Prelude to Glory, Vol. 4

by Ron Carter

  “Pretty much.”

  “What’s their attitude?”

  Deep sadness filled St. Clair’s face. “They’re mostly young, raw, barefoot, green militia who still think this is a great adventure. They’re anticipating a great battle in which they will hold the fort and live to tell their grandchildren.”

  Eli leaned forward to interrupt. “What’s your plan? Is there something you have for us to do?”

  St. Clair nodded. “The best plan I can conceive is to try to stop St. Leger and Brant before they come in from the west, and hope that General Howe doesn’t come in from the east. I know Howe believes taking Philadelphia is critical to ending the war. If we can stop Brant, and if Howe decides to take Philadelphia this season, or if General Washington can engage him and hold him in New York, or around Philadelphia, there’s a chance we can draw Burgoyne into pursuing us as we move south. If he does follow us, our knowledge of the terrain, and of the people, might be enough to slow him down. Maybe force him to return to this fort.”

  Eli responded. “A lot of ‘ifs,’ but it sounds like the best you can do. I gather you want us to go west to try to slow down Brant and his Mohawk.”

  St. Clair swung his face directly to Eli’s, and his response was curt, direct. “Yes.”

  “Who’s in command at Stanwix?” Eli asked.

  “Stanwix is now called Fort Schuyler, but I know it as Stanwix and will call it that. You’ve seen it?”

  “Many times. The last time it was a wreck.”

  “Colonel Peter Gansevoort is in command. Dutch. Good officer. He has five hundred fifty of his own New York continentals. They’ve been doing everything they can to bring the fort to fighting condition.”

  “Five hundred fifty men inside the fort, against two thousand? And one thousand of those are Indians?” Eli pursed his mouth for a moment, making calculations. “At best, that will be a close thing.”

  St. Clair delayed responding for ten full seconds before he put the question directly to Eli. “The question is, is there any way you can slow down or stop Brant and St. Leger?”

  Eli shrugged. “Maybe. Won’t know ’til we get there.”

  St. Clair caught it. “You’re volunteering?”

  Eli looked at Billy, and Billy gave him the slightest nod.

  “Looks that way.”

  “When will you leave?”

  “Tonight.”

  “What will you need?”

  “A little sleep. A bath. Food. Some clothes for Billy. Gunpowder. Ammunition. I’ll also need the seashells you were going to get, and I’ll need an artisan to make a small handloom.”

  “Handloom?”

  “To weave a wampum belt. I’ll show them how to make the loom. I’ll weave the belt.”

  “The shells are ready. Do you need string for the loom?”

  “No, it has to be gut to be right. Can’t chance Brant taking insult from string. I have some gut with my things.”

  “I leave it to you. What’s your line of travel?”

  “Do you have a map?”

  St. Clair quickly unfolded a map and spread it on his desk. Billy and Eli came to it, and Eli traced with his finger as he spoke.

  “Down Lake George in the canoe, portage the twelve miles on south to the Hudson River, south on the Hudson to where the Mohawk River comes in, and west on the Mohawk River to Fort Stanwix.”

  For the first time, St. Clair turned to Dunn, who had sat totally absorbed through the entire meeting. “Major, go with these men. Get them anything they want. Bath, clothes, food, ammunition. Find a good carpenter for them, and get the basket of shells you had drilled for them. Also provide them a quiet place to sleep.”

  The three walked out squinting into the bright June sunlight, and Dunn turned to Billy. “Where do you want to start?”

  Eli glanced at Billy, who spoke. “Sleep. We were in the canoe since yesterday morning.”

  Dunn turned toward the enlisted men’s barracks, and Eli spoke. “Could you bring a carpenter over? I’ll show him about the loom and maybe he can make it while we sleep.”

  * * * * *

  In early twilight, Eli sat hunched over a small table beneath a window in the corner of the enlisted men’s barracks, a section of board in front of him on the tabletop. On one corner of the table were the clean, dried intestines of the deer he had shot to feed and heal Billy after the combat far to the south. He had honed his knife on a whetstone, and was now carefully slicing the lengths of intestines into long, very thin strips. Billy sat on the other side of the table, carefully selecting seashells of the same color from the basket and threading the strip of intestine through the hole.

