“I’m sorry. I’m a fool. It’s easy to see why you don’t love me,” I wailed.
Malcolm seized me by the shoulders. “Don’t love you? If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t lie with you in that bed. I love you as a wife, as loyal a wife as any man has on this continent. I know your crosspatches. I know I’ve put some of them there and God or destiny or the Evil Brother has put others. But they don’t diminish the love I have for you.”
It was useless. He was talking to the mirror across the room, desperately trying to convince himself that he was telling the truth. While waiting for him beyond Albany was the woman who exalted his soul. I let him have the benefit of my perpetual doubts—and kissed him good-bye with tearful fervor.
At Albany, where the British army was camped for the winter, Malcolm discovered a modicum of hope. Chagrined by repeated defeats, the British Parliament had ousted the Duke of Newcastle and installed a new prime minister, William Pitt, who had in turn sent new generals to America. One of them was Malcolm’s friend James Wolfe, finally promoted after years of neglect. Malcolm thought he detected a new spirit of patriotism replacing the quarrelsome self-interest that had prevailed in the royal army—along with an obnoxious anti-Americanism. Pitt had a new slogan, which he had given his generals to pass on to the army: “In America, England and Europe are to be fought for.” He saw, with a prescience few other Britons possessed, that the control of this vast continent was the key to world power in the future.
Malcolm soon located William Johnson, the Irishman who had first rented and then bought our Mohawk River lands. Johnson had a letter from Clara, whom he had met at Onaquaqu, the Indian town on the Susquehannah, where the Irishman kept a store. The letter told Malcolm she had gone north to the Seneca country. Her mother had died and she had become matron of the Bear Clan. Johnson had told her about the all-out military effort the British were about to make. With the French on the defensive, she hoped to reconstitute their village on Shining Creek. She begged Malcolm to bring seeds for a corn crop and for apple and pear and peach trees. The men needed gunpowder and bullets, the women blankets and warm wool cloth against next winter’s snows.
Malcolm asked Johnson, who had become superintendent of Indian affairs, to issue these supplies as gifts from the British government. At first Johnson demurred at giving presents to the Senecas. Too many of them had joined the French in previous campaigns. But Malcolm described the price Clara’s people had paid for their loyalty and persuaded him to relent.
As the supplies were being packed and loaded on horses, Johnson asked Malcolm if he was interested in leading an expedition into the heart of Canada to cripple France’s Indian allies. The target was a large Indian town on the St. Francis River, not far from Montreal. From there had come many devastating war parties. General Jeffrey Amherst, the new British commander, wanted to strike a blow that would warn Canada’s Indians that they could not slaughter Americans with impunity.
“I told Amherst you were the perfect man to lead a raid like that,” Johnson said. “He wants an answer from you the day before yesterday. Time is at a premium. Any day your friend General Wolfe will arrive by sea with an army to attack Quebec and Amherst wants to draw as many French and Indians as possible out of his way.”
How could Malcolm say no? Especially when he learned that his brother Jamey’s regiment was in Wolfe’s army. It was the sort of mission that stirred the recklessness in his soldier’s soul. Best of all, he would take the warriors from Shining Creek with him for the assault. They would be ideal scouts for his force of rangers—and their good conduct would resolve Johnson’s doubts about the Senecas, making them candidates for more generous present-giving.
Within an hour, Johnson was introducing him to General Amherst. At the general’s side was a familiar, if unexpected, face—Robert Foster Nicolls. Thanks to his father’s political pull and his own familiarity with America, Robert had become Amherst’s commissary, in charge of feeding his huge army. William Johnson enviously muttered to Malcolm that Nicolls was making a fortune at the job. He got eight percent of all the money he spent.
Nicolls heartily seconded Johnson’s recommendation of Malcolm. “I’ve seen him attack Indians unarmed and chase them into the woods,” he said, recalling the fateful morning Clara and I had met him and Malcolm.
