Adventures of Putnam

The adventures of the captured Putnam were sufficiently remarkable.

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

Previously in Montcalm and Wolfe, Volume 7 of the French in Canada series. Continuing Chapter 21.

Up to this time Rogers had observed his usual caution, commanding silence on the march and forbidding fires at night; but, seeing no signs of an enemy, he forgot himself; and on the following morning, the eighth of August, he and Lieutenant Irwin, of the light infantry, amused themselves by firing at a mark on a wager. The shots reached the ears of four hundred and fifty French and Indians under the famous partisan Marin, who at once took steps to reconnoiter and ambuscade his rash enemy. For nearly a mile from the old fort the forest had formerly been cut down and burned; and Nature had now begun to reassert herself, covering the open tract with a dense growth of bushes and saplings almost impervious to anything but a wild-cat, had it not been traversed by a narrow Indian path. Along this path the men were forced to march in single file. At about seven o’clock, when the two marksmen had decided their bet and before the heavy dew of the night was dried upon the bushes, the party slung their packs and set out. Putnam was in the front with his Connecticut men; Dalzell followed with the regulars; and Rogers, with his rangers, brought up the rear of the long and slender line. Putnam himself led the way, shouldering through the bushes, gun in hand; and just as the bluff yeoman emerged from them to enter the forest-growth beyond, the air was rent with yells, the thickets before him were filled with Indians and one of them, a Caughnawaga chief, sprang upon him, hatchet in hand. He had time to cock his gun and snap it at the breast of his assailant; but it missed fire and he was instantly seized and dragged back into the forest, as were also a lieutenant named Tracy and three private men. Then the firing began. The French and Indians, lying across the path in a semicircle, had the advantage of position and surprise. The Connecticut men fell back among the bushes in disorder; but soon rallied and held the enemy in check while Dalzell and Rogers — the latter of whom was nearly a mile behind — were struggling through briers and thickets to their aid. So close was the brushwood that it was full half an hour before they could get their followers ranged in some kind of order in front of the enemy and even then, each man was forced to fight for himself as best he could. Humphreys, the biographer of Putnam, blames Rogers severely for not coming at once to the aid of the Connecticut men; but two of their captains declare that he came with all possible speed; while a regular officer present highly praised him to Abercromby for cool and officer-like conduct.[1] As a man his deserts were small; as a bushfighter he was beyond reproach.

[1: Letter from the Camp at Lake George, 5 Sept. 1758, signed by Captains Maynard and Giddings and printed in the Boston Weekly Advertiser. “Rogers deserves much to be commended.” Abercromby to Pitt, 19 Aug. 1758.]

Another officer recounts from hearsay the remarkable conduct of an Indian, who sprang into the midst of the English and killed two of them with his hatchet; then mounted on a log and defied them all. One of the regulars tried to knock him down with the butt of his musket; but though the blow made him bleed, he did not fall and would have killed his assailant if Rogers had not shot him dead.[2] The firing lasted about two hours. At length some of the Canadians gave way and the rest of the French and Indians followed.[3] They broke into small parties to elude pursuit and reuniting towards evening, made their bivouac on a spot surrounded by impervious swamps.

[2: Thomas Barnsley to Bouquet, 7 Sept. 1758.]

[3: Doreil au Ministre, 31 Août, 1757.]

Rogers remained on the field and buried all his own dead, forty-nine in number. Then he resumed his march to Fort Edward, carrying the wounded on litters of branches till the next day, when he met a detachment coming with wagons to his relief. A party sent out soon after for the purpose reported that they had found and buried more than a hundred French and Indians. From this time forward the war-parties from Ticonderoga greatly relented in their activity.

