Chelsea Creek and Fighting in the Indian Way

Earlier this spring the Army Historical Foundation shared Alexander Cain’s detailed article “‘The Firing Begun on Boath Sides’: The Battle of Chelsea Creek, 27-28 May 1775.”

Cain’s introduction says:

Positioned between the significant events at Lexington and Concord (19 April) and the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Battle of Chelsea Creek (27-28 May) is frequently overshadowed by these more renowned engagements. Nevertheless, Chelsea Creek should not be regarded merely as a preliminary skirmish to Bunker Hill. The events of 27-28 May are equally essential to understanding the Siege of Boston as those at Lexington and Concord and at Bunker Hill. Therefore, the Battle of Chelsea Creek warrants comparable scholarly attention.

The Battle of Chelsea Creek holds considerable significance within the broader context of the American Revolution. This engagement is notable for several key milestones, including the first planned offensive by Provincial land forces, which resulted in direct combat. It also marked the initial collaboration between military units from different colonies and the first use of artillery by American forces in support of the Revolutionary cause. Most importantly, Chelsea Creek signaled the emergence of the American Army and the adoption of a supply interdiction strategy that benefited the Provincials in subsequent campaigns.

The Battle of Chelsea Creek also led to the first time Native Americans fought for the American forces in the “Indian” way, as opposed to individual Native men serving within militia companies modeled on the British regulars.

That started on 29 May, the day after the battle. Chaplain David Avery recorded in his diary:

About noon Capt. [Jehoiakim] Yoking, a Stockbridge Indian & I reconnoitered the Ground East of the schooner & judged that the taking off the cattle was practicable. The Capt. with 3 men took a canoe & went about a mile & a quarter upon the north side of the river from the Ferry & went across to Noddle’s Island & reconnoitered & scouted round about an hour & a quarter, when he fixed his centuries & another canoe went over to his assistance & soon took 2 horses & mired a 3d when a cannon ball fell pretty near them & four barges landed upon which all the scout retreated to the main shore & came over.

Upon that I advised that they should go back & get the stock. Accordingly they got off the Stock about sunset.

On 3 July the Massachusetts committee of safety considered a request from a man who had evidently been on that raid:

Henries Vomhavi, an Indian, having represented to this committee, that he had taken two horses at Noddle’s island, one a little horse, which he is desirous of retaining as some recompense for his fatigue and risk in that action, in which, it is said he behaved with great bravery; it is the opinion of this committee, that said Indian should be gratified in his request, which will be an encouragement to others in the service, provided, the honorable Congress should approve thereof.

The Massachusetts Provincial Congress did resolve that Vomhavi should receive “a small Horse…for his own use.”

That small operation to seize livestock from Noddle’s Island thus appears to have been conceived and carried out by the Stockbridge Indian company. That was an official part of the Massachusetts force, but people viewed those fighters as living and fighting in their own way. The horse for Vomhavi, who’s otherwise unknown, shows the rebel government saw value in compensating those men differently as well. 

“The horses lately taken from Noddle’s Island”

The major fighting over Noddle’s Island, later elevated with the name of the Battle of Chelsea Creek, took place on 28 May 1775.

Provincial troops returned to the island on 30 May and 10 June to remove the remaining livestock and burn the structures still standing on Henry Howell Williams’s farm.

On 2 June, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress appointed a five-man committee to consider what to do with “the horses lately taken from Noddle’s Island.”

That committee decided to treat a significant number of those animals, if not all, as belonging “to our enemies” and thus as the spoils of war. Perhaps those horses really had been the property of the British military, left to graze on the island. But we know that Williams had raised horses on that island, and on 12 June he told the congress that provincial soldiers had taken more than eight horses from his farm.

Before that petition arrived, the congress had adopted its committee’s recommendation:

the same horses be delivered to the committee of supplies, to be by them used and improved for the benefit of the colony, as they shall think fit, until further order from this or some future congress, or house of representatives.

On 13 June, one horse was grazing outside Edmund Fowle’s house in Watertown, where Provincial Congress committees met. The congress assigned “the horse in Mr. Fowle’s pasture in this town, which was taken lately from Noddle’s island,” to James Sullivan. Along with two other delegates, he was about to head west to inspect Crown Point and Fort Ticonderoga, and he needed transportation.

On 3 July, the committee of safety resolved:

Henries Vomhavi, an Indian, having represented to this committee, that he had taken two horses at Noddle’s island, one a little horse, which he is desirous of retaining as some recompense for his fatigue and risk in that action, in which, it is said he behaved with great bravery; it is the opinion of this committee, that said Indian should be gratified in his request, which will be an encouragement to others in the service…

The next day the full congress heard the “recommendation of the committee of safety relative to an Indian’s having a horse.” Yet another committee endorsed the plan to give Vomhavi the small horse “to encourage his further brave conduct and good behaviour in camp,” and the congress agreed.

