Thursday, May 20, 2010

Moving on to With Musket and Tomahawk by Louusz

This is a remarkably well written book that is history, but reads as easily as great historical fiction in the tradition of Mitchner and Roberts. The book is punctuated with the rugged wilderness and the tougher people that lived there. Even today much of this area remains wild. The area is today described as Adirondack National Park. This is not an area one wants to walk through off road. I have been to many of the places described such as Schroon Lake, Fort Anne and Benington.

One part the book describes is the brutal murder and scalping of Jane McRae. What is taught is that patriots used this murder to gather up people sitting on the fence. McRae was engaged to a loyalist named David Jones and living with a large older woman who was a Patriot but a first cousin of British General Fraser named Mrs. McNeal. Jones sent some Indians to pick up his fiance. Along the way they encounter another group of Indians and someone shoots and kills Jane McRae. McRae is then scalped by an Indian Wynadot Panther. The older woman is stripped and beaten, though not raped and brought into Burgoyne's camp.

When the woman arrived in the British camp she cursed the entire planet and raised such a stir the General Burgoyne and Fraser had to interrupt a meeting. Fraser immediately placed a cape on his first cousin who was irate. Jones picked up a tomahawk backed by his loyalist friends and wanted to kill the Indians. Meanwhile Mrs. McNeal was so livid several troops were required to get her into a tent and calmed down.

Burgoyne wanted to kill the Indian responsible for the death of McRae. Fearful of losing his allies he relented, but only allowed Indian Raids to proceed accompanied by a British Officer. Officer David Jones and his brother asked to be discharged and are refused. They desert and head back to Canada. Many Indians do not feel appreciated and desert as well.

Soldiers are killed in upcoming battles with notes left by the patriots referencing revenge for McRae.

The moral of the story should be do not mess with women of the frontier. In several places they are seen defending their homes from loyalist and Indian raiders.

5 comments:

Cateran said...

You know, Beak, if you're set to act the scholar and teach history to the unwashed masses, you should at least make an attempt to spell the names of the participants correctly. If you don't bother with the spelling, I may as well be reading Yeagley's gawdawful attempts at intellectualism. Mind you, with the academic level of his readership, I doubt anyone notices.

It's Jane McCrea, not McCrae, and it's McNeil, not McNeal.

A footnote: of the six persons you've named here, all but two are either Scottish, or of Scots heritage. The other two, Jones is a Welsh name, and Burgoyne is probably Norman French (read English).

beakerkin said...

Misspellings noted. Interestingly apparently St. Clair in the book is said to be Scottish but most Americans would guess that name was
French.

There were plenty of Scotts on both sides. The Hessians had a hard time dealing with the Americanized German patriots. There were plenty of defections caused by German patriots.

The Northern Army was reflective of the people of the region English, Scott, Welsh, Irish, Indian, Greek, Poles, Jews and plenty of others. Someone should remind Yeagley of the Black Patriots who fought with various units.

Oddly I did not write about the last major act of the Northern Army. Captain Allen of Vermont found a group of British heading for Canada with a Black Woman and young infant. His party was aware that captured Blacks were resold into slavery. Allen ordered his men
to overtake the British and freed the woman named Mrs. Mattis. She was taken to Vermont and lived the
remainder of her life in freedom.

Of course these actions of the founding fathers are lost upon Yeagley who has no concept of Americanism beyond his racial cartoon worldview.

Cateran said...

Interestingly apparently St. Clair in the book is said to be Scottish but most Americans would guess that name was French.

Yes, you’re right, St. Clair with that spelling would give one the idea the man is French. But the name is also a very old Scottish name of Norman origin. However, I would expect it to be spelled Sinclair ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Sinclair/ ) if the name belonged to a Scot. By the way, the Sinclairs are a family with a long historical connection to North America. As a for instance, Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Sinclair#Henry_I_Sinclair.2C_Earl_of_Orkney ) , is the man who built Rosslyn Chapel. As you’re probably aware, there’s a great deal of mysticism surrounding Rosslyn Chapel and it played a role in Dan Brown’s novel "The Da Vinci Code". And if the stories are correct about Henry Sinclair, he beat Columbus to North America by close to an hundred years.

Have you ever heard of the Westford Knight ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westford_Knight ) , Beak?

There were plenty of Scotts on both sides.

Beak, you’re making me play the pedant. In exactly the same manner as there is only one "w" in Jews, there is only one "t" in Scots ( http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Scot ).

She was taken to Vermont and lived the remainder of her life in freedom.

Sounds like Yankee propaganda to me. ;)

beakerkin said...

This time my spelling is correct and apparently Gen Arthur St Clair
is a Scot. Admitedly not much is known about his early life and the spelling appears to be correct.

Vermont has a strange history as an anti slavery hot bed. Its abolitionist traditions are very strong and do not come from the usual places. It was an important area in the underground railroad and was very pro Union unlike NY which had some Coperheads.

Given the history of Vermont this is not surprising.

Cateran said...

This time my spelling is correct and apparently Gen Arthur St Clair is a Scot. Admitedly not much is known about his early life and the spelling appears to be correct.

I wasn't taking issue with the way you spelled the name, Beak, what I said was that I would expect a Scot to spell the name as Sinclair. Looking at St. Clair's Wickedpedia entry he was born in Caithness, which is the area of Scotland that Clan Sinclair originates.

It also looks like, at some point, he changed the spelling of his name to St. Clair (unless the other spelling was more common at that time - I don't know about that).

But whatever the story is, his father is thought to be a William Sinclair. Which is spelled the way I suggested it should be.