Johannes Dietz, victim of war

Massacred by Indians at the behest of British forces.

Capt. Wm. Dietz and his wife Maria Cregler, and their four young children were living on the farm of his parents, Johannes Dietz and Maria Oberbach. All were killed except Capt. Wm. The following story tells of his ordeal. He died a short time later in captivity at Ft. Niagara in western New York.

From "Stories of the Revolution," by Josiah Priest; first published 1836

THE CAPTIVE BOYS OF RENSSELAERVILLE - JOHN AND ROBERT BRICE

The parents of these children had migrated from their native county, Scotland, in the year 1774, and settled in an entire new place, twenty-two miles west of the city of Albany.

At this place a few families had chosen a residence, which was then called Van Rensselaer's Patent, but now Rensselaerville. Here a few log houses were erected by the new comers - the pioneers of a population which has since magnified in wealth and numbers, beyond the most sanguine expectations of these isolated back-woodsmen.

The war of the Revolution had raged with various success, for about four years, when reports of the depredations of marauding parties, composed of Tories and Indians, in and about the precincts of Old Schoharie, reaching the hitherto unmolested society of Rensselaer-Patent, which threw the defenseless inhabitants into fear and perplexities, as yet to them unknown.

At a distance of some eight or nine miles from the home of the boys, at a place called the Beaver Dam where the inhabitants resorted to get their grinding done. The Beaver Dam was even then, comparatively, was an old settled place; but had escaped the vigilance of the ruthless Indians, and Tories, till the affair of which we are about to give account took place, after which they built a Fort and stood on their defense.

Between the little neighborhood of the boys parents, and their first house, on the way to the Beaver Dam, was a deep woods of about six miles distance. This first house was that of Johannas Deitz, where John Brice, the eldest of the two boys was at work, helping them thresh out their wheat. This family consisted of eight persons, the old man and his wife, his son and his son's wife, with their four children, which were very young. The parents of the boys, who are the subjects of the following story, at a certain time having got out of bread, enquired of Robert, the younger of the two, who was then eleven years old, whether he could go to the Beaver dam for the first time, to mill. To this he replied that he could, and the more easily, as at the same time three other lads, who were older, were going on the same errand, to the same place.

Accordingly, early in the morning, the horse and grain were got ready, and the lad Robert set thereon; when a few hours trotting and chatting along brought the little group to safety to the place of destination, where they procured the grinding of their grain. But the day, by that time was too far spent for them to reach their homes before dark, on which account they came to the resolution to staying at the miller's house until the next morning. The long woods which must be passed, was the chief reason of this arrangement. Little Robert was, however, an exception to this plan, as he thought he could easily go toward home as far as to the place where his brother was at work.

The miller having placed his bag upon his horse, and him seated safely on it, he started off alone. While, as he slowly made his way along the newly made road, he thought of the war, of Indians, and of dreadful things undefined, such as children are capable of, especially when some way from home, and night coming on. Now and then the bounding of a rabbit across the road, or the sudden flutter of a partridge, made him start with fear for a moment, as the woods were darkening with the approach of night.

It was near the commencement of twilight, the last beams off the descending sun were flashing their golden glare among the peaks of the mountains, trembling for a brief moment on the placid face of a western sky, when he had nearly reached the gate, which hung across the road near the house where he had intended to have slept that night; a step or two more and he would have dismounted, in order to swing open the gate to reach the house; but at that moment a tawny Indian, horribly painted, who had lain hid beside the road, among some old logs, rose suddenly up and seized the bridle of the horse, without saying a word, or seemingly to notice the boy at all. The gate he flung open, leading the horse directly toward the house. But in passing the barn door, what was the boy's terror, in addition to what the Indian had already inspired him with, when he beheld old Mr. Deitz lying there, weltering in his own blood. This was not all; between the barn and house, which stood in line with each other, he saw, in a similar situation, the wives of old Mr. Deitz and son, with four small children of the latter, and a servant girl, (eight persons,) all smoking in their newly shed blood; which had as yet scarcely cooled in the evening air. He now perceived the house to be full of Indians, hideously painted; busily, and silently employed in carrying out its contents - provisions, clothing, &c. In casting his eye around, he beheld at a little distance from the house, his brother John and Captain Deitz, the son of the old man, tied to a tree {as} prisoners of war

The Indians had now nine horses in their possession, four had been obtained from the Deitz family, four from his son-in-law, although a Tory, and one from the boy. On these they laid their plunder. The work of death and robbery being now accomplished, they hurried away with the horses, baggage, prisoners and all, directing their course, toward where the place where the parents of the two captive brothers lived.

