eet "Indian Butler"
more than half way. They knew the country, they said, and they knew the
Indians, and they deduced that the proper plan was to march forth and
attack the British force near the head of the valley. Some of the more
hot-headed ones rather openly taunted the Continentals, but these
veterans of Washington's army remained silent and composed amid more or
less wildness of talk. My own concealed opinions were that, although our
people were brave and determined, they had much better allow the
Continental officers to manage the valley's affairs.

At the end of June, we heard the news that Colonel John Butler, with
some four hundred British and Colonial troops, which he called the
Rangers, and with about five hundred Indians, had entered the valley at
its head and taken Fort Wintermoot after an opposition of a perfunctory
character. I could present arms very well, but I do not think that I
could yet keep my heels together. But "Indian Butler" was marching upon
us, and even Captain Bidlack refrained from being annoyed at my
refractory heels.

The officers held councils of war, but in truth both fort and camp rang
with a discussion in which everybody joined with great vigour and
endurance. I may except the Continental officers, who told us what they
thought we should do, and then, declaring that there was no more to be
said, remained in a silence which I thought was rather grim. The result
was that on the 3rd of July our force of about 300 men marched away,
amid the roll of drums and the proud career of flags, to meet "Indian
Butler" and his two kinds of savages. There yet remains with me a vivid
recollection of a close row of faces above the stockade of Forty Fort
which viewed our departure with that profound anxiety which only an
imminent danger of murder and scalping can produce. I myself was never
particularly afraid of the Indians, for to my mind the great and almost
the only military virtue of the Indians was that they were silent men
in the woods. If they were met squarely on terms approaching equality,
they could always be whipped. But it was another matter to a fort filled
with women and children and cripples, to whom the coming of the Indians
spelled pillage, arson, and massacre. The British sent against us in
those days some curious upholders of the honour of the King, and
although Indian Butler, who usually led them, afterwards contended that
everything was performed with decency and care for the rul