The adventures of the captured Putnam were sufficiently remarkable. The Indians, after dragging him to the rear, lashed him fast to a tree so that he could not move a limb and a young savage amused himself by throwing a hatchet at his head, striking it into the wood as close as possible to the mark without hitting it. A French petty officer then thrust the muzzle of his gun violently against the prisoner’s body, pretended to fire it at him and at last struck him in the face with the butt; after which dastardly proceeding he left him. The French and Indians being forced after a time to fall back, Putnam found himself between the combatants and exposed to bullets from both sides; but the enemy, partially recovering the ground they had lost, unbound him and led him to a safe distance from the fight. When the retreat began, the Indians hurried him along with them, stripped of coat, waistcoat, shoes and stockings, his back burdened with as many packs of the wounded as could be piled upon it and his wrists bound so tightly together that the pain became intense. In his torment he begged them to kill him; on which a French officer who was near persuaded them to untie his hands and take off some of the packs and the chief who had captured him gave him a pair of moccasins to protect his lacerated feet. When they encamped at night, they prepared to burn him alive, stripped him naked, tied him to a tree and gathered dry wood to pile about him. A sudden shower of rain interrupted their pastime; but when it was over they began again and surrounded him with a circle of brushwood which they set on fire. As they were yelling and dancing their delight at the contortions with which he tried to avoid the rising flames, Marin, hearing what was going on forward, broke through the crowd and with a courageous humanity not too common among Canadian officers, dashed aside the burning brush, untied the prisoner and angrily upbraided his tormentors. He then restored him to the chief who had captured him and whose right of property in his prize the others had failed to respect. The Caughnawaga treated him at first with kindness; but, with the help of his tribesmen, took effectual means to prevent his escape, by laying him on his back, stretching his arms and legs in the form of a St. Andrew’s cross and binding the wrists and ankles fast to the stems of young trees. This was a mode of securing prisoners in vogue among Indians from immemorial time; but, not satisfied with it, they placed brushwood upon his body and then laid across it the long slender stems of saplings, on the ends of which several warriors lay down to sleep, so that the slightest movement on his part would rouse them. Thus he passed a night of misery, which did not prevent him from thinking of the ludicrous figure he made in the hands of the tawny Philistines.

On the next night, after a painful march, he reached Ticonderoga, where he was questioned by Montcalm and afterwards sent to Montreal in charge of a French officer, who showed him the utmost kindness. On arriving, woefully tattered, bruised, scorched and torn, he found a friend in Colonel Schuyler, himself a prisoner on parole, who helped him in his need and through whose good offices the future major-general of the Continental Army was included in the next exchange of prisoners.

[On Putnam’s adventures, Humphreys, 57 (1818). He had the story from Putnam himself and seems to give it with substantial correctness, though his account of the battle is at several points erroneous. The “Molang” of his account is Marin. On the battle, besides authorities already cited, Recollections of Thomson Maxwell, a soldier present (Essex Institute, VII. 97). Rogers, Journals, 117. Letter from camp in Boston Gazette, no. 117. Another in New Hampshire Gazette, no. 104. Gentleman’s Magazine, 1758, p. 498. Malartic, Journal du Régiment de Béarn. Lévis, Journal de la Guerre en Canada. The French notices of the affair are few and brief. They admit a defeat but exaggerate the force and the losses of the English and underrate their own. Malartic, however, says that Marin set out with four hundred men and was soon after joined by an additional number of Indians; which nearly answers to the best English accounts.]

