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Episode 19 - The Raid on German Flatts, NY
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In the middle of the night in November, 1757, a small town on the banks of the Mohawk River wakes up to the sound of gunfire and shouts. They had heard of devastating raids by the French and their native allies on other frontier settlements, but surely such a fate would never have reached them!
In this episode we discuss German migration to the British colonies, the raid on the thriving settlement of German Flatts, NY, and the poor community that just couldn't catch a break.
Intro & Outro music - "Drums and Guns" by Village Volunteers Drum & Fife Corps
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Transcript
Introduction and Passion for Niche History
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome back to Tales from the French and Indian War. i am your host, Jackson. I am your co-host, Matt. And we are back together again, eking out an episode before the end of June.
00:00:23
Speaker
And we are talking about another small scale action in the in the grand course of the war. But as we love to say, we love talking about the small, more minute aspects of the war, because when you dig a little bit deeper than the surface, you find a lot of interesting stuff. So hoping to bring a fascinating little story from the French and Indian War to you today.
00:00:46
Speaker
That and we just we never want this podcast to end. So we're going to keep finding these little little, you know, even when we get to the end of the war, we're going to find these little tiny battles and keep it going. So, ah yeah, that's what we're just having so much fun. It's it's an interesting.
00:01:04
Speaker
like balancing act of feeling the progression of the podcast and moving through time, but then also taking enough pit stops to really flesh it out. So hopefully we're we're striking a good balance with that. I know I'm having fun diving into the smaller stuff, but obviously the big events, those make for a really great episode. So you can't go too long without without the big battles either.
00:01:25
Speaker
Correct.
Significance of the Raid on German Flats
00:01:27
Speaker
Yeah, today we are talking about the raid on German Flats. It's probably pretty low on the list of French and Indian War encounters that you may have heard of, especially if you only read one book or just watched a couple videos about the war as a whole.
00:01:44
Speaker
in a lot of the the big summaries, like big comprehensive books about the war, it might get... A couple sentences, similar to like the Louis Borg episode we did last time where it was the failed Louis Borg expedition. And that usually just gets a few sentences, maybe a paragraph or two if the author's being very generous. You know, maybe like Montcalm and Wolf that he he's very detailed in a lot of the smaller stuff too, which I appreciate the author there.
00:02:11
Speaker
Parkman, I think. But ah yeah, so this is a pretty... Not well-known episode of the war, but I know we've got some listeners in upstate New York, and that's where the action is taking place today. It's, again, along that Mohawk River.
00:02:28
Speaker
We've talked about it several times. It's, you know, the the New York colony's
Strategic Importance of German Flats
00:02:32
Speaker
main avenue west to compete with the French fur trade, to threaten French possessions there.
00:02:38
Speaker
It leads the way to Oswego, which at this time in the war... is either still a smoking ruin or the British are finally starting to rebuild. I think it still might...
00:02:50
Speaker
They might have just barely been trying to get back and reestablish something at at Oswego in 1757. But by 1758, they're back there for sure. But the Battle of Fort Bull took place along this corridor not far from the Mohawk River.
00:03:06
Speaker
And then, of course, the Lake George isn't terribly far from from that waterway either. So we've spent some time in upstate New York, haven't we, Matt? Yes, we have. And I apologize for any of our upstate New York listeners if we mispronounce the name of your town about a million times in this episode. We're going to be talking about the village of what Jackson and believe to be pronounced Herkimer.
00:03:29
Speaker
If it is not pro pronounced that way, we sincerely apologize and I hope that you will correct us on Facebook or on one of the podcast platforms. But that is where the actions of today's story will take place is near that village.
00:03:44
Speaker
So if you're there, i'm I'm not sure. I tried to look up to see if there was any any sort of monuments or anything. I couldn't find anything, but that doesn't mean there's not one there. So if there is, I'd be interested to hear about that and see like what's actually at the site of the German flat settlement. I did also see that there's a, there's a modern day German flats in New York, which is not the same place. So if you're looking to go to German flats, don't, don't go there, go to Herkimer.
00:04:11
Speaker
Oh, where's that one? I think it's, I think it's more South, but I could be wrong. But it is a different place. So I think it's just another town that picked up that, that name. So yeah, there's something cool, but yeah, we are, We are in upstate New York, and I hope that our listeners there can be like, oh, that's in my backyard.
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's so we love finding the little bits of local history all across the what is now the British colonies and Canada. But yeah, so German flats. Why is it called German flats, the settlement out by the Mohawk River? Well, there's a lot of Germans living there.
00:04:50
Speaker
There's about, at this time, there's approximately 300 inhabitants, maybe 60 or so houses. There's five block houses around the settlement, which is, there's a few different areas of settlement.
