sides a fine train of artillery and a suitable body of artillerymen, an army, consisting of more than seven thousand veteran troops, excellently equipped, and in a high state of discipline, was put under his command. Besides this regular force, he had a great number of Canadians and savages.
The employment of the Indians was deliberately determined upon by the British government at the very commencement of hostilities. This, though sometimes doubted, is clearly proved by the letters of Lord Dartmouth to Colonel Johnson, under date of the 5th and 24th of July, 1775. "It is his Majesty's pleasure," says the secretary, "that you do lose no time in taking such steps as may induce the Six Nations to take up the hatchet against his Majesty's rebellious subjects in America, and to engage them in his Majesty's service upon such plan as shall be suggested to you by General Gage, to whom this letter is sent, accompanied with a large assortment of goods for presents to them upon this important occasion."[1] As no small dependence was placed upon the Indian allies, General Carleton was directed to use all his influence to bring a large body of them into the field, and his exertions were very successful.
After detaching Colonel St. Leger with a body of light troops and Indians, amounting to about eight hundred men, by the way of Lake Oswego and the Mohawk River, to make a diversion in that quarter, and to join him when he advanced to the Hudson, General Burgoyne left St. John's, on the 16th of June, and, preceded by his naval armament, sailed up Lake Champlain, and in a few days landed and encamped near Crown Point, earlier in the season than it had been supposed possible for him to effect this movement.
It was here that Burgoyne gave the Indians a war-feast, and made a speech to them, calculated to inflame their zeal, and intended also to restrain their barbarous excesses. "Go forth," he said, "in the might of your valour; strike at the common enemies of Great Britain and America, disturbers of public order, peace, and happiness, destroyers of commerce, parricides of the state." He praised their perseverance and constancy, and patient endurance of privation, and artfully flattered them by saying, that in these respects they offered a model of imitation for his army. He then entreated of them, as the king's allies, to regulate their own mode of warfare by that proscribed to their civilized brethren. "I positively forbid," he further said to them, "all bloodshed when you are not opposed in arms. Aged men, women, and children, must be held sacred from the knife and hatchet even in the time of actual conflict. You shall receive compensation for the prisoners you take, but you shall be called to account for scalps. In conformity and indulgence to your customs, which have affixed an idea of honor to such badges
- ↑ See Judge Campbell's interesting paper, read before the "New York Historical Society," Oct. 7th 1845, in relation to " the direct agency of the British Government in the employment of the Indians in the Revolutionary War." Appendix to "The Border Warfare of New York," pp. 321–337.
