Читать книгу The History of Orange County New York - Группа авторов - Страница 13

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The French and Indian War was the result of rivalry between France and England for the possession of disputed territories in North America, and the Indians along the Delaware and other frontiers became allies of the French because they believed they had been cheated by the English and Dutch colonists, and were stimulated to hostility against them by French agents.

In 1754 England directed her colonies to oppose with arms the encroachments of the French, although the two nations were then at peace, and obedience to this command from the crown brought on the cruel war of 1755. In February of that year New York voted 40,000 pounds sterling to defray war expenses, and ordered a levy of 800 men to co-operate with troops of other colonies in the impending struggle. The law also declared that slaves were liable to military duty, and if over 14 years of age they were forbidden to be found more than a mile from their master's residence without his certificate of permission, and "if one of them were so found any white person might kill him without being liable to prosecution."

Along the Delaware River the Indians had been complaining that the whites appropriated lands which they had not bought, and by getting them drunk had defrauded them of the purchase money for their lands and their furs. These complaints led the Pennsylvania proprietaries to call a council, with the head chiefs of the Six Nations as arbitrators, and by bribing these chiefs with presents they obtained from them a decision which obliged the Delawares, then wards of the Senecas, to give up their lands and move to Wyoming. Soon whites followed them and bought in fraudulent ways their Wyoming lands. This angered the Senecas, and they drove away their chief who had aided the whites, and bade the Delawares defend their homes. The eastern and western chiefs met at Allegheny, rehearsed their grievances, and resolved on vengeance. The bloody scenes that followed have seldom been surpassed in barbarous cruelty and cunning, and the ravages of the Minsis were mostly confined to the western frontiers of Orange and Ulster Counties within the limits of the original Minisink patent.

The settlers of the Minisink observed that the Indians there, including squads who had been friendly, had suddenly disappeared, and the few that remained said they had gone west to join hostile tribes. Foreseeing trouble, some of the settlers sent their wives and children to places of comparative safety, and a well-settled region on the west side of the Wallkill, eight by fifteen miles in extent, was abandoned, some of the residents moving to the east side and others far away. Before they moved seven men and one woman had been killed by the Indians. In 1756, pending negotiations for peace, four men and two women were killed in the Minisink. Three of the men went into the harvest field with their guns and laid them down, when concealed Indians seized them, shot the men dead and scalped them. At Fort Westfall, which the Indians tried to capture by surprise, there was a fight in which several Indians and seven soldiers were killed. A large party of Indians attacked the upper fort at Neversink, which was well garrisoned, but the fort took fire from a burning barn near it, and its inmates had to leave. Only one of them escaped the Indian bullets and tomahawks, and among the killed was the wife of the captain, who was absent. Only a colored woman, hidden from view by the smoke, escaped. The captain returned a day or two afterwards, and took an oath of vengeance by the grave of his wife. A man named Owen was killed by strolling Indians in Asa Dolsen's meadow in the northwestern part of present Wawayanda, and Dolsen immediately moved to Goshen. David Cooley lived near him, and his wife was shot dead as she was walking from her house to an outdoor oven. In 1758, on the New Jersey frontier, one day, when Nicholas Cole was absent from home, thirteen Indians rushed in, tomahawked and scalped his two daughters and a son-in-law, and carried off his wife and a young son. When Cole returned the Indians were followed and frightened, and allowed the wife and boy to escape. In June of the same year a sergeant and several men went from Wawarsing block-house to Minisink, and not returning, a large party went in search of them and found seven killed and scalped, and three wounded, and that a woman and four children had been carried off. About this time a house containing seventeen persons was beset by Indians and all of them were killed. They carried off a little son of Mr. Westfall in Minisink, and he never saw his father again, but when the latter died, he came back with an interpreter after his inheritance. The persuasions and pecuniary offers of his mother could not induce him to abandon his life in the wilderness.

It was in 1758 that Governor Hardy caused a series of block-houses to be erected along the western frontier, which were a protection for the whites and a restraint to the Indians. In the latter part of that year negotiations with the head chief of the Delawares, Teedyusking, stopped hostilities for a time. The Minsis were paid for their lands in the Minisink, and the titles of the proprietaries were referred to the Government for adjustment. But subsequently "the Indian allies of the French" held the frontier in terror until after the fall of Montreal and Quebec, when all of French Canada was transferred to British authority.

In an address before the Newburgh Historical Society in 1885, E. M. Ruttenber said:

"In common with its associate regiments in Orange and Ulster, Colonel Ellison's Regiment had no little service in the French and Indian War of 1756, on the western frontier of the county, where the Minsis were scattering firebrands and death in their rebellion against the domination of the Six Nations, and for the recovery of the lands in the Minisink patent, of which they had been defrauded, and in 1757 marched to Fort Edward to aid Sir William Johnston. How great was the service performed or by whom personally we may never know. The depredations of the Minsis were terrible; the settlements west of the Wallkill were perpetually harassed, and many of them broken up; men were killed in the fields and in their houses; women and children became the victims of the scalping knife."

Colonel Ellison wrote in 1757:

"It is but too well known by the late numerous murders committed on our borders that the County of Ulster and the north end of Orange have become the only frontier part of the province left unguarded and exposed to the cruel incursions of the Indian enemy, and the inhabitants of these parts have been obliged to perform very hard military duty for these two years past, in ranging the woods and guarding the frontiers, these two counties keeping out almost constantly from fifty to one hundred men—sometimes by false detachments of the militia, and at other times by voluntary subscriptions—nay, often two hundred men, which has been an insupportable burden on the people, and yet all the militia of these parts are ordered to march to Fort Edward, while the officers had no orders to guard the frontier."

Mention may be made here of a famous character of the Minisink. whose unequaled career of revenge against Indians began during the French and Indian War. His name was Thomas Quick. His father was kind and hospitable to the Indians, and was shot dead while at work in his field by some of them whom he had entertained. Thomas, who was near him, and was then almost a youth, managed to escape. Over his father's grave he took an oath to avenge his death, and afterward to kill Indians became the passion of his life. It was said that he shot eighty-seven of them, the last one being the chief murderer of his father. He went by the name of "the Indian slayer." He was marvelously alert and cunning, escaped all of the many efforts of Indians to kill him, and finally died of old age. A monument has been erected to his memory in Milford, Pa.