Note 1276 — Chapter VIII

Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, was in correspondence with Major Brown. Fifteen days after the fall of Ticonderoga the governor wrote to the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts Bay, and, without mentioning his authority, spoke of the "iterated intelligence we receive of the plans framed by our enemies to distress us, by inroads of Canadians and savages from the Province of Quebec upon the adjacent settlements." (Stuart's Trumbull, p. 185.) In a note (Ibid. p. 186) an extract from a letter of Arnold, of the 19th, is given, in which Arnold says that there are "400 regulars at St. Johns, making all possible preparation to cross the lake, and expecting to be joined by a body of Indians, with a design of retaking Crown Point and Ticonderoga." (Cf. also, Arnold, May 23d, from Crown Point, in Jour. Cong., i. 111.) The New Hampshire Provincial Congress, on the 3d of June, 1775, had "undoubted intelligence of the attempts of the British ministry to engage the Canadians and savages in their interest, in the present controversy with America, and by actual movements in Canada." (Sparks's MSS.) On the 6th of July, 1775, Governor Trumbull wrote to General Schuyler, enclosing a statement of a person who had been in Canada, containing the assertion that Governor Carleton "directly solicited the Indians for their assistance, but on their refusal declared he would dispossess them, and give their lands to those who would." July 21, 1775, Schuyler gave Major John Brown a general letter for use in Canada, in which he said: "Reports prevail that General Carleton intends an excursion into these parts; that for that purpose he is raising a body of Canadians and Indians." (Lossing's Schuyler, i. 366.) On Aug. 15th, Brown reported that "Sir John Johnson was at Montreal with a body of about 300 Tories and some Indians, trying to persuade the Caughnawagas to take up the hatchet", etc. (Ibid. p. 380). From the foregoing we can see that Congress had some reason to believe that the English authorities were at work among the Indians. Washington was evidently not convinced of the fact until Schuyler received information of a positive character concerning the Guy Johnson conference at Montreal. On the 24th of December, 1775, he wrote to Schuyler: "The proofs you have of the ministry's intention to engage the savages are incontrovertible. We have other confirmation of it by some despatches from John Stuart, the superintendent for the southern district, which luckily fell into my hands" (Sparks's Washington, iii. p. 209). Congress had not made public its previous sources of information, but it authorized the publication of "the second paragraph in General Schuyler's letter relative to the measures taken by the ministerial agents to engage the Indians in a war with the colonies." Montgomery, at St. John's, had, in September, already met with proofs of the most convincing character, but the presence of the Mohawks there, and their opposition to the American force, does not seem to have made the impression to which it was entitled.