BEFORE I arrived at the encampment of the Indians, as I approached they all arose with one of their war yells, which, indeed, awed me. You may imagine what my feelings were to behold so many savages.* With forced courage I went to one of the chiefs, told him I had great news for his commander, and that he must take me to him or they would all be lost. He did not understand me, but said, ‘Woman! What does woman want here?’ The scene by moonlight to some might have been grand, but to a weak woman* certainly terrifying. With difficulty I got one of the chiefs to go with me to their commander. With the intelligence I gave him he formed his plans and saved his country.* I have ever found the brave and noble Colonel Fitzgibbon a friend to me. May he prosper in the world to come as he has done in this.
Laura Secord.
Chippewa, U.C., Feb. 18, 1861.
* By all accounts, the Mohawk in traditional battledress was indeed a demoralising sight. In times of peace, however, he was courteous and honest, and it was his white neighbour who seemed wild and untameable. In 1825, eighteen-year-old Jacob Peter, a Mohawk convert to Christianity, delivered this verdict: “You white people have the Gospel a great many years. You have the Bible too: suppose you read sometimes — but you very wicked. Suppose some very good people: but great many wicked. You get drunk — you tell lies — you break the Sabbath. But these Indians, they hear the word only a little while — they can’t read the bible — but they become good right away. They no more get drunk — no more tell lies — they keep the Sabbath day. To us Indians, seems very strange that you have missionary so many years, and you so many rogues yet. The Indians have missionary only a little while, and we all turn Christians.”
* This was not a comment on her sex but on herself. In confirming her story for the records, James Fitzgibbon wrote: “Mrs Secord was a person of slight and delicate frame; and made the effort in weather excessively warm, and I dreaded at the time that she must suffer in health in consequence of fatigue and anxiety, she having been exposed to danger from the enemy, through whose line of communication she had to pass.”
* About four hundred of the Five Nations (in this area chiefly the Mohawk tribe), a handful of local militiamen and some fifty British of the 49th Regiment confronted a force of over five hundred and forty US regulars at Beaver Dams near Thorold on June 24th, 1813. The Americans’ commanding officer, Major Charles G. Boerstler, was taken prisoner. The defeat and in particular the fighting spirit of the Iroquois so demoralised them that the Americans, who had taken Fort George only that May, hardly dared venture abroad ever after, and gladly abandoned the fort the following December.