“What the devil is the matter with him now?” I asked.
Smoke Johnson replied. “He says that you must be most favoured by the Great Spirit to survive such a wound.”
“It is remarkable,” agreed Norton. “In all my time in the army I never saw anyone survive a wound such as that.”
I explained that I had been lucky and been treated by a good surgeon, but then they wanted me to tell them about the battle I had been wounded in. When I told them about the casualties at Albuera they rocked and moaned in wonder. Norton explained that the dead in that battle outweighed the number of Iroquois thought to be living. Several exclaimed that this proved the white men were limitless in number to consider such losses.
When I recounted how the battle had been fought, with lines of British and French troops facing each other, they shook their heads in dismay again. Why, they asked, had we not ambushed the French on the road and drawn them into more ambushes in the forest? Given the way the battle had been fought, it was a fair question. Such tactics could hardly have been less effective than Beresford’s dithering. When I tried to explain about the cavalry screens that the French used to protect their march, they then suggested slipping into the French camp at night and cutting as many throats as possible. That, they assured me, was the way to fight a war.
In exasperation I tried to claim that they simply did not understand the European style of warfare. Norton grinned and I remembered that he at least had once also served in the British army.
“I think you are forgetting,” he said quietly, “that our warriors have just won the battle of Queenston for the British.”
“Really?” I objected. “I think General Sheaffe would disagree. If the Americans had managed to get enough men and ammunition across the river they would have held the day.”
“So why didn’t they get enough men and ammunition across the river?” pressed Norton. Several of the Indians were grinning now as they followed his line of thought.
“Well the British artillery made the crossing difficult for the American boats.” I saw where he was going with his argument as well, but I was too stubborn to concede the point.
“You know as well as I that boats continued to cross, and that in the afternoon the ones coming from the American shore were half empty. Why was that, do you think?”
“A lot of them were sick, they have dysentery and their rations are not getting through.”
“And…” persisted Norton.
“Oh all right!” I thought back to the genial Major Cartwright when he gave me the real reason why they could not get more of the militia to cross. “They had heard your wretched war cries and were worried about being scalped when they got across the river.” The Indians chuckled as I conceded the argument, but Norton was not finished.
“And do you think one of the reasons that the Americans ran out of ammunition was because they fired volley after volley into the trees we were in, to make us keep our distance?”
Before I could reply, Smoke Johnson spoke up. “And they rushed their shots, firing high.” He was right about that as only five Iroquois had been killed in the battle and eight wounded. I did not know what the American casualties were, but they must have been in the hundreds.
“All right,” I yielded. “I admit that you might have made a bigger contribution to the victory than I first thought.”
We settled down a bit after that. The venison was good and I found a new ant-free patch of ground on which to spread my blanket. Several of the Indians were smoking and Norton showed me how to use the pipe bowl of my tomahawk. Some believed that the smoke helped them commune with the spirits. God knows what they put in with the tobacco, but it produced a richer more mellow smoke than any cigar.
“The tobacco tastes good, doesn’t it?” enquired Norton.
“It is certainly the best Iroquois thing I have had so far,” I agreed feeling relaxed.
“Yes, you must find lots of our ways strange, but there is a purpose to most of them.” He paused for a while as though considering what to say next and then pressed on. “Take scalping, for example. I know you find it abhorrent but Queenston shows how effective it is. The Iroquois do not have the advantage of numbers and so they must use other tactics to beat their enemies. They have always relied on ambush as well as hiding their true strength and frightening their enemies into retreat or surrender. In the past they would torture prisoners so that the screams would weaken the courage of their opponents, as well as scalp the dead. They would never stand in a line in front of their enemies; it would give away their strength and location. Instead they would fight from the edge of a forest and try to draw an enemy into the trees where their men could be surrounded and slowly destroyed. A good war chief does not come back with enemy flags; he comes back having instilled fear and respect in his enemies. He also brings home most if not all of the warriors he left with. When you understand that, you will begin to understand the Iroquois.”
“Tell me, Norton,” I asked sleepily. “On what side do you butter your crumpet?”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Well sometimes you talk of the Iroquois as ‘they’ and sometimes you talk as though you are one of them. In your heart are you Iroquois or British?”
“If I knew the answer to that, my friend, I would feel much more content.” Norton sighed as he considered the question. “I was brought up in Britain, although my father would tell me tales of Indian life. The Iroquois have welcomed me, formally adopted me as a Mohawk and made me a war chief. But I cannot forget what I know of the white man’s world. The Iroquois are a nomadic people. They used to move their villages every twenty years or so as game became harder to find. But they have sold off too much of their original land grant to keep moving. Now they are going to have to change their way of life. They cannot remain dependent on gifts from the British as these will stop as soon as the British have no more use for the Indians. More settlers will come and there will be more pressure for land.” I remember him turning to me all moist-eyed at one point and gripping my arm. “You know, Flashman,” he cried, “I think it is my God given duty to help the Iroquois adapt to the modern world.”