00:05:03
Speaker
You know, it's a little bit more spread out or clusters, several clusters of settlements along the river. but We're focusing on the north side of the Mohawk River. Yeah, where present day Herkimer is. That's the focus of the action today. That was where the the main village of German flats was.
00:05:20
Speaker
At this point, 1757, it had been around for about 30, 35 years or so. The settlers first arrived around the 1720s. So the settlement of German flats was mainly settled by Germans, specifically Palatine Germans or Palatin Germans. That's a word I've only ever read. I've never actually heard, I don't think.
00:05:44
Speaker
ah For our intents and purposes, it is referring to a region of Germany, the southwest and central west area of what is now Germany. Of course, at this time, it was the Holy Roman Empire. Germany as an entity did not exist, but we're just going to refer to those lands as Germany.
00:06:02
Speaker
So you might be wondering, Matt, why are there Germans in the middle of the British colonies, specifically New York? Do you have any idea? I yeah No, I do not. I am wondering that. So please, please
German Immigration to the Colonies
00:06:14
Speaker
inform us. Oh, well, let me tell you, man.
00:06:18
Speaker
You're in luck. So German immigration to the British colonies did start pretty early on, but it really only saw its main force in the early and mid 1700s. So Maryland, actually, the colony of Maryland was originally known as the Maryland Palatinate or Palatinate. Again, not sure.
00:06:37
Speaker
ah Because it was set up specifically as a haven for German Catholics in the 1600s when the the Thirty Years War and some of those real vicious European wars were tearing apart, and devastating the land.
00:06:51
Speaker
And there a lot of confessional divide, Protestant versus Catholic, alongside all the political alliances. So as early as like the founding of Maryland, there were some Germans trickling into the British colonies.
00:07:03
Speaker
But really, it's only the 1700s where we're seeing thousands and thousands of Germans start to make their way. One of the reasons for that is because, again, with all these continued European wars, especially succession wars, different alliances, just you know the birth of these...
00:07:22
Speaker
competing empires. Germany, the German areas are on the front lines. You know, we're seeing in the in the Seven Years' War, the European side of the French-Ninian War. Again, it's Prussia, which is in modern day Germany. That is the central, the focal point of the European fighting. So even at this time, there's still a lot of action happening in Germany.
00:07:43
Speaker
But ah so all these successive wars affecting both Protestant and Catholic Germans are slowly going to start driving a lot of these people to seek a better life, a more stable life, a life where they might have a little bit of peace and quiet perhaps, or at least some land that they can they can own and not have these armies of 50,000 troops coming across and burning everything.
00:08:10
Speaker
As we'll see today, the peace they're looking for wasn't quite found in the New World. But ah a lot of people like the Amish, the Mennonites, the Moravians, ah and of course, luther plenty of Lutherans too. A lot of those groups entered the, well, not the United States, the British colonies through these waves of Germans coming over.
00:08:33
Speaker
and an example of just how many Germans had arrived by the start of the war. Just in Pennsylvania alone in 1745, a decade before the war starts, there were 40,000 Germans in the colony of the Commonwealth Pennsylvania. Yeah. And Matt, do you remember how many French Canadians are there at the start of the war? I do not know, but I'm going to say not. and Well, I guess comparatively, not that many. Well, so there was like 70,000 or 75,000 in all of new France at the start of the war and just Germans in Pennsylvania alone, there's 40,000. So that will give you a perspective on again, that huge population difference between the French and German, uh, new world territories.
00:09:20
Speaker
then Jackson didn't you say you had some family that came over in this time that were German or no yes I did I love to talk about the French ancestry because I can trace some of it back to this very war but on the other side of my family I do have some Germans and they did come over in the 1720s and 30s from this palatinate area of Germany as well as Switzerland and Bavaria too But so, yeah, so my own ancestors were caught up in these this great wave of immigration.
00:09:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. Most of my if you're wondering where Matt's family was during this entire podcast, none of my family had come over yet that I know of. I think I had some British ancestry that might have came over in the colonies, but I haven't dug that deep.
00:10:07
Speaker
yet so you know what a little side note as i was looking back on the uh like the genealogy website to confirm i looked a little bit further into the dutch ancestry i have and a lot of them were around like in the days of uh new amsterdam and like serving in some of the caribbean like wars in the 1600s And I've got some a couple loyalist ancestors, like for the American Revolution. And then of course, I think some that, well, plenty of that stayed in the colonies in the United States. So there's going to be a few more subjects I'm going to be interested in reading. I think especially like the ah Dutch colonies in the New World because of that personal connection. next podcast after the French and Indian War will be based solely working with Jackson, but the most family members. Yeah. Yes. So that way I could keep saying, and you know, this person was my second cousin nine times removed, but on the Dutch side.
