Читать книгу The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution - James Henry Stark - Страница 26

COLONEL MIFFLEN'S INTERVIEW WITH THE CAUGINAWAGA INDIANS. At Watertown during the seige of Boston, the Revolutionists endeavored to obtain their assistance.

On the 21st of June, two of the Indians killed four of the regulars with their bows and arrows, and plundered them. Frothingham says the British complained, and with reason, of their mode of warfare.

Lieut. Carter, writes July 2, 1775: "Never had the British army so ungenerous an enemy to oppose. They send their riflemen, five or six at a time, who conceal themselves behind trees, etc., till an opportunity presents itself of taking a shot at our advanced sentries, which done, they immediately retreat."[76]

During the siege of Boston, John Adams visited Washington's camp at Watertown, and wrote the following letter to his wife, which goes to prove the efforts made by the Americans to enlist the Canadian Indians in their cause, and which they afterwards complained so bitterly of the British for doing:

"Watertown, 24 January, 1776.

"I dined at Colonel Mifflin's with the general and lady, and a vast collection of other company, among whom were six or seven sachems and warriors of the French Caughnawaga Indians, with several of their wives and children. A savage feast they made of it, yet were very polite in the Indian style. One of the sachems is an Englishman, a native of this colony, whose name was Williams, captivated in infancy, with his mother, and adopted by some kind squaw."[77]

Many attempts were made by the Americans to use the Indians. Montgomery made use of them in his Canadian expedition.

In April, 1776, Washington wrote to Congress, urging their employment in the army, and reported on July 13th that, without special authority, he had directed General Schuyler to engage the Six Nations on the best terms he and his colleagues could procure, and again submitting the propriety of engaging the Eastern Indians. John Adams thought "we need not be so delicate as to refuse the assistance of Indians, provided we cannot keep them neutral." A treaty was exchanged with the Eastern Indians on July 17, 1776, whereby they agreed to furnish six hundred for a regiment, which was to be officered by the whites. As a result of this, the Massachusetts Council subsequently reported that seven Penobscot Indians—all that could be procured—were enlisted in October for one year.[78] It is interesting to remember, in this connection, that the courteous and chivalrous Lafayette raised a troop of Indians to fight the British and the Tories, though his reputation has been saved by the utter and almost ludicrous failure of his attempt.[79]

When all this had been done, it needed the forgetfulness and the blind hypocrisy of passion to denounce the king to the world for having "endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savage." Yet Americans have never had the self-respect to erase this charge from a document generally printed in the fore-front of the Constitution and Laws, and with which every schoolboy is sedulously made familiar.

The Revolutionists failed to enlist the Indians in their cause, for the Indian and the Colonist were bitter and irreconcilable foes. The Indian had long scores to pay, not upon the English nation or the English army, but upon the American settler who had stolen his lands, shot his sons, and debauched his daughters. It is well here to remember the speech of Logan, the Cayuga chief, on the occasion of the signing of the treaty of peace in 1764, at the close of the Pontiac Conspiracy. Logan said: "I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not. Such was my love of the white man that my countrymen in passing my cabin said: 'Logan is the friend of the white man.' I have even thought to have lived with you but for the injuries you did me last spring, when in cold blood and unprovoked, you murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance." Logan's family, being on a visit to a family of the name of Greathouse, was murdered by them and their associates under circumstances of great brutality and cowardice. It is known that in revenge, Logan took over 30 scalps with his own hand. And others than Indians had old scores to wipe out. Many loyalists who desired to be left alone in peace had been tarred and feathered by their former friends and fellow-townsmen; were driven from their homes and hunted like wild beasts; imprisoned, maimed, and compelled to suffer every kind of indignity. In many cases fathers, brothers and sons were hanged, because they insisted on remaining loyal to their country. Therefore it is not to be wondered at that many of these loyalists sought a terrible revenge against those who had maltreated them. If the loyalists of New York, Georgia and the Carolinas resolved to join the Indians and wreak vengeance on their fellow countrymen at Wyoming and Cherry Valley, and to take part in the raids of Tyron and Arnold, there was a rude cause for their retaliating. Their actions have been held up to the execration of posterity as being exceptionally barbarous, and as far surpassing in cruelty the provocative actions of the revolutionists, Sullivan's campaign through the Indian country being conveniently forgotten. There was not much to choose between a cowboy and a skinner, and very little difference between Major Ferguson's command and that of Marion and Sumpter. There were no more orderly or better behaved troops in either army than Simcoe's Queen's Rangers. There can be no doubt that the action of the loyalists have been grossly exaggerated, or at least dwelt upon as dreadful scenes of depravity, to form a background for the heroism and fortitude of the "patriotic" party whose misdeeds are passed lightly over. The methods of the growth of popular mythology have been the same in America as in Greece or Rome. The gods of one party have become the devils of the other. The haze of distance has thrown a halo around the American leaders—softening outlines, obscuring faults, while those of the British and the loyalists have grown with the advanced years.[80]

