Sergeant Lamb's America

by Robert Graves

  Brothers, Sachems and Warriors! We, the delegates from the twelve United Provinces, now sitting in general congress at Philadelphia, send their talk to you, our brothers.

  Brothers and Friends, now attend! When our fathers crossed the great water, and came over to this land, the King of England gave them a talk, assuring them that they and their children should be his children; and that if they would leave their native country, and make settlements and live here, and buy and sell and trade with their brethren beyond the water, they should still keep hold of the same covenant chain, and enjoy peace; and it was covenanted that the fields, houses, goods, and possessions, which our fathers should acquire, should remain to them, as their own, and be their children’s for ever and at their sole disposal.

  Brothers and Friends, open a kind ear! We will now tell you of the quarrel between the counsellors of King George and the inhabitants of the colonies of America.

  Many of his counsellors have persuaded him to break the covenant chain, and not to send us any more good talks. They have prevailed upon him to enter into a covenant against us; and have torn asunder, and cast behind their back, the good old covenant, which their ancestors and ours entered into and took strong hold of. They now tell us they will put their hands into our pockets without asking, as though it were their own; and at their pleasure they will take from us our charters, or written civil constitution, which we love as our lives; also our plantations, our houses and goods, whenever they please, without asking our leave. They will tell us that our vessels may go to that or this island in the sea, but to this or that particular island we shall not trade any more; and in case of our non-compliance with these new orders they shut up our harbours.

  Brothers, we live on the same ground with you; the same land is our common birthplace; we desire to sit down under the same tree of peace with you; let us water its roots, and cherish its growth, till the large leaves and branches shall extend to the setting sun and reach the skies. If anything disagreeable should ever fall out between us, the twelve United Colonies, and you, the Six Nations, to wound our peace, let us immediately seek measures for healing the breach. From the present situation of our affairs, we judge it expedient to kindle up a small fire at Albany, where we may hear each other’s voice, and disclose our minds fully to one another.

  Subsequently they besought the Mohawk nation to whet their hatchets against us, on the curious ground – among others – of the probable increase of Popery in Canada! They also persuaded Jehoiakin Mothskin of the Stockbridge Indians to take up the hatchet, who warned ‘King’ Hancock, as the President of Congress, that they must expect him to fight not in the English, but in Indian fashion. All that he desired was to be informed where his enemy lay. He was regularly enrolled in the Army of Massachusetts. Sir Guy Carleton had attempted in that same year to win over the Six Nations from the seductions of Congress; and had accordingly invited their chiefs, in a language they understood, to ‘feast on a Bostonian and drink his blood’. This meant no more than to partake of a roasted ox, of the sort brought up from New England by the drovers, and to wash the meat down with a pipe of wine. The American patriots, however, affected to understand this speech in a literal sense. It furnished a convenient instrument for operating upon the passions of the people, the more so as it was well known that the Mohawks were not by any means averse to eating the flesh of their foes. This they did (as also the Ottawa, Tonkawa, Kickapoo, and Twighee tribes), not from bestial gluttony but from a belief that the estimable qualities of the man they had slain, which centred chiefly in the heart, could be absorbed by the victor who partook of that organ roasted. Most Indians, however, looked upon cannibalism with the same horror that we Europeans do.

  How to look upon our Indian allies was a question which greatly puzzled us. It was said that at one period the Indian had not been so ready to pick quarrels and perform wanton barbarities as then; and that Penn the Quaker, who founded the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, proved that his policy of fair, generous, and pacific dealings with the Indian chiefs was never disappointed by any act of spite or ingratitude on their part. He went unarmed in their midst, ate of roast acorns and stirabout with them, and even on occasion shook a leg at their dances. When the first English settlers arrived in New England they were at pains to cultivate the friendship of the Indians of those parts, who often succoured them in their worst need, when nearly dead of cold and starvation. It was only a hundred years later that wars arose. The cupidity or cruelty of individual colonists had excited the communal vengeance of the Indians. Similarly, the Quakers did not forfeit the affectionate respect of the tribes until overreaching them in the purchase of lands: they had covenanted to buy from them as much land as could be walked around in a day, but ran rather than walked, and quite omitted the usual custom of sitting down now and then, for good manners, for a smoke and a meal.

