11/08/2025
This is a detail from the painting "Jane McCrea" . It was done to illustrate the book "Don Troiani's /Campaign to Saratoga -1777" (available on Amazon). The text here was written by the notable historian Eric Schnitzer. It is a great factual read worth the few minutes do so BEFORE commenting.
Toxic, nasty, insulting. political, and baiting comments will be deleted and if bad enough the poster will be blocked. It's strictly about the history and art. Enjoy.
Death of Jane McCrea – Saturday, July 26, 1777
Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne’s Army from Canada was truly a multinational force which included people from half a dozen sovereign and dependent European states, the Province of Quebec, and a third of the North American Colonies. But even this variety paled in comparison to the diversity of its indigenous contingent.
With their participation encouraged and coordinated by the British Quebec Indian Department, nearly 500 combatants from the Seven Nations of Canada, an expansive league of Iroquoian and Algonquian people, joined Burgoyne on the shores of Lake Champlain shortly after the campaign began in mid-June 1777. They participated in skirmishes on the Ticonderoga peninsula and saved the British in the July 8 Battle of Fort Anne. In mid-July, another 400 indigenous people joined Burgoyne’s camp at Skenesborough (present-day Whitehall, New York). Some travelled from as far as the Great Lakes, over 1,000 miles away, and included combatants from the Meskwaki (Fox), Menominee, Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), Potawatomi, Sauk, and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago).
As he had previously done with the Seven Nations of Canada, Burgoyne held a council in which combat policy was defined for his newly-arrived allies. Through a complex process of translating French into various Algonquian languages and dialects, and even the Siouan language of the Ho-Chunk, Burgoyne announced that bloodshed outside of combat was forbidden. “Aged men, women, children, and prisoners, must be held sacred from the knife or hatchet, even in the time of actual conflict,” he added, ensuring that compensation would be given for prisoners. They were permitted to “take the scalps of the dead” they killed, but never “from the wounded, or even dying.” Thus informed, the war captains and warriors set off on July 20.
It didn’t take long for any Americans located between Forts Anne and Edward to fall prey to Burgoyne’s new arrivals. Scouting parties were captured, sentinels assailed, and wayward officers and soldiers waylaid. Even an entire Continental Army brigade was attacked on July 22 in the woods at Kingsbury.
On July 26, another surprise attack hit a 20-man piquet stationed on a wooded hill located about one quarter mile north of Fort Edward. Terrorized by the “Indian Scream,” the Americans were routed and their commanding officer, First Lieutenant Tobias Van Veghten of the 1st New York Regiment, was killed. The warriors then went about the buildings of the all-but abandoned nearby settlement in search of potential prisoners and plunder. Found in one of the home’s cellars was Jane McCrea, a young woman betrothed to a royalist American officer in Burgoyne’s army, and Sarah McNeil, in whose house the pair were domiciled. Unsure of the warriors’ intentions, the women resisted helplessly as they were taken out of the house and separated.
Seen here, Jane McCrea, wearing a light chintz gown and a black calamanco petticoat, struggles to escape from her captors. The two men, one of whom is a young Odawa hailed as a “rising Warrior” while the other, possibly a war captain from a different nation, dispute over which of them is her guard and will thus benefit from the reward. Their argument became violent and, in a fit of rage “in the one from whose hands she was snatched,” McCrea was severely wounded. Finding her barely alive, she was scalped and, in keeping with the ritualistic aspect of their combat culture, mutilated. The men withdrew back to camp with their brethren and a number of prisoners, including Mrs. McNeil.
The bodies of both McCrea and Van Veghten were recovered on July 27, brought into the Continental Army camp, and laid out in a tent to be examined. Both were stabbed in several places, hatcheted in their breasts, and scalped. Van Veghten’s hands had been chopped off, while McCrea may have also suffered a gunshot wound. Both were buried that day.
Jane McCrea’s death remains one of the Revolution’s mythic events peppered with bizarre misinformation and drowned in profligacy. Even the established date of her death – July 26 – is nearly always wrongfully given as July 27 in histories. The most popular misinterpretation claims that the story of her demise marked the touchstone moment in the campaign that triggered a massive turnout of revenge-seeking militia. In fact, subsequent militia responses in the campaign had no connection with Jane McCrea’s terrible fate.
I would add to this a pension account mentioned the troops in camp were led past her laid out body for a viewing and saw the axe wound in her chest. DT
