Our
tale begins with the elderly and enigmatic “Dr.
Blank” recounting an adventure he had as a member of Rogers’ Rangers during
the early months of 1756, to the “New Contributor”, a young college
student, who eight to ten years after hearing it wrote it down. Later, he sent this account to the editors of
the Knickerbocker magazine, who published it in March of 1845.
According to Dr. Blank, in 1755, when he was nineteen, he joined the Provincial
Army, which was then preparing to take Crown Point away from the French. With the forces commanded by General Johnson,
he marched north to the “Great Carry”, a land break between the
waterways of the Hudson River, Lake George, Lake Champlain, and the St.
Lawrence River. On the eighth of September
1755, he fought in “The Bloody Morning Scout”, three miles from Lake
George, where Colonel Ephraim Williams, the Founder of Williams College, and
215 others fell, when Baron Dieskau’s French forces ambushed
the Provincial Army.
That
'dark and bloody ground',1757, from The Gentleman’s Magazine, May 1759
After
his enlistment ended at the end of that year, he joined Rogers' company of
Rangers. Our story takes place in the
early months of 1756, somewhere near the modern towns of Lake George, Fort
Edward, Fort Ann and Whitehall, a village which was originally known as "Skenesborough"1,
when the area was raw wilderness, haunted by skulking parties of Canadian “coureurs
de bois” and Native American warriors.
The next year he joined Rogers' company of Rangers,
and was stationed with a party of them at Fort Ann, not far from where
Whitehall now stands. But at that day it
was a 'dark and bloody ground;' a frontier station in the forests...
One day, in mid-winter, eight
rangers, with a serjeant, were ordered out
on some service; the doctor did not know what, but probably to seize some straggling
Frenchman about Ticonderoga or Crown-Point, and bring him to the fort, for the
sake of obtaining intelligence. He was
himself of the party. A narrow road, or
rather path, led northward toward Canada, and they followed it for several
hours. There had just been a very heavy
fall of snow: all the pines and hemlocks of the forest were loaded thick with
it; and as the afternoon was still and clear, only occasional flakes or light
masses dropped from the burdened boughs like feathers. These circumstances were stamped on the old
man's mind, seeming like a constantly-recurring dream. The rangers waded in Indian file through the
snow, and as danger was apprehended, a man was placed some rods in advance, one
on each flank, and another behind. This last
was the doctor himself, 'and this was the gun I carried,' said he, taking a short heavy piece from a
corner. They saw no signs of the enemy:
there was no sound but the note of the little 'chicka-dee-dee,' so familiar to the pine woods in winter.
At length, they descended into a hollow the frozen
sheet of Lake George lay not far on the
left, and a steep hill on the right. The
ground a short distance before them, was quite low and swampy, and a little
brook had spread itself out on the path, making a frozen space, free from trees,
across which their advanced man was now slowly tramping, crushing his boots
into ice and water at every step. He
paused suddenly, turned sharply round, and gave the low whistle appointed as
the signal of alarm. He had seen the
tracks of many moccasined feet in the fresh snow beyond. There was not time to think; the loud report
of a gun broke the stillness. The ranger
gave a shrill scream, leaped four feet into the air, and fell flat. Instantly the Indian yell burst from the
woods on the left and front, followed by the stunning rattle of more than fifty
guns, and not a man of the rangers but one ever moved alive from the spot where
he stood transfixed with surprise at the sudden death of his comrade.
That
man was our hero, whose position, far behind the rest, saved him. He remembered the panic felt at the fierce
burst of yells and musketry, and the sudden rush of the savage swarm from their
ambush, upon his fallen comrades: and, in the next instant, that his memory
could recall, he was flying back toward the fort. He heard sharp, sudden yelps behind him, and
glancing back, saw two Indians bounding on his track. He ran a mile, he should think, without
turning or hearing a single sound; then turning his head, saw an Indian
leaping, silent as a spectre, within a few rods of him.
With
admirable coolness, he turned quickly round, and raising his gun with a steady
hand, fired with such good effect that the Abenaki pitched forward to the
ground, and his shaven head ploughed up the snow for yards, by the impulse of
his headlong pursuit. The young soldier
turned and fled again, and as he did so he heard the report of the other
Indian's gun, followed by the loud humming of the ball. So alert and attentive were his faculties,
that he observed where the bullet struck upon a loaded bough in front of him,
scattering the glistening particles of snow.