  Gradually a very evil view came to be adopted by the colonists as a means of stilling the prick of conscience: namely, that the Indians, being heathen, had no claim upon the Christians for fair treatment. In the frontier districts of America, such was the readiness with which offence was taken against an Indian, that should a warrior so much as slap a white man for committing a criminal offence, the act would be eagerly seized upon and exaggerated, the whole white population would rush to war and the tawny men be hunted from their homes like wild beasts. Nor did even the adoption of Christianity serve to protect Indians from the animosity of the Americans: as witness the massacre in 1763 of the twenty peaceful, psalm-singing Conestogas at Lancaster in Pennsylvania by a mob known as the Paxtang Boys – they first burned the Indian houses early one morning and killed six, and later broke into the workhouse where the magistrates had put the fourteen survivors for safe keeping and killed them all – man, woman, and child. They scalped them too, in order to collect the bounty offered by the Government of Pennsylvania for Indian scalps of either sex. The Paxtang rascals were not grudged this blood-money or in any way punished for their wicked action.

  There was no peace possible on the frontier, since agriculture, by which the settlers lived, and hunting, by which the Indians lived, are trades that cannot be practised compatibly in the same district; the plough and axe are always the victors. The Indians naturally resented being driven from their ancestral hunting-grounds, without compensation, and from the tombs of their ancestors, and were at their wits’ end how to act, for the American pioneers were terrible men and avenged their own losses, ten lives for one. These pioneers, being of a restless and dissatisfied turn of mind, not untainted with greed, instead of keeping within provincial territories where millions of acres remained unoccupied (but all had to be paid for), crossed the boundary lines into Indian territory with no by-your-leave and began to behave in a most proprietary manner. The Indians’ only hope now was to recover some of their losses at least by profiting from the disagreements of the white men. They sold their military services to the French, the English, the Americans in turn at the highest price obtainable.

  They became, in effect, banditti and made war not for glory or for any generous motive but only in order to obtain money, rum, guns and powder – necessities of which they had once never even known the name. Many of them were now regular camp-followers, and periodical beggars at the gates of forts and trading-houses; and the alms or stipends given them to avert their hostility were sufficient, wretched as they were, to destroy their self-dependence. Supplied with munitions of war, their propensity for mischief was quickened by the increased means of gratifying it; and they knew their power to enforce tribute by intimidation.

  Thus the Indian, who in his natural state was generous and hospitable and expected generosity and hospitality, had been to such a degree spoilt by his dealings with the white races that to expect him either to forget his wrongs suffered at their hands, or to relinquish new appetites that he had acquired and return to his simple state, was manifestly foolish. Even Dr Franklin, who had disapproved of the Paxtang Boys and who had joined in the ‘good talk�
�� quoted above between Congress and the Six Nations, believed firmly that the only solution to the problem of how to deal with the Indian was a gradual extermination of all the tribes.

  Revenge is the emotion that burns most hotly in a savage’s breast, nor is he careful to distinguish between a particular wrongdoer and the wrong-doer’s associates. Let me take an example from the abuses of the fur trade, which were almost incredibly enormous. The Indians assembled at Montreal, Three Rivers, or some other trading-place in the autumn, to exchange the skins taken in the past season for arms, ammunition, blankets, and other articles needed for their support. For two or three hundred pounds’ worth of peltry, the product of a whole year’s hunting with all its concurrent fatigues and dangers, the hunter was plied with brandy and then given a kettle, a handsome firelock, a few pounds of powder, a knife, a duffel-blanket, some paltry ornaments of tin for his arms and nose, together with paints, a looking-glass, and a little scarlet cloth and cheap calico to make a dress for his squaw. The whole was not worth one twentieth part of the furs which the Indian had brought in. If then the firelock which he had been given proved as unserviceable a weapon as it too often was, despite its showy appearance, and burst at the first discharge, wounding him, he would be like to seek revenge, not on the fraudulent trader who supplied the weapon, but indiscriminately on the first party of white men whom he encountered.