The Provincial Congress thus recognized how the Stockbridge company was a valuable part of its army, and how its men might have particular expectations in regard to warfare. While Sullivan was supposed the return the first horse, the second now belonged to Vomhavi.

TOMORROW: And for Henry Howell Williams?

Meeting “Capt. Yoking”

Here’s more from the diary of the Rev. David Avery, who as chaplain accompanied a regiment to Chelsea in the wake of the fight over Hog and Noddle’s Island.

This is Avery’s entry from 29 May 1775 as the provincial forces finished salvaging useful material from H.M.S. Diana, which had run aground during the fighting.

29. Monday. Lodged last night in a comfortable bed. Went down to the Ferry, much treasure was got out to-day. Two large anchors & one Kedge & several large square pig iron as ballast, with several articles of consequence & a barrel of pork. 

When this diary was published in the D.A.R.’s American Monthly Magazine in 1900, the word I typed as “Kedge” (a sort of small anchor) was transcribed as “Kelly.” I haven’t seen the original document to confirm my guess.

Avery’s entry continued:

About noon Capt. Yoking, a Stockbridge Indian & I reconnoitered the Ground East of the schooner & judged that the taking off the cattle was practicable. The Capt. with 3 men took a canoe & went about a mile & a quarter upon the north side of the river from the Ferry & went across to Noddle’s Island & reconnoitered & scouted round about an hour & a quarter, when he fixed his centuries & another canoe went over to his assistance & soon took 2 horses & mired a 3d when a cannon ball fell pretty near them & four barges landed upon which all the scout retreated to the main shore & came over.

Upon that I advised that they should go back & get the stock. Accordingly they got off the Stock about sunset.

Stood upon guard two hours near Winnisimmit Ferry. Prayed with company.

The reference to “Capt. Yoking, a Stockbridge Indian” is very interesting.

Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War notes one state record of a captain named Jehoiakim Youkin in Col. John Paterson’s regiment. The same name also shows up on the records of Gen. George Washington’s headquarters. In August 1775 the general’s military secretary, Joseph Reed, paid Jehoiakim Youkin for digging necessaries—though perhaps he was collecting money for other men.

According to Patrick Frazier’s The Mohicans of Stockbridge, Jehoiakim Yokun or Yokum was a Mahican leader and landowner in western Massachusetts in the mid-1700s. Sites in the region still bear the Yokun name.

When the war began, Jehoiakim’s son Timothy Yokun became the first sergeant in Capt. William Goodrich’s company of Stockbridge Indians within Col. Paterson’s regiment. These soldiers were part of the Massachusetts forces and yet set apart in their style of living and fighting. Most company records don’t list Jehoiakim Yokun’s name at all. But evidently he was in command alongside Goodrich, perhaps particularly in combat. Less than two months into the war, Avery was calling him “Captain.”

One historian appears to have conflated father and son, saying Timothy gained the rank of captain during the war. Yet other authors list Timothy Yokun among the Stockbridge soldiers killed by Lt. Col. John Graves Simcoe’s rangers near Yonkers, New York, in August 1778. Diaries of the Sullivan expedition, the postwar diaries of the Rev. Samson Occom, the pension application of David Freemoyer, and an early history of the town of Stockbridge all refer to a “Captain Yoke or Yokun” active later in the war and returning to Stockbridge afterwards. That was most likely Jehoiakim.

Another source tells us the name of one of the Stockbridge men who went out onto Noddle’s Island and brought back those two horses. As quoted here, he was Henries Vomhavi. The Provincial Congress granted him the smaller of those two horses as a reward.

Eager to Enlist, Yet Easily Overlooked: Eastern Massachusetts Indians in Combat in 1775

Today I’m pleased to share an essay from guest blogger David K. Thomas, a student at Colby College in Maine.

Isaac Comecho. Thomas Cognehew. Alexander Quapish. Joseph Paugenit. Fortune Burnee, Jr. These are not household names. But they are among the many American Indians from eastern Massachusetts who rushed to enlist when hostilities commenced in 1775. Each saw action in the Greater Boston area alongside his white and black neighbors.

The exemplary service of Stockbridge Indians from western Massachusetts and a lack of accessible documentation makes it easy to overlook these eastern Massachusetts Indians’ contributions.

Several dozen Indians from eastern Massachusetts were in action in 1775—while Indians were officially exempt from service. In fact, two hundred Indians from eastern Massachusetts—more than a third of all Indian males—eventually saw combat during the Revolutionary war in nearly all of the conflict’s major campaigns.

These included Mashpees and other Wampanoag Indians from dwindling reservations at Herring Pond, Plymouth, Dartmouth, and elsewhere. Aquinnah Wampanoags from Martha’s Vineyard also served. Nipmucs and Massachusett Indians such as the Naticks and the Ponkapoags—the remnants of Christian “Praying Town” communities—also enlisted. The tribal affiliations of other Indians remain unknown.

Military service provided a respite from a life spent wandering in search of farm work, whaling, or toiling as servants. Indian soldiers hoped that their service would lead to better times and improved treatment. Perhaps this explains why Eastern Massachusetts Indians fought so bravely in the opening battles of America’s war of independence.