Another man might have been stirred by this all this passion and altruistic ambition but not me. I had seen too many old English villages destroyed by the enclosure of land by rich aristocrats. Money talks and when their way of life ceased to be viable, the Indians would have a simple choice: change or starve. I must have fallen asleep as he talked as I don’t remember him stopping, but I do recall I had the strangest dream. I was back at Albuera before I had been shot. The French column in front of me was breaking in panic and through their ranks charged thousands of triumphant Iroquois warriors. Then they were torturing someone; I could see a British officer tied to a spit over the same fire we had cooked the deer. I remember struggling to push through the surrounding throng of men. Then as I got to the front, the spit rotated so that the victim was looking calmly at me. He spoke with icy condescension as he informed me, “The name is Fforbes, with two ‘f’s.”
The next morning I felt surprisingly thick-headed considering we had consumed no spirits. The camp was struck and we began our march through the Grand River lands. It was still mostly forest but every now and then we came across a cleared field of crops and paths that led away into the trees. The band of warriors behind slowly shrank as men slipped away to their homes. When we finally reached the Iroquois village where Norton lived, I almost did not recognise it as an Indian settlement. It looked exactly the same as some white towns I had seen, with plank houses and log cabins. There was even a white painted church with a steeple. Crowds of women and children and old men came out to welcome the war band and the warriors excitedly told of their victories. Soon I was in the middle of a great crowd in the centre of the village and staring in bewilderment at the people about me. I had expected them all to look like…well, Indians, but there seemed all sorts of nationalities.
Amongst the women was a very pretty blon
de-haired girl who was throwing her arms about Smoke Johnson. She had a blonde-haired baby tied to a device on her back. There were several brown-haired women and a girl scowling from the back of the crowd, who had bright red hair. It wasn’t just hair colour. Two of the old men welcoming the warriors back were black. Another had the narrow eyes I had last seen on a merchant in India, who it was claimed had come from China. Quite a few looked to be at least half white and with my black hair and olive skin from my Spanish mother, I seemed almost as Indian as them. Only my red coat made me stand out from the crowd.
When I asked Norton about this variety of races he told me that the Iroquois would take women and children as hostages in raids and then absorb them into the tribe. They would not be treated as slaves but full members of the tribe, to marry and have Iroquois children of their own. He pointed out the two black men. “One of our foraging parties found them close to death in the woods. They were escaped slaves who had tried to survive on their own, but they had no idea how to live on this land. They were taken back to the village and, once they had recovered, invited to join the tribe.”
“Did they have a real choice?” I asked.
“Certainly, anyone can leave at any time; we are not that far from white communities. But they prefer now to live as part of the tribal family in our village than somewhere else.”
This tribal family was now in a mood to celebrate and as soon as we arrived preparations began for a huge feast. Norton invited me to stay with him in a house that was as comfortable as any I stayed in while in Canada. I spent much of that first afternoon sitting on a rocking chair on his porch watching as women prepared huge bowls of mysterious foods, plucked fowl and prepared joints of meat for roasting. The men seemed to do little work, but instead painted depictions of their victories and achievements on long strips of bark that would be the centrepiece of the festivities. Then they painted themselves in the war paint colours they had fought the battle in and started to gather in the centre of the village.
I felt a complete outsider, but they did their best to involve me in the celebrations. Norton introduced me to some wizened old Indian who I gathered was the village chief. He made a long rambling speech of welcome I could not understand. Then Smoke Johnson took me away to look at the bark strips. He wanted to show me a section he had painted, which depicted a stick man with a red smudge on his chest which I gathered was me in my red coat. The stick man was swiping a sword over the head of another crouching Indian whose hair was flying through the air. A crowd of villagers were gathered around the painting giggling like young children over a fart. If Black Eagle ever saw his depiction he did not react; I did not doubt he had painted himself elsewhere on the strips killing that sentry and collecting a handful of other scalps.
Shortly after that the singing and dancing started. There is a reason why Iroquois songs and dances have not become popular: they are bloody awful. Lines of men swaying and chanting, interspersed with the occasional shriek; I can honestly say that I have heard more harmony from a cow in labour. Oh don’t get me wrong, it is not as bad as bagpipes – what is? – but the noise somehow managed to be both dreary and disturbing. I found some corner of the clearing to sit in, out of the way. Mercifully at the same time that they started this caterwauling din they also served the food and some strong spirits. Back then I had no idea what I was actually eating, but I did know that most of it was delicious. There were corn cakes sweetened with syrup and others containing berries, some kind of apple chutney and plenty of meat, including slices of smoked venison that I particularly enjoyed. The camp women ensured I was well supplied and they also brought cups of liquor. It tasted like cheap brandy but with some berry flavour added. In no time at all I had reached a happy mellow drunkenness and singing became less jarring.
Then the chanting stopped and the warriors sat themselves in a big circle around the fire, surrounded by the other villagers to hear their stories. Norton and Smoke Johnson came and got me up from the floor and gave me a place in the circle. Tobacco was being passed now and as I still had the tomahawk in my belt, once more the pipe bowl end was filled. I soon felt even mellower than I had before. I could not understand most of the tales as they were told in Iroquoian, but several warriors got up to act how they had beaten an enemy or avoided an attack.