  Chapter XIV

  IN THE journal of occurrences that I kept posted throughout this Northern campaign, a gap occurs between June 26th 1776 and the last day of September in the same year. These three months were among the busiest and happiest in my life. In company with all the rest of the Army under the command of General Sir Guy Carleton I was busy shipbuilding. As has already been remarked on an earlier page, vessels were needed on Lake Champlain to oppose the American fleet now cruising up and down upon its waters and hindering our advance, for on either side of the lake the virgin forests presented an impenetrable barrier to invasion. Sir Guy had sent in haste to England for a number of gunboats, in sections. These could be reconstructed in the dockyard at St John’s which lay, as I have said, well above the rapids of Chambly that hindered direct navigation between Lake Champlain and the St Lawrence River. There was a vessel of one hundred and eighty tons, the Inflexible, in building at Quebec; Sir Guy ordered her to be taken to pieces and shipped up the river in batteaux together with the carpenters who had been engaged upon her construction – she was likewise to be completed in the dockyard at St John’s. The Inflexible carried eighteen twelve-pounders and was ship-rigged. Two schooners lay at Montreal, the Maria armed with fourteen six-pounders, and the Carleton with twelve. These were sailed at once to Chambly and, rather than lose the time of taking them to pieces, it was proposed by the naval lieutenant who commanded the Inflexible, to convey them upon a cradle overland to St John’s; and that the troops should be called upon to build a road for them. General Carleton acquiesced and we set to.

  This was a very slow and tedious business, for it meant felling thousands of trees and levelling off the stumps, and hauling the vessels forward by means of cables fixed to windlasses at every twenty yards. Our men lost a great deal of weight by sweating, and much skin from their hands; but this hard work was on the whole beneficial to their health, as was also the copious ration of spruce beer now served out to us as a preventive of scurvy, for we were again living mainly on salt meat and biscuit. At the end of a week, in spite of all we could do, we had advanced the Maria no more than half a mile. The General, perceiving that this mode of conveyance would engross more time than the other, ordered the two schooners to be taken to pieces and reconstructed at St John’s in the same manner as the Inflexible and the gunboats. Some of us were then employed in the hauling of two hundred laden batteaux up the Chambly rapids, which demanded almost incredible exertions; others at the ropewalk at St John’s in making rigging; others in assisting the Royal Marines to improvise stocks and slip-ways, to reconstruct the schooners and the gunboats (which carried one brass field-piece apiece, varying from nine-pounders to twenty-pounders), and to build, besides the Inflexible, a flat-bottomed radeau or raft, to mount twelve guns and a number of howitzers, also a gondola with seven nine-pounders, numerous long-boats and a whole fleet of batteaux.

