LAP OF THE GODS

“Marched this day at 6:00 am 2 miles to the Cayuga Castle, and Indian town of that name containing in number about 15 very large square houses. I think the building superior to any I have seen. [Here] cattle were killed and three days beef issued to the troops. The fatigue parties were sent to destroy the corn to the amount of 110 acres, though not all destroyed this day. Two other towns were discovered, one 23 1/2 miles from Seneca Lake, which we called Upper Cayuga, containing 14 large houses, the other about two miles east of the castle we called Cayuga, containing 13 houses. The troops were all employed this day in destroying corn until after dark. We found at this town apples, peaches, potatoes, turnips, onions, pumpkins, squashes and vegetables of various kinds and great plenty.” -Thomas Grant, Sullivan/Clinton Expedition journal, Sept. 21, 1779

    Although many of Sullivan’s men offered vivid descriptions of the terrain and crops, they also recorded the gore. The aftermath of one of their men (Lt. Boyd) being taken, beheaded, and eviscerated was prevalent in many of their journals. But it’s the white captive, and willingly assimilated Indian, Mary Jemison, who captures the scene best. She was present when it happened. 

    “Poor Boyd,” Mary wrote, “was stripped of his clothing, and then tied to a sapling, where the Indians menaced his life by throwing their tomahawks at the tree, directly over his head, brandishing their scalping knives around him in the most frightful manner, and accompanying their ceremonies with terrific shouts of joy. Having punished him sufficiently in this way, they made a small opening in his abdomen, took out an intestine, which they tied to the sapling, and then unbound him from the tree, and drove him round it till he had drawn out the whole of his intestines. He was then beheaded, his head was stuck upon a pole, and his body left on the ground unburied….The women and children were then sent on still further towards Buffalo….At that time I had three children who went with me on foot, one who rode on horseback, and one whom I carried on my back.”

     And in another, less dependable, record of the soldiers accompanying Boyd I turn back to Peter Osterhout, who I trust as much as Jack Hodges:

   “Murphy was with General Sullivan in his expedition to the western part of the state, as was also my father [Petrus Osterhout], who said he never knew [Timothy] Murphy to be frightened but once. He was in the party of Lt. Boyd, on a scout, in advance of the army, when they were suddenly surrounded by several hundred Indians. All but two of the party, who were Murphy and my father [Petrus] were killed. These two ran for their lives, and reached Sullivan’s camp in safety, Murphy retained his rifle, while my father dropped his to enable him to outrun the Indians. Murphy then looked as white in his face as a sheet. About two hours after, the army reached the place of the surprise and butchery, and found the men, who had been shot, stripped and scalped, lying on the ground. After that no Indian within reach of Murphy’s rifle, male or female, escaped his unerring aim….After his return from the war, it is said that many Indians suddenly disappeared, and were believed to have been shot by Murphy. The shooting of Indians and Tories in that region, in a secret manner, after the war, led others to flee elsewhere for safety.”

   In the tradition of Tom Quick, Timothy Murphy was another one of those American “heroes” that carried on his murderous activities after the war and out of uniform. Like James Fenimore Cooper’s “Natty Bumppo,” who was based on another real life “Indian killer,” these archetypes are heralded and memorialized as great pioneers, no matter the extra-judicial body count. Quick and Murphy are the more obscure, northern equivalents of Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett. The headless Lt. Boyd and the “Zelig-like” and very lucky, Petrus Osterhout, are long forgotten.     

    When the war was over the New England Yankees flooded into western New York. Families, and sometimes entire towns in Vermont would pick up and move west into the finger lake region of New York. Cayuga Lake is the longest of the finger lakes, surrounded with good farm land and deep forests, Ithaca sitting at it’s southern most tip. Cayuga County, which contains the town of Auburn lays due north at the top of neighboring Lake Owasco, a few miles south of the Erie Canal. The Indians who once populated the shores of all the finger lakes were known as the Tuscarora, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, Oneida and Mohawk, or Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee tribe, what the French called the Six Nations of the Iroquois. In a matter of months, Sullivan and Clinton’s army would kill or drive off a society that had resided in this area of New York for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.  

     One of the first white religious organizations to move in, established on the Cayuga frontier, was Ithaca’s Moral Society. These peace time “societies,” which pre-dated churches on the frontier, were a reaction to the violence and chaos that persisted in many towns in western New York during the antebellum era. The religious societies were in direct conflict with pioneer status-quo. Before the introduction of this enthusiastic new morality, Ithaca was a godless, outlaw sanctuary, referred to as The Flat, The Pit, or just Sodom, a town of “gamblers, horse racers, Sabbath-breakers and profane-swearers.” It was a tough challenge for any missionary movement. A Wisner would step up.   

    The Presbyterian minister, Rev. William Wisner’s, first service in Ithaca was held in a small school house, that was quickly attacked and burned to the ground by an angry mob. It would not be an easy battle for the souls of the inhabitants. “If one was a drunkard, or a meddler, a coward or boaster,”  a church historian wrote, “or if some vagrant attempted to exhibit a puppet show……he was sure to find himself under a crate, where he was drenched with water……or mysteriously entangled in a rope and dragged to the creek…or advised to run the gauntlet…..or having a regular trial before the society, fled to escape its execution.”

      The frontier had grown quickly, and predictably sinful, as the Indians were either killed or driven into Canada and the “burners” moved into the void left behind. Undeterred by the “sinful” response of the community to his pioneer church service, the tenacious Rev. Wisner salvaged the school house steeple, hoisted it to the roof of an old barn, hammered it into place, and reconvened services the next sabbath. He would not be deterred. 

    Temperance and persistence eventually won out, quelling the infidel, bringing genteel society to the wilderness. Piety, along with a rifle and a boatload of money, helped along the process. The process would be repeated across the continental United States. As “civilization” found a firm foothold, Rev. Dr. William Wisner would go on to serve on the first board of trustees at The Auburn Theological Seminary, founded in 1818, (just as Richard Jennings was being murdered) another very odd connection with Jack Hodge’s lawyer, the Rev’s. cousin Henry G. Wisner. Family, religion and real estate was again at play.  If one was going to invest in the property of any cousin’s neighborhood, it had better have a church and not revert to the vagrant, the bear baiter or the puppet show.