDonald, what do they care as long as their Senecas are inflamed to fury, and fight the more ruthlessly? No, sir, only the priesthood of our own allies has dared to accept the challenge from Amochol and his People of the Cat. Between these it is now a war of utter extermination. And must be so until not one Erie survives, and until Amochol lies dead upon his proper altar!"
The General said in a low voice:
"I had not supposed that this business were so vital."
"Yes, sir, it is vital to the existence of the Iroquois as a federated people who shall remain harmless after we have subdued them, that Amochol and his acolytes die in the very ashes they have so horribly profaned. Amherst hung two of them. The nation lay stunned until he left this country. Had he remained and executed a dozen more Sachems with the rope, the world, I think, had never heard of Amochol."
The General looked hard at me:
"Can you reach Amochol, Mr. Loskiel?"
"That is what I would say to you, sir. I think I can reach him at Catharines-town with my Indians and a detachment from my own regiment, and crush him before he is alarmed by the advance of this army. I have spoken with my Indians, and they believe this can be accomplished, because we have learned that on the last day of this month the secret and debased rites of the Onon-hou-aroria will be practiced at Catharines-town; and every Sorcerer will be there."
"Do you propose to go out in advance on this business?"
"It must be done that way, sir, if we can hope to destroy this Sorcerer. The Seneca scouts most certainly watch this encampment from every hilltop. And the day this army stirs on its march to Catharines-town and Kendaia, the news will run into the North like lightning. You, sir, can hope to encounter no armed resistance as you march northward burning town after town, save only if Butler makes a stand or attempts an ambuscade in force.
"Otherwise, no Seneca will await your coming--I mean there will be no considerable force of Senecas to oppose you in their towns, only the usual scalping parties hanging just outside the smoke veil. All will retire before you. And how is Amochol to be destroyed at Catharines-town unless he be struck at secretly before your advance is near enough to frighten him?"
"What people would you take with you?"
"My Indians, Lieutenant Boyd, and thirty riflemen."
"Is that not too few?"
"In all swift and secret marches, sir, a few do better service than many--as you have taught your own people many a time."
"That is quite true. But they never seem to learn the lesson. I am somewhat astonished that you have seemed to learn it, and lay it practically to heart." He smiled, drummed on the table with a Faber pencil, then, knitting his brows, drew to him a sheet of paper and wrote on it slowly, pausing from time to time in troubled reflection. Once he glanced up at me coldly, and:
"Who is to lead this expedition?" he asked bluntly.
"Why, Lieutenant Boyd, sir," said I, wondering.
"Oh! You have no ambitions then?"
"Mr. Boyd ranks me," I said, smiling. "Who else should lead?"
"I see. Well, sir, you understand that a new commission lies all neatly folded for you in Catharines-town. Even such a modest man as you, Mr. Loskiel, could scarce doubt that," he added laughingly.
"No, sir, I do not doubt it."
"That is well, then. Orders will be sent you in due time--not until General Clinton's army arrives, however."
He looked at me pleasantly: "I have robbed you of the sleep most justly due you. But I think perhaps you may not regret this conference. Good-night, sir."
I saluted and went out. An orderly with a torch lighted me to my quarters. Inside the bush-hut assigned to the Mohican and myself, the red torch-light flickered over the recumbent Sagamore, swathed in his blanket, motionless. But even as I looked one of his eyes opened a little way, glimmering like a jewel in the ruddy darkness, then closed again.
So I stretched myself out in my blanket beside the Sagamore, and, thinking of Lois, fell presently into a sweet and dreamless sleep.
At six o'clock the morning gun awoke me with its startling and annoying thunder. The Sagamore sat up in his blanket, wearing that half-irritated, half-shamed expression always to be seen on an Indian's countenance when cannon are fired. An Indian has no stomach for artillery, and hates sight and sound of the metal monsters.
For a few moments I bantered him sleepily, then dropped back into my blanket. What cared I for their insolent morning gun! I snapped my fingers at it.
And so I lolled on my back, half asleep, yet not wholly, and soon tired of this, and, wrapping me in my blanket and drawing on ankle moccasins, went down to the Chemung where its crystal current clattered over the stones, and found me a clear, deep pool to flounder in.
Before I plunged, noticing several fine trout lying there, I played a scurvy trick on them, tickling three big ones; and had a fourth out of water, but was careless, and he slipped back.
Some Continental soldiers who had been watching me, mouths agape, went to another pool to try their skill; but while I would not boast, it is not everybody who can tickle a speckled trout; and after my bath the soldiers were still at it, and damning their eyes, their luck, and the pretty fish which so saucily flouted them.