  Eli glanced at him. “About a foot long. I’ll need ten. Two have to have mixed colors. The others, all one color.”

  With daylight fading, they lighted a lamp and worked on. They had slept five hours, bathed in a wooden tub with hot water, shaved their two-week beards, gotten their supplies, new clothes for Billy, and had mess with the enlisted men.

  Patiently Eli began stringing shells on a strip of gut. Carefully he tied a loose knot six inches from the end, then began the selecting of shells, considering their shape and color. He threaded them on, loosely, until the shells were more than twice the length of the loom. Then he untied the knot, took one wrap around the headless tack in the upper left corner of the loom, brought the string down to the other end, caught it on the first tack in the lower left corner, brought the string to the next tack to the right, caught it, and brought the string back up to loop it around the second tack in the upper arm of the rectangular loom. He worked on, threading, adding string after string loosely on the loom, while Billy continued threading shells.

  One hour became two as the pattern of colors appeared on Eli’s work. With the loom filled, Eli began working strips of gut from side to side, over, under, over, under, until all strings were laced together and could not separate. Finally he began to tighten all the strings, round and round the loom, pulling them a little tighter each round, until the strings were all locked tightly into place. Then he tied them all off, one at a time. Finished, he cut the wampum belt from the loom and trimmed the excess gut with his knife.

  He had not been aware that half a dozen enlisted men had silently gathered, fascinated as the wampum belt took form and substance before their eyes. They murmured in admiration, and Eli turned to look at them in surprise while they pointed and commented.

  Eli raised his hands to shake his cramped fingers for a moment, then reached for the first of the ten strings Billy had finished and laid at the head of the table. Five minutes later he raised the finished wampum belt. Fifteen inches long, eight inches wide, with five strings of shells dangling from each end. He held it up for Billy to see.

  The design in the belt was clear—a circle in the center, formed by light-colored shells, with light lines radiating outward, surrounded by shells of other colors. On each end, the strings of mixed colors were in the center, with two strings of all light-colored shells on either side. For a moment the two of them admired their work before Eli laid it on the table.

  Billy asked, “Is there meaning to the design?”

  “If that old Indian was right a long time ago, Washington will become the father of a great nation. The sun represents that nation—the United States.”

  He fell silent, and for a moment a strange, sure feeling stole over both men as they stared at the belt. Neither spoke of it, and it began to fade, and was gone.

  Eli broke the spell. “Anything else we need to do before we leave?”

  Billy reflected. “I’d like to take a few minutes to write a letter.”

  Ten minutes later Billy folded the letter, wrapped it carefully in the oilskin with the others, and slipped it into his bullet pouch. He turned to Eli. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Eli was sitting on a chair, hunched over the small, battered, leather-bound Bible he carried in his pouch. “That letter to the Boston girl? Brigitte?”

  “Yes.”

&n
bsp; Eli laid his open Bible down to carefully wrap the wampum belt in oilskin, then work it into his pouch. While he worked, Billy reached for the Bible, suddenly intensely interested in what Eli would be reading just before leaving on an assignment from which St. Clair thought they might not return. Eli turned to reach for the Bible, unaware Billy had lifted it.

  Billy handed the book to him, eyebrows raised in question. “Joshua? The battle of Jericho?”

  Eli nodded as he slipped the small book back into its place in his pouch.

  Billy watched him, deep in thought. “The shouts and trumpets brought down the walls?”

  Eli didn’t answer, waiting.

  Billy continued quietly. “Trumpets, or the Almighty?”

  Eli answered. “They were doing His work, not theirs. I think it was Him.” For a moment the two men stood thus, and in that moment a quiet assurance rose in the heart of each of them.

  Billy reached for his bedroll. “Let’s go.”

  Notes

  Unless otherwise indicated, the facts herein set forth are from Ketchum, Saratoga, on the pages indicated.

