CHAPTER III

THE LONG HOUSE OF THE IROQUOIS

The Indian country to be invaded by Sullivan stretched from the Hudson to Niagara Falls, and was called by the Iroquois “The Long House.” To this long house there were four “doors,” the northern at Oswego, the southern at Tioga Point, the eastern at Schenectady, and the western at Niagara.

In 1779 there were only a few settlements of the white man outside of a thin line in the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys. The Six Nations of Iroquois, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and Tuscaroras, were federated together and usually acted as a whole. Many of the Mohawks living near the settlements were friendly to the American cause, and almost the entire Oneida tribe had been won over to loyalty to the Continental Congress through the efforts of Dominie Kirkland, afterwards a chaplain in Sullivan’s army and the founder of Hamilton College. He was one of the few white men who had been as far west as the great “castle” of the Senecas, on Seneca Lake.

The Tuscaroras lived east of Cayuga Lake, the Cayugas between the largest two of the “finger lakes,” Cayuga and Seneca. The Onondagas dwelt around the lake which takes their name, and the Senecas, in the region between the lake named after them and the Genesee river. Roughly speaking, we may think of Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Elmira, Geneva and Ithaca as being the centers of the six tribes mentioned in their order, the central council-fire being with the Onondagas, near Syracuse.

The Senecas were, in 1779, the largest and most active of the tribes, and “the Seneca country” was a general name for the great region which Sullivan was to traverse. Our soldiers were to enter the Long House through the southern door, at Tioga Point, near which, on the fertile slope of the valley, was Esthertown, or the Indian Queen Esther’s country and castle. One of their hardest marches would be through the swampy valley stretching from the town of Chemung west of Esthertown to the castle of Queen Catherine Montour, her sister, at Montour Falls, N. Y.

The mention of Queen Esther’s name recalls the fact that the savages were not entirely alone in their schemes of hostility, but that the brain and hands of white men assisted them in their bloody forays. Indeed, it was one of the counts in the Declaration of Independence that the colonies were justified in their war of independence, because George III. “has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” There were several hundred white men aiding and abetting the Indians in the arts of war and in methods of fortification. Besides the British regulars, Johnson’s Greens, loyalists, Canadians and half-breeds, two of the most eminent Iroquois women called “Queens” had white blood in their veins. Both boasted descent from the French Count Frontenac, and were married to powerful chiefs. Esther, at Sheshequin, near Tioga Point, and Catherine, at Montour Falls, near the modern Watkins Glen, were the owners of large and well-worked corn fields and of fenced gardens, of horses, cattle, hogs, and other live stock and of houses made of sawed and carved timber and spoken of as “palaces.”

It must not be forgotten that from the missionaries of France, who had at various times lived among the Indians for over a hundred years, and from the traders, gunsmiths, and friendly whites of various disposition and ability, supported by the British government, the Iroquois Indians had reached a comparatively high point of progress. Even when the white men first met them these federated warriors were the most advanced of all others within the limits of the United States. They had their own myths and legends. They met in council and had orators to argue both sides of a question or proposal. They sent embassies from one tribe to another, and these envoys were very ceremonious and careful in dress and etiquette. When they made a treaty of peace they solemnly buried the hatchet and smoked the calumet, or pipe of friendship. To dig up the same weapon meant war. Instead of our letters, seals, and documents of paper and parchment, they used wampum made of shells drilled and laced together, which in belts or strings served as money, as messages, as historical records. Some of the Indian orators, Logan, Red Jacket and others, were very famous. To become such these men practiced elocution and rhetoric very much the same as do our public speakers. As the Iroquois raised and stored corn and other vegetable foods, they were able to wage systematic war and go on long campaigns. Thus they excelled and conquered the other savages. When they left the stone age, by obtaining guns from Europeans, their lust of conquest was fired more than ever. When the white men of Pennsylvania and Virginia paid the Indians for lands, the avarice of the Iroquois was still further excited. Many tribes, even as far as Canada and the Mississippi Valley, were vassals of the confederacy. In the Iroquois we see the highest type of pagan man.

Our debt to the Indian is very great. He taught our fathers the use of tobacco, maple sugar, corn, succotash and various methods of getting food, besides the use of the birch bark canoe, the moccasin, and the snow shoe.