So I flung 'em a big trout and went back to camp whistling, and there found that my Indians had fed and were now gravely renewing their paint.
Tahoontowhee dressed and cooked my fish for me, each in a bass-wood leaf, and when they were done and smelling most fragrant, we all made a delicious feast, with corn bread from the ovens and salt pork and a great jug of milk from the army's herd.
At eight o'clock another gun was fired. This was the daily signal, I learned, to stack tents and load pack-horses. And another gun fired at ten o'clock meant "March." With all these guns, and a fourth at sundown, I saw an unhappy time ahead for my Indians. Truly, I think the sound makes them sick. They all pulled wry faces now, and I had my jest at their expense, ours being a most happy little family, so amiably did the Mohican and Oneidas foregather; and also, there being among them a Sagamore and a Chief of the noble Oneida clan, I could meet them on an equality of footing which infringed nothing on military etiquette. There were doubtless many interpreters in camp, but few, if any, I suppose, who had had the advantage of such training as I under Guy Johnson, who himself, after Sir William's death, was appointed Indian Superintendent under the Crown for all North America, Guy Johnson knew the Iroquois. And if he lacked the character, personal charm, and knowledge that Sir William possessed, yet in the politics and diplomacy of Indian affairs his knowledge and practice were vast, and his services most valuable to his King.
Under him I had been schooled, and also under the veteran deputies, Colonel Croghan, Colonel Butler, and Colonel Claus; and had learned much from old Cadwallader Colden, too, who came often to Guy Park, as did our good General Philip Schuyler in these peaceful days.
So I knew how to treat any Indian I had ever seen, save only the outlandish creatures of the Senecas. Else, perhaps, I had sooner penetrated the villainy of the Erie. Yet, even my own Indians had not been altogether certain of the traitor's identity until almost at the very end.
At ten another gun was fired, but only a small detachment of infantry marched, the other regiments unpacking and pitching tents again, and the usual routine of camp life, with its multitudinous duties and details, was resumed.
I reported at headquarters, to which my guides were now attached, and there were orders for me to hold myself and Indians in readiness for a night march to Chemung.
All that day I spent in acquainting myself with the camp which had been pitched, as I say, on the neck of land bounded by the Susquehanna and the Chemung, with a small creek, called Cayuga by some, Seneca Creek by others, intersecting it and flowing south into the Susquehanna. It was but a trout brook.
This site of the old Indian town of Tioga seemed to me very lovely. The waters were silvery and sweet, the flats composed of rich, dark soil, the forests beautiful with a great variety of noble and gigantic trees--white pines on the hills; on the level country enormous black-walnuts, oaks, button-woods, and nut trees of many species, growing wide apart, yet so roofing the forest with foliage that very little sunlight penetrated, and only the flats were open and bright with waving Indian grass, now so ripe that our sheep, cattle, and horses found in it a nourishment scarcely sufficient for beasts so exercised and driven.
That day, as I say, I walked about the camp and adjacent river-country, seeking out my friends in the various regiments to gossip with them. And was invited to a Rum Punch given by all the officers at the Artillery Lines to celebrate the victory of General Wayne at Stony Point.
Colonel Proctor's artillery band discoursed most noble music for us; and there was much hilarity and cheering, and many very boisterous.
These social parties in our army, where rum-punch was the favourite beverage, were gay and lively; but there was a headache in every cup of it, they say. I, being an interpreter, held aloof because I must ever set an example to my red comrades. And this day had all I could do to confine them to proper rations. For all spirit is a very poison to any Indian. And of all the crimes of which men of my colour stand attainted, the offering of this death-cup to our red brothers is, I think, the wickedest and the most contemptible.
For when we white men become merely exhilarated in the performance of such social usages as politeness requires of us, the Indian becomes murderous. And I remember at this Artillery Punch many officers danced a Shawanese dance, and General Hand, of the Light Troops, did lead this war-dance, which caused me discomfiture, I not at all pleased to see officers who ranked me cut school-boy capers 'round a midday fire.
And it was like very school-lads that many of us behaved, making of this serious and hazardous expedition a silly pleasure jaunt. I have since thought that perhaps the sombre and majestic menace of a sunless and unknown forest reacted a little on us all, and that many found a nervous relief in brief relaxations and harmless folly, and in antics performed on its grim and dusky edges.
For no one, I think, doubted there was trouble waiting for us within these silent shades. And the tension had never lessened for this army, what with waiting for the Right Wing, which had not yet apparently stirred from Otsego; and the inadequacy of provisions, not known to the men but whispered among the officers; and the shots already exchanged this very morning along the river between our outposts and prowling scouts of the enemy; and the daily loss of pack-animals and cattle, strayed or stolen; and of men, too, scalped since they left Wyoming, sometimes within gunshot of headquarters.