  Billy and Eli are fictional, however, the facts reported by them to General St. Clair are historical. The British did set sail out of Cumberland Bay as described herein, moving south on Lake Champlain, cradled between the Adirondack Mountains on one side and the Green Mountains on the other. The colorful Indian war canoes came first, and the other regiments and soldiers in the sequence set forth. It made a most interesting, exciting spectacle (p. 140–41).

  The PROCLAMATION appearing in this chapter, drafted by General Burgoyne, by which he intended frightening the Americans into submission, is nearly a verbatim reproduction of the language he actually used. Rather than frightening the Americans, it raised in them resentment and anger (pp. 142). General Burgoyne did write theatrical productions for the London stage, two of which were The Maid of the Oaks, for his nephew’s wedding, and a farce titled The Siege of Boston. His PROCLAMATION was far too theatrical for its intended purpose. As a result of the document, most Americans drove their livestock away to avoid the British taking it (pp. 145–46).

  Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger was assigned to lead a force west to Oswego, then back east to capture Fort Stanwix from its American commander, Colonel Peter Gansevoort, then proceed on east through the Mohawk Valley to arrive at Albany and join generals Burgoyne and Howe (pp. 102–3).

  John Whiting and John Batty were American tent mates, who walked out of camp about mid-June, were attacked by Indians less than one mile from Fort Ti, shot, stabbed, and scalped (p. 157).

  In general support, see Leckie, George Washington’s War, pp. 375–80.

  Unadilla

  Late June 1777

  CHAPTER XI

  * * *

  Ancient and dark, shrouded in legends and tales of monsters and apparitions, and of the brave men and the cowards who had gone before, and of their spirits that lingered to drift and whisper in the shadows of the great primeval forest, the mysterious Adirondack Mountains rose from the banks of the mighty Hudson River and Lake Champlain westward, piled tier upon purple tier, beyond the horizon.

  The red men who came seeking, found sanctuary in the valleys of the rolling mountains. A thousand unnamed streams, winding through the jumbled hills, worked their way to rivers, forming the mighty waterways that drained north and south, teeming with fish. The rich soil sustained thick forests filled with boundless wildlife, great and small. Birds of every description flitted beneath an overhead canopy, so thick it blocked the sun.

  With men came war. Hate, fear, territory, wealth, prejudice, jealousy, wrongs imagined, wrongs real—the causes were those that have divided men from the dawn of creation. It was only a matter of time until the Adirondacks rang with the warbling battle cry of warriors from one village, intent on spilling the blood of those from another.

  And with war came those few men who abhorred the evil and the devastation. They rose from among their people, and they met, and they sought and found common ground. Slowly they led their people to the council fires where they sat in peace, talking, seeking. In time they reached an accord, and he who was chief among them, Deganawida, with Hiawatha, wrote it, and the leaders of all tribes at the council fire signed it.

  “I, Deganawida, and the union lords now uproot the tallest pine tree and into the cavity thereby made we cast all weapons of war. Into the depths of the earth, down into the deep underneath currents of water flowing to unknown regions, we cast all the weapons of strife. We bury them from sight, and we plant again the tree. Thus shall the Great Peace, Kayenarhekowa, be established.”

  It was done. The five nations had buried the hatchet beneath the pine tree, in waters that would carry it far away, and had bound themselves together in the mighty Iroquois confederation, sworn to stand united forever in peace, and to defend the confederation from all who would seek to divide or destroy. The eternal council fire of peace was lighted at the village of Onondaga, their capitol.

  With the union of the five nations came the need to organize, define, delineate. To set boundaries, they turned to the mountains and valleys, the rivers and forests, which for them were the source of all things in their lives—their schoolmaster, provider of food, clothing, dwellings, religion, ceremonies—their all.

  Far to the east were the two long lakes, Champlain and George. Below was the mighty Hudson River, flowing south. To the west and parallel to the Hudson, were other rivers—the Schoharie, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna. Also the Unadilla, the Chenango, and much further west, the Seneca, with the four Finger Lakes, Cayuga, Owasco, Onondaga, and Skaneateles, draining into it, thence further west into the Oswego River that emptied into the great lake, Ontario.

  Flowing from the west to empty into the Hudson, just above Albany, was the Mohawk River, the northernmost boundary of the Iroquois territories. The southernmost portions of the Susquehanna, and the headwaters of the Delaware, marked the southern boundaries of their domain.

