The Little Red Foot

June in the year 1774; which w

uilt, I left the Hall for Fonda's Bush, which was a wilderness and which lay some

he trapper who wore two gold rings in his ears, had built him a house near the Kennyetto and had taken u

nts[2] met, others now began settling upon the pretty little river in the wildernes

Helmers arrived. And Benjamin De Luysnes followed with Joseph Scott where the Frenchman, De Golyer, had built a house and a mill on the trout brook north of us. Ther

marked some gigantic trees with his ax

e sets his mark he returns to set his foot. And where he s

And the clans came with him, too; and they peppered the wilderness with their Scottish names,-Perth, Galway, Scotch Bush, Scotch Church, Broadalbin,-but my memo

e for waggons, and used sometimes by Sir Wil

r, well-horsed, and had borrowed the f

ome books, bedding of my o

ling piece, two pistols,

hnstown on a June morning, all alone, my heart still heavy w

t and was burning fiercely in Massachusetts Bay, where John Hancock fed the flames, daintily, cleverly, with all the circumstance, im

wrest from a sunless land a mouthful

I was as inflammable as the next man, who will

, and Nick had become already my warm friend, though I was now a grown man of more t

scapegrace. However, two years in the wilderness will undermine the grace of saint or sinner in some degree. And if, when during those two hard years I went to J

me Albany watchman's Dutch noddle needed vinegar to soothe the f

too; but there came no harm of it, unless there be harm in bussing a fresh and rosy wench or two; or singing loudly i

pulls with the oxen to uproot enormous stumps so that when the sun is let in there will be a soil to grow corn enough to defy starvation,-youth that toils from sun-up to dark, hewing, burning, sawing,

in our scrapes, even when hot blood boiled at the Admiral Warren, and Tory and Rebel drummed one another'

hispered; the families of Philip Helmer and Elias Cady talked very loudly of the King and of S

axe there in the immemorial twilight of the woods, co

this frontier? What would happen to the solitary settlers, to such haml

irs. He was most violently a King's man-a member of the most important family in all the Nor

e warriors of these six nations t

wed. I thought about them as I sat at eventide by the door of my new log house. I co

how to conduct when I encountered them in the forest,

ut treated them always with the consider

es either. To me they were a natural part of the wilderness, like the trees,

coureurs-du-bois often hated them, and lost no oppor

hom God had fashioned in His own image if not in His own colour. A

est. I learned enough of their language to suit my requirements; I was courteous to their

higher than those black thunder-clouds that roll up behind the Mayfield hills and climb toward mid-h

with the news of Lexington, and carried it up and down the wilderness f

out to reassemble; and it left our settlement very still and sober, and a lo

nd they became further so enraged when the Continental Congress met that they contrived a cou

lists; and our Tory hatch-mischiefs did by arts and guile and persuasions obta

Tryon County, presently produced in all that slow, deep anger with

o discuss what was to be the attitude of our own p

e beginning of the Revolution in the great Province of New York. The

nced, uninvited; and with him the entire company of Tory big-wigs-Colonels C

sing them for dolts and knaves and traitors to their King, until Jacob Sammons, unable to stomach such abuse, shook his fist a

eturn. Then the armed guard came at Sammons and knocked him down with their

our people were unarmed, and pre

best for him to fortify his Baronial Hall, because the day drew near when he wo

n Boston was already running north along

of militia regiments of which, when bri

he Mohawk regiment. But the Mohawk

mainder of it, doubtless with the i

and whose messengers to Albany in quest of ammuniti

nders, his Tory militia, his swivels, and his armed retainers, could mus

ar chief was Sir William's brother-in-law, brother to the dark Lady Johnson, Joseph Brant, called Thayendanegea,-the greates

ed like any gentleman of the day and having served Sir William as secretary, Brant, in the c

any conversation addressed to him. Always he had been made much of by ladies-always, when it did not too greatly weary him, was he the centre of batteries

d civil student and ge

a war chief: he never became Royaneh;[3] but he possessed the wisdom o

turned in dumb expectation toward our Provincial Congress of New York; toward our dear General Schuyler in Albany; toward the Continental

s to liberty,-to fortify Johnstown, to stop us about our business on the King's highway, to i

He met the Delaware Sachems at a mongrel fire-God knows where and by what authority, for the Federal Council never gave it!-and we stopped one of his runne

hat his show of armed force at the Hall was solely for the reason that he had been war

ther die as free people than continue to live as slaves. Very fine indeed! But what was of more interest to us at Fonda's Bush, this Congress commissioned Ge

ad come. Now, at last, Sir J

ising the Iroquois against us at Oswego; he was plotting with Carleton and Haldimand at Montreal; he had arranged for the departure of Brant with the g

of the Lenape, and perhaps half-possibly two-thirds of the Oneida nat

North, where, behind the Canada border, savage ho

are stop the Superintendent for Indian affairs on a mission

d quietly over into Cana

of Johnstown and Caughnawaga Tories. McDonald followed, accompanied by som

d swivels at the Hall, vowing and declaring

Alexander White, fired upon Sammons, and the friends t

posed him and reappointed White, so the plain people went again to do h

loudy glass running very swiftly. Schuyler and Montgomery were directing a force of troops again

ed, and the Mohawk I

y pickle for Sir

news of the burn

through Fonda's Bush on snow-shoes, calling out a

wman, Joe Scott, and I

ed foot for the Kingsborough trail, where we met up with a

Albany battalion were heard; and we saw, across the snow, their long br

s Church, lower down in the town. But I saw our General Schuyler rid

turday, the twentieth of January, when our tour of duty ended, and our squads were dismissed, each to its proper district, all people knew that Sir John Johnson had given his parole of honor not to take up arms against America; not to communi

on of the great Sir William would keep