Ambush at Chemung Recalled

August Ambush at Chemung Recalled
By Ellsworth Cowles, Monday, August 13 1979

From West Point on August 1, Gen. Washington informed John Sullivan al Wilkes Barre that Mohawk Capt. Joseph Brant was "himself killed or wounded (during his attack on Minissink). His party came from Chemung in quest of provisions of which the Indians are in great want. At Chemung were 2-300 warriors ...Chemung was appointed as the place where the Indians and Tories intend to give you battle."

GENERAL Ill
On Aug. 5, the same day that Tory Capt. John McDowell reported from Tioga Point regarding the devastating incursion by his Rangers on Indians into the Susquehanna River's West Branch Valley, General Sullivan's sluggish army advancing about ten miles each day up the Susquehanna toward Tioga, reached the abandoned Indian, Moravian mission, Tory town of Wyaluslng. The general was illand was being cared for by a nurse on one of the propelled boats.

Abandoning Tioga in such haste that they left deerskin pallets and blankets at their camp, McDonell's band left their West Branch prisoners and cattle at Chemung, when he hurried north, reached Col.Butler's headquarters at Canadasaga accompanied by wounded John Montour.

On Aug. 9, while Col. Proctor destroyed Newtychanningo an Indian town of 22 new cabins. Sulljvan's army moved on to the lower Sheshequin Flats. The next day the general with his officers and two regiments searched the river as far as Tioga Point for a place, choosing a spot 3 miles below the Point. On the 11th,
ColoneJ Proctor landed artl11ery on the west bank and fired a few cannon shots in the woods to forestall any Indian ambush. The army then forded by platoons, each man holding onto a comrade as they crossed from the east to the west of the swift armpit deep river at Greens Landing, above the old Tory hamlet of Sheshequin.

Lieutenant Barrrer and his horse were nearly lost as he rescued a floundering soldier who had lost his footing in the deep water and was tumbling down the rapids. There were several other close calls as his regiments of infantry and riflemen, with one of artillery and the Wyoming militia, 300 frightened cattle and 1,200 laden pack horses waded or swam acrossed the Fort Stanwix treaty line into Indian territory, three miles below Tioga Point.

With the women and children :still in the boats, the army then tramped through the high grass, hiding the year-old ruin of Queen Esther Montour's Town with it's many various fruit trees still standing.  Indian graves were thick and bout 4 feet high. About 9 am with the powder horns lifted high on their bayonets, the Continentals began fording the Chemung River to Tioga Point. This was familiar ground to Lt John Jenkins who had guided Colonel Hartley's men to the same spot in September. Drums were beating; fifes were playing, colors flying. They were greeted by Captain Jeboiken, a Stockbridge Indian, and 4 scouts who had arrived the day before.

FEW RATIONS
The men were hungry and would not eat until the next day, the ration boats being slow on arriving. Several cattle had fallen from the narrow path 200 feet precipice at Break Beak Hill. Boatmen below butchered and dressed them out. A number of soldiers were overcome by the heat. Time was running out, if, as the British believed  and General Washington had hoped, Niagara was the target.

Meanwhile, Colonel Butler recalled all available Tory rangers to Canadasaga and 300 Indians bravely advanced to oppose Sullivan's invaders.

FORT STARVED
At Tioga Point, while tents were being set up from river to river near a line of camouflaged foxholes dug by the Indians or Tories Corps of axmen, still wet from the river crossing, immediately began felling and squaring timbers in the rain for the construction of Fort Sullivan across the 300-foot-wide canoe carry at the narrow neck of land between the Chemung and Susquehanna rivers, a mile and a half above their landing point.

The fort was constructed as a nearly-square stockade of pointed logs with a ditch on the outside and a blockhouse at each corner, one blockhouse at each river bank and the other two facing north and south straddling the Great Warrior path through the Tioga water gap. The fort was built at Washington's suggestion as a base of supplies and for the security of the Flying Hospital, the women and children, the sick, the boatmen and their fleet. Some of the men dug into the Indian graves looking for pipes, beads and tomahawks.

That very night Captain Cummings with Lt. John Jenkins of Hand's brigade as his guide, who had been a captive at Chemung two years before went forward with the Oneida scout Hanyary , Capt. John Franklin and five riflemen, to reconnoiter the war town of Chemung 12 miles above.

INDIANS SIGHTED
Lying concealed on the crest of the high hill above McDowell's spring, they looked down upon the Indian town and counted, as the fog lifted, the number of fires below, estimated the number of huts and cabins, and noted the general confusion among the enemy during the exodus of Tories and Indians with their women and children carrying what they could, up the trail I toward Chucknut and Newtown

McDonell's captives from Fort Freeland, most of his cattle and the sick had already been sent north to Canadasaga. Meanwhile Colonel Brodhead at Fort Pitt, disregarding the latest orders from General Washington, moved north from his base with a force of 650 men toward the Monsey, Mingo and Seneca towns on the upper Allegheny and Genesee rivers. His supplies moved by boats as the men. packhorses and cattle train went overland guided by a dozen friendly Delawares. Although hopeful that he and Sullivan would operate "In favor of each other' the year was half gone and Brodhead doubted if there was enough time to form a useful cooperation" against Fort Niagara.

SUPPLIES SHORT
At the same time Colonel Butler at Canadasaga informed his son Captain Walter, that all the Indians about Niagara had been ordered by their chiefs to hurry down by forced marches, "night and day", to join him in an attempt to stop Sullivan. Powder, shot al1 moccasins were in short supply. John Secord, a Wyalusing Tory then at Niagara, was ordered to bring packhorses carrying ammunition for the Rangers and Indians. Also two gross of scalping knives and 50 pounds of war paint, to boost the moral of the Indians.

