Long Knife (16 page)

“Now I ask: Is there a man here who’s not somehow suffered the wrath of an Indian raid? Who does not know of a woman widowed, or a child orphaned, by savages out of the woods?” Throughout the mass of fire-warmed faces ran an angry, assenting murmur. “We have at least one among us,” he went on, “who has personally felt the scalping knife …”

“Don’t we know that, though!” cried a raucous voice from the shadows, and a roar of laughter went up all around. Sergeant Crump, leaning against a tree near the fire, threw a ferocious gesture in the direction of the voice, but was grinning. George laughed with them, but soon his face darkened and the troops grew still.

“Many of you were free to join this company because you’d been made homeless by torches and fire-arrows, or because you lost your families. Many are here wanting revenge on the savages.” The glowering eyes attested. He raised a fist, and shouted:

“You shall have it!”

A cheer went up, but it was followed by a loud, sarcastic voice from the rear.

“Yah! But when?”

The eyes demanded now. The only sounds were the distant rush of the Falls and the crackling of the bonfire. George knew the men were remembering his refusal to help at Fort Randolph; he waited and let them think of it. Then, turning slowly so that they all might see, he drew from his tunic a piece of folded paper. He shook it open and held it high, and the nearer ones could see printing on it, and ruddy streaks and spots.

“You see this,” he said. “This is a piece of British paper, with the blood of an American woman on it.” He turned again, letting them gaze on it. “This was left on the body of a woman whose womb had been ripped open by …” he paused, “by British steel!”

A fierce, confused muttering swept around him; the men’s hatreds were fixed upon Indians, and here he was talking of British.

“This is British paper, printed with a threat to Americans,” he resumed. “That knife was of British steel.
Both
were delivered at Point Pleasant by the hands of a Shawnee warrior.” He paused to let that imagery sink in. “Now, gents: It is true, the Indians do not like us. We all know that.” He swept his arm full circle. “They call this their country, and they see us coming in to take it. They have always tried to stop us from that. They make a general war against us, now and then resting on a treaty. But they have a natural fear of us. And why should they not? We cut down forest, we kill and drive out game, we build cabins and stay.” The men shifted and frowned. What they did not want now was to hear of legitimate Indian grievances. “But I ask you this: Why, with this war for freedom, are there suddenly so many
more
Indian raids than ever before? I ask you, why is there an English paper handbill and an English steel knife in the hands of the red warrior?” He paused again and let them think on that, then he continued.

“The Indians carry British knives with red handles and bloody blades. When they get those knives, only the handles are red; the blades are clean and new. Do you know that the savages are given those red-handled knives by the British lieutenant governor of Detroit, a dandy named Henry Hamilton?
Henry Hamilton.”
He repeated the name so that even some half-listening Indian-hater with a mind gorged on bloody vengeance might grasp it. Then he lowered his voice to a menacing, steely hiss, which the men strained forward for, but could hear, to a man.

“This British Henry Hamilton, this ‘civilized’ English gentleman who is in charge of Detroit … D’you know that
he
gives these red knives to the Indians? D’you know that
he
assigns British officers to lead them south against Kentucky? That he pays the Indians a bounty for every American scalp they bring back to him? D’you think Hamilton does not know the difference between a man’s scalp and the long hair of a woman, or the white hair of a grandmother, or the fine hair of a child? Of course he can tell the difference! But he pays his bounty equally for them all!”

The men were seething. Their eyes glowed like coals with the reflected firelight. They were all turned inward now, turned as much to their inner burning fury as to this tall red-haired orator beside the bonfire in the center of their circle, who now resumed in that menacing, sharp-edged tone:

“Now consider this fine, red-coated British gentlemen, who hires Indians to come and kill women and children in Kentucky. He has agents who help him with this bloody business. His Indian agent is Major Jehu Hay, a renegade American. Jehu Hay. This is another name to remember.

“But for now let us consider only Henry Hamilton, this learned English gentleman. Lads, I know witnesses who have seen that man curry the favor of Indian chiefs by …” here his voice fairly curdled with contempt, “by stripping himself to do their war dance and lead their war song!”