  My company happened to be employed at first in outpost duty, three miles into the forest from St John’s, where we occupied a block-house protected by a screen of Indian scouts. It was very pleasant thereabouts. As well as the other Canadian trees before mentioned, the paper birch grew plentifully around us, and that rich shrub, the aralia, with numerous flowers and a high pink fragrance, also a wild gooseberry, the honeysuckle of the garden and strawberries in abundance. We were next set to building barracks for the troops and artificers. American block-houses never varied in plan. They were constructed of roughly trimmed logs, placed one on the other and overlapping at the corners. Each length of timber in roof and walls was so jointed as to be independent of the length next to it; so that if a piece of artillery were played upon the house only that timber which was struck would be displaced; indeed if one half of the construction were completely shot away, the remainder would stand firm. There were two storeys, a shingle-roofed loft, and a chimney constructed of brick or dressed stone; the upper storey, reached by a ladder, projected two or three feet beyond the walls of the lower one. Each of these storeys was supplied with a couple of pieces of cannon and four port-holes, so that the cannon could be trained in any direction to resist attack. There were also loopholes for musket-fire in all the walls, and holes in the floor of the upper storey – both at the projected sides, to fire down upon the enemy if he attempted to storm the lower part, and in the centre should he succeed in gaining an entrance. Each block-house served to lodge a hundred men, and there was an apartment in the upper storey for the officers. The building was made weatherproof by clay daubed in the interstices of the timber, and proved snug enough in winter if the two fireplaces were well supplied with dry fuel. A block-house was a very strong defence, unless the enemy succeed in firing it by incendiary shells, especially when placed on a little knoll in a clearing, as ours was. The barracks that we built were only rough affairs, of untrimmed logs, but sufficient to the purpose; it was not to be expected that they would be needed for more than short use. Some of our men became handy with the axe, though it would have needed years more at the task to make them equal in expertness with the Canadians or with our American foes.

  On one of the rare days when I was free to leave my duty for an hour or so and visit the dockyard I found that the two schooners, Maria and Carleton, had been reconstructed in a mere ten days; but even this prodigy of expedition was surpassed by the building of the frigate Inflexible. Her parts only arrived at St John’s on September 4th, her keel was laid on September 7th, and she was all rigged, armed, and ready to sail by the end of that month. Only sixteen shipwrights built her, and one of these was so badly wounded by an adze on the third day as to be of little service.

  One evening at the block-house, where I happened to be in command, since the two company commanders were absent at a general conference of officers, and the other officers were out hunting with their dogs, I visited my chain of sentries. I heard a challenge at some distance away and a deal of argument. Presently Mad Johnny Maguire and another soldier brought along for my examination two persons who wished to pass through the posts.

  ‘Who are they, Maguire?’ I asked. There was only a feeble light and they had halted at a few paces from me.

  ‘That I do not know, Sergeant,’ he grumbled. ‘I have had many and various customers pass through my post since first I stood sentry, but here’s a pair of queer fish that beat and bewilder me entirely. There’s one who says he’s a warrior, though, by Jesus, he’s a squaw unless my two eyes are liars; and the other calls himself Captain Brant and speaks better English than I do, yet he’s a rogue of an Indian for all that. Who knows that they an’t a couple of Yankee spies, such fancy fellows as they are, upon my soul!’<
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  I brought them into the officers’ apartment at the blockhouse, where I could question them at greater convenience and without the inquisitive stares of the men. Maguire had not deceived me as to their appearance. The person describing himself as Captain Brant was clearly an Indian of blood, tall, slender, and of commanding appearance. He wore elegant deer-skin leggings trimmed with gold lace, moccasins with diamond buckles, a blue military topcoat with tarnished silver buttons, good lace at his cuffs and throat, a pair of excellent duelling pistols in a holster at his side, and several strings of wampum about his neck. His head was bare and shaved clean, but for his scalp-lock which was dyed vermilion. His face was streaked with war-paint.

  The other, introduced as Sweet Yellow Head, wore a red velvet dress with a silver girdle, bangles, and long Spanish ear-rings, a necklace of garnets and small white beads, a wrapper of white fox fur, and a fusil slung on his shoulder. His face was delicately powdered and rouged, and his long, braided hair, with its vermilion-streaked parting, was dyed bright yellow. He walked in an exaggerated mincing manner, rolled his eyes coyly about, constantly tossed his hair, and in a word behaved exactly as a gay young ensign would do at a regimental theatrical performance when called upon to play the heroine in a farce.

  Captain Brant spoke severely to this creature in the Mohawk language, which I did not understand, and evidently bade him conduct himself in a more seemly fashion. Then he asked me in a deep voice: ‘Sergeant, where are your officers?’