Crown of Serpents (49 page)

Boyd’s party of 29 scouts set out on the path west toward Genesee Castle on the early morning hours of September 13. At the same time, Butler and Brant had planned an ambush on that same bluff above Sullivan’s army; when the engineers had fixed the bridge and the Continental troops proceeded up, they would pounce. After cresting the bluff, the trail split and fate took over. In the darkness, Boyd’s men actually passed the Rangers and Indians on a parallel trail traveling in the opposite direction, neither knowing of the other’s presence.

Six miles behind enemy lines – still in darkness – Boyd’s party discovered a recently deserted Indian village with fires still burning inside the huts. Fatigued from the long night march, they hunkered down for the night. When daylight broke, Boyd and his two best sharpshooters, the famous Indian fighter Timothy Murphy along with James Elliot, snuck close to the village and observed two Indians approaching. One Indian was on horseback. The other led a cow. Murphy and Elliot fired simultaneously. Murphy killed the walking Indian – an old Tuscarora. The other, though seriously wounded, escaped.5 Murphy then ran up on his victim and took his thirty-third scalp. It is not known if Boyd ordered his men to shoot. Regardless, contact with the enemy was made under his leadership. It would be his second fatal mistake. Realizing his position was compromised, he sent two runners back to report the location of the village, the killing of the Indian, and the return of his detachment.6

As the scouting party retraced their path back east and just two miles from the safety of the main army, Hon Yost, one of their experienced Oneida Indian guides, found a different trail leading off to the southeast. He urged Boyd to take this route instead of their original one north toward the ravine, but Boyd disregarded his advice.7 Their party then discovered five enemy Indians retreating from them in plain sight. Yost knew this was a ruse to invite pursuit and urged Boyd not to follow for fear of ambush. Again, Boyd overruled his guide – the third fatal error. The party gave chase and Murphy caught up and fired a ball in the trailing Indian’s back. He then coolly pulled another scalp and stole his victim’s leggings, which were of good scarlet colored cloth.8 The chase continued. The Indians successfully lured Boyd’s party closer to their main force laying in wait for ambush not a mile up from the repaired bridge. Among the British forces, Butler heard the approaching firing on his right flank and thought his ambush had been discovered. He shifted his men and to his surprise found a rebel detachment running toward him. Before he was aware of it, Boyd blindly led his own men into the embrace of 500 Rangers and Iroquois warriors; he was surrounded. Boyd’s party took cover in a small grove on a knoll with clear fields of fire. He realized his only chance of escape was to compact his force and strike in mass at a given point to cut through the enemy line. The first volley downed many of the enemy without the loss of a single scout. But the enemy ranks closed. After the second volley and return fire, the scouts started dropping. Hand-to-hand combat ensued. The firing was so close that the black powder of the enemy’s muskets was driven into their flesh.9 With the majority of his men now dead and Boyd injured with a shot through his side, he ordered a final charge. Murphy led the rush and tumbled a larger Indian warrior who blocked his path before several of the scouts beat their way through and ran for their lives. Two Indians pursued Murphy; he eventually outran them but not before pausing to cut off his earlier stolen leggings, which proved too small and hampered his flight. Again set upon by another bloodthirsty warrior, Murphy put a ball through his breast, killing him instantly before finally reaching the safety of the main camp and raising the alarm. Two other scouts hid under a log in the tall grass back on the knoll and went unnoticed before also making their way back to the main army.10 Boyd tried to follow through the breach but his wound hindered his escape. He and two other men, Sergeant Michael Parker and their guide Yost, were taken prisoner. Yost’s own Indian brother (who fought with Brant) recognized him and a confrontation ensued. Chief Little Beard stepped up and slammed a tomahawk in Yost’s skull.11 He was then hacked to pieces by the vengeful Indians for being a traitor. It was at this moment that Boyd asked for an audience with Brant, whom he knew to be a Freemason, in a last desperate attempt to save himself from death. The Rangers and Indians ripped scalps off Boyd’s fallen men, picked up their wounded and dead, and started a hasty retreat back to Genesee Castle. Boyd found himself in the clutches of his enemy and fearing for his life.

The Sign

Continental Army First Sergeant John Salmon, a friend and fellow soldier in Boyd’s company, described the incident. “When Lieut. Boyd found himself a prisoner, he solicited an interview with Brant, whom he well knew commanded the Indians. This chief, who was at that moment near, immediately presented himself; when Lieut. Boyd, by one of those appeals which are known only by those who have been initiated and instructed in certain mysteries, and which never fail to bring succor to a ‘distressed brother’, addressed him as the only source from which he could expect a respite from cruel punishment or death. The appeal was recognized, and Brant immediately, and in the strongest language, assured him that his life should be spared.”12 This account was confirmed by Brant’s adopted nephew and close confidant British Major John Norton is his 1816 journal when he wrote, “Capt. Brant used every endeavour to save Capt. Boyd.”13 Salmon’s well-documented letter, one of the main sources of Boyd’s Masonic appeal, appeared in the appendix of Life of Mary Jemison, the White Woman, a best-selling memoir originally printed in 1824. Salmon is said to have been one of the scouts who escaped the ambush, but there is no evidence to suggest he was an actual witness to this important exchange. However, Mary Jemison, who was kidnapped at the age of 15 and raised by the Seneca Indians, was living at Little Beard’s Town at the time. She knew the Butlers, Brant, and many of the Rangers and Indian warriors. She was 36 years old when this incident occurred and did witness the torture deaths of Boyd and Parker. Her account corroborates Salmon’s letter. Boyd’s gamble that Brant would uphold the sacred tenet of the fraternity was well founded. Brant was known as a worthy brother Mason who kept his word through his actions. Raised and educated in Tory schools, Brant was a man of many quality attributes: civilized, intelligent, charismatic, and a persuasive English orator. He was also a brave and brutal war chief, a battlefield leader of men, and loyal to the British cause. He was considered the epitome of the noble savage and had even visited London where he was received as the “Indian King.” On April 26, 1776 Brant was initiated into the fraternity at Hiram’s Cliftonian Lodge No. 417 in Leicester Fields, London.14 He had the distinct honor of having his Masonic apron presented to him from the hand of King George III himself.15

   Brant’s legend of upholding Masonic honor on the battlefield came from an earlier incident following the Battle of the Cedars in late May 1776. He was alleged to have saved a rebel Mason from execution after the surrender of American troops. Captain John McKinstry, wounded and facing burning at the stake, recalled that Brant was a Freemason and gave the Masonic sign of a brother in distress. Brant accepted the sign and secured McKinstry’s release and resulting fair treatment. After the war they remained good friends. Brant was even honored at McKinstry’s Hudson Lodge No. 13 in Hudson, NY.16 Members of McKinstry’s family vouched for this story during author William Stone’s research for his biography Life of Joseph Brant-Thayendanegea. However, there is one major fallacy to this account: Joseph Brant was clearly in England at the time! In fact, he was about to set sail from Falmouth on the merchantman Lord Hyde. He arrived back to British-held Staten Island in New York on July 29, 1776.17 Another possible explanation was that the saving of McKinstry did not occur at Cedars in Canada but instead at the Battle of Oriskany in New York on August 6, 1777 where Brant was definitely present on scene.

Two more stories were attributed to Brant saving his rebel prisoners before death. One story came directly from Lieutenant Jonathan Maynard. On May 30, 1778 he was captured by Brant’s Mohawks and said that Brant recognized a Masonic tattoo on his arm and interceded.18 The other story revolved around Captain John Wood on July 22, 1779. He was the sole survivor of 40 dead after an engagement between Brant’s Indians and American militia on the Delaware River. After being taken prisoner he supposedly gave the Masonic hail sign and Brant personally intervened and saved him, as well. However, after finding later that Wood was in fact not a Mason Brant treated him with contempt. Years later, Wood’s son said that his father had inadvertently given the signal.19 In both cases, Brant sent the prisoners of war to Canada where they were held for several months and then exchanged for British prisoners. One of the first acts that Wood did upon his return was to become a Freemason.20

The Torture Death

Boyd and Parker were escorted back to Genesee Castle where the rest of the Rangers and Indians had retreated after Sullivan’s forces responded to Boyd’s surprise ambush. Inexplicably, their protector Brant disappeared from the scene. Salmon described what happened next,

After their arrival at Beard’s Town, Brant, their generous preserver, being called on service which required a few hours’ absence, left them in the care of the British Colonel, Butler, of the Rangers – who, as soon as Brant had left them, commenced an interrogation to obtain from the prisoners a statement of the number, situation, and intentions of the army under Gen. Sullivan; and threatened them, in case they hesitated or prevaricated in their answers, to deliver them up immediately to be massacred by the Indians, who, in Brant’s absence, and with the encouragement of their more savage commander, Butler, were ready to commit the greatest cruelties. Relying, probably, on the promises which Brant had made them, and which he undoubtedly meant to fulfill, they refused to give Butler the desired information. Butler, upon this, hastened to put his threat into execution. They were delivered to some of their most ferocious enemies, who, after having put them to very severe torture, killed them by severing their heads from their bodies.21

In the recollection of eyewitness Mary Jemison, 80 years old during interviews for her memoir, she described the torture of Boyd:

Little Beard, in this as in all other scenes of cruelty that happened at his town, was master of ceremonies, and principal actor. Poor Boyd was stripped of his clothing, and then tied to a sapling; where the Indians menaced his life, by throwing their tomahawks at the tree directly over his head, brandishing their scalping-knives around him in the most frightful manner, and accompanying their ceremonies with terrific shouts of joy. Having punished him sufficiently in this way, they made a small opening in his abdomen, took out an intestine, which they tied to the sapling, and then unbound him from the tree, and drove him round it, till he had drawn out the whole of his intestines. He was then beheaded, his head was stuck upon a pole, and his body left on the ground unburied. Thus ended the life of poor Thomas Boyd, who, it was said, had every appearance of being an active and enterprising officer, of the first talents. The other was, if I remember distinctly, only beheaded, and left near Boyd.22

Another account described the torture in even greater detail.

The prisoners were seized, stripped and bound to trees, and severely whipped with prickly ash boughs. The Indians commenced a series of horrid cruelties directed especially toward Thomas. When all was ready Little Beard lifted his hatchet, stained with recent blood, and with steady aim sent it whistling through the air and in an instant it quivered within a hair’s thickness of Thomas’s head. The younger Indians were now permitted to follow the chief’s example, and from right, front and left their bright tomahawks cleaved the air and trembled above the unflinching persons of the victims. Wearied at length of this work a single blow severed Parker’s head from his body, and mercifully ended his misery. Poor Thomas however was reserved for a worse fate. An incision was made in his abdomen and a severed intestine was fastened to a tree. He was then scourged with prickly ash boughs, and compelled to move around until the pain was so great that he could go no farther. Again pinioned his mouth was enlarged with a knife, his nails dug out, his tongue cut away, his ears severed from his head, his nose hewn off and thrust into his mouth, his eyes dug out and the flesh cut from his shoulder, and then sinking in death after their enormities, he was decapitated and his disfigured head after being partly skinned raised by the frenzied savages upon a sharpened pole and a knife stuck into body when it was found.23

The Betrayal?

Was this atrocity the result of a deliberate act of betrayal? There is substantial evidence to suggest that Boyd was not the resolute Patriot he was portrayed to be but instead broke under interrogation after being threatened with death. According to this letter excerpt from Butler to the commandant of Fort Niagara, Lieutenant Colonel Mason Bolton, on the day after the killings Butler specifically reported,