Gage: “the Rebels have brought all the Savages they could against us here.”
General Thomas Gage, commanding British troops in Boston, wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth, "the Rebels have brought all the Savages they could against us here."
(Miniatures by John Jenkins designs.)
Gage was referring of course to Native Americans who joined in the uprising against British imperial oppression. Who exactly were they?
The most conspicuous were soldiers of the Stockbridge Indian Company, who served in the battles of Bunker Hill, Bennington (part of the battles at Saratoga that resulted in the surrender of an entire British army), and White Plains, and in the Philadelphia Campaign. The company was wiped out in a British ambush in 1778, in what is now Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx borough of New York City. The massacre was in large part the work of "Bloody Ban" Banastre Tarleton, who had a savage reputation for killing prisoners of war after they surrendered and generally showing contempt for Americans. He later served in the British parliament where he bitterly opposed efforts to end British participation in the slave trade.
Historical painter Don Troiani’s presentation of “Bloody Ban” Tarleton’s cavalry massacring the Stockbridge Indian Company.
Sometimes known as the Battle of Kingsbridge, the ambush was prepared by the British occupation army in New York near a ridge in what is now Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.
General Washington wrote that the Stockbridge "remained firmly attached to us and have fought and bled by our side; that we consider them as friends and brothers." Thirty-five had volunteered as "Minute Men" even before the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord.
Mahicans and Munsees from the eastern Hudson Valley migrated to a mission initiated by John Sergeant Jr near what is now Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Some sources say they were pushed out by Mohawks, others sources say by Anglo and Dutch settlers moving up the Hudson Valley. Quite possibly both contributed.
Before the Revolution, known as Wappingers, they had pursued land claims against the aristocratic Phillipse family, with the support of settlers from Connecticut who would rather pay modest rent to the Wappingers than exorbitant rent to the Phillipses. When British courts ultimate turned down their claims, while Brisih Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Sir William Johnson, provided no support, the Stockbridge were ready to join the cause of American independence.
Captain Daniel Nimham, of the Continental Army in the American Revolution, a sachem of the Stockbridge nation.
Model by sculptor Michael Keropian fot a life sized statue to be place in the Hudson Valley as a permanent memorial to this Revolutionary War veteran, who lost his life fighting at the Battle of Kingsbridge.
Daniel Nimham, a Stockbridge sachem, was commissioned a captain in the Continental Army. His son Abraham commanded the company in the field. Daniel Nimham had traveled to London to press the land claim against the Phillipse estate, getting a sympathetic hearing, but ultimately being turned down by the royal governor's council in New York. He engaged in diplomacy in 1775 to encourage the six Iraquois nations to remain neutral, although ultimatly the Oneida and Tuscarora joined the battle for independence, while the rest aided the British.
The Stockbridge had a reputation as scouts and skirmishers, often begin assigned to spearhead assaults by larger army formations. The community transported 300 bushels of corn via snowshoes during the winter of 1777-1778, to supply the main Continental Army at Valley Forge. Hessian officer Johann Van Ewald wrote in his journal that the Stockbridge wore body length shirts of coarse linen, long linen trousers, deerskin shoes, with rings through their noses and ear lobes. Their heads were shaved bald. In battle, they carried a musket, a quiver of about 20 arrows, and a short battle ax.