But work on the four block-forts, just begun, progressed rapidly; and, alas, the corps of invalids destined to garrison them had, since the army left Easton, increased too fast to please anybody, what with wounds, accidents in camp from careless handling of firearms, kicks from animals, and the various diseases certain to appear where many people congregate.
There were a number of regiments under tents or awaiting the unfinished log barracks at Tioga Point; in the First Brigade there were four from New Jersey; in the Second Brigade three from New Hampshire; in the Third two from Pennsylvania, and an artillery regiment; and what with other corps and the train, boatmen, guides, workmen, servants, etc., it made a great and curious spectacle even before our Right Wing joined.
Every regiment carried its colours and its music, fifes, drums, and bugle-horns; and sometimes these played on the march when a light detachment went forward for a day's scout, or to forage or to destroy. But best of all music I ever heard, I loved now to hear the band of Colonel Proctor's artillery regiment, filling me as it did with solemn, yet pleasurable, emotions, and seemingly teaching me how dear had Lois become to me.
The scout, sent out the day before, returned in the afternoon with an account that Chemung was held by the enemy, which caused a bustle in camp, particularly among the light troop.
Headquarters was very busy all day long, and sometimes even gay, for the gentlemen of General Sullivan's family were not only sufficient, but amiable and delightful. And there I had the honour of being made known to his aides-de-camp, Mr. Pierce, Mr. Van Cortlandt, and Major Hoops. I already knew Captain Dayton. Also, of the staff I met there Captain Topham, our Commissary of Militia Stores, Captain Lodge, our surveyor, Colonels Antis and Bond, Conductors of Boats, Dr. Hogan, Chief Surgeon, Lieutenant R. Pemberton, Judge Advocate, Lieutenant Colonel Frasier, Colonel Hooper, Lieutenant Colonel Barber, Adjutant General, the Reverend S. Kirkland, Chaplain, and others most agreeable but too numerous to mention. Still, I have writ them all down in my diary, as I try always to do, so that if God gives me wife and children some day they may find, perhaps, an hour of leisure, when to peruse a blotted page of what husband and father saw in the great war might not prove too tedious or disagreeable.
In this manner, then, the afternoon of that August day passed, and what with these occupations, and the catching of several trouts, which I love to do with hook and line and alder pole, and what with sending to Lois a letter by an express who went to Clinton toward evening, the time did not seem irksome.
Yet, it had passed more happily had I heard from Lois. But no runners came; and if any were sent out from Otsego and taken by the enemy I know not, only that none came through that day, Thursday, August the 12th.
One thing in camp had disagreeably surprised me, that there were women and children here, and like to remain in the block forts after the army had departed from its base for the long march through the Seneca country.
This I could not understand or reconcile with any proper measure of safety, as the cannon in the block-houses were not to be many or of any great calibre, and only the corps of invalids were to remain to defend them.
I had told Lois that no women would be permitted at Tioga Point. That these were the orders that had been generally understood at Otsego.
And now, lo and behold, here were women arrived from Easton, Bethlehem, Wyalusing, and Wyoming, including the wives and children of several non-commissioned officers and soldiers from the district; widows of murdered settlers, washerwomen, and several tailoresses--in all a very considerable number.
And I hoped to heaven that Lois might not hear of this mischievous business and discover in it an excuse for coming as the guest of any lady at Otsego, or, in fact, make any further attempt to stir until the Right Wing marched and the batteaux took the ladies of Captain Bleecker, Ensign Lansing, and Lana, and herself to Albany.
After sundown an officer came to me and said that the entire army was ordered to march at eight that evening, excepting troops sufficient to guard our camp; that there would be no alarm sounded, and that we were to observe secrecy and silence.
Also, it appeared that a gill of rum per man had been authorized, but I refused for myself and my Indians, thinking to myself that the General might have made it less difficult for me if he had confined his indulgence to the troops.
About eight o'clock a Stockbridge Indian--the one who had been with the scout to Chemung--came to me with a note from Dominie Kirkland.
I gave him my hand, and he told me that his name was Yellow Moth, and that he was a Christian. Also, he inquired about the Mole, and I was obliged to relate the circumstances of that poor convert's murder.
"God's will," said the Yellow Moth very quietly. "You, my brother, and I may see a thousand fall, and ten thousand on our right hand, and it shall not come nigh us."
"Amen," said I, much moved by this simple fellow's tranquil faith.
I made him known to the Sagamore and to the two Oneidas, who received him with a grave sincerity which expressed very plainly their respect for a people of which the Mole had been for them a respectable example.
