by Ron Carter
Crouched low, moving like a shadow, Eli crept directly into the rum-scented breeze, across the small clearing, into a neck of trees. They passed on through, and as the trees thinned on the far side the first flicker of light gleamed through. They stopped ten feet inside the tree line and each settled onto one knee, peering through the branches and trunks of pine and oak trees into a broad meadow. Eli glanced eastward. The moon had set, and the morning star shone brightly in the black sky.
Twelve scattered fires burned. On the far side of the clearing, the black, square silhouettes of wagons loomed high against the glow of the nearest fires. Hobbled among the wagons were great oxen, horns two feet long gleaming in the firelight. Standing near the wagons and seated around the closest campfires were many men with muskets, wearing tricornered hats, and coats. They were silent, watchful, refusing to mix with the Indians scattered throughout the clearing, feathered, painted, stripped to the waist. Four open barrels of rum were positioned among the fires nearest the center of the meadow, with Indians clustered around, unsteady on their feet, dipping, drinking, some lying in the grass unable to rise. Their voices were raised, words slurred, gestures awkward. Billy and Eli both drew out their telescopes and for two minutes studied the clearing through the trees.
Eli collapsed his telescope, gave a hand signal to Billy to follow, and turned east, working his way silently through the neck of trees, then angling south in an arcing circle. Halfway to the far end of the clearing they again stopped to crouch in the grass and ferns and begin a count of all the Indians they could see in the east half of the clearing. Finished, they silently continued south, coming in close behind the wagons to again kneel on the forest floor and count the wagons and oxen. This time they did not use their telescopes; they were too close to firelight that could reflect off the lenses.
The crimson tunics and white belts of British regulars were clear, and the shoulder epaulets of six British officers glittered. White men not in uniform were mixed among the soldiers, and Eli paused to study one man through narrowed eyes. He gestured with his head and breathed the word “Claus.”
Minutes later, they once again continued their circle of the camp, coming to a stop on the west side of the clearing. With the river one hundred yards from their backs, they each dropped to one knee to make their count of the Indians in the west half of the camp. Suddenly Eli tensed, and he raised a hand to point and softly whisper, “St. Luc, and Langlade.” Billy heard the acrid bite in his voice.
Moments later, Eli again raised his hand to point and utter a single word. “Brant.” He drew his hand back to tap at a place just below his own throat. Billy peered intently at the cluster of Indians and caught a flash of firelight reflected from a silver plate hung around the neck of one man, just below his throat. He was taller than average, well built, and carried himself with an air of dignity not seen in the others. He was steady on his feet, and held no cup or gourd in his hand. He wore a buckskin shirt, no war paint. Light reflected off the high cheekbones and the coppery flat planes of his strong, striking face. In the darkness, Billy saw Eli finger the hammer and trigger on his rifle, then relax.
For a time the two men remained motionless, fascinated by the aura that surrounded Brant and by the near-reverent respect afforded him as he moved among his men. They watched as the Indians opened a path for him to walk to the south end of the camp where he sought out Daniel Claus. They spoke briefly, then sat down cross-legged on a blanket away from the fires to continue their parley.
Again Eli turned to look east, where the morning star was beginning to fade. Without a word he backed away from the clearing, turned, and the two worked their way back to the lake, then turned to walk south for two hundred yards. They stopped with their backs to the water and the fires of the huge Indian camp hidden by the forest. Birds broke the silence with their early morning cacophony, and on the lake, teal and loons began their movements toward the shores for early morning feeding.
Eli spoke quickly, quietly. “Brant was the one with the silver collar. King George gave it to him.”
Billy remained silent, and Eli continued, revulsion plain in his face as he spoke. “St. Luc and Langlade were both there. That explains the rum. Devils, both of them. If they have their way, every white man, woman, and child between here and the Hudson will be massacred.” He paused for a moment to let his anger pass, then continued. “Daniel Claus was among the whites. He’s one of the British Indian commissioners and is married to the daughter of William Johnson—the man in charge of British Indian affairs. He’s the one Brant went down to the wagons to talk to.” Eli paused. “I didn’t see John Butler there. He works among the Indians for the British, but he doesn’t much like Brant, and Brant doesn’t trust him. Likely he’s up at Oswego bringing in more rum and gifts to stir up the Indians. I didn’t recognize any of the British officers. Did you?”
“No.”
“I counted eight wagons and thirty-six oxen. Maybe three hundred Indians, and one hundred British soldiers and civilians.”
“That’s about what I counted.”
“See any cannon?”
“No.”
“We’ve still got to find their canoes and count them, and we’ve got little time. It’s getting light fast. They likely got guards watching them. My guess is they’re a little further south—”
The slightest sound from the north froze Eli in his tracks, and Billy remained still, silent. The hair on his neck and arms instantly rose as he realized what three hundred drunken Indians would do with them if they were caught. The gray-purple of approaching dawn was charged with unbearable tension as they held their breath. Suddenly the bullfrogs bellowing to their left quieted, a hush fell over the birds flitting in the trees, and it flashed in their minds, Too much light—can’t move in this light—how many?—how far?—how soon?
