by James McGee
“The latter: as former superintendent.”
The visitor’s eyebrows rose. “Sounds intriguing, but it’s been a while since I held office – fifteen years and then some. Not sure I can remember that far back!”
“I don’t believe that for a moment,” Prevost said.
The visitor smiled politely and helped himself to another sip.
Sir George rotated the glass in his hand, watching the contents swirl, then looked up. “There’s been an incident – a place called Lacolle. Attempted cross-border incursion by our American friends. They failed, fortunately.”
His visitor sat back. “I see.”
Sir George moved to his desk and returned to the fire bearing papers. “I have here a report from Colonel de Salaberry – you’ve heard me speak of him. I’d like you to read it and give me your thoughts on how we might proceed.”
“Proceed? In what regard?”
“A matter of … persuasion. Your experience in fighting alongside our Indian allies is second to none. I would call upon it now. As you’ll read in the report, the incursion might well have succeeded if it hadn’t been for the assistance of a certain Mohawk war captain. De Salaberry and I believe he has potential, a fellow worth cultivating. He fought for us before, during the Revolution. It’s possible you may have knowledge of him.
“Really? His name?”
“It’s there in the report. He’s called Tewanias.”
The grey-haired man had been on the point of taking another drink. His hand paused.
“The name means something?” Prevost said, struck by the expression on his visitor’s face.
The grey-haired man did not reply immediately but stared at the papers and shook his head, as if trying to formulate thought. His forehead creased. Then, suddenly, he gave a sharp intake of breath and looked up. “Would his involvement have anything to do with that fellow I saw just now – the one who was leaving as I arrived. Tall, scarred face—”
“What? Ah, yes … why do you ask?”
To Sir George’s amazement, his visitor began rifling through the pages of the dispatch. “What’s his name?”
Sir George frowned. “Er, Hawkwood. He used to be a soldier; a captain in the Rifles. Tough devils; we could use them here.”
“Does he have a forename?”
Sir George looked nonplussed. “Forename? Why … yes. It’s Matthew, I believe.”
His visitor stared down at the dispatch in his hand. “It can’t be,” he breathed.
Sir George opened his mouth to speak, but was forestalled as his visitor shot to his feet. “My apologies – I must go. This … Hawkwood; did he say where he was bound?”
Sir George rose. “Bound? He sails for London on the morning tide.”
“Then, there’s time! Do you know where he stays tonight?”
“A local hostelry, I believe.” Sir George gave a helpless shrug. “But I’m afraid I don’t know which one. Good Lord, man, what ails you? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
His visitor shook his head as he made for the door. “No ghost, my friend. Though I thought he had become one.”
And before his host could react, the white-haired man had hurried from the room.
It had taken Hawkwood two wrong turnings to discover the correct set of stairs that led down to the chateau’s main lobby, where the clerk who’d directed him to Sir George’s office performed a swift interception.
“Would you like me to arrange a carriage, sir?”
Hawkwood thought about the next month and the claustrophobic accommodation he was about to endure on-board ship and shook his head. “I’ll walk.”
The clerk threw a dubious look through the window to the weather outside. “You’re sure, sir? It’s no trouble.”
“I’m sure. Just steer me on to the shortest path into town.”
The clerk duly obliged. Armed with directions, Hawkwood thanked him and set off across the courtyard. The sleet had eased off, but a sharp wind made itself felt as he exited the main gate. He knew he was on the right track when, a short time later, he saw, looming ahead of him, a large stone archway surmounted by a snow-topped wooden guardhouse.
A passage ran beneath the archway and into a street that looked as though it had been blasted out of the rock. Acknowledging the sentry and the soldiers manning the braziers and cannon either side of the gate, he continued on his way.
The street began to narrow. A series of zig-zags led down to a set of wooden stairs. He was about to start his descent when, above his own footsteps, he heard the sound of someone approaching from behind. He tensed.
“Matthew?” a voice said.
He turned. A figure moved out of the shadows and he found himself staring into the questioning face of an elderly man. It took him a moment to recognize the tall, stoop-shouldered, white-haired stranger as the visitor who’d brushed by him in the anteroom to Sir George Prevost’s office.
“You seem to have the advantage, sir,” Hawkwood said. “Do I know you?”
He waited and watched as the stranger drew closer. Taking a series of calming breaths, the old man offered Hawkwood a rueful smile. “Forgive me, I’m not as fit as I once was.”
“You’re not alone in that,” Hawkwood said.
The old man drew himself up. He took another, deeper breath. “If you’re not who I think you are, then I am about to look very foolish.”
Hawkwood stared at him. A strange feeling began to stir in his chest.
Then the old man held out his hand and said, “My name is John Johnson. You might not remember me, my boy, but I was a friend of your father …”
HISTORICAL NOTE
Sir John Johnson was a key figure in Loyalist, Quebec and Canadian history. An exceptional soldier and leader of men, his escape through the Adirondack Mountains in the spring of 1776 did take place as described. As did his raid on the Mohawk Valley in May 1780 when, with Captain Thomas Scott of the 53rd Regiment as his second-in-command, he entered the northern part of Johnstown at the head of 528 men – 344 white and 184 native auxiliaries – to rescue Loyalists who were being persecuted by the rebel congress.
