AND ITS IMPACT ON THE INDIANS OF THE NORTHEAST 
To The Reader:
   As I began the research for this article I knew I would find enough information to write an interesting piece on firearms and their effect on the lives of the Indians in colonial America.  What I have written here is a very trim version of one aspect of white-Indian relations in the northeastern colonies during the 17th century – I have hit the high points.  Since there is so much known, and so much more being learned even as I write this, I’ve had to continually narrow the scope of this article so I could at least present work with which I hope to pique your interest. 
         Edward Maurer            
                                  

     Of all the trade goods the European introduced to the American Indian, the gun has had the most broad-ranging effect, both positive and negative, on native and settler alike.  As a tool for hunting the gun helped the Indian provide more food for his community, which in turn led to a better standard of living and provided for greater population growth.  On the other hand, this increased efficiency also made it possible for the Indian hunter to harvest more animals than could be removed from the environment without having a negative impact on the ecology.

   Not only did the gun allow for more efficient hunting, it provided a better means of making war. This in one respect could protect a small tribe from a much stronger neighbor, but could eventually allow some nations (as in the case of the Iroquois) to utterly destroy their own weaker neighbors.  The gun, as it still is today, was a helpmate when used as a tool for feeding or defending the family, and was a terror when misused as an apparatus of uncontrolled destruction.

   There were three types of guns on the American frontier which found their way into the hands of not only the Indians, but also the settlers and employees of the trading companies.  The military musket issued to regulars and militia was made available for sale or trade when in surplus or unacceptable condition, or when sold on the black market by deserters or undisciplined troops or officers. Some muskets were also supplied to Indian allies as enticements to fight an enemy of the colony or crown.  High grade sporting guns were brought over for use by wealthy traders and company owners, as well as military officers and some explorers, as presents “From The Crown” to Indian leaders.  Trade guns, in this case a firearm made exclusively as a trade item by the English, Dutch, or French, were of great variety and quality, and were available to all but the poorest or most unsuccessful hunter or trapper.

   The Dutch established Fort Orange [now Albany, NY] in 1618 as a trading post to the Iroquois. It was effectively the seat of the Iroquois Confederacy by 1650.  From here they traded, not only firearms, but also metal cookware, cloth, blankets and other items of European origin.  The fur trade was so important to the Dutch that the entire economies of villages such as New Amsterdam came to be built on maintaining a viable trade, no matter what the consequences were to other settlements in New Netherland.  Unscrupulous traders dealt in guns, powder, flint, and lead, even while the Indians where engaging in active warfare with other Dutch settlers in the area (Russel 12).

   The trade in furs was extremely lucrative for both the whites and the Indians. The Indians were trading furs that were relatively easy to obtain in the beginning, and the whites were dealing in commodities that they found easy and cheap to procure.  The greatest problems the whites had to deal with were maintaining a consistent source of supply, and the constant fear of arming people they considered savages.

   Charles Hansen reports that in 1625 at Ft. Orange alone, 7,250 beaver and 800 otter were taken in trade. T. M. Hamilton reports this number to be 5,295 and 493, respectively, for the same year.  They both agree that 10,000 furs were traded in 1628 (Hansen 5; Hamilton 9).  The original disparity isn’t important. What is important is the impact this amount of hunting pressure had on the environment.  By 1640 the Iroquois country was effectively barren of fur animals to be trapped and traded.  This was of course an unbearable condition and the Iroquois responded as how we would only expect any shrewd businessman to respond: they went after other sources of furs, and the easiest source happened to be the Hurons living to the north and west (Leach 97-98).

   The Iroquois, with great business acumen, approached the Dutch in 1640 with demands for arms so they could invade their neighbors for furs (Hamilton 9).  This being done, they headed north into Huronia, trapped beaver, and even set up ambushes for Huron hunters returning with furs, which the Iroquois then spirited back to Ft. Orange (Leach 98).  In 1641, the Iroquois were even bold enough to send a 500-man delegation (which had only 36 guns among them) to Montreal to demand guns. The French wisely refused (Hamilton 9).  By 1643 the Iroquois were making their presence known in Montreal by carrying on their fur-gathering operations very close to the city, much to the consternation of both the French and the Huron.  During the winter of 1648-49, the Iroquois, apparently having enough of the French and their Indian allies, attacked two Huron villages, destroyed them and a number of their occupants, and drove the survivors west.  Soon after, the Iroquois spread the wealth and gave other native groups, the Petuns, Nuetrals, and Eries, Huron-treatment and took over furring operations in their areas as well.  This continued until the Iroquois came face-to-face with the warlike Ottawa of Lake Huron, who had moved into the Huron trade-gap and picked up the French trade (Leach 98).

