From George Washington to Colonel Peter Gansevoort, 25 October 1779
To Colonel Peter Gansevoort
Head Quarters West point 25th Octobr 1779.
Dear Sir
General Schuyler has shewn me a letter from Mr Douw of Albany by which I perceive that you did not think my letter of the 12th to General Schuyler or in his absence to Mr Douw desiring the release of the Mohawks, a sufficient authority to you to give them up, as the order was not in positive terms, nor directed to you.1 Upon referring to the letter, I find it was not a full order, tho’ I meant it as such. You will therefore be pleased on the receipt hereof to deliver the Indians to Mr Douw, who will lay them under such obligations for their future good behavior as he shall think necessary. I am Dear Sir Your most obt Servt
Go: Washington
LS, in Caleb Gibbs’s writing, NN: Gansevoort-Lansing Collection; Df, DLC:GW; Varick transcript, DLC:GW. GW signed the cover of the LS, which was addressed to Gansevoort at Albany.
1. GW is alluding to a letter from Volkert Pieterse Douw, Indian commissioner for the northern department, to Philip Schuyler written at Albany on 22 October. Douw’s letter reads: “Your Favor of the 17th Inst was delivered me Yesterday, since which I have had a Conference with Colonel Gansevoort on the Subject Matter thereof—He is of Opinion that your Letter and one I had the Honor to receive from his Excellency General Washington (which I shewed him) are not sufficient to justify him in not complying with the Orders he received from General Sullivan respecting the Disposition of the Mohawks—The Colonel has however consented to retain them at this place until the Return of this Express, with whom I wish you to transmit General Washington’s Order for delivering the prisoners to me, as without such Order Colonel Gansevoort absolutely refuses to deliver them and will send them down to Head Quarters agreeable to his Orders. …
“Inclosed You have General Washington’s Letter the Receipt of which I have not acknowleged” (NN: Schuyler Papers).
Acting on orders from Maj. Gen. John Sullivan, Gansevoort had raided Fort Hunter, N.Y., the location of Tiononderoga, a Mohawk settlement commonly known as the Lower Castle, and taken prisoners (see Sullivan to GW, 28 Sept., and Gansevoort to GW, 8 Oct., and n.1 to that document). In his letter to Schuyler, or Douw in Schuyler’s absence, written on 12 Oct., GW explained: “General Sullivan must from his situation have been totally unacquainted with the circumstances of the Mohawks families at the lower Castle … But as the public faith has been pledged for their remaining there unmolested, and you say good consequences have resulted to the neighbourhood from the measure hitherto, I see no objection to their being suffered to return home again.”