They had gone but a little way from the scene of butchery, when hearing a crackling noise behind them, the lads looked back and saw the house, barn, and out-houses, all in flames. Four or five were now pursued by the Indians, directly along the way that led through six miles of woods, and nearly to the spot where the parents of the boys lived, when they suddenly turned out of the road into the woods, where after a short time on account of its being too dark, they encamped for the night.

Here, the first night of their captivity, they slept within a mile of their parents, in the arms of savages, while those parents, unconscious in their slumbers, that their sons were on their dismal road of captivity, knew it not.

As soon as the grey light announced the morning, the Indians, nimble as the wolf, sprang up from their lair, ate a hearty breakfast of the food that they had plundered, and then resumed their flight. Their progress was slow through the wood, occasioned by the bulkiness of their baggage, while they wended their way toward the head waters of the Catskill Creek, sleeping that night somewhere in the neighborhood of what is now called Potter's hollow, a few miles southwest of Oakhill, Green County, N. Y.

From this place they again set off in the morning toward the Schoharie River, and having nearly terminated the second days journey, in ascending to the height of land, aiming to reach the river above Middleburgh, when all at once the Indians appeared to be greatly alarmed. At this particular juncture they had entered an old field where there was a deserted log house, at which it is probable they had intended to have slept that night. But instead of doing so, as the boys hoped they would, they suddenly put their horses on a gallop, and seemed desirous of reaching the side of the field on their left hand, the margin of which lay along the base of a steep and heavily timbered mountain.

News, it appeared, had reached the garrison at Schoharie, of the outrage not far from the Beaver Dam, and knowing the course the Indians always took, in leaving the country, a scouting party in pursuit, had intercepted them at this place. They had scarcely commenced their hurry to reach that side of the field, when the report of musketry in the woods below them, was heard to speak in vengeful tones, echoing among the caves, and along the broken ranges of the hills of Schoharie, in the brief rattle of successive vollies, The cause of their alarm was now explained to the boys, for the keen eyes of the Indians had discovered them before a shot was fired, when looking that way they saw the woods alive with men, but too far off, as yet, to do much execution.

At the verge of this field, being obstructed in their course both by a fence and the sternness of the mountain, they were compelled to abandon their horses, plunder and all, the three prisoners and eight scalps excepted, and flee into the woods on the side of the ridge, where was offered the only hope of escape from the fury of their pursuers; yet even this could not have availed them anything, had it not been so near dark, which now closed in and hid them as a gang of wolves in the fastness of the mountain.

If they had not been disturbed in their course, their intention was to have availed themselves of the warriors path on the Schoharie river, leading to the place called Brake a bin, [Breakabeen] from thence to Harpersville, and so on to the Susquehannah, the Chemung, Genesee and Niagara.

As soon as it was day, having slept that day without fire, they set forward again, much cast down in their mind, pursuing the range of the mountain till somewhere near Gilboa, they crossed the creek and so passed on through the woods to Harpersfield; from thence to the Charlotte river, coming to the Susquehannah at McDaniels Mills, since so called, and thence onward down the river to the Ochquago.

Having now lost all of their provisions, they were immediately exposed to the horrors of hunger, and no way to relieve themselves, as they did not dare to shoot any game, lest their tell-tale guns should report them to their pursuers. Three days and nights they were compelled to subsist on nothing except what the bushes might afford, wintergreens, birch bark, and now and then a few wild berries.

Captain Deitz was a peculiar sufferer, more so than the lads, as suspended from a stick were the aged scalps of his father and mother, his wife and the four bloody memorials of his babes, adorned with the half grown hair of their infant heads. These were constantly in his view, and often slapped in his face by the poor untutored warrior. What from the pain of a broken heart, and the concomitant sorrows of captivity, Captain Deitz died at Montreal, [actually Fort Niagara] among his enemies, sinking to the grave as a fair pine, whose towering foliage had beat the bosom of the unconscious earth, when the leveling axe, which had lain at its root, had done its office.