Like the Mole, the Yellow Moth wore no paint except a white cross limned on his breast over a clan sign indecipherable. And if, in truth, there had ever really been a totem under the white paint I do not know, for like the Algonquins, these peoples had but a loose political, social, religious, and tribal organization, which never approached the perfection of the Iroquois system in any manner or detail.
About eight o'clock came Captain Carbury, of the 11th Pennsylvania, to us, and we immediately set out, marching swiftly up the Chemung River, the Sagamore and the Yellow Moth leading, then Captain Carbury and myself, then the Oneidas.
Behind us in the dusk we saw the Light Troops falling in, who always lead the army. All marched without packs, blankets, horses, or any impedimenta. And, though the distance was not very great, so hilly, rocky, and rough was the path through the hot, dark night, and so narrow and difficult were the mountain passes, that we were often obliged to rest the men. Also there were many swamps to pass, and as the men carried the cohorn by hand, our progress was slow. Besides these difficulties and trials, a fog came up, thickening toward dawn, which added to the hazards of our march.
So the dawn came and found us still marching through the mist, and it was not until six o'clock that we of the guides heard a Seneca dog barking far ahead, and so knew that Chemung was near.
Back sped Tahoontowhee to hasten the troops; I ran forward with Captain Carbury and the Sagamore, passing several outlying huts, then some barns and houses which loomed huge as medieval castles in the fog, but were really very small.
"Look out!" cried Carbury. "There is their town right ahead!"
It lay straight ahead of us, a fine town of over a hundred houses built on both sides of the pretty river. The casements of some of these houses were glazed and the roofs shingled; smoke drifted lazily from the chimneys; and all around were great open fields of grain, maize, and hay, orchards and gardens, in which were ripening peas, beans, squashes, pumpkins, watermelons, muskmelons.
"Good God!" said I. "This is a fine place, Carbury!"
"It's like a dozen others we have laid in ashes," said he, "and like scores more that we shall treat in a like manner. Look sharp! Here some our light troops."
The light infantry of Hand arrived on a smart run--a torrent of red-faced, sweating, excited fellows, pouring headlong into the town, cheering as they ran.
General Hand, catching sight of me, signalled with his sword and shouted to know what had become of the enemy.
"They're gone off!" I shouted back. "My Indians are on their heels and we'll soon have news of their whereabouts."
Then the soldiery began smashing in doors and windows right and left, laughing and swearing, and dragging out of the houses everything they contained.
So precipitate had been the enemy's flight that they had left everything--food still cooking, all their household and personal utensils; and I saw in the road great piles of kettles, plates, knives, deerskins, beaver-pelts, bearhides, packs of furs, and bolts of striped linen, to which heaps our soldiers were adding every minute.
Others came to fire the town; and it was sad to see these humble homes puff up in a cloud of smoke and sparks, then burst into vivid flame. In the orchards our men were plying their axes or girdling the heavily-fruited trees; field after field of grain was fired, and the flames swept like tides across them.
The corn was in the milk, and what our men could not burn, using the houses for kilns, they trampled and cut with their hangers--whole regiments marching through these fields, destroying the most noble corn I ever saw, for it was so high that it topped the head of a man on horseback.
So high, also, stood the hay, and it was sad to see it burn.
And now, all around in this forest paradise, our army was gathered, destroying, raging, devastating the fairest land that I had seen in many a day. All the country was aflame; smoke rolled up, fouling the blue sky, burying woodlands, blotting out the fields and streams.
From the knoll to which I had moved to watch the progress of my scouts, I could see an entire New Jersey regiment chasing horses and cattle; another regiment piling up canoes, fish-weirs, and the hewn logs of bridges, to make a mighty fire; still other regiments trampling out the last vestige of green stuff in the pretty gardens.
Not a shot had yet been fired; there was no sound save the excited and terrifying roar of a vast armed mob obliterating in its fury the very well-springs that enabled its enemies to exist.
Cattle, sheep, horses were being driven off down the trail by which we had come; men everywhere were stuffing their empty sacks with green vegetables and household plunder; the town fairly whistled with flame, and the smoke rose in a great cloud-shape very high, and hung above us, tenting us from the sun.
In the midst of this uproar the Grey-Feather came speeding to me with news that the enemy was a little way upstream and seemed inclined to make a stand. I immediately informed the General; and soon the bugle-horns of the light infantry sounded, and away we raced ahead of them.
I remember seeing an entire company marching with muskmelons pinned on their bayonets, all laughing and excited; and I heard General Sullivan bawl at them:
"You damned unmilitary rascals, do you mean to open fire on 'em with vegetables?"