A fallen white pine, photograph by the Author.
The path now led downward with a steep descent at the
bottom an ancient pine-tree had fallen across it, whose sharp broken branches
rose up perpendicularly from the prostrate trunk four or five feet from the
ground, blocking up the way, like a bristling chevaux-de-frise.
The rangers had previously turned aside into the
woods to avoid it. There was no time to
do so now. The doctor's limbs were small
and light, but active as a deer's, and the Indian's tomahawk was close
behind. Without hesitating, he ran down
and sprang into the air. His foot
caught, so that he fell on the other side; but he snatched up his gun and ran
again. In a moment, he heard a wild and
horrid cry, and turning as he ran up the opposite hill, he saw a sight that has
murdered his sleep for many a night. The
daring savage had leaped like him, but had not succeeded so well; he had
tripped, and one of the broken branches had caught and impaled him on its
upright point, passing upward into the cavity of his chest! He saw the starting eye-balls, and the
painted features hideously distorted, and paused to see no more.
About sunset the sentinels of Fort-Ann saw him
emerging from the woods, running as if the Indians were behind him still.
“A strong party sent out next morning...”, from “The March of Roger's Rangers” by Frederic Remington
A strong party sent out next
morning found the bodies of the
rangers stripped, and frozen in the various positions in which they had died,
so that they appeared like marble statues.
On a tree close by, the French officer who commanded the Abenakis had
fastened a piece of birch bark, inscribed with an insolent and triumphant
message to the English. The bodies of
the two Indians had been removed, although the white snow around the old pine
tree retained ineffaceable marks of the tragedy that had been enacted there,
and was beaten hard by the moccasins of a crowd of savages who had gathered
about the place.
This was Dr. Blank’s tale of
adventure as a member of Rogers’ Rangers in 1756, but is it fiction like the
story of “Joshua Goodenough’s Old Letter”2, full of facts, but
ultimately just good historical fiction, or is it a truly a lost tale of an
actual happening? Come back next week and read “The Peculiar Tale of
Dr. Blank, Part One ©”, where we will talk
about some things in the tale that ring true and some inconsistencies and try
to answer the question of is it a true tale or a tall tale.
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
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That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1 When
it was first settled in 1759, the town was called Skenesborough, the name was changed
to Whitehall in 1789.
“Whitehall
History”, [© 2005-2011, Bloated Toe Enterprises],
https://whitehall.bloatedtoe.com/whhistory.html#:~:text=Originally%20called%20Skenesborough%2C%20Whitehall%2C%20NY,name%20of%20Skenesborough%20until%201786.,
accessed March 30, 2023
“Part
of the counties of Charlotte and Albany, in the Province of New York”, [Library
of Congress], https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3803w.ar107800/?r=-0.752,0.029,2.503,0.919,0,
accessed March 30, 2023
“Town
of Fort Ann”, [Ancestry.com], https://sites.rootsweb.com/~nywashin/ftann.htm,
2 See
Frederic Remington’s, “Joshua Goodenough’s Old Letter”,
Stories of Peace and War, published by Harper & Brothers, New York
and London, 1899, page 31, HERE.
Sources
Department
of the Army, Basic Cold Weather Manual, FM 31-70, April 12, 1968,
[Paladin Press, Boulder, CO, 1974], page 61
Frost, John, LL.D.; Thrilling
Adventures Among the Indians, [J. W. Bradley, Philadelphia, PA, 1849], page
33 to 38, https://books.google.com/books?id=4JCRlAIOa5QC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=%22a+very+old+gentleman,+Dr.+Blank%22&source=bl&ots=nn36oweYDh&sig=ACfU3U1TfCJ1eOPD9veRtIZTDTAUS3DOIw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiy0dDCnfj9AhWzF1kFHdSKDBEQ6AF6BAgJEAM#v=onepage&q=%22a%20very%20old%20gentleman%2C%20Dr.%20Blank%22&f=false,
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Kalm, Peter; Travels
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