General Amherst was impressed by Malcolm’s promise to recruit fifty Senecas. No one in the English or the American wing of the British army had been able to persuade more than a handful of Indians to serve with them. A handshake sealed the bargain. Malcolm would deliver the Senecas and General Amherst would find the volunteers in a month’s time.
Malcolm journeyed to Shining Creek with the gifts of seeds and goods and found her presiding over a new longhouse with the symbol of the Bear Clan over the door. The other clans had also built new longhouses; most of the warriors, their wives, and children had returned. Clara greeted Malcolm gratefully. The bags of seeds, the bundles of blankets, and barrels of salt meat and gunpowder on the packhorses he had hired from William Johnson were proof that he still cared about her and her people.
But Clara’s gratitude dwindled when Malcolm assembled the warriors and told them about the expedition to Canada. Once more his oratory mesmerized them. Here was a chance for revenge against their ancient enemies, who had burned their village and caused the deaths of many of their grandparents and parents. Clara was even more dismayed when she studied Malcolm’s route into Canada on his map. They would have to pass no less than four French forts. They might manage this with reasonable stealth on their way to the attack—but once the assault became known, the exit route would be patrolled by French troops and Indian allies hungry for vengeance.
“You’re leading these men to almost certain death!”she told Malcolm.
He stiffly disagreed. It was no more dangerous than any other war party. They would have the advantage of surprise. It was an opportunity for Americans—he was sure most of his volunteers would be Americans—to distinguish themselves in a war where the British regulars were now doing most of the fighting. “This is our kind of warfare, Clara, one the British can’t fight,” he said. “They can’t go anywhere without artillery, supply wagons, all the abracadabra of a regular army.”
He was still trying to create an American presence, an American consciousness. But he stubbornly refused to see that it was irrelevant as far as the Indians were concerned. The war was a quarrel between white men. “What does it have to do with us?” Clara said. “We only want to live in peace, to grow our corn and hunt our game on our ancestral lands.”
“The British—and a lot of Americans—are angry at the Iroquois—at all Indians. At least ten thousand people have died on the frontier in the last five years. This raid could change their minds about the Iroquois. It could win better treatment for your people after the war.”
“If you win.”
“We’re going to win, Clara. The British have poured in men. They’ve got twenty-five thousand regulars in America now. They’ve pinned down a big chunk of the French army by fighting them in Europe. It’s a worldwide war, Clara. They’re fighting the French in India, in Africa, in the Caribbean—and winning most of the battles.”
Clara capitulated and allowed the warriors to go off with Malcolm. It would have been difficult for her to oppose them. She lacked the authority her mother and grandmother had wielded over the Bear Clan’s sachems and war chiefs. They would have to be wooed patiently over many years before they granted her the power which she possessed in theory now.
That night, as the warriors feasted and danced and boasted of the scalps and booty they were going to collect, Clara remembered her mother’s dream of her and Malcolm on the dwindling island above the great falls. Was this part of the current that was slowly destroying their fragile foothold? If this expedition ended in disaster, she would be blamed. She might become a pariah, driven out of the village, possibly killed. Grey Owl’s followers had grown more numerous during their years as refugees. Red Hawk’s
mother was one of the leaders, constantly preaching hatred of all whites.
Clara could not explain any of this to Malcolm as he took her hand and led her into the woods. They were still lovers. She could not deny the desire she felt for him whenever they met.
“Does Catalyntie know?” Clara asked, as the familiar sweetness gathered in her flesh.
“I lie to her,” Malcolm said. “I tell her you won’t let me touch you.”
“That’s probably better than telling her the truth,” Clara said.
“I’ll tell her someday—when the war ends and we say good-bye, once and for all.”
“No. I’ll tell her. I’ll take all the blame. I deserve all the blame.”
