The First American Army by Bruce Chadwick

and the Indians. Greenwood and the other enlisted men were worried about being taken prisoners by the Indians; none of them wanted to be killed or mutilated. Wrote Greenwood, “It is the custom of the Indians always to carry their prisoners with them . . . have them lie on the damp ground in the open air without the least covering except the heavens. [They were] often well soaked with rain and with little or nothing to eat. [Men] are generally much debilitated and weakened and subject to attack of flux and fever. As soon as one poor fellow is not able . . . to travel with them, the Indians knock him in the head more for the sake of getting his scalp than of getting rid of him, for the scalp is their trophy of war and he who has in his possession the greatest number is accounted the bravest warrior.”
    Arnold sent a scout to find Indian advance war parties and told Greenwood to go with him because, someone had told Arnold, Greenwood was “a brave little fellow of some intelligence.” It was here that the fifer became the soldier, carrying a gun and a sword he had procured in Montreal for the first time. That night, in search of Indians, the two men found a small two-story, two-room stone farmhouse in a thick forest. The scout, wearing a buckskin shirt, went in, leaving Greenwood hiding behind a wooden rail fence. Greenwood noted, “He was afraid my regimental clothing, blue coat turned up and trimmed with buff and silver lace, would cause suspicion.”
    The man and his wife inside seemed harmless, so the scout waved Greenwood to join him. Fifteen minutes later, the two soldiers and the couple were startled to hear a series of loud Indian war whoops coming from the woods outside the home. They assumed that the Indians had been in a skirmish with Arnold’s army, had lost, and were running from it. The scout and Greenwood dove underneath a bed in one of the rooms in an effort to hide. “In a minute or two the house and the entire road were ensconced with Indians, making a most hideous noise and retreating as fast as they could toward Fort Anne, some twelve miles off. In about an hour, they passed by without discovering us. Had they found us, we would have been burned alive.”
    Greenwood and the scout left the farmhouse and made their way through the woods, avoiding roads or clearings to remain unseen, and emerged several hours later outside of Fort Anne. The scout had changed clothes at the farmhouse and, looking like a Canadian trapper, ventured into the fort to gather information. He told Greenwood to hide behind another fence of round wooden poles a few hundred yards outside the fort. The teenager was nervous. He wrote, “I began to think what a situation I was in, standing in a nook between two posts of the fence within hearing of the savage Indians. Every minute appeared an hour; sometimes I heard them walking by me in the road. Then again, I would fancy they were looking after me; in short I had but a very unpleasant time of it.”
    Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the scout returned to tell him that the Indians were crossing the St. Lawrence and planned to ambush Arnold’s army of eight hundred men in a day or two. They had to hurry to inform the general of the danger. They began to run away from the fort through some thick underbrush, unable to see much on the ground in front of them in the dark. Greenwood fell climbing over a stone wall and cut open the heel of his right foot. He had lost the shoe for that foot earlier as they scrambled through some bushes and had to limp the two miles to the village of Lachine, on the St. Lawrence, where Arnold had told them he would stop to camp. The teenager’s foot continued to throb.
    Arnold, never one to wait, decided to attack the Indians preparing to ambush him and moved the army westward right after he received the information from Greenwood and the scout. Greenwood, unable to walk, was placed in the front of a boat, put in charge of a blunderbuss, and sailed