Colonel Louis, Caesar Marion, and More

Here are a couple of new online resources exploring aspects of the first months of the Revolutionary War in New England.

The Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site has posted Dr. Benjamin Pokross’s article “General Washington in the Native Northeast.” It begins:

It had been ten days since the Caughnawaga Mohawk men had arrived at the camp in Cambridge with their wives and families, and George Washington was still not sure what he was going to do. This was the second time that one of their leaders, Atiatoharongwen (also known as Col. Louis Cook), had come to Cambridge, and he had again made it known that he could raise four or five hundred men to fight for the colonists if he was given a commission in the Continental Army. But Washington was unsure how he would pay for all these additional soldiers if Atiatoharongwen did what he said, and even more apprehensive about the idea of engaging Indigenous allies at all. At least it had stopped snowing on the clear, cold, morning of January 31, 1776; this was the day Washington had promised to meet the Mohawk delegation outside.

Washington’s “Out-Door’s Talk”, as he called the subsequent conversation in a letter to General Phillip Schuyler, would be the most extensive of several interactions with Indigenous people he had had while he lived in the Vassall House. These visits did not result in decisive alliances or enduring treaties. They matter, however, for two reasons. The first is that they emphasize how the Revolution—normally thought of as a conflict between American colonists and the British—occurred on Native land, in areas that had long been stewarded by Indigenous communities and where Native people continued to find ways to survive in spite of colonial upheaval. Secondly, these visits highlight the unsettled and transitional character of the very early days of the Revolution. For both Washington and the Native diplomats who came to visit him, this was a moment of experimentation, of exploring what a possible relationship between the Continental Army and Indigenous Nations could look like.

At the HUB History podcast, Jake Sconyers shared an episode on “The Well Known Caesar Marion.”

In this somewhat brief episode, we’re going to look at why Mr. Marion was thrown into Boston’s notorious jail 250 years ago this week, and then we’ll compare his treatment inside British-occupied Boston with the experience of Black volunteers in the Continental Army outside Boston, once Virginia enslaver George Washington took command.

Both Pokross and Sconyers explore moments when Washington was pushed out of his comfort zone by encounters with men of color. And in both cases, while he never stopped being a planter with aristocratic ambitions, Washington was able to shift his habits and show respect for allies.

(Hearing the podcast also reminded me that I broke off a short series about Marion, promising more was “COMING UP,” nine years ago. I won’t get back to that story this week, but it’s back on my to-do list.)

“Natives at the Siege” talk in Cambridge, 12 Mar.

On Thursday, 12 March, I’ll speak at the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge on the topic of “Native Americans at the Siege of Boston.”

This is the latest of the annual talks I’ve given at that site to commemorate the anniversary of Evacuation Day.

The description we came up with:

Indigenous Americans fought in the Revolutionary War months before Gen. George Washington arrived in Cambridge. They came to the siege as members of their towns’ militia, in companies from “praying towns,” and as emissaries to confer with Washington, John Adams, James Bowdoin, and other Continental leaders. This talk examines the work of David Lamson, Captain Jehoiakim Yokum, Colonel Louis Akiatonharónkwen, and other Native Americans active in the first campaign of the Revolutionary War.

I’ll draw on a couple of hefty National Park Service studies: George Quintal’s Patriots of Color: ”A Peculiar Beauty and Merit”: African Americans and Native Americans at Battle Road & Bunker Hill and my own Gen. George Washington’s Home and Headquarters—Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’ve also found some new stories about Native soldiers on the Continental side in the first year of the war.

This talk will start at 6:30 P.M., when Cambridge parking becomes a little more possible. It’s free and open to the public, but there’s limited seating, so the site asks people to reserve a seat by calling 617-876-4491 or emailing long_reservations@nps.gov. I believe the talk will be recorded and eventually shared online, but that will take some time.

Fort Plain Museum’s American Revolution Conference, 9-12 June

The 2016 Conference on the American Revolution in the Mohawk Valley will take place on 9-12 June. I’ll be one of many speakers at this event, organized by folks at the Fort Plain Museum in New York. It’s designed both to introduce visitors to the Revolutionary War sites of central New York state and to bring in speakers on the whole conflict.

On Thursday, 9 June, there will be a “Western Frontier Bus Tour” taking registrants to many historic sites in western Mohawk County: Fort Plain/Fort Rensselaer, the General Herkimer Home, the 1747 Nellis Tavern, the Van Alstyne Homestead & Tavern, Fort Klock, the Palatine Church, the Stone Arabia and Klock’s Battlefields, the Stone Arabia Churches, and the grave of Colonel John Brown.