Suddenly Eli backed toward the lake, and Billy followed him, both peering north for the first flicker of movement in the trees. Then Eli was in the lake up to his chest, rifle held above his head with one hand, moving south, parallel to the bank. Billy followed, watching the telltale ripples move outward on the water as they pushed on. They had covered twenty-five yards when Eli found what he was looking for and moved directly to the shore. The bank of the lake rose five feet above the water to form a three-foot overhang with ferns and foliage dangling nearly to the surface. Ten seconds later the two men were standing in the darkness beneath the overhang in cold water up to their chests, weapons held above their heads, invisible to anyone on the lake shore. They both watched the ripples they had raised roll outward in the morning mist.
They felt, more than heard, the oncoming tread of the Mohawk, and then they heard the muffled sound of their arguing voices. Both men stared at the ripples, still moving away, dwindling in the gray of the fast approaching dawn. Too slow—they’ll see them. Unless they’re still too drunk, they’ll see them and know.
At that moment both their heads jerked around at the rushing sound of a flock of teal coming from the south. The black and white fowl were two feet above the water, gliding fast, preparing to land. They veered toward the bank, and the leaders set their wings to break their speed, while their large, orange webbed feet swung forward and upward. The heels of their webs caught the water hissing, the birds beat their wings twice to stop, and the flight settled onto the smooth surface to begin feeding. Some plucked at the swarming insects, while others plunged their heads into the water, their stubby tails pointed directly upward before they disappeared, diving to the bottom to gather the growing things five feet down. They shot back to the surface like small rockets, shaking water from their oiled feathers, their short bills trailing lake-bottom vegetation rich with algae. The ripples from their landing, and their diving, spread in all directions.
Billy and Eli watched, fascinated, as the teal came ever closer to the shore. The two nearest the overhang were but four feet away when the oncoming Mohawk broke out of the trees, near the bank. The startled teal instantly set up a raucous outcr
y that echoed across the water, and then spun to pound their wings as they darted away from the shore, using their feet to run on the surface, then dragging them to stop thirty yards out, where they turned to squawk their anger at the Mohawk standing on the shore. Small waves and lengthy ripples reached far out on the lake.
Billy closed his eyes in relief, then opened them wide as he heard the Indians coming south, then stop. There were four of them, all standing above them on the overhang, directly over the heads of Billy and Eli. Their voices were raised in anger, their argument hot.
The two men remained motionless as they listened. Billy understood none of it, but quickly became aware that two of the voices were slurred, drunken, angry. One was reticent, quiet, apparently beginning to emerge from the stupor of too much rum from the previous night. The last one was stone sober, dominant, disgusted. In the growing light, they listened in silence, Billy watching Eli’s face, reading every expression intently.
The argument above their heads raged for three minutes. Twice a smile flickered on Eli’s face, then passed. Once he tapped the hammer on his rifle, and Billy laid his thumb over the hammer on his musket, waiting for the signal to cock it. Then the sober voice raised above all protests until they stopped, then barked harsh orders, and the four men divided, two going north, two south. The sounds of their leaving grew distant, and then they were gone.
Eli raised a hand, and they waited for a time before he spoke quietly. “We stay here.”
Minutes became quarter of an hour. Their legs became numb in the deep cold of the lake water, and they moved their feet to avoid muscle cramps. The first arc of the sun rose in the east, behind them, and they watched it catch the tops of the trees on the far side of the lake, setting them afire for a moment, then turning them to bright emerald green. The early morning mists rose off the water and began to dissipate in the breaking of a glorious new summer day.
Ground vibrations of trotting feet reached them from the north. Once again Eli raised a hand, and they stood silent beneath the overhang, waiting. Sounds of men moving passed over their heads, faded to the south, and were gone. Eli concentrated for one more minute before he whispered, “Let’s go.”
He led Billy from beneath the overhang, then north in the water, to where they had entered the lake. They climbed stiff-legged onto the bank and moved into the trees, where they stopped and sat on an ancient log, soaked, water puddling around them.
Eli spoke. “The leader—with the strong voice—was one of those that ambushed us down by Albany. He recognized our tracks. He followed them from the camp to the lake, then south, and he saw where we got into the water. What he didn’t know was whether we went north or south. The two drunk ones said Brant gave orders to strike camp and be in the canoes to leave just after sunrise, and they wanted to go back to camp right then. Brant’s taking them north to Cayuga, just like I thought. The sober one said he’d cut out their tongues if they didn’t quit their whining and act like men. They didn’t believe him until he reached for his knife. He took one, and the fourth voice—the one with a head full of regret for drinking too much rum last night—took the other one. Two went north. The sober one took one of the drunk ones south. They’re going half a mile both directions looking for us, then back to camp to leave with Brant and the others. The canoes are south. The British and the wagons are going north with twelve more barrels of rum and a lot of trinkets. Also some gunpowder and knives and iron tomahawks.”
The chill of the cold lake water was beginning to cramp their legs. Billy shifted to break the set of his muscles, then spoke quietly. “The sober one was at that fight by Albany, and remembers our tracks?”
