COUNTING CHRISTIAN TEARS

“The thought, therefore, that Wisner might be torn to pieces while yet alive seemed to him even more savage cruelty. Under the distressing circumstances and considerations, the chief argued with himself that true humanity required a speedy termination of his sufferings. Having formed this conclusion, the next point was to compass his death without inflicting additional tortures upon his feelings. With this in view, he engaged Wisner in conversation and while diverting his attention struck him in an instant and unperceived with his hatchet.” -The Wisners in America by G. Franklin Wisner 1918

     This particular portrait of Joseph Brant (Thayendanega) was not painted by Charles Wilson Peale, but a member of his very talented family in the style of their father’s original. In 2005, the copy hung in the dining room of the residence of then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. Poor Joseph Brant. He remained a silent witness to the white man’s plotting and murderous geo-political depredations into the 21st century. Payback for Minisink?  

     The Coldens and Peales brought something unique to the frontier. Botany, mathematics, philosophy and radical political thought were increasingly investigated and practiced in the northeast, fused with a renewed interest in the arts. The Hudson Valley and Catskills formed the center of this particularly American cultural revolution and the eventual genocide of indigenous people in the area. The lakes, rivers and forests had birthed a hybrid Euramerican culture, as the Indians were exterminated and the slaves toiled away in the hot sun or froze to death on Goshen barn floors. This so-called “enlightenment” didn’t replace antiquated views on race, empire and entitlement, but it augmented bare-bones sustenance with a meatier cultural stew. The Jennings and the Osterhouts would be the beneficiaries of the slave’s labor and the Indian’s demise, as well as Peale and Colden’s complex, and often contradictory, brilliance.

     Drive north on Rt. 97 out of Port Jervis and you’ll find the Minisink Battlefield. This spot along the Delaware River, where the notorious Mohawk warrior, Joseph Brant, ambushed the pursuing militia from Goshen, killing all but one in 1779, is now a zip-line and shabby weekend paintball park. It really wasn’t that long ago that there were bloody Goshen scalps—not McDonald’s wrappers, dirty diapers and a split plastic water bottle—piled up in the autumn leaves. 

      Seward family patriarch, John Seward, survived the battle at Minisink; not by heroism, but through self preservation; or possibly, cowardice. The Osterhout soldiers under Col. John Cantine’s  2nd Ulster regiment were just out of reach, stationed farther north up the old mine road, awaiting orders that never came. Col. John Seward (Doc. Seward’s father), was in command of reinforcements approaching from the south. They were unaware that Brant had already killed over forty men from Goshen down river. Spotting the fleeing Brant and his warriors, too frightened to engage, they never acted. Instead, on Col. Seward’s orders, his men quietly turned around and slunk home to New Jersey. 

    As far as the Jennings side goes, to quote William H. Seward, “Of my maternal grandfather, Isaac Jennings, I know only that he was of English derivation, a well-to-do farmer, who turned out with the militia of Goshen, and, more fortunate than most of his associates, escaped the Indian massacre of Minisink.” I doubt Isaac Jennings was anywhere near the battle. But, if he was, he ran early in the fight, joining Col. John Hawthorn’s fleeing militia, leaving Gabriel Wisner to die with the others. There was no glory on either the Osterhout, Jennings, or the Seward sides of the family at Minisink, and plenty of shame to go around.

      Whether or not Joseph Brant inflicted the fatal wound, Henry Wisner’s father Gabriel, was killed in the battle along with his friends and neighbors. Between 42 and 47 (figures vary) volunteer Goshen militia died in those thick laurel tangles on one bloody afternoon. Only one man, Lt. John Wood, survived the carnage. Wood was taken prisoner by Brant after flashing the arcane, arms raised, bent at the elbows, Masonic sign of distress. The Mohawk leader Joseph Brant had been inducted into freemasonry by none other than the King George III of England and was well aware of the mysterious signals and secret handshakes of the exclusive club. In fact, the lieutenant was a cowan, a pretender, a “fake mason,’’ playing at a very serious life and death game. It worked. Brant told his men to bring the surrendering “mason” along. Thought long dead, Wood sat out the war in a Canadian prison, coming home to a re-married and noticeably pregnant wife. He then married my great, etc...….grandmother, Sophia Carpenter Jennings’ young cousin, Hanna Carpenter, and joined the Freemasons. 

    As late as 1819, unlike those of the Montgomery mastodon, the bones of the Goshen fallen had yet to be recovered. The entire village of Goshen, so traumatized by the loss and afraid to venture to the remote battlefield along the Delaware River (only a days ride away), left their dead undisturbed by human hands for over 40 years. It wasn’t until renewed interest in one of the Goshen soldiers (the brilliant small pox researcher, Dr. Benjamin Tusten) brought it all back, that an expedition of volunteers was organized and some of the human bones were recovered for burial. In 1822 the scattered remains of some of the white men who died at the Battle of Minisink were placed in two walnut coffins and buried in the graveyard of The First Presbyterian Church in Goshen.  

    The fantasy of Brant comforting Gabriel Wisner was a kind of idealized mercy-killing myth; both parties engaging in a “noble savage” and “willing victim,” fantastic pantomime, created to comfort early 20th century parlor society mores. In reality, Wisner was probably scalped by any one of Brant’s Mohawk and tory warriors, without benefit of ritual soliloquy and left to die alone; the bears, wolves, coyotes, and vermin ripping him to shreds, devouring his flesh and scattering his bones before daybreak. It was the last decisive battle the Six Nations would ever win. History in plain drab.