00:11:06
Speaker
Yes. One other thing I wanted to know about this before we get into the expedition against German flats. is that there is a somewhat similar link between this immigration wave and what we talked about in the last Acadia episode, where we mentioned the town of Lunenburg and some of the British government's specific efforts to draw what was known as foreign Protestants to settle Acadia rapidly so that they could get a lot of extra population there, more settlers, more militiamen, counteract the the Catholic French that were in Acadia.
00:11:42
Speaker
It's kind of similar in this case. I did read that Queen Anne of Queen Anne's War. So this is like very beginning of the 1700s. She did specifically invite some of these German, I guess you could say refugees or those seeking a better life. She did specifically invite them that were heading, they were heading to England and she invited them to settle in the new world.
00:12:07
Speaker
There was whole like political scandals associated with that because there were suddenly like thousands of Germans showing up into England and they were like, oh, that's a big drain on resources. What are we doing with all these people?
00:12:18
Speaker
ah very A mass movement of people. They're always going to cause that. But I found one, to end this, I found one quote from a historian, Walter Allen Knittle, or Knittle.
00:12:33
Speaker
He wrote a book called Early 18th Century Palatine Emigration, which I think would be the perfect book if you wanted to learn more about this immigration wave. But he summarized the reasons that drew all of these Germans to the new world included war devastation, heavy taxation, an extraordinarily severe winter. i think that was 1708 or nine religious quarrels, but not persecutions land hunger on the part of the elderly and desire for adventure on the part of the young people.
00:13:01
Speaker
Liberal advertising by colonial proprietors. And then finally, the benevolent and active cooperation of the British government. So this isn't exactly a like a wild, completely libertarian movement of people, but there's also some work done, at least in the past by this point, by the British government to bring over these settlers to populate their colonies and help them grow and flourish. And important question is for you, Jackson. What these settlers have been welcomed in New Canada or New France.
00:13:31
Speaker
ah but No, absolutely not. So yeah, this is again showing just how much of a patchwork the British colonies were, you know, different ethnicities, different nationalities, different religious convictions.
00:13:45
Speaker
Whereas new France was much more of a monolith, almost entirely, you know, born and bred French or from like the Northern and Western parts of France. and almost exclusively Roman Catholic because they did not accept people of other denominations or they had to convert upon settling down into the into the province and they weren't as active in recruiting different kinds of people over to their colonies so ah yes they would not have been welcomed the Germans in ah in Quebec unless they became Roman Catholic most likely
00:14:23
Speaker
But yeah, so there's a settlement that we're talking about on the Mohawk River. It is thriving. It has been existing for about 30 years at this point. But do you know, Matt, what draws the French target on this? Now, we know, of course, the frontier is very porous at this time. French and Indian raids are devastating everything from New England down to Virginia.
00:14:45
Speaker
But why do you know anything about why this settlement was targeted?
French Targeting German Settlers
00:14:50
Speaker
Because there is a specific reason. I know the motive behind targeting Maybe there is a specific characteristic of this settlement that I'm missing. But I do know that Vajray, when we were talking about the siege of Fort William Henry, and other battles in the Mohawk region, the French had really appealed to the German settlers that were living in the area to join the French cause and to fight for the French. And they were almost categorically declined in that efforts. So the French government saw it as like a front to New France's governorship of the area that the German settlers would deny them. So they took this as a sort of punitive action against the German settlers. But I guess if you have a specific reason why this... that is...
00:15:43
Speaker
That's exactly what I was thinking. Yes, they were invited to join or pressured to join the French when they were attacking Fort William Henry. They did not. You know, I mean, these are Germans. They're not fighting for proudly for king and country because they're not British.
00:15:58
Speaker
ah They're just trying to live and farm. They refuse, like Matt said, and yes, because they refused, now they're being targeted by Vaudray, who's going to send out an expedition to raid, destroy, and bring back captives from the village.
00:16:16
Speaker
So on October 20th is when the detachment is assembled by Vaudray in Montreal. I would like to back up for one second, Jackson. isn't that yeah Just thinking of this, like thinking candidly, isn't that a really crazy strategy when you have what you would consider a neutral force in the area that's not really taking up arms against you but also not taking arms for you so then your plan is to just attack them so then you create more enemies in the front well i guess their idea is if we attack them we wipe them out so that there won't be enemies these neutral parties left to take up arms against us but uh yeah it's potential potential enemies essentially new France doesn't need more enemies.
