Plot
In late 18th century upstate New York, a quarrelsome white man named Butler seeks to foment war between the Continental Army garrison of Fort Alden and the Indians, to rid the Mohawk Valley of the natives and white settlers he despises. He goes to the Iroquois chef Kowanen to warn him about a party of armed white settlers. Kowanen shows no concern, but his son Keoga and brave Rokhawah feel otherwise and plot a raid to steal the settlers' muskets. They are assisted by Keoga's sister Onida, but many Indians end up killed and Onida captured.
An artist, Jonathan Adams, has arrived in Fort Alden from Boston, commissioned to do paintings and portraits. He is joined by sweetheart Cynthia Stanhope, a society lady from Boston, and attracted to Greta Jones, a local barmaid. But when he escorts Onida from the fort back to her people, he develops a romantic interest in her instead. Adams also earns the respect and trust of Kowanen as he paints the chief's portrait and Keoga comes to admire Adams' fighting prowess. Kowanen, seeking peace with the white settlers, offers to have his son Keoga accompany Adams back to the fort, as a sign of good faith.
As the two peace emissaries are en route to the fort, Butler stages an ambush, shooting and murdering Keoga in Adams' company. Adams does not see who fired the shot. He takes Keoga's body back to his tribe who plan a war.
Chief Kowanen's men hold the whites responsible and take Adams captive, and are going to burn him at the stake. Onida kills one of her own tribe and helps him escape. When Adams finally reaches the fort, he confronts Butler and Butler's knowledge of the murder reveals his guilt. As the enraged Indians attack, Butler is cast out of the besieged fort and meets his end in a hail of Indian arrows. A truce is declared, and while Cynthia goes back to Boston with his works of art, Adams remains behind to be with Onida.
The Mohican are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe that historically spoke an Algonquian language. As part of the Eastern Algonquian family of tribes, they are related to the neighboring Lenape, whose indigenous territory was to the south as far as the Atlantic coast. The Mohican lived in the upper tidal Hudson River Valley, including the confluence of the Mohawk River and into western New England centered on the upper Housatonic River watershed. After 1680, due to conflicts with the powerful Mohawk to the west during the Beaver Wars, many were driven southeastward across the present-day Massachusetts western border and the Taconic Mountains to Berkshire County around Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant was a Mohawk military and political leader, based in present-day New York, who was closely associated with Great Britain during and after the American Revolution. Perhaps the Native American of his generation best known to the Americans and British, he met many of the most significant Anglo-American people of the age, including both George Washington and King George III.
The 1779 Sullivan Expedition was a United States military campaign during the American Revolutionary War, lasting from June to October 1779, against Loyalists and the four British allied Nations of the Iroquois. The campaign was ordered by George Washington, in response to the 1778 Iroquois–British attacks on Wyoming, German Flatts and Cherry Valley, with the aim of "taking the war home to the enemy to break their morale". The Continental Army carried out a scorched-earth campaign, chiefly in the lands of the Iroquois Confederacy in what is now Pennsylvania and western New York state.
The Battle of Oriskany was a significant engagement of the Saratoga campaign of the American Revolutionary War, and one of the bloodiest battles in the conflict between the Americans and Great Britain. On August 6, 1777, a party of Loyalists and several hundred Indian allies from different tribes ambushed an American military party that was marching to relieve the siege of Fort Stanwix. This was one of the few battles in which the majority of the participants were Americans; Patriots and allied Oneidas fought against Loyalists and allied Iroquois in the absence of British regular soldiers. There was also a detachment of Hessians in the British force, as well as Western Indians including members of the Mississaugas.
John Butler (1728–1796) was an American-born military officer, landowner, interpreter, merchant and colonial official in the British Indian Department. During the American Revolutionary War, he was a Loyalist who led an light infantry unit known as Butler's Rangers on the northern frontier of New York. Born in Connecticut, he moved to New York with his family, where he learned several Iroquoian languages and worked as an interpreter in the fur trade. He was well-equipped to work with Mohawk and other Iroquois Confederacy warriors who became allies of the British during the rebellion.
The Cherry Valley massacre was an attack by British and Iroquois forces on a fort and the town of Cherry Valley in central New York on November 11, 1778, during the American Revolutionary War. It has been described as one of the most horrific frontier massacres of the war. A mixed force of Loyalists, British soldiers, Seneca and Mohawks descended on Cherry Valley, whose defenders, despite warnings, were unprepared for the attack. During the raid, the Seneca in particular targeted non-combatants, and reports state that 30 such individuals were killed, in addition to a number of armed defenders.
Drums Along the Mohawk is a 1939 American historical drama western film based upon a 1936 novel of the same name by American author Walter D. Edmonds. The film was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and directed by John Ford. Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert portray settlers on the New York frontier during the American Revolution. The couple suffers British, Tory, and Native American attacks on their farm before the Revolution ends and peace is restored.