About noon on August 13, General Sullivan received Captain Cumming's report of what he and his scouts had observed at Chemung. He examined two fresh scalps taken by the Indians and found by one of the captain's men. Four hours later, after ordering a gill of rum for each man, he, with most of his command, carrying one day's cooked rations and Colonel Proctor's little cohom quietly moved away from Fort Sullivan toward Chemung. General Hand's riflemen were in the van, preceded by the Oneida scouts.

SLOW GOING
The men spent most of the night in a slow advance along the old Forbidden Path, hoping to surprise the enemy at Chemung. Often sitting down for short periods and then moving only eight or ten yards
at a time because of swamps narrow hillside paths and dark defiles, they advanced but seven miles before break of down. The attackers then moved rapidly, running the last mile in a heavy fog. Two regiments crossed the river to prevent .Indians attempting to escape into the cornfields in that direction, and also to enter the town from the west. Gen. Hand with the light corps moved in front to attack "on the north of the town". The third group led by General Poor rushed directly into the town with fixed bayonets, from the south and east. They all entered at sunrise on Aug. 13, 200 years ago.

NO SURPRISE
There was no surprise. Only a few Indian stragglers were observed moving out. General Hand ordered the light infantry from General Hubley's regiment with Captain Bush in command to hasten forward in pursuit on a trail which led toward Chucknut and Newtown, about three miles west.

About a mile beyond New  Chemung, near where the path led along and between high, forested "hog back" ridges, Captain Bush discovered a hastily-abandoned Indian encampment where fires still burned, a dog lay sleeping, and there were a number of deer skin pallets and several blankets.

Informed of the discovery, he remainder of the Light Corps,  comprising two independent companies and Hubley's regiment,!7moved forward preceded by Captain Walker and 24 riflemen. As they again approached the Indian campfires, the apparently careless advance guard was twice fired upon from ambush by the enemy rear guard, composed of some 40 Monsey Delaware led by Capt. Roland Montour.

Recovering from their surprise the riflemen then advanced rapidly in a flanking movement as well as straight up the ridge in a bayonet charge which gave no time for the Indians to again reload. The Delawares fell back and scattered, taking one dead warrior and their wounded. Hearing the bells of cattle ahead, Hubley's regiment attempted to pursue the enemy for nearly a mile, advancing in eight columns to gain their rear, but without success since most of the Indians took refuge in a nearby swamp.

TROOPS AMBUSHED
In the ambush, at the place some called the "Hell Hole," General Hand lost seven men killed and 13 wounded, including four officers, Captains , John Franklin, Carbury and Walker and Adjutant Houston.
Part of the losses, in spite of their training as bush fighters, was due to their own crossfire in the half light of the fog and the confusion during the short but deadly engagement.

The contingent halted near the swamp, where, on the arrival of Gen. Sullivan it was determined to proceed to farther toward Newtown. Returning to Chemung they joined the main army in turning the town into two great bonfires. In that 'pretty capital place" they found quantities of striped linen nearly 300 dressed deer and bear skins, brass kettles, pewter plates, knives, ladles and other trade and household items. A considerable quantity of furniture was found hidden in the woods.

New Chemung lay in two parts, Upper and Lower Chemung, on the Rose Valley flats, just west of the Chemung Narrows and Katydid Curve. 

GROWING NEW CHEMUNG
The town consisted of 40 or more sturdy log-and-frame houses, some of them "very large and well furnished" split and hewn timbers and  slabs, some covered with bark, without chimneys or floors. There were also a number of bark covered huts and two large public buildings. One was thought to be a chapel or council house, containing "an Idol" and some painted 'feathers. The other may have been the trading post home of the prominent Tory Warren.

Lieutenant Shute reported that one cabin belonged to Esther Montour, sister of Catherine. On an early English map in Corning's Ben Patterson Inn the town is shown not as Chemung, but is named "Warrens."

CROPS DESTROYED
One soldier was killed and three wounded by Indian marksmen as the army destroyed some 40 acres of corn in the milk on both sides of the river. They trampled large fields of beans, potatoes, squashes,  cucumbers and watermellons, "planted with as exactness as any farmer."

The larger fields of corn were i believed to have been planted by Tories to supply the British. The smaller ones were for the Indians. A few acres bearing corn with ears ''as long as a man's forearm" were left standing to augment army rations during the expected return of the army when it marched to Newtown.

RIDE TO GRAVES
During the march of the army from Chemung to Fort Sullivan the, eight dead officers and soldiers were bound and braced stiffly upright on horses and thus rode to their place of burial in unmarked grave near the Fort. It was assumed that Indians watching from the hilltops along the route would thus never know the number of casualties they had inflicted.

It was near sundown when they arrived at their encampment. Most of them had been without sleep for 36 hours and on active duty without intermission for 23 hours. They returned without prisoners except for several colts found corralled at Chemung. They also brought a number of scalps taken by the Indians, found
cleaned, dressed and panted in the lodges at Chemung.

SMOULDERING RUINS
The following day, Aug 14th, Joseph Brant and his band of raiders returned to Chemung with their captives and a few cattle taken during their successful attack at Minissink. They found nothing but a place .of total, smoldering ruin and disorder. Limping from an ugly foot wound taken near Minissink, Brant moved on and waited at Newtown for the arrival of John and Walter Butler with their rangers. Sayenqueraghta with the Senecas and Secord's packhorses with the munitions.

Soon the warriors at Newtown numbered over 300 and seemed in high spirits, confident that they could and would turn back Sullivan's invaders at their next encounter. Joseph Brant, however, was "a little afraid of the outcome.