Indian soldiers from Massachusetts hastened to enlist when the first Revolutionary shots were fired in 1775. Isaac Comecho, a Natick Indian, was present on the Battle Road between Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Thomas Cognehew, a Mashpee Indian from Sandwich, also “marched on the alarm of April 19, 1775.” A struggling farmer, the Nipmuc Fortune Burnee, Jr., of Grafton, officially enlisted on April 26, 1775, a week after the Battles of Lexington and Concord (see Burnee’s name on a pay petition here).

Some Indians, like Henries Vomhavi (profiled on Boston 1775 in 2009) participated in raids on British posts. Less than two months later, sixteen Indians fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Five were from Massachusetts. These men included Natick Indians Alexander Quapish and Joseph Paugenit. Quapish served in Cambridge in 1775, but sickened and died early the next year.

Paugenit was the son of a wounded French and Indian War veteran. His surname is a shortened form of an Indian word for “codfish.” He later saw action at the Battles of Harlem Heights in 1776 and Saratoga in 1777. He died in a military hospital in Albany before the end of 1777, at just 23 years old. An exact death toll for Indian patriots remains unclear, but these deaths strained already struggling Indian communities.

Indians in the army camp at Cambridge in 1775 no doubt met Stockbridge Indians, Connecticut Indians, maybe even Indians visiting from Maine. They may have even been detached to pick off of British sentries and to join an Indian-led attack on British barges sounding the mouth of the Charles River.

In the short term, there were clear financial incentives to join the American cause in the starting phases of the Revolutionary War. Some Indians, like the debt-ridden Jonas Obscow, who had buried three sick children in the years prior to 1775 (as he and his wife wrote in a 27 May 1772 petition to the province), were all but forced to join the Continental Army out of economic necessity.

From the start of the Revolution, all enlisted Massachusetts Patriots of color found generous enlistment bounties and pay equal to that of white soldiers. Moreover, Indians received either a “bounty coat” or the equivalent in cash from the Continental Army. For instance, Wampanoags Samuel James and Robert Pegin, both of Bridgewater, received their bounty coats in December 1775.

Despite the initial reluctance of the Continental Congress to employ Indian (and African American) soldiers, in December of 1775, Massachusetts officials called on Indian soldiers “in the case of real necessity.” New England Indians became more prevalent in the Continental Army.

The services of Eastern Massachusetts’ Indians in 1775 proved to be only the beginnings of many distinguished military careers. Yet despite their services and sacrifices, little improved for these Native Patriots or their Indian communities after the war.

Recent developments, particularly several ceremonies in Natick in the 2000s, have resulted in renewed attention to Massachusetts Indians’ contributions to the American cause and represent an increased interest in their service and contributions.

The major sources for information on Native soldiers in the first year of the Revolutionary War include George Quintal, Jr., Patriots of Color: “A Peculiar Beauty and Merit”; the Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War series; and the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Minority Military Service, Massachusetts: 1775-1783.

This article is a nice match to Thomas’s professor Daniel J. Tortora’s article at the Journal of the American Revolution today, tracking Native American soldiers from Massachusetts through the war. Thanks to both men for the contribution! 

Henries Vomhavi and Two Captured Horses

On 3 July 1775, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety considered a special request from a provincial soldier:

Henries Vomhavi, an Indian, having represented to this committee, that he had taken two horses at Noddle’s island, one a little horse, which he is desirous of retaining as some recompense for his fatigue and risk in that action, in which, it is said he behaved with great bravery; it is the opinion of this committee, that said Indian should be gratified in his request, which will be an encouragement to others in the service, provided, the honorable Congress should approve thereof.

I quoted a couple of reports on the fighting on Noddle’s Island back in May 2007. The major purpose of the provincial raid was to seize cattle and sheep, depriving the besieged garrison of meat. Those two horses were a bonus.

The Provincial Congress records for the afternoon of 4 July say:

A recommendation of the committee of safety relative to an Indian’s having a horse, was read, and committed to Doct. [John] Taylor, Mr. [George] Partridge, and Mr. [John] Glover. . . .

The Committee upon the Letter relative to the Indian’s having a Horse, reported. The Report was accepted, and is as follows, viz:

Resolved, That a small Horse, taken by Henries Vomhavi from Noddle’s Island, be granted to the said Henries for his own use, to encourage his further brave conduct and good behaviour in camp.

What about the bigger horse that Vomhavi had secured? The Congress had already put that to use on 13 June, resolving “That Mr. [James] Sullivan have liberty to use the horse in Mr. Fowle’s pasture in this town which was taken lately from Noddle’s island for his journey to Ticonderoga.” The legislature was then meeting in Edmund Fowle’s house in Watertown, now home to that town’s historical society. Evidently the horse was kept as provincial property nearby.

I’d love to know more about Henries Vomhavi, but as far as I can tell this is the only record of him.