He stopped again and raised the bloody paper above his head and listened to the outraged babble around the fire. He had given them a series of unforgettable pictures for their minds’ eyes: mutilated women and children, bloody leaflets of propaganda, red knives, and now the ridiculous vision of a lordly Englishman’s white nakedness posturing around a war post.

“I demand to know,” he boomed, “who are the
real
savages in this game? A warrior with a passion to preserve his lands, or a British official, calculating to buy that passion for his own use, trading for it with guns and knives, pots and cloth, mirrors and liquor? Oh, I make no excuses for a blood-crazy, painted savage who guts a praying woman and throws her unborn baby in the fire. But I’ll tell you who the real savages are! Their names are Henry Hamilton, and Jehu Hay, and Philippe de Rocheblave, Hamilton’s agent on the Mississippi. Boys,
those
are the people who murder your families and burn your property! I mean Hamilton the Scalp-Buyer and his Indian agents!” He snarled this through bared teeth and his piercing eyes drilled
the message home. The men leaned in toward him, their hearts pounding with rage at this revelation, which they seemed to understand for the first time; but they were not sure what it had to do with their presence here.

“Men,” he began now in a confiding sort of tone, “I don’t know of anybody lower than a British fop in a white wig hiring Indians to fight a war that he’s too weak or cowardly to fight for himself, do you? Why does he have to buy them with gifts, or prance with ’em in a war dance, if he isn’t weak? Why, he
wouldn’t
, if he had the strength of a man about him!” The men were looking at each other and nodding.

“And so in case you haven’t guessed it by now for yourselves,” he said loudly, “I’m going to tell you what we’ve come so far to do.” An attentive silence settled in the crowded, firelit circle; he passed an intense dark stare around, to make each man feel he was being addressed personally. “I have the pleasure to tell you now,” he said, “that each one of you who serves with me will get a passel of three hundred acres of new land if we’re successful ….” A great murmur of astonishment went up. Without stopping to dwell upon that happy news, which confirmed the rumor they had heard of it, he waved them to silence and went on:

“You’re strong men. You want revenge. Now you shall have it … but
not
by ranging over Kentucky, picking off a few hired Indians at a time! No, by heavens! In the name of the Commonwealth of Virginia, I am authorized to take you into the Illinois country and strike once and for all at the center of the British vipers’ nest!”

He had chosen his words carefully. He expected, at worst, an immediate hubbub of consternation, at best, a patient attendance for more explanation.

Instead, the men, the whole sweat-stained, haggard, unshaven force of them, mulled on this staggering portion of brave but appalling news for a mere three or four seconds, then rose to their feet whooping and cheering.

He felt almost faint with relief. He stood there on the crude platform sweating and smiling as the men began to come forward, milling about their officers, whooping, swearing, and whistling, asking for facts.

“Hey, boys!” he yelled, “look at this!” He crumpled the bloody handbill into a wad and threw it into the bonfire where it vanished in a small, bright yellow flare. “So much,” he shouted, “for your British terror!”

T
HESE TWO ARE EVEN BEGINNING TO SMELL LIKE
I
NDIANS,
thought Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton as Major Hay and Captain LaMothe talked with Chief Black Bird and the other Chippewa chieftains and prepared to leave Hamilton’s office. Musky and smoky, he thought. Hamilton stood for a moment, hands clasped behind his back, head tilted, a baleful, sideways, heavy-lidded gaze lingering on the two agents and the four Chippewas. The upper lip of his sensual mouth drew up slightly in an unconscious expression of distaste.

He especially disliked Hay. Not just because Hay was a renegade American, but because his courage was questionable, and because he was stocky and uncouth and given to base humor, and was said to consort with squaws.

LaMothe, on the other hand, Hamilton could respect and trust, even though he disliked his arrogant and sinister manner. Captain LaMothe was indeed the only French-Canadian militia officer he could trust. LaMothe looked like an Indian. He was hard, dark-skinned, graceful. He spoke all the tongues of the Lakes tribes, was utterly merciless in warfare, and had an unflinching reptilian eye which never betrayed his feelings. Hamilton suspected that LaMothe was responsible for Major Hay’s success with the Indians to a greater degree than Hay would ever acknowledge. And LaMothe for many months had been proving himself a brilliant, foxy leader of the Indians in the small-scale raids against the American settlements south of the Ohio in Kentucky, those bloody, terrorizing skirmishes which kept the immigration of the Americans at a minimum and produced a steady trickle of scalps and prisoners into Detroit.

