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.45 Thatdrunken afternoon was most probably the one that saw the brutal gang rapes ofthe women and girls in the power of the army.Although Van Schaick and hisrecording officers, Lieutenant Erkuries Beatty and Captain Thomas Machin, wereprimly silent on this score, oral tradition still recalls the outrage, while Americansources at the time recorded that the Onondagas filed angry complaints about therapes immediately after the raid.46 The sex crimes still rankled heavily thirty-fiveyears later in 1816, when Teyoninhokarawen wrote down the League tradition ofVan Schaick s campaign, making particular note of the prisoners,   mostly females,whom they [the soldiers] treated with the most shameful Barbarity.  4732 George Washington s War on Native AmericaThroughout his campaigns against the Iroquois, General Washington was in-tent on securing prisoners, making this a major goal of his orders to Sullivan andClinton, as well as to Brodhead and Van Schaick.48 The majority of those prisonerswere always female.The question naturally arises, why? The official answer hasalways centered on their usefulness in prisoner exchanges and blackmail (or, inthe parlance of the day,   ensuring good behavior  on the part of their free com-rades).Indeed, one of the children taken was Thayendanegea s, and the Britishjustly feared that this child s being in American hands might persuade the franticfather to quit his activities.49 Still other, vague reasons for targeting women,just   as important  though never articulated, are also tossed into the discus-sion from time to time.50 American officials coyly avoided the sexual issue inthe eighteenth century, and Victorian chroniclers prudishly sidestepped it in thenineteenth century.In the twentieth century, especially after the Geneva Con-vention outlawed rape as a war crime, historians became downright tight-lippedon the matter, but it deserves frank scrutiny in the twenty-first century.For all their evasion of the issue, rape was not unconsidered by generals onthe ground during the Revolutionary War.In fact, just before Van Schaick tookoff on his Onondaga raid, he and General James Clinton, who was fixing for anassault of his own, had a little exchange on the matter that remains part of thewestern record.  Bad as the savages are,  Clinton observed,   they never violatethe chastity of any women, their prisoners.  This was quite true, and had con-stituted a stinging rebuke to the Europeans since first contact.Having noted asmuch, Clinton admonished Van Schaick,   Although I have very little appre-hension that any of the soldiers will so far forget their character as to attemptsuch a crime on the Indian women who may fall into their hands, yet it will bewell to take measures to prevent such a stain upon our army.  51Van Schaick s answer is not known, but it is a matter of history how utterly hissoldiers did   forget their character  at Onondaga, and I believe that Clintonsuspected in advance that Van Schaick would do nothing in the event to preventtheir amnesia, despite his formidable reputation as a stern disciplinarian onother matters.52 Having read through more period journals, histories, memoirs,letters, reports, orders, novels, and diaries than I care to recall, it is my con-tention that Native women were taken by the Revolutionary Army for preciselythe same reason that Korean women were taken by the Japanese Army duringWorld War II, as   comfort women,  that is, forced prostitutes under armedguard.This was common, though seldom spoken, knowledge at the time.Consequently, I am not surprised that twenty Onondaga men hiding in the thicketsalong the edge of Onondaga Creek mounted a desultory attack on the Americans lateon 21 April.53 Since the twenty could certainly have had no hope of prevailing against,or even denting, Van Schaick s reassembled force of 558, they were no doubtattempting, and rather desperately, to give the miserable prisoners a chance to run forit by distracting the army.Of course, Van Schaick s sharpshooters easily drove off theattackers, killing one Onondaga while retaining the prisoners trapped between theirtwo lines of march.Nevertheless, alarmed by the unexpected heroics of the distraughtVan Schaick s Sweep through Onondaga 33relatives of their victims, the troops took the precaution of crossing and recrossing thecreek as they progressed, to forestall any further attack.54After their evening s revels, the army set off around 8:00 a.m.on 23 April, arrivingback at Fort Schuyler about noon on the 24th, to be cheerily greeted by   3 Pieces ofCannon from the fort  as the companies parted, each heading for its accustomedquarters [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]