The Iroquois method of raising corn was very ingenious. On the lands in river valleys this was easy enough, yet they could win crops even in the forest. This they did by “girdling.” They cut round the tree trunk near the ground, and again about ten feet higher, and then stripped off the bark between the spaces girdled by the knife or hatchet. This caused the tree to wither and the leaves to fall, quickly letting in the sunshine on the ground. Thus, the Indian without the trouble of chopping down the trees and clearing the land got at once the benefit of the soil. In the autumn, by burning the underbrush and trees, the ground was enriched and the space easily cleared for next year’s crop. In almost every Iroquois village there were store houses made of bark or timber, in which the grain was saved.

The dwellings or long houses were made of wooden framework covered with bark and built in the form of a modern compartment house. Each had a long hall or passageway through the middle, with rooms on either side, one for each family, with a fireplace in the center and the sleeping bunks against the wall. The walls of these rooms were decorated with bows and arrows, guns and equipments, and the prizes of the chase, which all hunters love, and of war, over which warriors gloat. They had also more horrible ornaments in the scalps of their enemies, both white and red. These, stretched and dried on hoops, were often painted and decorated with feathers and strings dyed in bright colors which had symbolic significance.

Many of Sullivan’s soldiers, who enlisted hoping to rescue white captives, often their own relatives, were able to recognize in the Iroquois houses the hair and scalps of fathers, brothers, wives, children, neighbors or friends. In the case of women, it was especially easy to do this.

At several places where hill and ravine, or the situation of the rivers and the inclosed land made natural fortresses, the Iroquois had “castles.” These were made by driving three rows of young trees, sharpened at the ends, into the ground to form a palisade which was fastened at the top. Inside of these were platforms, on which warriors could stand and shoot arrows or balls against besiegers. Besides barring the gate tightly, they had heaps of stones ready to throw on the heads of near assailants and tubs of water prepared to put out fires. It was expected that the artillery would have to be used against these. The orders were to burn all the Indian houses and utterly destroy the crops so that the country would be left uninhabitable. There was no mistake about the orders of Washington on this point.

While the army was assembling and the stores, boats and horses were in preparation, other expeditions on a smaller scale had been attempted. The State of New York, in the autumn of 1778, attempted to send an expedition among the Mohawks and Onondagas, but on account of the lateness of the season it was abandoned. In the following year, however, on April 19, Colonel Van Schaick leading, 558 men of the First New York regiment made a forced march of 180 miles in six days against the Onondagas. He burned three of their towns with their storehouses of food, slew twelve and took prisoners thirty-three of the savages. With the Onondagas was the hearthstone of the confederacy, and a terrible humbling done to the Iroquois pride was the extinguishing of the council fire.

Pennsylvania was also active in clearing the path for Sullivan. In September, 1778, Colonel Thomas Hartley with about two hundred soldiers of the Eleventh Pennsylvania regiment, with seventeen horses, advanced northward from Sunbury up the Lycoming river and into a region of swamps, mountains, defiles and rocks. His especial object was to destroy the power of Queen Esther. This squaw had made herself very active in the massacre at Wyoming. She compelled the prisoners of war to kneel in a circle around a boulder, still called “Queen Esther’s Rock,” and tomahawked them one after another. This was in revenge for her son killed in a skirmish. At Sheshequin, near Tioga Point, Hartley destroyed, by the torch, her castle and everything else that could be turned to ashes. Advancing up the Chemung Valley, towards Newtown, the big Indian town on the flats, near modern Elmira, he found the enemy in force and was obliged to return. On his way he cleverly defeated the Indians and Tories who had tried to surround him. He and his men waded or swam the Lycoming river no fewer than twenty times. He reached Sunbury again, October 5, having marched nearly three hundred miles, capturing among other spoil fifty head of cattle and twenty-eight canoes. In his various battles and skirmishes he lost four men, but killed eleven of the enemy and took fifteen prisoners. His regiment was reorganized and became “the new Eleventh regiment,” under Colonel Adam Hubley, which formed part of Sullivan’s army and ranked among his most effective troops.

One has but to study the map of Eastern Pennsylvania, a region rich in swamps, rocks, hills and mountain ranges, to see what difficulties awaited the general who was to move a large body of troops, with artillery and wagon trains, from Easton to Wyoming. To go up the Lehigh Valley was impossible, for between its headwaters and the Susquehanna were hills insurmountable. On the steel tracks of to-day a double force of engine power is required. So from Easton, through the Blue Mountains and Wind Gap, a road was cut through the forest, the stones taken out, the boulders stacked, the miry hollows corduroyed and the swamps filled.