On Friday, 10 June, a second tour covers the “Sites of Eastern Mohawk Country”: Fort Johnson Historic Landmark, Fort Hunter (Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site), Johnson Hall State Historic Site, the Drumm House, the Tryon County Courthouse, the Colonial Cemetery, the Fort Johnstown Jail, the Johnstown Battlefield, the Montgomery County History & Archives, and the Kateri Indian Museum (Liberty Pole Site).

The conference presentations will take place over the weekend at Fulton-Montgomery Community College in Johnston, New York.

The program on Saturday, 11 June, includes:

• Bruce Venter, “The Battle of Hubbardton: The Rear Guard Action that Saved America”
• James Kirby Martin, “Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered”
• Edward G. Lengel, “First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His and the Nation’s Prosperity”
• Lois Huey, “Molly Brant: A Legacy Of Her Own”
• Todd Braisted, “Grand Forage 1778: The Battleground Around New York City”
• J. L. Bell, “The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War”

Don Hagist of British Soldiers, American Revolution will deliver the keynote presentation during that evening’s banquet at the Historic 1765 Goose Van Alstyne Tavern in Canajoharie.

On the morning of Sunday, 12 June, the presenters will be:

• Darren Bonaparte, “Colonel Louis Cook, Oneidas at Oriskany”
• Philip D. Weaver, “The 3rd New Jersey in the Mohawk Valley”

The last event will be a panel discussion of archeology at New York’s Revolutionary War fortifications featuring Dr. Amy Roache-Fedchenko on Fort Stanwix (Fort Schuyler), Dr. Susan Maguire on Fort Niagara, Dr. Douglas Pippin on Fort Haldimand, Aaron Gore on Fort Oswegatchie, and Wayne Lenig on Fort Plain/Fort Rensselaer.

Registration for the conference (including Saturday lunch) and the Saturday banquet are each $50 per person. The bus tours are each an additional $35. For more information and registration forms, please visit the host’s Facebook page.

Washington’s First Two Encounters with Colonel Louis

In early August 1775, or one month after he arrived in Cambridge to take command of the Continental Army, Gen. George Washington received a couple of visitors from the north. One was a New Hampshire militia colonel and Vermont settler named Jacob Bayley.

The other was, the general told the Continental Congress, “a Chief of the Cagnewaga Tribe, who lives within 6 miles from Montreal.” Months later Washington identified that man from the Kahnawake Mohawk community by name: Colonel Louis.

Louis had been born about 1740 near Saratoga. His mother was Abenaki, and his father was of African descent, possibly the enslaved servant (or cook) of a British army officer. Their baby was first named Lewis Cook.

During King George’s War (1744-48), a raiding party of French and Indians captured the family, or at least the mother and young boy. Seeing Lewis’s African features, a French officer wanted to claim him as a slave and perhaps to sell him. Lewis’s mother appealed to the Mohawk leaders in the raiding party, and they insisted instead on adopting both mother and child into their nation.

Lewis Cook thus received new names. One was Mohawk; I’ve seen it rendered as Akiatonharónkwen (“He unhangs himself from the group”) and Atayataghronghta (“His body is taken down from hanging”). The former translation seems like a better match for his character.

The other name was French, since the people at Kahnawake were allied with the French and had taken up Catholicism. From then on, Lewis spelled his name Louis, in the French style. (He’s also sometimes called Joseph Louis Cook, and I don’t know where the first name came from.)

Louis fought on the side of the French Empire in the next war, started by a young Virginia officer in 1754. Evidently at some point in that war Louis added the rank of Colonel to his name.

As a young warrior Louis was at the 1756 fight known as the Battle of the Mononghela, the Battle of the Wilderness, or Braddock’s Retreat. He helped to rout a British army column that included Gen. Edward Braddock, Lt. Col. Thomas Gage, Capt. Horatio Gates, and that young Virginian George Washington, there as an unranked volunteer.

I suspect that Colonel Louis and Washington didn’t dwell on that earlier event when they met in Cambridge in 1775.

COMING UP: What they did have to talk about.

(The image above is a sketch of Colonel Louis by John Trumbull. He was an aide de camp to Gen. Washington during Louis’s August 1775 visit, but Trumbull drew this nearly a decade later in preparation for his Death of General Montgomery.)