00:17:00
Speaker
can, it needs the extra manpower. I can see why they appealed and said, Hey, you know, Britain can't protect you. Come join the French, help us out and we will protect you and in new France. But yeah, once they refused,
00:17:13
Speaker
Yeah, i guess it's ah it's not a a pretty situation, I guess we can yeah can certainly say. it's ah Maybe not the best tactical. What is this town going to do? like how are they going to defend against New France? or you know They're not going to the change the course of the war anyway. Exactly.
00:17:32
Speaker
But yeah, so on October 20th, so this is about a couple months after Fort William Henry, you know, the aftermath happened. the Everyone's returned to New France, all the soldiers, the militiamen.
00:17:44
Speaker
And so now that that's all set, he's sending out another expedition of about 300 men or so. So it's led by Franรงois-Marie Picotรฉ de Belle Estre. send it 10 times fast yeah so fun fact because i did at first i didn't find a connection but i do believe he is my second cousin nine times removed and i have the genealogy websites to prove it no you're losing credibility
00:18:13
Speaker
So he was born in 1716. His father's in the military. He followed in his footsteps. He's born and bred in New France, ah in Lachine, which is just outside of Montreal. We've seen a lot of French officers follow this path where pretty young, they join the Marines.
00:18:30
Speaker
They fight all over North America for New France. So he himself went from Mississippi during the Chickasaw Wars, which I'd love to read more about, all the way up to Acadia and King George's War.
00:18:41
Speaker
He was stationed in some of the western outposts before the French and Indian War, including modern Niles, Michigan. He was in the Battle of the Monongahela, the Battle of Oswego.
00:18:53
Speaker
He went down to the Carolinas to raid with some Indians. So he's a veteran traveled all over. Yeah. Seen a lot of action. I think i even read I didn't look any further into this yet, but he but he was captured at one point raiding near Fort Cumberland in like that's like that would be Virginia at this time.
00:19:12
Speaker
but And he was interrogated in the presence of George Washington. so George Washington may have met him. Hey, this is a great segue into telling our listeners about the young Washington movie coming out later this week. Yes, go see that. I've seen the, okay, I'm not trying to get too much off track of Jackson, but I did see the trailer for it today where Washington was being questioned, or they were reading over the, uh,
00:19:37
Speaker
the treaty that or not treaty the agreement he signs about the Jumonville affair the front where he admits to like assassinating Jumonville and all that so it's I figured they'd have to cover that one yeah it was I saw that like saw it on TV and I was like oh my gosh so yes listeners please go watch that movie and then we'll debrief about it afterwards yes yes well I think I'm I think I'm gonna go see it with my father-in-law and I think you're also seeing it with father-in-law I am also seeing it with my father-in-law Okay. So anyway, back to, back to George Washington.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yes. Who knows? They'll probably won't put that in the movie, but maybe, we'll be in the background somewhere. Yeah. um But yeah, anyway, so lots of experience all across North air America, a qualified man to lead an expedition into enemy territory.
00:20:24
Speaker
He's got seven officers, 12 cadets in the Marines, 15 Marines, like full-on Marines, 30 Canadian volunteers, and about 200 resident Indians. So those are like the domiciliers that we saw in French in the Fort William Henry episode with some of the primary resources. I couldn't, I tried, I couldn't confirm exactly which tribes they were from, or like any notable chiefs that might have been on. Unfortunately, that kind of documentation is lacking very often. found some British primary sources at the time, referred to them as, and I'm assuming this is a mistranslation or, you know, they just wrote it.
00:21:04
Speaker
incorrectly, but they call them Odin and dog Indians, which I don't know if that means oneida Indians. No, so onondaga was one of the six nations like the eu okay league.
00:21:16
Speaker
So now there were some Mohawks who migrated up north and joined new France as allies, even though most of the Mohawks stayed pretty loyal to the British.
00:21:27
Speaker
So I think Well, yeah, I would be surprised if some Onondaga Indians were fighting for New France there.
00:21:39
Speaker
It's interesting because this was... So the the source I was reading from was from a journal of one of the... British soldiers who was stationed nearby at Fork Herkimer. that Oh, wait. is that Is that the account of Conagwikwison?
00:21:55
Speaker
No, this is Benjen. Oh, okay. Yeah. No, this is an actual British soldier that was garrisoning that fort. um and then ah this this account though he wrote down that a woman who and i'll we'll get to it later in the episode but a woman like who came to the fort after the raid relate to him that there were odin and daka indians with the and enemy and then see that my research interesting yeah but then like throughout this throughout his writings he refers to them as a lot a lot of like oneida indians like which
00:22:29
Speaker
is not So that's why I thought maybe like, oh, he just wrote Odendaka, but he meant Oneida. But regardless. There are some, yeah there's some Oneida involvement in this story for sure that we'll cover. So maybe, yeah, maybe the puzzle will sort itself out as as we move along. We'll see. hmm.