Eli looked at him. “He knows our tracks, and they told him about us. He knows I’m a white man raised Indian, and that you’re not. He knows how tall we are, our weight, how we walk, how we move, that you’re strong, and a lot of how we think. He could pick our tracks out if we walked right through the middle of their camp with four hundred other sets of tracks all over the ground.”
Eli paused before he finished. “White men spend their lives studying the rules of white society and think Indians are untutored, ignorant. Indians spend their lives studying the rules of nature and can’t understand how white men got so foolish. We’re in that Indian’s mind forever, and it’s likely if he saw us right now, he’d recognize us just because he’s seen our tracks. Don’t ever underestimate them. In the forest, they’re the king.”
“What do we do next?”
“Go north and find our canoe. Then we wait for Brant’s party to come past on their way to Cayuga. We’ll be in the woods with our telescopes, and can get a clear count of both canoes and men. We let them pass, and then follow them at dusk. We’ve got to find a way to get to Brant.”
Billy swallowed. “You mean walk right into his camp and talk with him?”
“If we have to.”
“I doubt we’d have stayed alive for thirty seconds in that camp last night.”
“Depends. If we can get them to honor a wampum belt we’ve got a chance.”
“I’m going in with you?”
Eli shrugged. “Why not? You’ll learn a lot in a hurry.”
“That’s what worries me. Maybe I’d just as soon not learn what they have in mind to teach.”
Eli looked at him wide-eyed. “What? Your red brothers? You keep up that attitude, they might not like it. Come on. Let’s go find our canoe. We’ve got to stop Brant somehow and then get back to St. Clair. I’ve got a hunch Burgoyne’s going after Fort Ti soon, and our side is going to need all the help they can get. If Burgoyne gets past St. Clair, Washington could lose this revolution in a hurry. Let’s move.”
Notes
In preparation for the assault on Fort Stanwix, British General Barry St. Leger requested a gathering of the Indians he needed. The meeting was to take place at Oswego, where the Seneca River empties into Lake Ontario. While bringing his Indians to join the others at the proposed Oswego conference, Joseph Brant met with Daniel Claus and others on the shores of Lake Cayuga, where rum was generously distributed. Billy and Eli are fictional characters; however, the facts surrounding the meeting on the shores of Lake Cayuga are herein reported as accurately as the better historians have recorded them (see Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution, pp. 123–25).
East Creek, north of Mt. Independence
July 3, 1777
CHAPTER XVII
* * *
Lieutenant Colonel Heinrich Breymann approached his two subordinate officers, Major von Barner, who commanded the German Jaeger riflemen, and Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum, who commanded the German dragoons. The officers were dressed in the blue tunics of Hanau-Hessian soldiers, with their distinctive fifteen-inch-tall, copper-fronted hats standing high in the bright sunshine of another hot, sultry July morning. Sweat stood out on their faces as they peered at their troops.
They had one company of troops with them, with other companies of the Breymann corps spread eastward at intervals. They had given their company their midmorning twenty-minute rest and watched as the men quickly sought shade wherever they could find it in the forest lining the east bank of Lake Champlain, just over one mile north of Mt. Independence. The troops had shed their sixty-pound backpacks, removed their tall hats, sat down on anything available, and were sipping tepid water from their canteens.
Breymann, von Barner, and Baum remained standing. They drew their telescopes from their hard leather cases, extended them, and began a careful study of the troop movements across the lake. Burgoyne’s Indians were moving freely in the gap between Fort Ticonderoga and the Lake George landing; effectively cutting off Fort Ti from the south. North of the fort, red-coated cannoneers were unloading General Phillips’s beloved cannon from bateaux, under Phillips’s expert eye, and the Germans could hear his booming commands echo across the calm lake. To the south, forty-one bateaux unloaded more German Hessians on the east shore of the lake, below Mt. Independence.
Breymann smile
d with his thoughts. We have the Americans and their fortifications on Mt. Independence caught squarely between my command and those unloading to the south. They have no chance. They will be ours in one-half day and their fortifications along with them.
Movement further south on the lake caught his eye, and once again he extended his telescope to study the boats crossing from west to east. Fraser’s riflemen, with Canadians and Indians to take the Hubbardton Road. Right on schedule. Burgoyne is sealing off all retreat to the south. When will St. Clair realize he is beaten and surrender?
The three officers turned at the sound of a horse cantering in from behind and faced Lieutenant Johann Reichmann. Sweat was running from his chin, making dark spots on his blue tunic as he dismounted, came to attention, and saluted.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” Breymann said.
“Herr Colonel, I am with Captain Gottfried Strauss, one mile east. He sent me to report that East Creek is not as represented on our maps. The colonel will recall that we must cross East Creek to reach Mount Independence. The creek is not a creek, but a bog, perhaps half a mile across. My captain is doubtful men can cross it on foot, and even if it is possible, he estimates it will take two days. Either way we will be much delayed and unable to follow the schedule Herr General Burgoyne has ordered. My captain wishes further instruction.”
Breymann turned narrowed eyes to von Barner and Baum. “Am I to understand that some dunderhead made these maps without scouting the territory? East Creek is shown to be nothing—a trickle that can be crossed in minutes. Now we are here facing it, only to discover it is an impassable swamp?”