Marvelous to relate, this military road, about seventy miles long, was built within ten days. It was indeed one of the wonders of the Revolution. Several hundred road builders, mostly Continental soldiers, under Colonels Spencer and Van Cortlandt, did the work in parties, while guarded by outlying scouts and riflemen. To-day the turnpike road and the iron rails and bridges of the great railway companies traverse the region in which “The Sullivan Road” once was, but the achievements of the modern engineers are in no way more wonderful. In five days the three brigades of Poor’s New Hampshire men, Hand’s Pennsylvania Light Corps and Maxwell’s New Jerseymen, with Proctor’s artillery and the wagon trains, made the march over the new road. Their camps were at Wind Gap, Larner’s on the Pocono, “Chowder Camp,” near the Tobyhanna, on the creek near the “Shades of Death,” and at “Great Meadows,” or Bullock’s. Some of the relics of the road builders, including the section of a tree carved with the camp name of “Hell’s Kitchen,” are still preserved.

By the building of the military road from Easton to Wyoming, and through Hartley’s and Van Schaick’s raids, the enemy was now fully convinced that an invading army was being made ready for their chastisement. Rousing the whole confederacy of the Six Nations, Brant, the Mohawk, and Butler, the Tory, sent their warriors to make a series of attacks on the American settlements, hoping thus to distract and scatter the coming avengers. Sullivan, however, understood these tactics. He refused to detach any pursuing parties, and pressed right on. In April he had sent his advance guard of two hundred of the Eleventh Pennsylvania under Major Powell to strengthen the garrison at Wyoming. On the 23d, when not far from the site of Wilkes-Barre, the party having reached, as they thought, nearly the end of their journey, were desirous of entering the settlement in good order and in fine personal appearance. They halted, therefore, to brush and clean themselves, while the officers put on their coats and ruffles. Then marching forward, but having their attention called from possible present danger by the presence of a deer crossing their path, they were led into an Indian ambuscade, in which several of them were killed. In 1896 a monument was reared to their memory by the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution.

Another incident previous to the movement of Sullivan’s force was in the attack, by one hundred British and two hundred Indians under command of Captain McDonald, fifteen miles above Northumberland, Pa., on Freeland’s Fort. This they surrounded on the 28th of July, 1779, and compelled the garrison of thirty-two men to surrender. They also ambuscaded Captain Boon’s party, which had marched to their relief, killing fourteen of his men.

During the same week Brant with a party of warriors moved down the Wallkill valley, destroying the Minisink settlements in Orange county, New York, killing many and making many prisoners. They decoyed into an ambush more than 150 militia from Goshen, of whom over 100 were slain. Brant then moved on to the destruction of the settlement of Lackawaxen, which was laid in ashes and the inhabitants slain.

All this was done to distract and scatter the avenging army, but every effort failed, and the Continentals moved steadily on.

General Sullivan was implored, by messengers who brought him the terrible news, to march to the relief of the burned settlements. Wisely and firmly he refused to detach a single soldier from his column. He knew full well that advance into the enemy’s country would compel both red and white foes to draw away their forces and concentrate. This policy was really the best means of protecting the settlements. He therefore hastened his preparations, so as to move on at the first moment possible. On July 31, at 1 P. M., he broke camp at Wyoming. Determined not to be led into ambush or to be “Braddocked,” he threw out the riflemen in advance, to guard against surprise, and moved in line of battle. The flotilla of boats, the line of twelve hundred pack horses and seven hundred cattle, the park of artillery and the brigades of infantry being all ready, the signal was given by firing a cannon on the _Adventurer_, Proctor’s flagboat lying in the Susquehanna. The march from Wyoming to Tioga Point, through swamps and over frightful precipices, was safely made in good order. The procession of boats on the water and of soldiers on land were each several miles long. Reaching Sheshequin on the Susquehanna, the soldiers faced the flood, locked arms and forded the swiftly flowing river at where Milan, Pa., now stands, and then again crossed the stream to reach the peninsula at Tioga Point, where they encamped, awaiting the arrival of their right wing, Clinton’s New York brigade.