Suddenly I realised that I was being called to the centre of the circle. When I had staggered into the space it was clear that they wanted me to remove my shirt to show them my wound again. I did so and many of the villagers who had not seen it before crowded round to look. Then the singing started again with various warriors getting up to give a solo refrain. Norton rose and gave a Scottish lament from his childhood. When my turn came, all I could think of was a bawdy drinking song I had sung in London clubs. It was called To Anacreon in Heaven and it finishes with the refrain:
‘And besides I’ll instruct you like to entwine;
The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’ Vine.’
The symbolism was lost on the Iroquois but they cheered politely as I slumped back in my place and puffed on my tomahawk.
The rest of the evening is a bit hazy. I was still bare-chested and I recall that several of the warriors, including Smoke Johnson, decided that my wound would benefit from some war paint. They outlined the big star-shaped scar in yellow and then added further outlines in red and then black so that it looked like I had a huge target on my torso. Even to my drink-fuddled brain, that seemed a rather reckless war paint design. I must have fallen asleep then before I somehow got to bed. But slumbering next to drunken Iroquois warriors with war paint is a dangerous thing to do. I discovered this the next morning when I awoke with a roaring hangover. I staggered out of the cabin to get a drink, but as I bent over the bucket of water I got the fright of my life. I actually whirled round with arms raised in defence before I realised that the fearsome face covered in red, black and yellow that I had just seen staring at me, was my own.
Chapter 6
Norton and several of the other Iroquois war chiefs took turns taking war bands back to the Niagara over the next few weeks, but they did not see any further action. The Americans did try one more crossing but that was even less successful and easily seen off by the local troops. I on the other hand stayed in the village and had to concede that it seemed a very comfortable life. With the harsh winter coming, any further campaigning would have to wait until the spring. The Indians were busy gathering food before the snows came and there seemed a bountiful harvest. Well, when I say Indians, I actually mean the Indian women, as most warriors thought it was beneath them to toil in the fields. The men viewed themselves as hunters. When I asked Black Eagle if he ever helped with the crops, he told me proudly that only women and hogs were suited to dig in the ground.
Norton did tend his own vegetable patch and one afternoon he asked me to help him.
“It might help change their opinion if they see that even a British officer is prepared to till the ground.” I pottered about among his vegetables for a bit, but looking at the plots cultivated around the village it seemed that the women did not need much help. In many fields they were managing to grow three crops at once, typically corn and up those stems grew beans and below them squash plants were fruiting. Norton explained that he was trying to encourage white farmers to buy land in the area to help the Indians understand about crop rotation and other innovations. Some men did work on the land; the two former slaves had a mule and plough and hired their services out to the women to help clear their plots.
This virtuous agricultural work was all very well but I preferred to spend my time with the warriors. They filled their time with gambling, drinking, smoking, competitions of skill such as knife and tomahawk throwing and of course hunting. Hurling a tomahawk into a tree trunk from twenty paces is not nearly as easy as it looks when done by an expert. I discovered that the pipe bowl on the back of my tomahawk blade was not just there for smoking, but also for balancing the weapon when throwing. Get the timing wrong and you harmlessly clout your
target with just the shaft of your axe. But it was the hunting I enjoyed most. Norton might have been right about the farming, but there is something far more manly and satisfying in bringing back a brace of rabbits or a turkey for the pot, than pulling up a carrot.
Black Eagle and Smoke Johnson would often go hunting together and sometimes I would go too. The pair of them had an uncanny knack of finding game and we rarely came home empty handed. It was on one of those hunting expeditions that I first met Magda.
We had been stalking in a line near the river. They had put me in the middle as I was the least likely to spot anything; Johnson was on my left near the bank and Black Eagle to my right. We had been moving quietly through the trees for nearly an hour when there was the sound of a women’s scream to my left followed immediately by a booming gunshot. There was no sound from Johnson and I sprinted in his direction. I could hear Black Eagle crashing through the trees behind me, but as we got close to the river Johnson stepped out from behind a tree.
“Keep back or the crazy bastard might try and shoot you too.”
“Who was it?” I gasped, out of breath.
“Some white woman in a boat on the river. She screamed when she saw me and then one of her servants fired a huge gun in my direction.”
“Which way were they going?” asked Black Eagle.
“Up river.”
There was shouting now coming from the water, the woman was yelling at someone to keep still. I decided to creep forward and see for myself. I crawled up into a thick bush at the top of a hill overlooking the river; my red coat was too conspicuous to risk standing out in the open. The small boat was drifting just twenty yards away in mid-stream. The oarsman sitting on the middle thwart was watching over his shoulder as the woman, with her back to me, tended to an injured man in the bows of the boat. There were just the three of them in the craft, and a large luggage chest by the vacant seat in the stern. The wounded man was whimpering with pain and I could see the barrel of a large blunderbuss leaning against the gunwale.
Flashman and Madison's War Page 6