00:22:47
Speaker
So yeah, so with this ah about 250-300 men, they depart from Montreal in October. On October 24th they stop at La Prรฉsentation, mission slash fort on the St. Lawrence.
00:23:00
Speaker
They pick up some more friendly mohawks that are in that mission settlement, add to the expedition. They boat through Lake Ontario and then into the Black River, which is in modern day Sackett's Harbor, New York.
00:23:16
Speaker
That was also where Vaudreuil's brother had set up his flying camp once they were coming down on Oswego last year. But they go up that river. They're doing ah various portages and river crossings as they approach German flats on the Mohawk.
00:23:34
Speaker
And side note, the the fact that the French can get to the Mohawk River and travel up it or to it unopposed. Now, we've talked about how much of a lifeline the Mohawk River was going straight to Albany, straight to the the heart of the the the New York colony.
00:23:53
Speaker
And the French are just kind of... cruising along through right up all the way to German Flats, which is a significant penetration from the the most advanced British positions like when they had Oswego fortified. So that just shows just how much extra territory can be easily accessed by French raiders at this point.
00:24:16
Speaker
um Before they gather outside German flats and attack, they do pass through some Oneida territory. So there's the Oneida Lake, which I think, I don't know if it'd be considered one of the Finger Lakes, but it's just to the east, northeast of those.
00:24:32
Speaker
So it is like the easternmost of the bigger New York lakes. But they pass through some Oneida lands and they do invite them to join. And I think a few Oneida Indians do join the attack.
00:24:47
Speaker
However, some of the more pro-British Oneida Indians will go on to warn the settlers at German flats that there's something happening. An attack is impending.
00:24:58
Speaker
Impending? Imminent. emmonenting yeah Not impending. An attack is imminent.
Unheeded Warnings and Consequences
00:25:04
Speaker
But for some reason or the other, the settlers at German flats do not adequately prepare.
00:25:10
Speaker
the The reports are not believed. Now, we can talk a little bit about that because... Well, Indians can be some of the best scouts you can have on campaign as either the British or French. There are often a lot of false reports that do come through because there's a lot of underlying motivations, different tribes at play, a lot of different reasons for feeding true or false intel to the Europeans on your land.
00:25:37
Speaker
I remember when I was reading through Bougonville's journal, he was mentioning when he was giving like a summary of where all the fronts were, like all the action around the continent, in 1757, he was mentioning how there were rumors in the spring of a massive British army marching on Fort Duquesne.
00:25:55
Speaker
But then like a few entries later, like there and that was coming from some Indian scouts, but then a few entries later, he's like, yeah, actually they have no plans in that area whatsoever. And That's true. The British did not attempt anything against Fort Duquesne in that year. So there can be some, you do have to take some of the things you hear with a grain of salt, but in this case, there very much was an attack coming and the German settlers were not quite prepared.
00:26:22
Speaker
Another reason for that is there was Fort Herkimer that was just across the river, maybe like a mile away or so. So they may have felt they were close enough to the fort that they would be safe in case an attack happens.
00:26:35
Speaker
The issue is that this attack is happening at three in the morning on November 12th. So that's there's no, you know, everyone's sleeping at that time. It's sudden.
00:26:48
Speaker
It's devastating. It's quick. There's not going to be a lot of time to get everybody across the river in an orderly fashion and find safety in the fort. That and technically the French force was larger than the Fort Herkimer Garrison. I saw there was about 250 soldiers garrisoned at Herkimer. So having it that would be a pretty massive battle if it were to happen, but technically the French did have the the number advantage.
00:27:12
Speaker
And we have seen, even though this group wouldn't have had siege equipment with this with them, we have seen like with Fort Bull, sometimes that won't even stop them. They can find other ways to attack and seize a fort. So yeah, it could have been could have been dangerous for the garrison, for sure.
00:27:29
Speaker
I did find, before we get into the the actual raid itself, it's not... too many sources to draw from but i have i found a testimony from kona gwee kona gwee son the chief of the oneida so this is referring to like were the settlers of german flats actually notified ahead of time like could anything have been done And he is a an Oneida chief, and he testified 15 days. So this is like after the attack happened there.