The petty victory over Marin was followed by a more substantial success. Early in September Abercromby’s melancholy camp was cheered with the tidings that the important French post of Fort Frontenac, which controlled Lake Ontario, which had baffled Shirley in his attempt against Niagara and given Montcalm the means of conquering Oswego, had fallen into British hands. “This is a glorious piece of news and may God have all the glory of the same!” writes Chaplain Cleaveland in his Diary. Lieutenant-Colonel Bradstreet had planned the stroke long before and proposed it first to Loudon and then to Abercromby. Loudon accepted it; but his successor received it coldly, though Lord Howe was warm in its favor. At length, under the pressure of a council of war, Abercromby consented that the attempt should be made and gave Bradstreet three thousand men, nearly all provincials. With these he made his way, up the Mohawk and down the Onondaga, to the lonely and dismal spot where Oswego had once stood. By dint of much persuasion a few Oneidas joined him; though, like most of the Five Nations, they had been nearly lost to the English through the effects of the defeat at Ticonderoga. On the twenty-second of August his fleet of whaleboats and bateaux pushed out on Lake Ontario; and, three days after, landed near the French fort. On the night of the twenty-sixth Bradstreet made a lodgment within less than two hundred yards of it; and early in the morning De Noyan, the commandant, surrendered himself and his followers, numbering a hundred and ten soldiers and laborers, prisoners of war. With them were taken nine armed vessels, carrying from eight to eighteen guns and forming the whole French naval force on Lake Ontario. The crews escaped. An enormous quantity of provisions, naval stores, munitions and Indian goods intended for the supply of the western posts fell into the hands of the English, who kept what they could carry off and burned the rest. In the fort were found sixty cannon and sixteen mortars, which the victors used to batter down the walls; and then, reserving a few of the best, knocked off the trunnions of the others. The Oneidas were bent on scalping some of the prisoners. Bradstreet forbade it. They begged that he would do as the French did, — turn his back and shut his eyes; but he forced them to abstain from all violence and consoled them by a lion’s share of the plunder. In accordance with the orders of Abercromby, the fort was dismantled and all the buildings in or around it burned, as were also the vessels, except the two largest, which were reserved to carry off some of the captured goods. Then, with boats deeply laden, the detachment returned to Oswego; where, after unloading and burning the two vessels, they proceeded towards Albany, leaving a thousand of their number at the new fort which Brigadier Stanwix was building at the Great Carrying Place of the Mohawk.

From Montcalm and Wolfe, Chapter 21 by Francis Parkman

To be continued.

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Preface to this book.

A very large amount of unpublished material has been used in its preparation, consisting for the most part of documents copied from the archives and libraries of France and England, especially from the Archives de la Marine et des Colonies, the Archives de la Guerre, and the Archives Nationales at Paris, and the Public Record Office and the British Museum at London. The papers copied for the present work in France alone exceed six thousand folio pages of manuscript, additional and supplementary to the “Paris Documents” procured for the State of New York under the agency of Mr. Brodhead. The copies made in England form ten volumes, besides many English documents consulted in the original manuscript. Great numbers of autograph letters, diaries, and other writings of persons engaged in the war have also been examined on this side of the Atlantic.

I owe to the kindness of the present Marquis de Montcalm the permission to copy all the letters written by his ancestor, General Montcalm, when in America, to members of his family in France. General Montcalm, from his first arrival in Canada to a few days before his death, also carried on an active correspondence with one of his chief officers, Bourlamaque, with whom he was on terms of intimacy. These autograph letters are now preserved in a private collection. I have examined them and obtained copies of the whole. They form an interesting complement to the official correspondence of the writer, and throw the most curious side-lights on the persons and events of the time.

Besides manuscripts, the printed matter in the form of books, pamphlets, contemporary newspapers, and other publications relating to the American part of the Seven Years’ War, is varied and abundant; and I believe I may safely say that nothing in it of much consequence has escaped me. The liberality of some of the older States of the Union, especially New York and Pennsylvania, in printing the voluminous records of their colonial history, has saved me a deal of tedious labor.

The whole of this published and unpublished mass of evidence has been read and collated with extreme care, and more than common pains have been taken to secure accuracy of statement. The study of books and papers, however, could not alone answer the purpose. The plan of the work was formed in early youth; and though various causes have long delayed its execution, it has always been kept in view. Meanwhile, I have visited and examined every spot where events of any importance in connection with the contest took place, and have observed with attention such scenes and persons as might help to illustrate those I meant to describe. In short, the subject has been studied as much from life and in the open air as at the library table.

BOSTON, Sept. 16, 1884.

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