Henry Hamilton did not like to deal with the fickle and brutal Indians, but he was getting ever deeper into it. He had held several
great war councils with the Indians in Detroit in recent months, dispensing tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of gifts to the tribes. He and LaMothe and Hay had even stripped to their drawers to join in war dances, which memory never failed to make him shudder or smirk at himself. He was confident that within a year he could enlist enough Indian loyalty through these techniques to conduct a thorough, sweeping offensive through the Kentucky lands and drive all the rebel frontiersmen back eastward over the Alleghenies. Even the major American stronghold at Fort Pitt, he believed, could be taken, and then this obscure war he had been waging in the West, with too few British regulars for the expanse of wilderness, would assume a significance that would redound to his reputation.

He shook hands with the departing Chippewas and accepted the salutes of Hay and LaMothe. The door closed behind them and he stood glowering after them. Then he turned and went to his desk, lifted a small chased-silver snuffbox, pinched out a quantity of the brown powder, dusted it onto the back of his left wrist and, gazing out the glass window at the four blanketed Indians who now stood in a knot just outside on the parade ground gabbing gravely with Hay and LaMothe and passing around a new flask of English rum, he drew up the snuff with two quick sniffs. He always resorted to the snuff after parleying with Indians in a closed room. Though a great part of his success with the chiefs was his habit of treating them as individuals and friends—even delighting them sometimes by drawing fine pencil portraits of them—he still had never managed to accustom himself to their odor.

Would God I had never started such dealings, he thought. An endless business, buying the services of these bloody murderers like piecework one trinket at a time.

Hamilton, who had been in charge of Detroit and responsible for the conduct of all affairs in the Northwest Territory since 1775, had advocated the use of mercenary Indians against the American settlers, and had been authorized to do so in 1776, over the strenuous objections of many in Parliament. “But who is the man,” Lord Chatham had pleaded in Parliament, “who has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savage? They shock every sentiment of honor. They shock me as a lover of honorable war and a detester of murderous barbarity!”

Ah yes, Henry Hamilton would think whenever he reflected on Chatham’s speech. But how else would you have me uphold
the interests of His Royal Highness in this barbaric place? Honorable war indeed!

There were others who wanted him to stop hiring Indians to go against the colonists. Lieutenant Governor Abbot, for one, and Abbot never stopped harping on it.

Hamilton went behind his desk and sat down on the dark green velvet upholstery of his chair. He sucked the inside of his cheek. The afternoon sunlight slanting in the window outlined his powdered wig like a halo and cast the reflection of his blood-red coat among the inkwells and books and candlesticks beside him. He caught a glimpse of himself when he turned to lift some manifests and records off the credenza behind him. His eyes had a tired, cynical cast about them, under the dark eyebrows which ran across in a perfectly straight line. He tended to keep his head forward these days and glower out from under those brows. His jaw, long and narrow, always had a dark shadow of whisker-stubble on it by afternoon unless he could find time to sit for a shave at midday, and that gave him a rather swarthy, piratical look most incongruous with his powdered silver wig and fine gentlemanly features. He held the gaze in the mirror for a moment, surprised by the sullenness of his aspect. This Indian business is changing me, he thought.

With a sigh he lifted an inventory ledger onto his desk and opened it to a marked page. Among the goods listed for the Indians were blankets, kettles, mirrors, rum, and one hundred and fifty dozen red-handled scalping knives. He subtracted twenty-five knives and three gallons of rum from the totals, wrote a voucher to the quartermaster for them, and sent the orderly out with the vouchers. Through the window he watched the fellow’s trim red-clad figure saunter among groups of Indians and militiamen and vanish into a crowd of savages around the great storehouse on the other side of the parade ground. Then he took up his quill, and continued his letter to Governor Carleton at Quebec, which had been interrupted by the arrival of the Chippewas: