Every boy of the Blues had wanted to marry Angelica; every girl wanted to be her friend. But they called me Buckskin Betsy, and it was once suggested that I should make a new troop of the so-called strays I was known for collecting. But Angelica never tolerated a mean word to be said against me, and promised that if I left the Blues, she’d leave, too. That had been the end of it.
I’d never forgotten my sister’s loyalty. And it made me miss her even more.
But our mood was so celebratory that morning as we set off that even Peggy seemed to enjoy herself. Laughing and teasing, we paddled canoes to get to the berry patch, gathering and eating the sweet berries until fourteen-year-old Stephen Van Rensselaer, the young patroon of Rensselaerswyck, suddenly lifted his hunting rifle with wary eyes on the shoreline. And everyone fell silent.
Except Peggy. “What is it?” she whispered.
“Indians,” he said, eyes wild.
My heart thumped a drumbeat as I measured the distance back to the Pastures, where we might slam the shutters and guard the doors. Alas, they’d come upon us too stealthily. We’d never make it, I thought, when I spotted the Iroquois emerge from the foliage.
I knew them on sight. Oneida.
Friendly Iroquois. Not a war-painted party wielding hatchets, but a small delegation of Oneida chieftains dressed in buckskin and moccasins, carrying a haunch of venison. And a tall woman walked with them, a clay pipe between her teeth.
“Two Kettles Together!” I called, my voice shaky with relief. She gave a regal nod of her head, explaining that she was on her way to see my father. And she carried grave news. Though Lafayette’s bounty had turned the tables on the spy, we’d never captured Major Carleton. Now he was leading coordinated raids against our settlements. And a separate force of three hundred Indians had skulked through Cherry Valley with two hundred British Rangers, laying waste to everything in their path—including the fortifications Lafayette had authorized to defend our friends. Forty women and children had been butchered, mangled, or scalped—some had their heads, legs, and arms cut off, or the flesh torn from their bones by dogs.
Our Oneida friends had tried to warn us, and for months after the treaty conference, Papa had tried to warn Gates, to no avail. Now that my father had been exonerated, I expected that he would take back his command and lead the army in reprisals. I’d been at his side in Johnstown when, with Lafayette, he promised to treat the Mohawk, the Cayuga, the Seneca, and the Onondaga as enemies if they persisted.
Someone would have to make good on that promise.
For more than a year now, I’d burned with a desire to see Papa again in his general’s uniform, his honor restored.
But when my father was finally offered back his command of the Northern Army, he refused it.
“Why?” I asked, mortified.
“Because I have been appointed to Congress,” he replied.
Congress. I supposed it to be a great deal of jabbering. Scarcely anyone paid the men who labored with paper and pen the respect due a major general of the Continental army.
I couldn’t see the glory in it. And I couldn’t imagine how my father would be content with it, given the abuse he’d already suffered. Not even when he said, “Too few legislators know anything about provisioning an army. They know even less about these territories and the real power of the Six Nations. If they did, they would quake in their boots. So it seems I am needed in Philadelphia.”
I wanted to change his mind. How was he to finish rebuilding our fortunes from Philadelphia? How would we provide for the family without completed mills or timber? Shouldn’t he be remembered as the great general that he was?
But before I could argue, my mother rested her hand atop his. “Whatever you decide, your family needs nothing but your presence to make us happy. Whether you are called General Schuyler or simply Philip Schuyler, Esquire.”
The warm and grateful way he smiled at her made me bite my tongue.
I have since thought back many times to that moment. Remembering how graciously she accommodated both my father’s pride and his sense of duty. The way she convinced him that his family would love and honor him just the same. That there was nothing whatsoever he needed to prove. That he was enough of a husband, a father, and a patriot, in and of himself. That he could be at peace with private honor over public laurels.
And I’ve wondered why I couldn’t accomplish the same when it came to my own husband.
Perhaps it was because the man I married was not born to a great family. He was not secure in his heritage or in himself. It would be easy to blame the wounds that my husband carried that had nothing to do with me. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I wonder if, unlike my mother, I have always carried within myself some spark of ambition or expectation that my husband sensed he mustn’t disappoint lest he lose my love.