Colin Ross, "Unser Amerika", in English. Chapter 17

 IV.

Germans in the Fight for American Freedom

17.

The defense of the frontier

Anyone who considers the geographical location of the early German settlements will be surprised to find that they were consistently crowded together along the frontier. Close behind the protecting, or rather mostly insufficiently protecting, or not protecting at all, line of forts, the Germans accounted for half the population and more. A little beyond the Indian frontier it sank to a third, to shrink further up the coast to almost nothing, with the exception of Pennsylvania, where the Germans had Germantown, a strong settlement in close proximity to the capital, Philadelphia.

Apart from New England proper, where there was no German settlement of any appreciable extent, from Massachusetts down to Georgia a living rampart of German bodies protected the British colonies against the raids of the Indians as well as the incursions of the French. They shared this frontier guard with Scots and Irish, who were likewise settled to a large extent in the most endangered areas.

The hazard was not the same everywhere. It was less in Pennsylvania as a result of the skillful and peaceful Indian policy of the Quakers. But if the latter boast of having carried out their colonization without Quaker blood flowing, they forget that it did not have to flow because a ring of advanced German, Scottish, and Irish farmers protected the Quakers sitting around Philadelphia.

The Pennsylvanian Germans never forgot the Quakers for helping them to a freehold in the New World where they could adhere to their faith undisturbed and prosper. But they have complained bitterly more than once that the Quakers, as a result of their fundamentally peace-loving and unwarlike policy, left them without sufficient governmental protection against the Indians. Thus, on one occasion, six hundred German farmers marched from the frontier to Philadelphia to ask the government how long they would continue to be defenseless against the raids of the bloodthirsty Indians. They marched peacefully and in good order through the streets of the capital, but still the citizens who saw them marching by stopped in horror; for in their train they carried the horribly mutilated and scalped bodies of the men and women who had fallen victims to the Indians. Silently they laid the dead in front of the town house as a silent, but nevertheless terribly eloquent indictment of the faltering Quaker government averse to all violence. The governor promised redress. But still it was months before militia were mustered and sent to the frontier. These militias were again primarily of German blood.

The Germans' share in the defense of the frontier became even greater when, in the course of the century-long struggle with the French for supremacy on the American continent, the British General Braddock suffered a crushing defeat. Braddock's catastrophe lives on in American history as the glory of the young George Washington, who with his militia covered the retreat of the defeated British troops. But that it was the German frontiersmen who intercepted the onslaught of the French and the Indians allied with them and prevented their advance into the heart of the New England colony is less heard of. How many thousands of blockhouses went up in flames, how many settlers perished under the scalping knife, died agonizingly at the stake, how many girls and women were violated and abducted, of this there is hardly anything in the history books. And yet it was always the frontier farmers who bore the brunt of the fighting in the Indian wars. The red warriors rarely dared to approach the well-protected forts. They preferred to raid the farms and settlements where there was more to take.

The Indian threat would have been much more threatening to the young colony had the German frontiersmen - unlike the New Englanders - not known how to generally get along with the Redskins. This fact was of particular benefit to the New England colonies of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont, which were protected by the advanced settlements of the Palatines in the Mohawk and Schoharie Valleys.

The Palatines, who had come to New York by way of London at the beginning of the 18th century, endured a long period of suffering before establishing a new, though by no means peaceful, home.

It must be admitted that the mass immigration of the Palatines presented the authorities in England as well as in America with a difficult task, and that London society in particular did much for the refugees. But for the call to provide a place of refuge for those fleeing from the French as well as from their own princes, there was less pure humanity but rather highly selfish motives. In those lines, labor was not a burden and a worry in the New World as it is today, but literally in high demand, and the British government thought from the outset - as it says in official documents - of settling the Palatines on the banks of the Hudson in order to use them "to produce necessities for the fleet as well as border guards against the French and Indians. May the intentions of the London government be benevolent apart from any selfish thoughts, in their execution by the colonial authorities they became a human drudgery. The funds for the maintenance of the Palatines were for the most part embezzled. The little food they received was spoiled, the flour bad, the salted meat inedible. In bitterly cold winters, men, women and children were housed in wretched huts without sufficient fire or clothing. In addition, there was the constant hard work of preparing tar, which was unfamiliar to the people of the Palatinate.

When the hardship rose to the highest level, the governor remained firm in the face of all complaints and soldiers drove the unfortunates to work with the cob, they made the decision to flee into the wilderness. A strange coincidence helped them to their new home in the midst of the great forests. While waiting in the refugee camp in London for passage to America, they had made the acquaintance of some Indian chiefs who were paying a visit to the English capital. When these heard that the refugees crammed into the narrow camp wanted to go to America because they did not have enough land in their homeland, they laughed and said that they should only come over, land they could get from them as much as they wanted.

The Palatine forced laborers now remembered this promise. They sent emissaries to the Indian chiefs, and when they upheld their gift, the Palatines set out for the Schoharie with wives and children. It was in March. There was still snow in the forests. The emigrants did not have a single draft or riding animal, not even wagons or carts. They had to carry their belongings, the sick and the infirm on their backs. Completely exhausted, without any means, they arrived in the Schoharie Valley after a fourteen-day hike. They would have starved if the Indians had not taken pity on them and provided them with game until the first harvest.

This first crop was obtained from a bushel of wheat, which had been procured with the last of the money. There was neither enough for a plow nor for a hoe; so they tore up the ground with sickles and scattered the sow in these meager furrows. But it came up wonderfully, and in the fall they harvested 83 bushels. The grain was ground on stones. They built houses from tree trunks and made clothes, caps and shoes from the skins of the hunted game. Within a year, seven small villages were established, which soon took on a homely, friendly appearance.

But hardly had the German peasants achieved some prosperity in the Indian country when the Dutch and British aristocrats in New York saw in them a good object of exploitation. The governor transferred the land he did not own to a group of speculators who demanded high rents from the Palatines. One part complied, but another did not want to submit to this new exploitation and arbitrariness. Therefore, one group left for Pennsylvania with sackcloth and baggage, a second moved deeper into the Indian country, into the valley of the Mohawk. These very Palatine farmers, who suffered nothing but adversity from the moment they set foot on American soil, became the strongest bulwark against Indians and French. Their good relations with individual tribes frustrated the French plan to field the entire Redskins against the British colonies. More than once they intercepted French Indian advances from Canada. When the War of Independence began, it was again the Palatines who fought and died for the young freedom at the most advanced post.