   Before and during this whole mess some whites, like the Pilgrim leader William Bradford (noted friend of Squanto), complained that the English, French, and Dutch were providing arms to the Indians.  That same year, William Wood of Massachusetts, also accused the French of supplying guns (Hamilton 9).  Wood complained about this method of procuring beaver furs in his tome “New England’s Prospect.”  As an observer of the trade, what did he expect the Indians to barter for their furs – beads?

   In response to all the complaints, or possibly from its own observations, the Dutch government attempted to meter the trade in guns to the Indians.  It established a system of trading permits, which would be issued to traders by a council.  At the same time, the government enacted price controls that were judged by the Chamber of the Dutch West India Company to be about 1/20 of what the Indians would be willing to pay (Russel 13).  These trade laws were soon rendered ineffective. The Indians wanted guns, and would refuse all transactions with any trader who would not provide them.  Bootleggers were easily found and, in spite of a threatened death penalty for lawbreakers, the illegal trade flourished.  As the few law-abiding communities felt the economic impact of the controls, more and more began to return to an unfettered gun trade (Leach 100).  In spite of all its efforts to control and extend the Indian trade, the Dutch government would soon lose in a big way.

   Three separate wars were fought between the Dutch and their neighboring Indians until a peace treaty was signed in May of 1664.  Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of the colony, had fought long and hard for the survival of Dutch interests in the New World.  But August of that year found the English, who probably smelled the blood of a fledgling rebellion caused by social unrest and economic weakness from too much war, sailing into the harbor of New Amsterdam.  Stuyvesant could not mount a viable defense, and had no alternative but to surrender his colony — lock, stock, and barrel — so to speak.  In spite of this turn of events, or possibly because of it, many Dutch stayed and carried on the trade.  Many English traders of the colony, now called New York, adopted the all-too-successful Dutch methods of trade. Why upset the apple cart (Russel 13)?

   The English in New York now brought the trade fight to the French.  Both shared a long border inhabited by numerous towns and tribes of Indians whose good will had to be fought for in earnest, and the loser could very well forfeit more than just his business.  In 1685 the English began a trade war by flooding the market with guns and ammunition, oft times at a loss.  By trading very generously, the English sought to undermine the French by giving the Indians much more in trade when they came to Orange, than when they went to Montreal.  A typical English trader would take two beaver furs for a gun, while the French would demand five.  A single beaver would purchase eight pounds of powder from the English, while it would take four furs for the same amount from the French.  Forty pounds of lead could cost either one beaver if was English lead, or three beaver if it was French.  To add insult to injury, the English were indifferent about the quality of the skins, whereas the French accepted only the best (Russel 14).   

   The gun trade had a tremendous impact on the social, economic, and ecological order of New England and its residents, both white and red.  Social and economic orders are not mutually exclusive, both rely on one another and are equal influences on a society.  The Indian, who was ill prepared to suddenly change from a society of stone tool users to one of iron and mechanization, could not readily absorb the impact of the new technology.  Nor could any other society in similar circumstances.  This socio-economic impact was expressed in an increase in warfare, genocide, and almost irreversible ecological damage.

   A excellent example of how a rare commodity can be manipulated and used almost as effectively as any weapon is the evolution of the trade in wampumpeag, or what we know as “wampum,” the purple and white beads made from the shells of quahog and whelk shells.

   Wampum was historically a rare commodity among the Indians of New England due to its difficulty of manufacture with stone tools.  It was found only among the higher classes as decoration or as a ritualistic sign of respect or friendship, and occasionally as compensation for a wrongful death.  The Dutch adopted wampum as a commodity for trade in 1622, which they in turn spread from its original area of use in southern New England into the rest of their area of influence. 

   In 1627, the Pilgrims introduced the coastal Maine Indians to wampum as a trade medium.  This was done at the prompting of the Dutch, who pointed the Pilgrims north, and out of Dutch territory.  By 1629 it was the single most important commodity of the Pilgrim trade, and traders from Plimoth colony used it to full advantage to beat out other traders who had only European goods to offer (Cronin 95-96).

   As the trade in wampum grew, the whites supplied iron tools to the Pequot, Mohegan and Narraganset. This gave these coastal Indian nations the ability to produce even more wampum at a lower cost per unit.  This had the additional effect of making once rare wampumpeag available universally, which in turn threatened the social order of the Indians.  What was once accepted as a badge of rank and social standing, was now available to all without consideration (Cronin 95-96).