00:27:59
Speaker
Some British sources are recording this testimony, and this chief is speaking. And he is saying that the Oneidas, 15 days before the attack, had, quote, sent the Germans word that some of this, they wrote down Swagetchi Indians. I don't know if that's a subgroup of the Oneida or a village of the Oneida. I tried looking into what Swagetchi Indians might have been, but I couldn't really find anything other than this testimony. So we will just assume that some Oneida Indians.
00:28:29
Speaker
told the Germans, told us that the French were determined to destroy the German flats and desired them to be on their guard. About six days after that, we had a further account from the Swagetchi that the French were preparing to march.
00:28:43
Speaker
I then came down to the German flats and in a meeting with the Germans told them what we had heard and desired them to collect themselves together in a body at their fort and secure their women, children and effects and make the best defense they could.
00:28:55
Speaker
and at the same time told them to write what I had said to our brother Waragiyagi, which is the Indian name given to Sir William Johnson. But they paid not the least regard to what I told them and laughed at me, saying they did not value the enemy.
00:29:08
Speaker
And then later on in the testimony, it closes with, this is the truth, and those Germans here present know it to be so. And then George Krogan added to that testimony, the aforesaid Germans did acknowledge it to be so, and that they had such intelligence.
00:29:24
Speaker
So there were some of the survivors of the attack present that confirmed what the chief had said. So it does seem like they were warned ahead of time, but did not believe it or did not take it seriously. Maybe they thought, despite Vaudrey's warning, maybe they thought, you know, we're just, we're not involved in this war. They won't, sure, they won't attack us. I don't know.
00:29:43
Speaker
Yeah, I was actually reading that was a pretty common statement. issue in settlements like this where there's a raider attack coming where they be forewarned but um people just want to take it seriously because you didn't know whether or not the information you were hearing was correct or faulty or you know um but yeah apparently it's pretty common for settlers to kind of just wave off warnings like that um so i guess it's not surprising that it happened here Yeah, maybe they're like, hey, the war's been going on for two, three years. We haven't been hit yet. Surely we'll never be targeted. i don't know.
00:30:19
Speaker
But yeah, so this raid does happen at 3 a.m. m on the morning of November 12th.
Details of the French and Indian Attack on German Flats
00:30:25
Speaker
Balestra's force launch a three-pronged attack on the small, those five different picket forts or block houses spread throughout the settlements. They go one you know one to one.
00:30:37
Speaker
both with musket fire and the Indian War shouting. Overall, they pressure and intimidate these blockhouses to surrender one by one.
00:30:48
Speaker
And then they're going to burn down 60 dwellings. They're taking lots of prisoners in the confusion and the chaos of the night.
00:31:00
Speaker
A lot of the German settlers are going to try to swim or boat across the river to get to the fort. Many are going to, well, at least some are going to drown doing so. There's about 40 or 50 killed from the villagers. Some of that's going to be from fighting and defending. Some of that's going from drowning. Some probably from, you know, just scalping. raiding, trophy collecting, that kind of stuff.
00:31:25
Speaker
102, mostly women and children, will be made prisoners, including the like the mayor of the town or the equivalent. that Fort Herkimer, which was just across the river, was named after Nicholas Herkimer, who would go on to fight in the War of the of American Independence at the Battle of Oriskany. If any listeners are familiar with that war, they probably will have heard of that.
00:31:50
Speaker
battle in upstate New York but he was present there so he wasn't far off like as Matt said he had at least 200 men in the garrison and i did read that once they received word they did send out a detachment to try to fight off the French but I think it was too weak in number and they withdrew and then the French raiders were able to go along finish burning down the town kill cattle get their prisoners and then head off within 24 hours of first striking jackson i actually i have a pretty good i think primary source to read from here um it was actually in the same like online book that i was reading where i i found that other source but this one is actually ah an excerpt from the journal of balustray or baluster so oh i think i i did see that yeah go ahead and read Yeah, so, and I know he goes through the whole attack. So, I mean, hey, we got we got all the facts right, according to, so that's good. Well, no, so I also heard in another source that quoted Balestria's journal or account of the of the battle that he was greatly exaggerating the amount damage they inflicted on. Well, that's what I was about to read, because I think it's kind of, I think it's pretty funny. So, um I think he gets a kill, right? So he says, in all these expeditions, about 40 English paris killed or drowned. The number of prisoners is nearly 150 men, women and children, among whom is the mayor of the village, the surgeon and some willish officers. We had not a man killed, but M. De Lorimer, Lorimer officer, was wounded in the right side by a ball and three or four savages slightly. Well, he calls those native allies, savages. Savages. Savages.
