containing other news besides that from bunker hill.
to pass from october, 1774, to mid-june of 1775--from the moonlit streets of sleeping albany to the broad noonday of open revolt in the mohawk valley--is for the reader but the turning of a page with his fingers. to us, in those trying times, these eight months were a painfully long-drawn-out period of anxiety and growing excitement.
war was coming surely upon us--and war under strange and sinister conditions. dull, horse-racing, dog-fighting noblemen were comforting themselves in parliament, at london, by declaring that the americans were cowards and would not fight. we boasted little, but we knew ourselves better. there was as yet small talk of independence, of separation. another year was to elapse before thomas paine's common sense should flash a flood of light as from some new sun upon men's minds, and show us both our real goal and the way to attain it. but about fighting, we had resolved our purpose.
we should have been slaves otherwise.
turn and turn about, titled imbecile had succeeded distinguished incapable at london in the task of humiliating and bullying us into subjection. now it was granville, now townshend, now bedford, now north--all tediously alike in their refusal to understand us, and their slow obstinacy of determination to rule us in their way, not in ours. to get justice, or even an intelligent hearing, from these people, was hopeless. they listened to their own little clique in the colonies--a coterie of officials, land-owners, dependents of the crown, often men of too worthless a character to be tolerated longer in england--who lied us impudently and unblushingly out of court. to please these gentry, the musty statutes of tudor despotism were ransacked for a law by which we were to be haled over the seas for trial by an english jury for sedition; the port of boston was closed to traffic, and troops crowded into the town to overawe and crush its citizens; a fleet of war-ships was despatched under lord howe to enforce by broadsides, if needs be, the wicked and stupid trade and impost laws which we resented; everywhere the crown authorities existed to harass our local government, affront such honest men as we selected to honor, fetter or destroy our business, and eat up our substance in wanton taxation.
there had been a chance that the new parliament, meeting for the first time in the january of this 1775, would show more sense, and strive to honestly set matters right. we had appealed from crown and commons to the english people; for a little we fancied the result might be favorable. but the hope speedily fell to the ground. the english, with that strange rushing of blood to the head which, from age to age, on occasion blinds their vision, confuses their judgment, and impels them to rude and brutal courses, decreed in their choler that we should be flogged at the cart-tail. to this we said no!
in albany, on this day in the latter part of june, when the thread of the story is again resumed, there were notable, but distressingly vague, tidings. following upon the blow struck at concord in april, a host of armed patriots, roughly organized into something like military form, were investing boston, and day by day closing in the cordon around the beleaguered british general gage. a great battle had been fought near the town--this only we knew, and not its result or character. but it meant war, and the quiet burgh for the nonce buzzed with the hum of excited comment.
the windows of my upper room were open, and along with the streaming sunlight came snatches of echoing words from the street below. men had gone across the river, and horses were to be posted farther on upon the berkshire turnpike, to catch the earliest whisper from across the mountains of how the fight had gone. no one talked of anything else. assuredly i too would have been on the street outside, eager to learn and discuss the news from boston, but that my old friend major jelles fonda had come down from caughnawaga, bearing to me almost as grave intelligence from the mohawk valley.
how well i remember him still, the good, square-set, solid merchant-soldier, with his bold broad face, resolute mouth, and calm, resourceful, masterful air! he sat in his woollen shirt-sleeves, for the day was hot, and slowly unfolded to me his story between meditative and deliberate whiffs of his pipe. i listened with growing interest, until at last i forgot to keep even one ear upon the sounds from the street, which before had so absorbed me. he had much to tell.
more than a month before, the two contending factions had come to fisticuffs, during a meeting held by the whigs in and in front of john veeder's house, at caughnawaga. they were to raise a liberty pole there, and the crowd must have numbered two hundred or more. while they were deliberating, up rides guy johnson, his short, pursy figure waddling in the saddle, his arrogant, high-featured face redder than ever with rage. back of him rode a whole company of the hall cabal--sir john johnson, philip cross, the butlers, and so on--all resolved upon breaking up the meeting, and supported by a host of servants and dependents, well armed. many of these were drunk. colonel guy pushed his horse into the crowd, and began a violent harangue, imputing the basest motives to those who had summoned them thither. young jake sammons, with the characteristic boldness of his family, stood up to the indian superintendent and answered him as he deserved, whereat some half-dozen of the johnson men fell upon jake, knocked him down, and pummelled him sorely. some insisted that it was peppery guy himself who felled the youngster with his loaded riding-whip, but on this point major jelles was not clear.
"but what were our people about, to let this happen?" i asked, with some heat.
"to tell the truth," he answered, regretfully, "they mostly walked away. only a few of us held our place. our men were unarmed, for one thing. moreover, they are in awe of the power of the hall. the magistrates, the sheriff, the constables, the assessors--everybody, in fact, who has office in tryon county--take orders from the hall. you can't get people to forget that. besides, if they had resisted, they would have been shot down."
major jelles went on to tell me, that, despite this preponderance of armed force on the side of the johnsons, they were visibly alarmed at the temper of the people and were making preparations to act on the defensive. sir john had set up cannon on the eminence crowned by the hall, and his roman catholic highlanders were drilling night and day to perfect themselves as a military body. all sorts of stories came down from johnstown and up from guy park, as to the desperate intentions of the aristocrats and their retainers. peculiarly conspicuous in the bandying of these threats were philip cross and walter butler, who had eagerly identified themselves with the most violent party of the tories. to them, indeed, was directly traceable the terrible rumor, that, if the valley tribes proved to have been too much spoiled by the missionaries, the wilder indians were to be called down from the headwaters of the three rivers, and from the lake plains beyond, to coerce the settlements in their well-known fashion, if rebellion was persisted in.