   Once the wampum inventory was controlled by whites who flooded the market with guns, colonists started complaining that the Indians were too well armed, and they craved a “safer” way of getting wampum without having to trade guns.  (Well, we just can’t eat our cake and have it too, now can we?)  Apparently some folks along the coast of New York and New England thought they could.  Thus we have the Pequot massacre of 1637, which was apparently a political move as well as economic, and the assassination of the Narraganset leader Miantonomo in 1643. With these two events, we have a safer way to obtain wampum, at least for the whites.  By exacting wampum as a military tribute the wampum supply became both safer to obtain and more reliable.  It was at this time that the Indians became acquainted with the idea of “prices,” an established value for a commodity that was in turn traded for a variety of goods, including guns of course (Cronin 97).

   Aside from the socio-economic impact of the trade in just one commodity, there was an even greater, almost irreversible, impact on the ecology of the northeast.  By 1675 the Indians had a large supply of guns and had become quite adept at using them, not only for warfare, but also for hunting (Leach 101).  The native hunter, with his new ability to kill even more effectively than with the bow, coupled with his innate knowledge of his environment and his prey, was undoubtedly the most deadly creature of the forest.  As already seen with the fur-bearing animals, the great lumbering moose, which heretofore had been hunted almost exclusively in deep winter snows, was now easily dispatched with one well placed musket shot.  So many moose had been killed by mid-17th century that they were almost eradicated from much of eastern Canada, a condition soon realized by the rest of New England (Cronin 104).

   The turkey was by 1672 almost entirely eliminated in New England, to the point that one observer commented that hunters had “now destroyed the breed, so that ’tis very rare to meet with a wild turkie in the woods,” only domesticated birds were generally to be found in eastern Massachusetts.  A century later a farmer’s manual stated that they were domestic birds brought from Turkey.

  The Indian hunter’s efficiency, in concert with his limited understanding of the long-term threat he posed to his environment with his new found ability, led to wide-spread disaster for many native people.  Their food source dwindled and they became more and more reliant on Europeans for clothing, weapons, and tools. They were ripe for dissolution of their society.  By the next century, the whites were there to step in and give them the coup de grace: land purchase, relocation, and eventually, reservations.  

REFERENCES

CHANGES IN THE LAND, Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England

William Cronin; Hill and Wang; New York; 1983

COLONIAL FRONTIER GUNS

T.M. Hamilton; The Fur Press; Chadron NE; 1980

GUNS ON THE EARLY FRONTIERS

Carl P. Russel; U. of California Press; Berkely & L.A.; 1962

THE NORTHERN COLONIAL FRONTIER 1607-1763

Douglas Edward Leach; U. of New Mexico Press; Albuquerque; 1966

THE NORTHWEST GUN

Charles E. Hansen Jr.; Nebraska State Historical Society; Lincoln; 1955

“I wish you wouldn’t go into that filthy swamp by yourself, Jerry.”

Mom scowled when she said those words to me. Sometimes she would look me in the eye when she criticized me, sometimes not. I think she knew I’d only listen when she agreed with me. It happened less and less these days. I told her there was nothing to be afraid of. “Look . . . Mom, if you know what you’re doing then you’re as safe as in your own bed.”

Well, that was the lie I told her and never about the snakes and gators and everything else in the swamp. Actually, the only thing I’m really afraid of are snapping turtles, I mean BIG snapping turtles that are all over the place out there. I swear some are the size of garbage can lids, and some are even bigger…they always give me the creeps. A turtle can take your hand off SNAP!

She had a disgusted look on her face. “I just don’t see why you can’t be like other boys. Play ball or something. Good God, Jerry, what’s the attraction?” she said as she ran her fingers through my long hair. She didn’t like my hair, either. Just no pleasing some people. Especially parents. Especially her.

Who the hell cares anymore.

I brushed her hand aside. “You wouldn’t understand,” I said as I glared at her, shaking my head knowing she never would. “I’ll be okay.” I told her, “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you later, okay?” I’d been going into the swamp by myself since I was a kid and rode there on my bike, even though I never volunteered that information, either. There’s only so much a kid can tell his mom. Especially her.

She was still grossed out from the time I came back cut up from saw grass and she found a leech on me that I couldn’t see because I couldn’t turn around and see my butt. How it got so far up under my jeans is beyond me, but, there it was, latched onto my right cheek for all to see when I stripped in the backyard to hose off ‘cause she wouldn’t let me in the house until I had. She about lost it, too. Thought she was gonna puke right there in the yard. Serves her right, making me strip outside like I was a dog or something.