  By common consent the tribes each occupied their own lands. The Mohawk dwelt to the north of the Mohawk River, reaching east to the Hudson. They were the eyes and ears of the Confederation, watching for invaders from the north and east. The Oneida were further west, on the lands bordered by the Chenango River on the east and by Lake Oneida and the Oswego River on the north. Farther west, the Onondaga lands were bordered by Onondaga Lake on the east, Lake Ontario on the north, and Owasco Lake on the west. To the Onondaga were trusted the sacred wampum belts—more than two thousand in number—that held the record of the nations spanning hundreds of years. The Cayuga were furthest west, bordered by Lake Cayuga and the Seneca River. The Tuscarora, not a signatory to the constitution of the Confederacy, were south, near the junction of the Unadilla and Susquehanna rivers.

  The five nations, along with the Tuscarora, thrived. Each welcomed the other into their own territory with food and lodging. They joined together in times of trouble for their common defense; for outsiders, to war with one was to war with them all. In times of need or famine, they shared. Strangers were made welcome, fed, clothed, and sent on their way. Soon none dared confront the mighty Iroquois confederation.

  Then came men with white skins—French from the north, English from the east—who brought government and religion, which were strange and incomprehensible to the red men. The white men were not prepared to survive in the forest, and the religion and the treaty between the five nations required the red men to save them, nurture them, teach them. Slowly the white men learned, and they flourished, and they brought to the red men new and wonderful things from their society—iron traps, axes and hatchets, gunpowder, muskets that could kill far, glass trinkets, woven cloth, sugar, and rum, which made the red men into fools. And they brought new and dreaded diseases that killed entire villages. The white settlements grew, and more came, and then they poured, as numerous as locusts, into the territories of the Great Confederation.

  The five nations inquired and learned that the white men did
not intend to return to their homeland beyond the sea. Rather, they challenged the five nations for their territory. The Iroquois took up the hatchet against them to drive them out, only to discover they could not sustain war against the weapons and the numbers of the white men. The red men had unwittingly become dependent on the muskets, gunpowder, iron axes and hatches, traps, sugar, cloth, trinkets, and the rum. Their trusting innocence had led them into a fatal trap.

  In the midst of their sporadic attacks on the white men, the French and the English went to war for control of the entire northeast section of the continent, south of the great St. Lawrence River, far to the north. Confused, frightened, fragmented in how to face the deadly threat, most of the five nations took up the hatchet once again to defend what was theirs—the Huron, far to the north, fighting for the French, the Iroquois nations for the British. The British prevailed, and the French abandoned their claims, to disappear back to their homelands. Peace returned for a time to the lands of the Iroquois confederation.

  Then, to the utter confusion of the Iroquois, rebellion divided the British. A faction calling themselves Americans rose against their mother country, demanding independence and freedom. With which side should the Iroquois cast their lot? The British, who came from far across the sea, or with the Americans, who lived among them and traded with them? There was but one solution: declare neutrality. Let the British and their rebellious children settle their family differences, after which the Iroquois could once again resume their peaceful stance. The Iroquois confederation agreed. Remain neutral. Do not take up the hatchet for, or against, either side.

  The clouds of war gathered, and the storm finally burst between the red-coated British soldiers and the Americans, at places called Lexington and Concord, far to the east. Cannon and muskets were going to decide the outcome of the conflict.

  From the five nations came a few rare men with a vision: survival of the Iroquois confederation depended on peaceful coexistence with the whites. Perhaps the greatest among those few men was Thayendangea, who dedicated himself to finding a way to save his people. He proved his selfless bravery and courage in battle as a boy, then mastered all five dialects of the five nations, then the English language, and the French. He studied the Jesuit Bible, graduated from a white school in Connecticut, and was baptized under the Christian name Joseph Brant. He sought and courted the friendship of William Johnson and others who were faithful to England, then other white leaders in his own territory, always watching, listening, studying, learning the new and strange thoughts of the whites. He rose steadily in the councils of his people and then became recognized as a leader by the whites.