00:33:34
Speaker
The damage inflicted on the enemy is estimated according to the representations of the English themselves to wit, which he, according to the representations of the English themselves, which is interesting. That's so he's like, you know, yeah, what they estimated the damage. it Um, in grain of all sorts, a much larger quantity than the Island of Montreal has produced in years of abundance. The same of hogs, 3000 horn cattle,
00:33:58
Speaker
three thousand sheep All these articles were to be sent in a few days to Corollaire. Was this Schenectady? shit I don't know how you say that. Schenectady? I think it's another.
00:34:10
Speaker
My guess is as good as your Schenectady. Yeah. That was a a big site of a battle in the previous war. Correct. It was raid on Schenectady, but not that doesn't mean I know how to pronounce it.
00:34:23
Speaker
1500 horses, 300 of which were taken by the Indians and the greater number consumed for the support of the detachment. And then it goes into the property in furniture, wearing apparel, merchandise and liquor might form a capital of fit or 1.5 million leave levers, which would say $277,000 back then. Yeah. ah The mayor of the village alone has lost which would be the equivalent of The French and Indians have acquired his rich a booty as they could carry off. They have a species more than 100,000 levers, $18,500. One Indian alone has as much as $5,000. There was likewise a plundered a quantity of wampum, silver bracelets, etc. Scarlet cloth and other merchandise, which were forming a capital of $80,000 or more.
00:35:12
Speaker
All this damage could not be done short of 48 hours. It's funny in his journal, he refers to himself in the third person. um but so yes Yeah. He says his own name. So he's like, it's funny. I think it's like, this is a miss. Obviously it was in French and they translated it to English and they actually spelled his name wrong. So it's,
00:35:34
Speaker
In here would be Bellatrix, but as we know it's Beluster. May provision to always be able to resist the enemy, who, as has been observed, were to be the number 350 men in the fort. ah They call it Fort Kuari, but it's Fort Herkimer, about a quarter of a league from the field of battle.
00:35:53
Speaker
So they're they're even overestimating how many men were in that fort and saying that they had the, that the fort would have had numerical advantage. When we do like killed and casualty counts reported from the different sources, we we see that very often where...
00:36:10
Speaker
you know You want your troops performance to be looked at well. So you inflate the number of casualties you think you inflicted. Like remember Fort Necessity, Washington thought they like killed like a hundred or 200 Frenchmen, but the real count was like five 20 or something like that. Yeah. If you imagine having horses and cattle taken, like,
00:36:38
Speaker
and then just all killed i mean that's right yeah take forever that would um and then the other account which i'm not going to read the whole thing but uh i thought benton was a soldier in uh fort herkimer but i think i'm wrong i think ben is um an author of this book that was written in like the early very early eighteen hundreds after this um But he wrote in there that, ah and I think this might be, I can't tell. It's it's not very clear in like the writing style in that time was very like hard to follow. So I can't tell if he's giving like an actual like firsthand account of what happened or if he's quoting from something. But he says that a woman came into the fort the next morning as being Fort Herkimer who had been scalped, her nose clearly cut off.
00:37:27
Speaker
and wounded in her breast and side and said she was even then in that mutilated condition supposed to be likely to recover. She related all that happened to her until scalped and then said that there were Onondaga Indians with the enemy.
00:37:43
Speaker
So that's where that comes in. Yeah, I think it's from this book written in. Yeah, I think it's 18, like in the 1810s. Yeah. the eighteen ten s yeah Well, it does go to show how, you know, a lot of times, especially with how this war ends, if you're thinking quickly or summarizing, you say like the Iroquois League, yeah, they were pro-British. They were British allies.
00:38:08
Speaker
But, you know, to this point, they still haven't officially entered the war. And in it this Native American culture, it's not so much like the entire tribe... you know, just rolls up to the chief, just like in Europe, everyone obeys the king. Like individual warriors can decide to go on any kind of raid for the French, for the British, switching back and forth. Like it is it's more up to the individual warriors and their desire for honor and bravery.
00:38:38
Speaker
as to what kind of raids and battles they participate in. So there are, especially in the Western Iroquois League, like the Seneca Indians at this time are getting very pro-French, especially with all the recent victories.
00:38:51
Speaker
The Mohawk are usually pretty stoutly pro-British, but again, there's some Mohawk that traveled up north to settle in New France some years before. So even though generally we think the Iroquois are pro-British at this time, it's quite quite a bit more complicated and you know in this case we have some oneida or and or onondaga indians joining this raid against the german flats so yeah definitely not a monolith in the six nations not at all yeah Yeah, so from this action, yeah about 50% of the settlement of German flats is either killed or captured.
00:39:29
Speaker
The rest will make it across to Fort Herkimer.