…………………………………

The Big Cypress Swamp, it’s way out in the Everglades about an hour west of where we live in Miami; “Where men go in and never come out,” or so that story goes. I think it’s just to keep Yankees out of there, anyway. Something else she didn’t need to hear. It’s where I go. It’s mine. To do as I please. I park off the side of the levee road that runs through the swamp, I guess it’s where logging trucks used to run but they don’t now, so I park there in the trees so no one can see the car from the air or the road—no sense in inviting trouble by having somebody rip off my Malibu while I’m out for a hike. I walk a couple hundred yards to a place I found a few weeks ago and sit down by the water’s edge to see what I can see and recognize it for when I come back out. Before I step into the water I slap it a few times to see if there’s any gators around.

Slap, Slap, Slap….

The slapping brings them like a dinner bell and I do it to see if there’s any big ones prowling. The little ones, you know—the ones under about six feet—ain’t much bother. Once they start growing up, though, they get an attitude and a can be hard to control. And a ten-footer can kill a man if you let him.

I slap the water a few times and only a five-footer comes to see what’s up. I pop him in the nose with the cypress staff I carry and he slips away and disappears into the murk. Now, some folks would expect me to carry a gun or something out here, but I don’t see a need for it. I just have my stick and an old Barlow I got for my birthday when I was little. I love that knife. The staff’s cool, too. It was a deadfall sapling I found and I carved a head into the root end and I wrapped copper telephone wire around the bottom end so it wouldn’t split. It’s really cool.

I step into the water once the gator’s gone. It’s dark and warm and feels real good. This place is so cool. The bottom is soft and I sink into the mud up to the tops of my Army surplus boots. These are the kind of boots the guys in Viet Nam are wearing and I figure if it’s good enough for them it sure is for me. They’re real tough boots and have this layer of nylon in the soles so punji sticks won’t poke through the bottom and into a guy’s foot.

The water gets deeper as I move farther into the cypress. Now, a lot of this is only about chest-deep and sometimes I find a deep spot, but it’s not too hard to walk in. Anyway, I can swim across the deep spots, even in boots. I move along between the cypress trees and watch raccoons watch me as I slip by.

Spanish moss hangs from tree limbs and gives the whole place an eerie feel. Man, I just love this stuff. It’s so beautiful and I bet I’m the only person to see it since the Seminoles moved onto the Reservation. The water is clear but brown and looks like real dark tea. I can hardly see the sky, either, ‘cause the cypress trees form a canopy over the swamp and in places it’s dark as night. Really cool.

A water moccasin swims towards me and I pick him up with the staff and flip him into a tree. I saw a rattlesnake swimming once and he was too big to lift so I just whacked him on the head so he’d go away. Imagine that, a swimming rattler…too cool.

Sometimes gators come up to check me out, too. They always get whacked in the nose. It never hurts them, just let’s ‘em know I’m not what they want. I had a big one make me shinny up a tree once and I stayed there most of the day ‘cause he settled down under me, like he was waiting for a meal…maybe he was. Too funny. Didn’t tell Mom that, either. She’d have a cow.

After I go in about a mile or so, something snaps shut on my right boot. Oh, no, this could be a big snapping turtle’s mouth I just stuck my foot into. It hurts like hell but a snapper would have cut through by now, and he’d shake his head, too. This ain’t shakin’ and don’t hurt that bad. What the hell? I pull my foot back to see what happens. I can move it some and I step back and move it some more, and then it stops. I can’t pull it any more. It’s like, it’s like…no…it can’t be. It’s like whatever is holding me is tied down to something else. I can move my foot around with this thing on it. This is really starting to hurt. I can even lift it up…but it’s still tied to something. I lift it up so I can feel what’s clamped on my foot.

Oh. No. I can’t really see it ‘cause the water’s so dark, but I can feel it with my hands. And “it” is a trap. Like the kind used for catching beavers, or bear. And it’s clamped onto my foot. What the hell is it doing here and so deep? I can feel the trap pressing into the boot leather crushing my right foot on top and bottom and it’s clamped on about where the laces begin on the boot and the damn thing is really starting to hurt. I start to lose my balance and put my foot back down. This ain’t good. Okay, don’t panic. Just calm down and think. Think! You can get out if you give it enough thought. You’ll be okay.

