CHAPTER X.THE HEAVEN-BORN GENERAL.
It is hardfor 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.
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 wasto be linked not with the name of Braddock or Loudon, but with that of Abercrombie.
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.
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.
A different story is that of Abercrombie’s expedition. For the reduction of the French fortress on Lake Corlaer, or Champlain, the largest army evergathered 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.
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. Takingcare to remain safely at the saw-mills, some distance in the rear, Abercrombie sent forward his men in four columns.
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.
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.
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 Johnsondid 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.
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.
During this year Johnson was unusually active withthe 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.
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.
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.
While active in the trenches with hot shot, bombs,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.
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.
Johnson’s victory at Niagara broke the chain of French forts along the great valleys and water-waysfrom 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.”
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.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.
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 appearedon 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.
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.
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.
CHAPTER XI.DECLINE OF THE INDIAN AS A POLITICAL FACTOR.
Withthe 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.
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,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.
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.
A change in Johnson’s domestic arrangements made about this time probably still further increased theprestige 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.
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,” whiteguests 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.
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.
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 contendedvigourously 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.
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 thesteps 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.
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.
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 fortssOrangie den 27eJuly 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.
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-groundsof 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.
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 matterof 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.
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.
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.
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 presentedby 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.
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 ruthlesslyslaughtered by wild beasts in white skins who wore the clothes of civilization. All this was part of “Pontiac’s War.”
“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?
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,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.
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 tofriends of the captives is one of the pathetic curiosities in the American journalism of the eighteenth century.
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 promiseto 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
CHAPTER XII.LIFE AT JOHNSON HALL.
Thelast 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.
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 ofterritory 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.
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.
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,—forthese 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.
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’sbody 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.
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 firstglass 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.
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.
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 inagriculture. 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.
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 providedin 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.
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.
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.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.
Holidays and out-door merry-makings were frequent. The many-sided lord of the manor seemedmost 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.
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.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.
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.
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 thusstimulating 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.
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,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.
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.