It is here, at the beginning of Hawkwood’s story, that I deviated from the facts. Contrary to the events in the novel, Sir John achieved his goal – rescuing 143 souls, and escorting them, along with 13 rebel prisoners and the family plate, all the way to the Canadian border in only eleven days – without losing a single man. It was an astonishing feat of logistics, given the difficulties that stood in his way: the number of people travelling with him, the terrain and the distances involved and the fact that he was being hunted by enemy forces.
It was just one of many raids that Johnson carried out throughout the Mohawk and Schoharie Valleys, destroying crops and villages and spreading terror among the Patriot population.
Johnson never returned to New York after the war and his estate was sold by the Americans to help pay off their war debts. He remained in Canada and eventually took over his father’s role as Superintendent of Indian affairs. During the War of 1812 he served as Brigadier General for a portion of the Canadian Militia and continued to champion Indian rights up until his death. When he passed away in Montreal in 1830, his funeral was attended by 300 Mohawk.
I’m indebted to author Gavin Watt, whose account of the Johnson raids in his book The Burning of the Valleys set me on the right path. Thanks also to Noel Levee, City Historian for Johnstown NY and Bob McBride, Editor of The Loyalist Gazette; the national magazine of the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada (UELAC), all of whom were immensely helpful. They responded to my requests for information on the Johnson family with both patience and good humour.
While Quade’s cross-border raid is fictitious, it was inspired by real events. During the war the Americans launched two strikes against Lacolle, with the intention of capturing Montreal; the first – the Battle of Lacolle Bridge – in November 1812 and the second – the Battle of Lacolle Mill – in March 1814. Both ended in embarrassing failu
re. On the first occasion, General Dearborn’s advance troops, which included cavalry, did reach the blockhouse but such was their state of confusion that in the darkness, the infantry, which attacked in two groups, ended up firing on each other. A counter-attack, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Charles-Michel d’Irumberry de Salaberry at the head of his Voltigeurs, Canadian militia and three hundred Kahnawá:ke Mohawk, forced the Americans to flee back across the border.
In the second attack, melting snow and knee-high mud hindered the advance and the Americans’ cannon and mortars were unable to make any impression against the mill’s walls. The defenders, a contingent of Royal Marines, retaliated with rocket artillery and the attackers were, once again, forced to withdraw.
After the 1812 raid, General Dearborn ordered his troops into their winter quarters. They had little idea of the hardship and misery that was to follow.
The camp on the Saranac River – also referred to as Pike’s Cantonment after its commanding officer – was real; as were the terrible conditions faced by the men who wintered there. More than 200 died during the winter of 1812/13 due to cold, lack of supplies, spoiled food, infection and disease. Only recently have archaeologists managed to verify the location of the site – thought to cover around 100 acres – on land adjacent to Plattsburgh International Airport. At the time of writing, no graves have been discovered but the excavation work continues.
The Vermont was the world’s second commercial steamer and the first to operate on Lake Champlain. Designed by the Winans brothers, John and James, and commandeered by the military to carry troops and supplies, it survived the war only to sink in the Richelieu River in 1815 when its crankshaft disconnected and punched a hole through the bottom of the hull.
The War of 1812, which was waged both on land and water, has often been described as America’s most obscure war. It is probably Great Britain’s, too, all things considered. Donald Hickey, in his book The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, writes that “the average American is only vaguely aware of why they fought or who the enemy was”. The same would probably apply to the average Brit as well.
Hickey puts forward various reasons as to why this should be. There were no great presidents involved and no well-known generals led the charge – either literally or figuratively – in any notable land battles, with the possible exception of Andrew Jackson’s defeat of the British at New Orleans in 1814. Neither were there any major naval engagements along the lines of Trafalgar or Aboukir Bay. Plus the causes were complex and are debated to this day.
Many scholars have argued that America went to war over free trade and sailors’ rights. Others that it was down to western aims; a new and immature nation’s desire to flex its muscles and finally expel the British from the continent – or, at the very least, weaken their influence over Canada and the Indian Nations – in order to secure additional farmland. Others have even put forward the theory that it was a Republican ploy to forge party unity, maintain power, and undermine the Federalists.
As to the consequences of President Madison’s declaration of war in the summer of 1812, there is debate over those as well.
Compared to European conflicts of the time, the cost in lives was relatively small. British losses have been put at around 8,600 killed, wounded or missing, while the Americans suffered around 11,500 casualties. When the respective governments signed the Treaty of Ghent on Christmas Eve 1814, the agreement was that all areas of conquest were to be returned to the state that had existed before the war began.
If anyone could claim victory it was Canada. America declaring war on Britain and setting out to make British North America part of the United States led ultimately to the union of the provinces who came together to fight a common foe, thus laying the foundation stones for modern Canada, where the war is commemorated with a great deal of national pride.
But there were losers.