Okay, a trap has to have some way to open it so it can work, right? So, all I have to do is figure out how to do that and I’m free. I raise my foot up again. God, this hurts. It’s starting to throb. I really gotta get this thing off me. I feel the trap to see what makes it work. Some traps have flat springs that make them close, others, the real good ones, have coil springs and can only be opened with a thing that looks like a C-clamp. If I’m lucky—Well, it’s too late for luck already, isn’t it?—it’s the flat-spring kind.

Oh, just great. I can feel not one, but two coil springs. Just great. God damn it. I put my foot back down. There’s no getting this trap off me. I’ve got to get it loose from the bottom then walk all the way out, what is it—a mile?—with this thing on me. Then I gotta drive out of here. Well that’s the easy part. Mom’s gonna have a cow, I just know it. What a pain in the ass.

A snake’s in the water and coming at me. It’s a water moccasin and I really whack it hard ‘cause I’m really mad and don’t wanna be messin’ with no damn snake right now—‘specially a poisonous one. He just breaks behind the neck and I flip him away with the stick.

Okay, I can do this. I’ll just sink down under the water and grab the trap and find where the end of its chain is attached. Then I’ll come back up and rest. Then I’ll just go back down and pull it loose. No sweat.

I sink below the surface and blow air out of my lungs to make me sink better. I can’t really dive because I’ve got one foot tied to the bottom. Oh, God this thing is really starting to hurt. I grab the trap and feel for its chain. I wish the water was clear, this is like swimming in tea and I can’t see a damn thing more than a foot or two away. Hell, in three or four feet of this kind of water no light gets through at all and it’s like diving at night. I pull myself along the chain to where it’s anchored then stand up to catch my breath.

I go down again and feel where the chain is anchored. Oh, crap, it’s wrapped around a root and locked. Locked? Who the hell would lock a trap? Dammit.

I come back up.

What can I do now? I go back down and see if I can saw through the root with the chain. I feel the root, it’s about as thick as my wrist and hard. It’s cypress and about as tough as iron.

I come up for air.

Okay, I can try cutting my boot with my knife and then I can pull my foot out. I go back down and begin to cut the boot. This takes three trips to do and by the time I get it done I’m winded and my foot is really hurting. The trap is pressing into the top of my foot and pinching it into the bottom of my boot. I go down again and feel my foot where it’s caught. The trap has worked its way deeper. I think I can feel the bone breaking, it feels like a chicken bone slowly cracking as you bend it in your fingers, but this is my chicken bone and it really hurts. My foot is beginning to swell up, too. Oh, God, it’s really hurting bad.

My whole leg is starting to ache.

I’m really screwed. I saw on the news once where this guy was caught in an earthquake in California or Mexico or someplace like that and his leg was trapped under a building and a doctor had to chop it off so they could get him out. Okay, that’s what I’ve got to do, but it took three tries just to cut my boot. Can I chop off my foot with this knife? Hell, it barely made it through the boot leather, how’s it gonna go through my foot? And it’ll never go through the bones. Anyway, I’d probably drown while trying.

That sucks.

So, here I am. Standing chest-deep in a swamp “Where men go in and never come out,” in the middle of the damn Everglades and now I’m gonna be one of those men and I’m only a kid and my Mom’s gonna kill me if I don’t come home.

So, I just stand here waiting for something to happen and my foot and my leg’s really hurting and I’m really getting scared and I don’t want to just stay here and rot tied to some damn tree and all I want to do right now is go home! “Help! HELP!” I yell as loud as I can. “Oh, somebody…please…help! Please get me out of here, please. . . please . . . ” Somebody please help me….I can’t believe I’m crying. I never cry anymore….

The sun’s going down. I’ll stand here tonight and maybe something will happen in the morning and I can get out of this.

…………………………………

It’s morning and I’m still here. Oh, like I’ve got a choice in the matter. I thought it was a dream and I’d wake up and find out that I’m home in bed and I’ve decided to go to college like my Mom wants me to and I’ll be a doctor or a lawyer or something and I won’t go into the swamp anymore but it’s not a dream and I’m still here. DAMMIT!

The mosquitoes really kicked my ass last night. I thought I could sleep standing up but they found me and I’m all bitten up. One point they were so thick it was like wiping mud off my face but it was just bloody mosquitoes. My face is swollen and my lips and eyelids are swollen and I itch like hell now.

I feel hot.

I think I’ve got a fever.

Great.

