Ticonderoga. G. P. R. James

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СКАЧАТЬ announcement that breakfast was ready interrupted the explanation of Captain Brooks, but seemed to afford him great satisfaction, and at the meal, certainly, he ate more than all the rest of the party put together, consuming everything set before him with a voracity truly marvelous. He seemed to think some apology necessary, indeed, for his furious appetite. "You see, Major," he said, as soon as he could bring himself to a pause sufficiently long to utter a sentence, "I eat well when I do eat; for sometimes I eat nothing for four or five days together. When I get to a lodge like this, I take in stores for my next voyage, as I can't tell what port I shall touch at again."

      "Pray, do you anticipate a long cruise just now?" asked the stranger.

      "No! no!" said the other, laughing; "but I always prepare against the worst. I am just going up the Mohawk for a step or two to make a trade with some of my friends of the Five Nations--the Iroquois, as the French folks call them. But I shall trot up afterward to Sandy Hill and Fort Lyman to see what is to be done there in the way of business. Fort Lyman I call it still, though it should be Fort Edward, for after the brush with Dieskau it has changed its name. Aye, that was a sharp affair, Major. You'd ha' liked to bin there, I guess."

      "Were you there, Captain?" asked Mr. Prevost. "I did not know you had seen so much service."

      "There I was," answered Woodchuck, with a laugh; "though, as to service, I did more than I was paid for, seeing I had no commission. I'll tell you how it was, Prevost. Just in the beginning of September--the seventh or eighth, I think--of the year afore last, that is, seventeen fifty-five, I was going up to the head of the lake to see if I could not get some paltry, for I had been unlucky down westward, and had made a bargain in Albany that I did not like to break. Just at the top of the hill, near where the King's road comes down to the ford, who should I stumble upon amongst the trees but old Hendrick, as they call him--why, I can't tell--the sachem of the Tortoise totem of the Mohawks. He was there with three young men at his feet; but we were always good friends, he and I, and over and above, I carried the calumet, so there was no danger. Well, we sat down, and he told me that the General, that is, Sir William as is now, had dug up the tomahawk, and was encamped near Fort Lyman, to give battle to You-non-de-yok; that is to say, in their jargon, the French governor. He told me, too, that he was on his way to join the General, but that he did not intend to fight, but only to witness the brave deeds of the Corlear men; that is to say, the English. He was a cunning old fox, old Hendrick, and I fancied from that he thought we should be defeated. But when I asked him, he said, no; that it was all on account of a dream he had had, forbidding him to fight on the penalty of his scalp. So I told him I was minded to go with him and see the fun. Well, we mustered before the sun was quite down well nigh upon three hundred Mohawks, all beautifully painted and feathered; but they all told me they had not sung their war song, nor danced their war dance before they left their lodges, so I could see well enough that they had no intention to fight, and the tarnation devil wouldn't make 'em. However, we got to the camp, where they were all busy throwing up breastworks, and we heard that Dieskau was coming down from Hunter's in force. The next morning we heard that he had turned back again from Fort Lyman, and Johnson sent out Williams with seven or eight hundred men to get hold of his haunches. I tried hard to get old Hendrick to go along, for I stuck fast by my Ingians, knowing the brutes can be serviceable when you trust them. But the sachem only grunted, and did not stir. In an hour and a half we heard a mighty large rattle of muskets, and the Ingians could not stand the sound quietly, but began looking at their rifle flints and fingering their tomahawks. However, they did not stir, and old Hendrick sat as grave and as brown as an old hemlock stump. Then we saw another party go out of camp to help the first; but in a very few minutes they came running back with Dieskau at their heels. In they tumbled over the breastworks head over heels--anyhow; and a pretty little considerable quantity of fright brought they with them. If Dieskau had charged straight on that minute, we should have all been smashed to everlasting flinders, and I don't doubt no more than that a bear's a critter that Hendrick and his painted devils would have had as many English scalps as French ones. But the old coon of a Garman halted up short some two hundred yards off, and Johnson did not give him much time to look about him, for he poured all the cannon shot he had got into him as hard as he could pelt. Well, the French Ingians, and there was a mighty sight of them, did not like that game of ball, and they squattered off to the right and left, some into the trees and some into the swamps; and I could stand it no longer, but up with my rifle and give them all I had to give; and old Hendrick, seeing how things were likely to go, took to the right end, too, but a little too fast, for the old devil came into him, and he must needs have scalps. So out he went with the rest, and just as he had got his forefinger in the hair of a young Frenchman, whiz came a bullet into his dirty red skin, and down he went like an old moose. Some twenty of his Ingians got shot, too; but, in the end, Dieskau had to run. Johnson was wounded, too; and them folks have since said that he had no right to the honor of the battle, but that it was Lyman, who took the command when he could fight no longer. But that's all trash! Dieskau had missed his chance, and all his irregulars were sent skimming by the first fire long before Johnson was hit. Lyman had nothing to do but hold what Johnson left him, and pursue the enemy. The first he did well enough, but the second he forgot to do, though he was a brave man and a good soldier, for all that."

      This little narrative seemed to give matter for thought both to Mr. Prevost and his English guest, who, after a moment or two of somewhat gloomy consideration, asked the narrator whether the friendly Indians had on that occasion received any special offence to account for their unwillingness to give active assistance to their allies, or whether their indifference proceeded merely from a fickle or treacherous disposition.

      "Somewhat of both," replied Captain Brooks; and after leaning his great, broad forehead on his hand for a moment or two in deep thought, he proceeded to give his views of the relations of the colonies with the Iroquois, in a manner and tone totally different from any he had used before. They were grave and almost stern; and his language had few, if any, of the coarse illustrations with which he ordinarily seasoned his conversation.

      "They are a queer people, the Indians," he said, "and not so much savages as we are inclined to believe them. Sometimes I am ready to think that in one or two points they are more civilized than ourselves. They have not got our arts and sciences; and as they have got no books, one set of them cannot store up the knowledge they gain in their own time to be added to by every generation of them that comes after; and we all know that things which are sent down from mouth to mouth are soon lost or corrupted. But yet they are always thinking, and they have a calmness and a coolness in their thoughts that we white men very often want. They are quick enough in action when once they have determined upon a thing, and for perverseness they beat all the world; but they take a long time to consider before they do act, and it is really wonderful how quietly they do consider, and how steadily they stick in consideration to all their own old notions. We have not treated them well, sir, and we never did. They have borne a great deal, and they will bear more still; but yet they feel and know it, and some day they may make us feel it, too. They have not the wit to take advantage at present of our divisions, and by joining together themselves make us feel all their power; for they hate each other worse than they hate us; but if the same spirit were to take the whole redmen which got hold of the Five Nations many a long year ago, and they were to band together against the whites as those Five Nations did against the other tribes, they'd give us a great deal of trouble, and though we might thrash them at first, we might teach them to thrash us in the end. As it is, however, you see there are two sets of Indians and two sets of white men in this country, each as different from the other as anything can be. The Indians don't say, as they ought: The country is ours, and we will fight against all the whites till we drive them out; but they say: The whites are wiser and stronger than we are, and we will help those of them who are wisest and strongest. I don't mean to say they have not got their likings and dislikings, and that they are not moved by kindness or by being talked to; for they are great haters and great likers. But still what I have said is at the bottom of all their friendships with the white men. The Dutchmen helped the Five Nations, and taught them to believe they were a strong people. So the Five Nations liked the Dutch, and made alliance with them. Then came the English, and proved stronger than СКАЧАТЬ