"but they would never dare do that!" i cried rising to my feet.
"why not?" asked jelles, imperturbably sucking at his pipe. "after all, that is their chief strength. make no mistake! they are at work with the red-skins, poisoning them against us. guy johnson is savage at the mealy-mouthed way in which they talked at his last council, at guy park, and he has already procured orders from london to remove dominie kirkland, the missionary who has kept the oneidas heretofore friendly to us. that means--you can see as well as the rest of us what it means."
"it means war in the valley--fighting for your lives."
"well, let it! my customers owe me three thousand pounds and more. i will give every penny of that, and as much besides, and fight with my gun from the windows of my house, sooner than tolerate this johnson nonsense any longer. and my old father and my brothers say it with me. my brother adam, he thinks of nothing but war these days; he can hardly attend to his work, his head is so full of storing powder, and collecting cherry and red maple for gun-stocks, and making bullets. that reminds me--guy johnson took all the lead weights out of the windows at guy park, and hid them, to keep them from our bullet-moulds, before he ran away."
"before he ran away? who ran away?"
"why, guy, of course," was the calm reply.
i stared at the man in open-mouthed astonishment. "you never mentioned this!" i managed to say at last.
"i hadn't got to it yet," the dutchman answered, filling his pipe slowly. "you young people hurry one so."
by degrees i obtained the whole story from him--the story which he had purposely come down, i believe, to tell me. as he progressed, my fancy ran before him, and pictured the conclave of desperate plotters in the great hall on the hill which i knew so well.
i needed not his assurances to believe that molly brant, who had come down from the upper mohawk castle to attend this consultation, led and spurred on all the rest into malevolent resolves.
i could conceive her, tall, swart, severely beautiful still, seated at the table where in sir william's time she had been mistress, and now was but a visitor, yet now as then every inch a queen. i could see her watching with silent intentness--first the wigged and powdered gentlemen, sir john, colonel guy, the butlers, cross, and claus, and then her own brother joseph, tall like herself, and darkly handsome, but, unlike her, engrafting upon his full wolf-totem mohawk blood the restraints of tongue and of thought learned in the schools of white youth. no one of the males, caucasian or aboriginal, spoke out clearly what was in their minds. each in turn befogged his suggestions by deference to what the world--which to them meant london--would think of their acts. no one, not even joseph brant, uttered bluntly the one idea which lay covert in their hearts--to wit: that the recalcitrant valley should be swept as with a besom of fire and steel in the hands of the savage horde at their command. this, when it came her time, the indian woman said for them frankly, and with scornful words on their own faint stomachs for bloodshed. i could fancy her darkling glances around the board, and their regards shrinking away from her, as she called them cowards for hesitating to use in his interest the powers with which the king had intrusted them.
it was not hard, either, to imagine young walter butler and philip cross rising with enthusiasm to approve her words, or how these, speaking hot and fast upon the echo of mistress molly's contemptuous rebuke, should have swept away the last restraining fears of the others, and committed all to the use of the indians.
so that day, just a week since, it had been settled that colonel guy and the two butlers, father and son, should go west, ostensibly to hold a council near fort schuyler, but really to organize the tribes against their neighbors; and promptly thereafter, with a body of retainers, they had departed. guy had taken his wife, because, as a daughter of the great sir william, she would be of use in the work; but mrs. john butler had gone to the hall--a refuge which she later was to exchange for the lower indian castle.
the two houses thus deserted--guy park and the butlers' home on switzer's hill--had been in a single night almost despoiled by their owners of their contents; some of which, the least bulky, had been taken with them in their flight, the residue given into safe-keeping in the vicinity, or hidden.
"my brother adam went to look for the lead in the windows," honest jelles fonda concluded, "but it was all gone. so their thoughts were on bullets as well as his. he has his eye now on the church roof at home."
here was news indeed! there could be no pretence that the clandestine flight of these men was from fear for their personal safety. to the contrary, colonel guy, as indian superintendent, had fully five hundred fighting men, indian and otherwise, about his fortified residence. they had clearly gone to enlist further aid, to bring down fresh forces to assist sir john, sheriff white, and their tory minions to hold tryon county in terror, and, if need be, to flood it with our blood.
we sat silent for a time, as befitted men confronting so grave a situation. at last i said:
"can i do anything? you all must know up there that i am with you, heart and soul."
major jelles looked meditatively at me, through his fog of smoke.
"yes, we never doubted that. but we are not agreed how you can best serve us. you are our best-schooled young man; you know how to write well, and to speak english like an englishman. some think you can be of most use here, standing between us and the albany committee; others say that things would go better if we had you among us. matters are very bad. john johnson is stopping travellers on the highways and searching them; we are trying to watch the river as closely as he does the roads, but he has the courts and the sheriff, and that makes it hard for us. i don't know what to advise you. what do you think?"
while we were still debating the question thus raised by major fonda--although i have written it in an english which the worthy soul never attained--my cousin teunis van hoorn burst into the room with tidings from boston which had just arrived by courier. almost before he could speak, the sound of cheering in the streets told me the burden of his story. it was the tale of bunker hill which he shouted out to us--that story still so splendid in our ears, but then, with all its freshness of vigor and meaning upon us, nothing less than soul-thrilling!
an hour later major jelles rose, put on his coat, and said he must be off.
he would sleep that night at mabie's, so as to have all the tryon county part of his ride by daylight next day, when the roads would be safer.
it was only when we were shaking hands with him at the door that i found how the secretive dutchman had kept his greatest, to me most vital, tidings for the last.
"oh, yes!" he said, as he stood in the doorway; "perhaps i did not mention it. young cross has left his home and gone to join guy johnson and the butlers. they say he had angry words with his wife--your daisy--before he deserted her. she has come back to the cedars again to live!"