Aftermath and Southern Settlements' Defense
00:39:32
Speaker
So aftermath, there is unfortunately going to be another raid targeting these German settlements, but this time on the south side of the river.
00:39:41
Speaker
so that would be more like the modern towns of Mohawk or Ilion or ah somewhere around there. On the other side of the river, there's more German settlements. that weren't targeted this time, but they will be hit in 1758. The advance notice for that rate is even shorter.
00:39:56
Speaker
I think it's just like the same day or the day before, perhaps. But good news for the the German settlers there. The garrison at Fort Herkimer is ready, and they do have some rangers on hand at that time. So they are actually able to repel the French and Indian raiders and save the fate of those South Bank settlements and drive them off. I don't know the exact kill count on both sides, but I think it is considered a successful repelling of the raiders from what I had read about that. On that note, um unfortunate news for German flats is that they would be attacked again in 1778. Yeah. In the War of Independence, which would again result in pretty bad outcome for the town.
00:40:44
Speaker
That was done by, i believe, loyalists in the area that raided. I think Joseph Brandt, perhaps the like the Mohawk chief who joined up with the British. Yes. think. Yeah. But yeah at least in that case, from what I read, there was much less killed. It was more just destruction of the village, but like the actual citizens, there were very few deaths, thankfully, I think.
00:41:05
Speaker
But yeah, so German flats, real rough 1750s and up to the 1770s until the the destruction again of their town.
00:41:16
Speaker
Very tough. Much, much better to be a German in eastern Pennsylvania at this time where you're mostly insulated from these raids. Still, we'll get through here and there, but on the New York frontier, on the Mohawk River, you're much, much more vulnerable. To talk about my family a little bit. So my family is mostly German ancestry and they are mostly from Eastern Pennsylvania, but they came over in the early it would have been after the War of Independence and all of that stuff. So
00:41:48
Speaker
If we ever do a Civil War podcast, Jackson, I have family members who fought on both sides, unfortunately. So we could get into that. I'm not aware of any of mine. i don't, I mean, maybe they do. ah I just have no awareness of any Civil War history ah in my family. So you've definitely beat me in that century of ancestor research. So that would be yeah interesting to hear more about. For our for our listeners who are interested, I had a family member killed at the Battle of Fort Donaldson.
00:42:16
Speaker
So... I know. All right, different war, but I just wanted to i wanted to get my hat in the ring. so There you go. We're equal there. ah But yeah, so that is ah that's everything I've got for the raid on German Flats in 1757.
00:42:32
Speaker
Yeah. This will be our last. I think Jackson's going to do a short episode in a couple of weeks. I'll be, I'll be out of town, but Jackson will be doing short episode. America 250. Matt is fleeing the country. I'm, I'm, you you know, I am experiencing other cultures. So I develop a greater appreciation of what we have here.
00:42:54
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Sure. So really I'm enjoying it a lot more than, um, I'm appreciating it a lot more than you are, Jackson. but Sure, yeah yeah into that yeah. Well, I'll be watching Young Washington on July 3rd, so yes you'll have to wait your turn until you can watch it.
00:43:10
Speaker
Please go watch that. You know, though I'm excited about this movie, but it's going to really stink because after this movie, we're going to have like you know, a hundred different, you know, podcast ah competitors out there. We better, we better crank up the volume. Yeah. We better keep up the volume of our episodes. We got to stay sharp and competitive now. Yes. Yes. But no, I kid, I kid. I'm glad that I am. I'm excited. Hopefully this movie will drive some more interest in,
00:43:38
Speaker
the the war once people realized that George Washington did more than just fight in the revolution and become president. He had a whole life before that. that he did Yeah, he didn't just pop up out of nowhere ready to lead the army. he yeah he had some lessons to learn and some experience to gain decade before, two decades. Yes.
00:43:57
Speaker
Yeah, you think you you think you screwed up at work. You've never signed paper saying you assassinated somebody.
00:44:05
Speaker
Let's take some perspective. Yeah, I can always be grateful no matter what happens at work, yes. Well, yeah. Thank you all for listening. Uh, hopefully I'll get this one up and edited by the end of June here. Uh, but yeah, a lot of fun stuff coming up to talk about. I know we've been saying that, but it's very exciting times to be following the podcast. So we're glad you're here.
00:44:28
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. We're finally getting into the war. No, we've, ah we've been there. going have some big battles coming me up and, uh, It'll be a lot of fun. yeah not for Not for people that did it, but for us now. it's No, yes. For for people 200 years later. Yes. Very fun for us. Not fun if you're the woman getting scalped and your nose cut off. yeah Anyway, with that cheery note, have a great rest of your day and we'll see you soon.
00:44:56
Speaker
See ya.