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Minisink battle commemoration
MINISINK FORD, NY — About 75 people turned out Sunday afternoon
for the 224th anniversary ceremonies for the July 22, 1779 Battle of Minisink.
The names of 46 colonial militiamen who died at the hands
of Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant’s raiding party were read aloud. Floral tributes
were laid at the monument at the summit of the county park. The Eldred American
Legion Post provided its annual military salute, joined by period re-enactors
of the Navasing Rifles, pictured below.
Sullivan County Historian John Conway, right, concluded his
keynote remarks with a reading of “The Minisink” by 19th century Monticello
naturalist poet Alfred B. Street.
The Minisink
Encircled by the screening shade,
With scatter’d bush, and bough,
And grassy slopes, a pleasant glade
Is spread before me now:
The wind, that shows its forest search
By the sweet fragrance of the birch,
Is whispering on my brow,
And the mild sunshine flickers through
The soft white cloud and summer blue.
Far to the North, the Delaware
Flows, mountain-curved, along,
By forest bank, by summit bare,
It bends in rippling song;
Receiving in each eddying nook
The waters of the vassal brook,
It weeps more deep and strong;
Round yon green island it divides,
And by this quiet woodland glides.
The ground-bird flutters from the grass
That hides her tiny nest;
The startled deer, as by I pass,
bounds in the thicket’s breast;
The red-bird rears his crimson wing
From the long fern of yonder spring:
A sweet and peaceful rest
Breathes o’er the scene, where once the sound
Of battle shook the gory ground.
Long will the shuddering hunter tell
How once red warriors rose,
And waken’d with their battle-yell
The forest’s long repose.
How shriek’d in vain, babe, wife, and sire,
As hatchet, scalping-knife, and fire,
Proclaim’d their bloody foes;
Until the boldest quail’d to mark,
Wrapp’d round the woods, Night’s mantle dark.
At length the fisher furl’d his sail
Within the shelter’d creek
The hunter trod his forest trail
The mustering band to seek;
The settler cast his axe away,
And grasp’d his rifle for the fray;
All came, revenge to wreak—
With the rude arms that chance supplied,
And die, or conquer, side by side.
Behind the footsteps of their foe,
They rush’d a gallant throng
Burning with haste, to strike a blow
For each remember’d wrong;
Here on this field of Minisink,
Fainting they sought the river’s brink
Where cool waves gush’d along;
No sound within the woods they heard,
But murmuring wind and warbling bird.
A scream!—’tis but the panther’s—naught
Breaks the calm sunshine there;
A thicket stirs!—a deer has sought
From sight a closer lair;
Again upon the grass they droop,
When burst the well-known whoop on whoop
Shrill, deafening on the air,
And onward from their ambush deep,
Like wolves the savage warriors leap.
In vain upsprung that gallant band
And seized their weapons by,
Fought eye to eye, and hand to hand,
Alas! ’twas but to die;
In vain the rifle’s deadly flash
Scorch’d eagle plume and wampum sash;
The hatchet hiss’d on high,
And down they fell in crimson heaps,
Like the ripe corn the sickle reaps.
In vain they sought the covert dark,
The knife gash’d every head,
Each arrow found unerring mark,
Till earth was piled with dead.
Oh! long the matron watch’d, to hear
Loved tones and footsteps meet her ear,
Till hope grew faint with dread.
Long did she search the wood-paths o’er,
Those tones and steps she heard no more.
Years have pass’d by, the merry bee
Hums round the laurel flowers,
The mock-bird pours its melody
Amid the forest bowers;
A skull is a my fee, though now
The wild rose wreathes its bony brow,
Relic of other hours,
It bids the wandering pilgrim think
of those who died at Minisink.
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