“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.

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.

George Washington Sat Here

The invoice for cleaning the John Vassall house in Cambridge before Gen. George Washington moved in, which aide-de-camp Thomas Mifflin paid on 15 July 1775, includes this item:

Necessary house — [£]1.2.6

A few weeks later, on 25 August, Washington noted in his expense notebook a payment of £1.10 to “James Campbell—Necessaries for the House.” Four days later he made an equal payment to Jehoiakim Youkin for “D[itt]o. D[itt]o.”

“Necessary” was an eighteenth-century euphemism for an outhouse. Apparently the general had paid for Campbell and Youkin to clean out the headquarters latrines, or dig new ones. (The unusual name of Jehoiakim Youkin or Yokum also appears in the records of the Stockbridge Indians. His signed receipt for 30 shillings from the general’s secretary Joseph Reed is in the headquarters files.)

As autumn arrived, that outdoor facility no doubt seemed less enticing in the middle of the night. On 20 September steward Timothy Austin bought “3 Chamber Potts & 1 Pitcher.”

The house became more crowded in early December when Martha Washington, her son, and his wife arrived, along with some enslaved servants.

Late the next month the weather turned cold, with ice covering the Charles River for the first time. On 26 January 1776 and then on 14 February, Austin added six more chamber pots for the household, so on chilly nights the family wouldn’t have to visit that necessary house.

(The image above shows the pieces of a Rhenish chamber pot uncovered in an archeological dig at Mount Vernon.)