The magazine of history with notes and queries, Vol. II, No. 6, December 1905Various
History
The magazine of history with notes and queries, Vol. II, No. 6, December 1905
Various
History -- Periodicals; United States -- History -- Periodicals
General Hand asked that he be allowed to take Colonel Hubley’s regiment
and the Wyoming companies to pursue the foe. This request was granted
and our men pushed eagerly on. In spite of all wariness, Captain Bush’s
company of the Eleventh Pennsylvania got into an Indian ambush, and six
of the Continentals were killed and nine wounded. Our men rallied and
drove the Indians off the ground with a loss equal to their own. Then
they began destroying sixty acres of standing corn, then in the milk,
by cutting down the stalks. While at this work they were again fired on
by the Indians in hiding, and one man was killed and five were wounded.
Forty acres of maize were left untouched for the future use of the
army, and then the whole force returned, greatly wearied with fatigue
and the extreme heat. The bodies of the dead were brought back to camp
for decent burial.
It was a sad occasion, when in the forest, the seven slain were buried
in one grave, which, as was usual, had all outward marks obliterated,
so that the savages could not exhume and mutilate the corpses. Then
their comrades fired memorial vollies. Thus perished by the bullets
of the enemy the first of the men in Sullivan’s main expedition. Two
days afterwards, a corporal and four men, who were guarding cattle on
Queen Esther’s plains, were fired on by sneaking Indians. One was shot
dead and one wounded. In the rude hospital, quickly built out of green
wood, within the lines of the diamond-shaped Fort Sullivan, the fifteen
wounded men found shelter and care. In 1897, in digging foundations for
the edifice of the Tioga Point Historical Society, at Athens, Pa., the
bones of the buried Continentals were exhumed, and with other relics of
1779 are now under glass in the cases of the Spalding Museum.
Having his whole effective force under his direct command, Sullivan
reorganized the army, and announced both the order of march and the
order of battle. The light troops under General Hand were to form the
advance, the riflemen acting as scouts. Poor’s brigade was to guard
the right and Maxwell’s brigade the left of the army, Clinton’s brigade
forming the rear guard. The park of nine pieces of artillery was placed
in the center, with three columns of pack horses on either side. A
morning and evening gun was to be fired daily and on account of the
length and narrowness of the moving line through the woods, a horn,
instead of drums, was to announce the orders to march or halt. The
corps of engineers and surveyors were to measure each rod of ground
traversed, and maps of the region traversed were to be made.
In the fort, Colonel Shreve was left with a garrison of two hundred and
fifty men of the New Jersey regiment. It was ordered that when further
supplies should come up from Wyoming, Captain Reed should proceed up
the Chemung Valley, build a fort where Newtown Creek joins the river
(at Elmira), and there await the return of the army from the Genesee
valley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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