The Battle of Wyoming, also known as the Wyoming Massacre, was a military engagement during the American Revolutionary War between Patriot militiamen and a mixed force of Loyalist soldiers and Iroquois raiders. The clash took place in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania on July 3, 1778, in Exeter and Wyoming, Pennsylvania. More than 300 Patriots were killed in the battle. After the battle, Patriot settlers claimed that the Iroquois raiders had hunted and killed fleeing Patriots, and had then ritually tortured 30 to 40 who had surrendered until they died. In the massacre that followed, which was committed entirely by the Iroquois raiders, 360 American men, women, and children died, and many who escaped to the forests subsequently expired of starvation or exposure.
Walter Butler was a British Loyalist officer during the American Revolution. He was born near Johnstown, New York, the son of John Butler, an Indian agent who worked for Sir William Johnson. Walter Butler studied law, and became a lawyer in Albany, New York.
The Peach Tree War, also known as the Peach War, was a large-scale attack on September 15, 1655 by the Susquehannock Indians and allied tribes on several New Netherland settlements along the North River.
Ichabod Alden was an American Revolutionary War officer and commanding officer during the Cherry Valley Massacre.
The Battle of Cobleskill was an American Revolutionary War raid on the frontier settlement of Cobleskill, New York on May 30, 1778. The battle, having taken place in the modern-day hamlet of Warnerville, New York, near the modern (2019) Cobleskill-Richmondville High School, marked the beginning of a phase in which Loyalists and Iroquois, encouraged and supplied by British authorities in the Province of Quebec, raided and destroyed numerous villages on what was then the United States western frontier of New York and Pennsylvania.
Kieft's War (1643–1645), also known as the Wappinger War, was a conflict between the colonial province of New Netherland and the Wappinger and Lenape Indians in what is now New York and New Jersey. It is named for Director-General of New Netherland Willem Kieft, who had ordered an attack without approval of his advisory council and against the wishes of the colonists. Dutch colonists attacked Lenape camps and massacred the inhabitants, which encouraged unification among the regional Algonquian tribes against the Dutch and precipitated waves of attacks on both sides. This was one of the earliest conflicts between settlers and Indians in the region. The Dutch West India Company was displeased with Kieft and recalled him, but he died in a shipwreck while returning to the Netherlands; Peter Stuyvesant succeeded him in New Netherland. Numerous Dutch settlers returned to the Netherlands because of the continuing threat from the Algonquians, and growth slowed in the colony.
William Caldwell was an Irish-born military officer and colonial official in the British Indian Department. He fought against the Patriots in the American Revolutionary War, especially with Butler's Rangers, based near upstate New York. After the war, together with other Loyalists, Caldwell was granted land in Upper Canada. He helped found the town of Amherstburg, near the mouth of the Detroit River. He also served as a lieutenant colonel in the War of 1812, and as the Superintendent of Indians in the Western Department. He was a merchant and farmer in Amherstburg.
The Battle of Johnstown was one of the last battles in the northern theatre of the American Revolutionary War, with approximately 1,400 engaged at Johnstown, New York on October 25, 1781. British regulars and militia, commanded by Major John Ross of the King's Royal Regiment of New York and Captain Walter Butler of Butler's Rangers, had raided the border area. Local American forces, led by Colonel Marinus Willett, blocked the British advance. As the British withdrew northwards Willett and his men marched to German Flatts to try to cut them off. The British managed to escape, but Walter Butler was killed.
William Stacy was an officer of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and a pioneer to the Ohio Country. Published histories describe Colonel William Stacy's involvement in a variety of events during the war, such as rallying the militia on a village common in Massachusetts, participating in the Siege of Boston, being captured by Loyalists and American Indians at the Cherry Valley massacre, narrowly escaping a death by burning at the stake, General George Washington's efforts to obtain Stacy's release from captivity, and Washington's gift of a gold snuff box to Stacy at the end of the war.
Brant's Volunteers also known as Joseph Brant's Volunteers were irregular British Loyalist volunteers, raised during the American Revolutionary War by pro-British Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant, who fought on the British side in the Province of New York. Being military associators, they were not provided soldiers' uniforms, weapons, or pay by the British government, and survived by foraging and plundering of the battlefields.
The Iroquois, officially the Haudenosaunee, are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to the French as the Iroquois League, and later as the Iroquois Confederacy. The English called them the Five Nations, comprising the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. After 1722, the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora people from the southeast were accepted into the confederacy, which became known as the Six Nations.
Chipeta or White Singing Bird was a Native American woman, and the second wife of Chief Ouray of the Uncompahgre Ute tribe. Born a Kiowa Apache, she was raised by the Utes in what is now Conejos, Colorado. An advisor and confidant of her husband, Chipeta continued as a leader of her people after his death in 1880.
The Battle of Evans Creek took place in Southwest Oregon in 1853. The U.S. victory brought about a short-lived peace in the Rogue River Valley.
