Burgoyne had been joined before leaving Skenesboro…

July 1777 CE

Burgoyne had been joined before leaving Skenesboro by about five hundred natives (mostly Ottawas, but also Fox, Mississauga, Chippewa, and Ojibwe, as well as members of the Iroquois) from the Great Lakes region under the leadership of St. Luc de la Corne and Charles Michel de Langlade.

The advance of Burgoyne's army to Fort Edward is, as with the approach to Ticonderoga, preceded by a wave of natives, which chase away the small contingent of troops left there by Schuyler.

These allies become impatient and begin indiscriminate raids on frontier families and settlements, which have the effect of increasing rather than reducing local support to the American rebels.

In particular, the death at native hands of the attractive young Loyalist settler Jane McCrea is widely publicized and served as a catalyst for rebel support, as Burgoyne's decision to not punish the perpetrators was seen as unwillingness or inability to keep the natives under control.

Jane McCrea had been one of the younger children in the large family of Rev. James McCrea of New Jersey.

Since her mother's death and her father's remarriage, she had been living with her brother John near Saratoga, New York, where she became engaged to David Jones.

When the war began, two of her brothers had joined the American forces, while her fiancé had fled with other Loyalists to Quebec.

As Burgoyne's expedition neared the Hudson River during the summer of 1777, Colonel John McCrea had taken up his duty with a regiment of the Albany County militia.

Jones is serving as a lieutenant in one of the Loyalist militia units accompanying Burgoyne, and had been stationed at Fort Ticonderoga after its capture.

McCrea had left her brother's home and was traveling to join her fiancé at Ticonderoga.

She had reached the village by the old Fort Edward, but so had the war.

She was staying at the home of Sara McNeil, another Loyalist and an elderly cousin to the British General Simon Fraser.

On the morning of July 27, 1777, a group of natives, an advance party from Burgoyne's army led by a Wyandot known as Le Loup or Wyandot Panther, descend on the village of Fort Edward.

They massacre a settler and his family, then kill Lieutenant Tobias Van Vechten and four others when they walk into an ambush.

What happened next is a subject of some dispute; what is known is that Jane McCrea and Sara McNeil were taken by the natives and separated.

McNeil was eventually taken to the British camp, where either she or David Jones recognized McCrea's supposedly distinctive scalp being carried by a native.

The traditional version of what happened appears to be based on the account of Thomas Anburey, a British officer.

Two warriors, one of whom was Wyandot Panther, were escorting McCrea to the British camp, when they quarreled over an expected reward for bringing her in.

One of them then killed and scalped her, and Wyandot Panther ended up with the scalp.

Anburey claimed she was taken against her will, but there were also rumors that she was being escorted at her fiancé's request.

The second version of the story, apparently advanced by Wyandot Panther under questioning, was that McCrea was killed by a bullet fired by pursuing Americans.

James Phinney Baxter, in supporting this version of events in his 1887 history of Burgoyne's campaign, asserts that an exhumation of her body revealed only bullet wounds and no tomahawk wounds.

When Burgoyne hears of the killing, he goes to the native camp and orders the culprit to be delivered, threatening to have him executed.

He is told by General Fraser and Luc de la Corne, the agent leading the natives, that such an act would cause the defection of all the native and might cause them to take revenge as they went back north.

Burgoyne relents, and no action is taken against the natives.