“I can’t imagine life without you, Clara. Or without her and the boys—”
“If you’re right about the war ending soon—”
The thought of an imminent farewell made their mutual coming sweeter, deeper, darker. Clara wept as he held her against him. She was as divided, as tormented by guilt as he was. “Let me go with you on this raid,” she said. “I want to protect the women and children in the villages you’re attacking.”
“I’ll do my best to save them,” Malcolm said. “But it’s become a very dirty war.”
In every imaginable way, history, personal and public, stained and disfigured their love. Why did it survive? For a moment Clara almost hated it—as if it were a grotesque abortion to which she had given birth. She could not deny its reality. But she could not see its purpose.
FOUR
WHEN CLARA AWOKE, MALCOLM AND THE warriors were gone. They hurried east down the lakes and rivers to Albany, where Malcolm found his two hundred volunteers waiting for him. Most of them had served as rangers in earlier campaigns. Almost all were Americans and they welcomed the Indians as valuable companions-in-arms. A month later they were on their way up the Lake of the Sacrament by night, hugging the shore to avoid the French warships that patrolled the center of this narrow 140-mile stretch of water.
At the head of the lake, they hauled their canoes into the woods and left two Indians to guard them and the extra parched corn and dried beef and bread that they would need on their return journey. Into Canada they slogged for two days. As they made camp for the second night, a commotion in the rear guard spread swiftly through the ranks.
The two Senecas they had left with the boats stumbled up to Malcolm, gasping for breath. They babbled dismaying news. A force of four hundred French troops had found the canoes and burned them. They were now on the trail of the invaders. Malcolm called a council of war with his chief officers, and the leader of the Senecas, Little Beaver. Some favored an immediate retreat, but Little Beaver supported Malcolm’s argument that a forced march would put enough distance between them and their pursuers. On the way back they would take another route to the east of the lake.
For the next week, they marched all day and half the night, struggling through swamps that often soaked them to the waist in freezing water. There were no fires to dry their clothes. For beds they laced together spruce boughs in the branches of standing trees. Meals were cold nibblings of dried beef, sausage, corn meal. Some men had eaten too much from their dwindling packs and for the last three days many were starving.
Finally, Malcolm saw grey swirls of smoke rising above the trees. He halted the column and with two of his officers crept forward to reconnoiter the village. It was huge—at least a thousand Indians were living there. As they watched, darkness fell and fires blazed. Soon a major feast was in progress, with dancing, singing, and the whirring of pebble-filled turtleshell rattles. Liquor was consumed in large quantities by the men, who whirled drunkenly around the fire until they collapsed and were dragged into one of the many bark cabins.
Malcolm waited until the last of the revelers reeled off to bed. He and his officers crept back to the men and ordered them to stack their packs and load their guns. Bayonets slid softly over the muzzles and locked with a murderous click. Tomahawks and knives were loosened. Malcolm gave a brief speech, in which he urged them to spare the women and children. He sensed no one paid much attention to him. Too many of these men had lost sisters, brothers, wives to raiding Indians. That was why they had volunteered for this dangerous job.
In a column of twos, they advanced on the village through a thick chilling mist. At a half hour before dawn, Malcolm raised his hand and roared: “Now!”
Into the village they charged, the rangers howling as wildly as the Senecas. Most of the French Indians were still on their pallets when doors crashed open and bayonets pinned them to the earth or the butt end of a musket smashed their skulls. Those who stumbled into the street were shot or bayoneted before they could find a weapon. In the semidarkness, little discrimination was made between women and men.
Many ran for the nearby St. Francis River. Malcolm had detailed forty men to cut off this line of retreat. Muskets roared from the shore and bodies toppled into the dark water. Those who tried to launch canoes were easy targets. Soon dozens of corpses were drifting downstream.
In the village, one of Malcolm’s men shouted: “Look at the scalps!” On poles in the center of the street were literally hundreds of scalps, many of them with long soft strands of hair—obviously from women. This sight redoubled the rangers’ blood lust. For a while, they showed mercy to no one. Malcolm tried to control them but he soon abandoned his efforts as hopeless. “It’s our turn!” one man screamed as he hacked the corpses of a woman and her child.