CARTOON ILLUSTRATING FRANKLIN'S DIABOLICAL SCALP STORY. From an old print in the possession of the Bostonian Society.

The following brief entry in a diary, will show that among the American forces savage customs found place: "On Monday, the 30th, sent out a party for some dead Indians. Toward morning found them, and skinned two of them from their hips down, for boot legs; one pair for the major, the other for myself."[81]

It has been the policy of American historians and their echoes in England to bring disrepute upon the Indians and the British government who employed them, and not only to magnify actual occurrences, but sometimes, when facts were wanting, to draw upon imagination for such deeds of ferocity and bloodshed as might serve to keep alive the strongest feelings of indignation against the mother country, and thus influence men to take the field for revenge who had not already been driven thither by the impulse of their sense of patriotism. Dr. Franklin himself did not think it unworthy of his antecedents and position to employ these methods to bring disrepute on the British. The "deliberate fiction for political purposes," by Franklin, were written as facts. Never before was there such diabolical fiction written as his well known scalp story, long believed and recently revived in several books purporting to be "authentic history." The details were so minute and varied as to create a belief that they were entirely true. For a century supposed to be authentic, it has since been ascertained to be a publication from the pen of Dr. Franklin for political purposes. It describes minutely the capture from the Seneca Indians of eight bales of scalps, which were being sent the governor of Canada, to be forwarded by him as a gift to the "Great King." The description of the contents of each bale was given with such an air of plausibility as to preclude a suspicion that it was fictitious. The following are a few brief abstracts from this story: "No. 1 contains forty-three scalps of Congress soldiers, also sixty-two farmers, killed in their houses in the night time. No. 2 contains ninety-eight farmers killed in their houses in the day time. No. 3 contains ninety-seven farmers killed in the fields in the day time. No. 4 contains 102 farmers, mixed, 18 burnt alive, after being scalped; sixty-seven being greyheads, and one clergyman. No. 5 containing eighty-eight scalps of woman's hair, long-braided in Indian fashion. No. 6 containing 193 boys' scalps of various ages. No. 7, 211 girls' scalps, big and little. No. 8, this package is a mixture of all the varieties above mentioned, to the number of 122, with a box of birch bark, containing twenty-nine infants' scalps of various sizes."[82]

With the bales of scalps was a speech addressed to the "Great King."

One of the most cruel and bloodthirsty acts of the Americans was the massacre of the Moravian Indians. "From love of peace they had advised those of their own color who were bent on war to desist from it. They were also led from humanity, to inform the white people of their danger, when they knew their settlements were about to be invaded. One hundred and sixty Americans crossed the Ohio and put to death these harmless, inoffensive people, though they made no resistance. In conformity with their religious principles these Moravians submitted to their hard fate without attempting to destroy their murderers. Upward of ninety of these pacific people were killed by men who, while they called themselves Christians, were more deserving of the names of savages than were their unresisting victims."[83]