While fighting raged from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, the main theatre of operations was along the Great Lakes and St Lawrence border which separated the United States from British North America. It was here, according to Carl Benn, in his book The Iroquois in the War of 1812, that the opposing armies shed the most blood; in the heartland of the Iroquois Confederacy (Rotinonshón:ni in Mohawk), the affiliation of Indian tribes also known as the Six Nations.
We have only the Iroquois’ oral history as a guide, so the confederacy’s founding date is difficult to determine. Some academics have put it at around 1450, while others say it could even have been as early as the twelfth century or as late as the beginning of the seventeenth. What is generally held to be fact is that the confederacy’s founding father was Tekanawí:ta – the Peacemaker – a shaman and prophet who received a vision from the Great Spirit which set him on the path to bring unity and justice to the various warring tribes.
So successful was he that by the late 1600s the confederacy had become the greatest native polity in North America. Once dubbed the “Romans of the New World”, the Iroquois, from their homeland in upstate New York, dispatched raiding parties as far south as the Carolinas, Illinois, Tennessee and Kentucky and as far north as Michigan and Ontario, subjugating every tribe they encountered.
But with the coming of the whites, all that was to change.
The first recorded contact between Iroquois and Europeans took place in 1534 when the French explorer Jacques Cartier met an Indian fishing party. In 1608 Samuel de Champlain built a trading post at Quebec. A year later he led a military expedition up the Richelieu River and into the lake that now bears his name. He and his Huron guides met and defeated a party of Mohawk, killing over fifty and taking several of them prisoner. It was an incident which sealed the Mohawk’s hatred of the Huron and sowed their distrust of the French for the next two centuries.
But progress could not be halted. The arrival of the French and later the Dutch and the English led to the opening of the fur trade; the disastrous repercussions that enterprise inflicted upon the lives of the aboriginal population cannot be exaggerated. The demand for beaver pelts had the same effect on the Eastern Woodland Indians that the decimation of the great bison herds had on the Cheyenne and the Sioux during the latter part of the nineteenth century. It changed their way of life for ever. For after the hunters came the missionaries, loggers, settlers, speculators, assorted land agents and, of course, the government, and with the government came the wars.
France, Britain and America all saw the advantages in using Indian forces against their enemies. The Iroquois were superb fighters and they lent their skills to all sides. Of the Six Nations, the most feared were the Kanien’kehá:ka – the Mohawk – the Keepers of the Eastern Door and the first nation to join the Rotinonshón:ni. They supported the British against the French in a series of inter-colonial wars and aided them against the Americans in both the Revolution and the War of 1812.
But after the wars, when the guns fell silent, as has happened so many times over the course of history, the indigenous population and their contribution to the struggle for control of their continent were ignored.
By 1800, after a succession of disastrous treaties and through liberal use of bribery, deception, intimidation and force, Iroquois lands, which had once stretched for more than a thousand miles, covering tens of millions of acres, were reduced in size to a few small reservations in New York State. Home villages were abandoned when their inhabitants moved to new settlements in Canada. Since then, the ownership of the lands they vacated has always been in contention.
In 1974, Mohawk from the Kahnawá:ke Reserve in Canada and the Ahkwesáhsne Reservation, which lies close to the St Lawrence River in New York State, occupied an abandoned 612-acre girl-scout camp at Moss Lake, in the western Adirondacks and declared the re-establishment of the Independent North American Indian State of Kanièn:keh – also called Ganienkeh – on their traditional homeland.
After three years, the occupation ended. In 1977, after nearly 200 sessions of negotiation, the people of Kanièn:keh reached an agreement with the New Y
ork State authorities that saw the Mohawk leave their settlement at Moss Lake and move to a new site on Miner Lake, near Altona, New York.
The founding of Kanièn:keh was that rare instance where a native people took back their land from a colonial power. Today, Kanièn:keh claims that it has the right to exist as a sovereign entity under international law and functions under the original Kaianere’kó:wa – The Iroquois Confederacy’s Great Law of Peace – without interference from either the United States or Canada.
For many years, historians claimed that the democratic ideals of the Kaianere’kó:wa served as inspiration to Benjamin Franklin and James Madison and the others who framed the United States Constitution.
Their faith was rewarded. In October 1988, the US Congress passed Concurrent Resolution 331 recognizing the influence of the Iroquois Constitution upon both the American Constitution and the US Bill of Rights.
As well as the various books mentioned above, my research was aided by the series of excellent War of 1812 documentaries which are available to view on the PBS website, www.pbs.org. I’m also grateful to Darren Bonaparte (cool name, or what?) who was very generous with his time and advice. His website, wampumchronicles.com, is well worth a visit for anyone who would like to read more about Mohawk history and culture.
About the Author
James McGee has worked in banking, sales, newspapers, the airline industry and bookselling. His interest in the Napoleonic period dates back to his first reading of C.S. Forester’s The Gun. This collection features the first three books in the Matthew Hawkwood series. The fourth, Rebellion, is out now.
Also by James McGee
Ratcatcher
Resurrectionist
Rapscallion
Rebellion
Copyright
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