I was born in Albany, New York, and raised in Guilderland, between Albany and Schenectady. My maternal grandparents lived to the north, first in Fort Edward and then just south of Lake George. Many battles or skirmishes took place in the 17th and 18th Centuries close to roads I frequently traveled. So it is natural that since childhood I've had an interest in the French and Indian Wars and the War of the American Revolution. My recent return to the Northeast has rekindled my desire to read about this era. It helps that bookstores here in New Jersey have "local interest" titles that simply aren't available in Colorado (and of course, many Colorado titles aren't stocked here). I found one such title, Bloody Mohawk - The French and Indian War & American Revolution on New York's Frontier, at a nearby chain bookstore, and couldn't pass it up.
I was first captivated by the magnificent Don Troiani cover art, which is from his painting The Oneidas at the Battle of Oriskany. I had been thinking about Oriskany, and its reputation as one of the most horrific engagements of its era. I wanted to learn more about this battle, which I first read of as a child in Paul I. Wellman's Indian Wars & Warriors East (Paul was the brother of imaginative fiction author Manly Wade Wellman, who is better-known today). Allan W. Eckert's The Wilderness War furthered my interest. Many fictional battles are based on ones from real-world history, and I thought Oriskany might be a good source of inspiration for a story I may someday spin. Bloody Mohawk includes a chapter on the fighting there, and that was enough for me to purchase the book on the spot.
Bloody Mohawk isn't an exhaustive study of the Mohawk River Valley between 1754 and 1783. Author Richard Berleth didn't consult archival sources for his research. Instead, he synthesized the best secondary works, and applied his excellent writing to create a solid introductory work on the subject. He pays more attention to the later years of the era, showing how the conflict became a civil war that left the countryside devastated, and largely depopulated. The Iroquois were split, as the Oneidas and some elements of the other tribes sided with the American Patriots. Much of the White population became Loyalists Tories, forced to abandon their homes, only to return as brutal raiders.
It was an age of cruelty, something not widely recognized or understood today. Berleth doesn't touch on earlier precedents, but by the 1750s Robert Rogers was leading his Rangers on horrible raids against Indian and French settlements, in retaliation for bloody French and Indian raids on British settlements. Both sides regularly killed and scalped as many enemies as they could get their hands on, both because of blood lust, and in order to collect the scalp bounties paid by French and British colonial officials. Twenty years later, Bloody Mohawk explains that the Tory Butler's Rangers were frequently hard to distinguish from their Iroquois allies, as together they attacked every settlement west of Schnectady. American forces burned down numerous Iroquois towns in return, with only occasional pitched battles such as Oriskany and Newtown.
This makes for compelling, if depressing, reading. For me, it was a good reminder that "total war" was not invented during World War 2. The partisan war behind German lines in the occupied USSR had similar cruelties and divided loyalties, and, of course, was on a much larger scale. I am apparently not the only person to share an interest in both the New York frontier fighting and World War 2, as I've seen the listing for Michael O. Logusz's new book, With Musket and Tomahawk - The Saratoga Campaign and the Wilderness War of 1777. Logusz is also the author of Galicia Division - the Waffen-SS 14th Grenadier Division 1943-1945, a decent study of the Ukrainians in the Waffen-SS. I've owned the latter for many years, and now look forward to acquiring his book about the decisive year 1777 in New York.
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