A few St. Francis Indians found guns and fired back from doorways or windows. Torches flung on their roofs soon turned their cabins into funeral pyres. They could be heard inside, quavering death chants. Others ran out, aflame from head to foot, to be bayoneted or tomahawked. Only as the carnage subsided did the Senecas prevail on the rangers to spare about twenty women and children, whom they herded around the scalping poles. They intended to take them back to their village to replace their recent losses.
Cowering in one hut the Senecas found a Jesuit missionary. They dragged him out and the rangers decided he would be given a trial. In twenty seconds the priest was found guilty of 302 murders—the number of scalps one enterprising ranger had counted on the poles. The murderous man of God was dragged to the nearest tree and hanged.
One of the Senecas emerged from the Jesuit’s hut with a silver statue of the Blessed Virgin. “Is this worth money, Standing Bear?” he asked Malcolm.
“If it’s real silver, yes,” Malcolm said. “Put it in your pack.”
In three huts they found baskets of corn. Malcolm ordered everyone to load his pack with as much of the precious stuff as could be crammed into it. This would have to sustain them on the long march home. By 9:00 A.M. they had begun their trek south along the shore of the St. Francis River. The region was a wilderness, badly mapped. On their heels came enraged French and Indian pursuers. The rear guard fought a number of bloody skirmishes in which a dozen men died.
In a week, they had eaten most of their corn and were still far from safety. By now it was mid-October and the Canadian winter was coming on. Game fled before their numbers. Malcolm decided they should split into small parties, hoping it would enable them to find food. The Senecas decided to travel west above the head of the Lake of the Sacrament as the most direct route home.
It proved to be a trail of tears. They were attacked a dozen times by the French or enemy Indians, losing men each time. They stumbled into Shining Creek, half-starved skeletons. Only five of the captured children survived the journey. The village was filled with wails of mourning and songs for the dead. Hardly a family had not lost a son or nephew. The surviving warriors had nothing to show for their travails but the silver statue of the Virgin Mary.
When Clara saw that serene face, she felt doom gather around her. The Virgin had not forgotten the blasphemy she had committed after Caesar’s death. She had returned to remind her of the lost sweetness of her celestial voice. Clara took the statue into the longhouse of the Bear Clan and put it in a dim cor
ner. That night, while everyone slept, she knelt before it and begged the Virgin to forgive her, to guide her once more. There was no answer.
At British headquarters in Albany, Malcolm was being feted as a hero. His exploit was extolled in every newspaper in America. General Amherst praised him and his men in his orders of the day and in an official dispatch to London. All but forty of the rangers had survived the return trip.
They were soon involved in a much larger celebration. Down the lakes came a messenger to report that General James Wolfe had captured Quebec. He had paid for the triumph with his life—but it meant the war was over. It was only a matter of time before the scattered demoralized French capitulated. A hundred cannon roared a victory salute and everyone from General Amherst to the lowliest private got gloriously drunk. No one drank more joyously than Malcolm—his brother Jamey had survived the battle with only a minor wound.
At the victory banquet at Amherst’s headquarters, Malcolm found the conversation disturbing. After the toasts to Wolfe and other heroes, including a nice compliment to “our American brothers-in-arms” from the general, the aides and colonels began discussing how much money the war had cost—and how they could economize to pay off the staggering debt the British government had run up.
“The first thing we should do is get a grip on the money we spend on these bloody Indians,” one aide declared.
Robert Foster Nicolls emphatically agreed with him. “We’ve poured ten thousand pounds a year into presents for those Iroquois for the better part of a century,” he said. “What did we get for it in this war? The scalping knife and the torch. From now on, it should be cash on the barrelhead for anything they get from us.”
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