Everybody was laughing, and the General grinned as Hand's bugle-horns played us in.
But it was another matter when the Seneca rifles cracked, and a sergeant and a drummer lad of the 11th Pennsylvania fell. The smooth-bores cracked again, and four more soldiers tumbled forward sprawling, the melons on their bayonets rolling off into the bushes.
Carbury, marching forward beside me, dropped across my path; and as I stooped over him gave me a ghastly look.
"Don't let them scalp me," he said--but his own men came running and picked him up, and I ran forward with the others toward a wooded hill where puffs of smoke spotted the bushes.
Then the long, rippling volleys of Hand's men crashed out, one after another, and after a little of this their bugle-horns sounded the charge.
But the Senecas did not wait; and it was like chasing weasels in a stone wall, for even my Indians could not come up with them.
However, about two o'clock, returning to that part of the town across the river, which Colonel Dearborn's men were now setting afire, we received a smart volley from some ambushed Senecas, and Adjutant Huston and a guide fell.
It was here that the Sagamore made his kill--just beyond the first house, in some alders; and he came back with a Seneca scalp at his girdle, as did the Grey-Feather also.
"Hiokatoo's warriors," remarked the Oneida briefly, wringing out his scalp and tying it to his belt.
I looked up at the hills in sickened silence. Doubtless Butler's men were watching us in our work of destruction, not daring to interfere until the regulars arrived from Fort Niagara. But when they did arrive, it meant a battle. We all knew that. And knew, too, that a battle lost in the heart of that dark wilderness meant the destruction of every living soul among us.
About two o'clock, having eaten nothing except what green and uncooked stuff we had picked up in field and garden, our marching signal sounded and we moved off; driving our captured stock, every soldier laden with green food and other plunder, and taking with us our dead and wounded.
Chemung had been, but was no longer. And if, like Thendara, it was ever again to be I do not know, only that such a horrid and pitiful desolation I had never witnessed in all my life before. For it was not the enemy, but the innocent earth we had mutilated, stamping an armed heel into its smiling and upturned face. And what we had done sickened me.
Yet, this was scarcely the beginning of that terrible punishment which was to pass through the Long House in flame and smoke, from the Eastern Door to the Door of the West, scouring it fiercely from one end to the other, and leaving no living thing within--only a few dead men prone among its blood-soaked ashes.
*Etho ni-ya-wenonh!
[*Thus it befell!]
By six that evening the army was back in its camp at Tioga Point. All the fever and excitement of the swift foray had passed, and the inevitable reaction had set in. The men were haggard, weary, sombre, and harassed. There was no elation after success either among officers or privates; only a sullen grimness, the sullenness of repletion after an orgy--the grimness of disgust for an unwelcome duty only yet begun.
Because this sturdy soldiery was largely composed of tillers of the soil, of pioneer farmers who understood good land, good husbandry, good crops, and the stern privations necessary to wrest a single rod of land from the iron jaws of the wilderness.
To stamp upon, burn, girdle, destroy, annihilate, give back to the forest what human courage and self-denial had wrested from it, was to them in their souls abhorrent.
Save for the excitement of the chase, the peril ever present, the certainty that failure meant death in its most dreadful forms, it might have been impossible for these men to destroy the fruits of the earth, even though produced by their mortal enemies, and designed, ultimately, to nourish them.
Even my Indians sat silent and morose, stretching, braiding, and hooping their Seneca scalps. And I heard them conversing among themselves, mentioning frequently the Three Sisters* they had destroyed; and they spoke ever with a hint of tenderness and regret in their tones which left me silent and unhappy.
[*Corn, squash, and bean were so spoken of affectionately, as they always were planted together by the Iroquois.]
To slay in the heat and fury of combat is one matter; to scar and cripple the tender features of humanity's common mother is a different affair. And I make no doubt that every blow that bit into the laden fruit trees of Chemung stabbed more deeply the men who so mercilessly swung the axes.
Well might the great Cayuga chieftain repeat the terrible prophecy of Toga-na-etah the Beautiful:
"When the White Throats shall come, then, if ye be divided, ye will pull down the Long House, fell the tall Tree of Peace, and quench the Onondaga Fire forever."
As I stood by the rushing current of the Thiohero,* on the profaned and desolate threshold of the Dark Empire, I thought of O-cau-nee, the Enchantress, and of Na-wenu the Blessed, and of Hiawatha floating in his white canoe into the far haven where the Master of Life stood waiting.
[*Seneca River.]
And now, for these doomed people of the Kannonsi, but one rite remained to be accomplished. And the solemn thunder of the last drum-roll must summon them to the great Festival of the Dead.