How long could I survive like this? I won’t get dehydration, I’m chest-deep in water. And to makes things worse I’m a Burger King for damn mosquitoes now. How long would it take to starve to death? Oh, that could take weeks, maybe months. What else could kill me? Gangrene. I’ll get an infection in a few days and gangrene will set in and my foot will rot off and then I can pull it free but by then it’ll be in my bloodstream and I’ll die before my foot rots off, chained here to this damn tree root.

Maybe I’ll get snake bit. I saw a dog get bit once and he ran around and yelled and howled like he was, well, snake-bit. But it didn’t kill him. No, snake-bit ain’t the way to go, it’ll just hurt like hell and it won’t kill me anyway.

I’m out of options. I just want to go home and see my Mom. If only…damn…I’m not getting out of this. I might as well face the facts. I’m screwed. No, I have to try. Keep trying! Don’t give up!

I sink back down to the chain again and if I pull hard enough and long enough on this damn chain the root has to break and….

I come up to breathe. Oh, it hurts just to move my foot. God, it hurts so bad. I go down again and pull and pull on the chain but the water makes me float and I push against the root with my good foot and puuuuullllll so hard something has break and….

I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe.

I try to float on the surface on my back and just try to catch my breath so I can try again. An egret flies above the trees…I wish I was a bird right now…I’d fly right on home….

I try all day to break the root with the chain but it won’t work and I know it but I have to try. Night’s coming again. I can hear bugs and frogs starting to make all their night sounds. I’ve been here what, two days? Three? Four? I don’t know anymore. Then the first mosquito of the night bites me. You know they give out a smell or something so when one finds food they all find food? And tonight—I’m the food. I can’t spend another night fighting off mosquitoes. But I can’t get under cover, either. I’ll try and put mud on my face to see if that’ll keep ‘em off me. I go back down and bring up handfuls of muck and rub it all over my face and ears and neck and in my hair before they get me again. If I just kinda stoop in the water so it comes up to my neck the bugs won’t get me. But I can’t sleep like this.

All I can do is wait for tomorrow to come. Tomorrow….

There’s a snake! Dammit it’s right by me and I didn’t see it! I whack the hell out of it and break my stick. Ha! Oh! It was just a harmless water snake. Sorry, snake. Damn, the stick broke…my favorite stick…. Damn. Damn. Just settle down…it’ll be okay…it’ll be okay…it’ll be ooooo—kayyyy…. I liked that stick…it had a head carved in it and everything. Maybe Mom will bring me another one.

…………………………………

Last night was okay but I’m really tired and my legs and back and my shoulders hurt and my right foot and leg really hurt now and I can feel my heart beating in my foot and oh, God this HAS TO STOP! Damn it!

What can I do? No one’s around. Nobody ever comes through here except me. And the son-of-a-bitch poacher who set this trap. Damn it! Damn him. Damn swamp. And I’m not gonna be seeing him anytime soon, am I?

My foot’s getting infected; I can feel it. I know it’s rotting, I can almost smell it. But that’s the swamp; it smells like rot. Rotten plants, rotten water and rotten damn animals and now ME! I have a fever. I hurt all over. I’ve been out here for I don’t know how long now and nobody can find me because nobody knows where I am and this just isn’t going to fix itself! Damn it! I look up and see another egret flying east, east where home is….

Night’s falling again and I can hear the bugs and frogs and all the other damn vermin out here. I don’t know how much longer I can take this crap, night after night . . . I’ve got it. How I can end this my way. Okay, that’s it, I’ve got to do it. I just can’t stand the biting and the pain and the stink of this place and I’m too far in and no one will ever find me. I can’t get loose and I’m already getting sick. It’s just no use. “Mom, I love you and I’m sorry I didn’t come home,” I cry out loud, hoping that in some way she’ll hear me. “I really did want to go to college, Mom. I really did. I love you, Mom.” I love you.

I start slapping the water, hoping to call a big one. A ten- or twelve-footer should do.

Slap, Slap, Slap….

I shouldn’t be here. It should have been me who burned up, covered with flaming jet fuel on the side of a New Mexico mountain that fall morning. It’s been more than 20 years now that we lost that aircrew and it still bothers me to this day.

I was coming off a night shift managing Air Force maintenance operations on HH-53 rescue and special operations helicopters. As my ground crew was getting ready to launch an aircraft on a combat-training mission, my boss told me the flight crew wanted a crew chief to fly with them to take care of any problems that may arise during the mission. “Your flight crew’s planning mountaintop and desert operations today. They want you with ‘em. I know you’ve been up all night, but it’s your ride if you want it.”

The HH-53, is a large, surprisingly agile combat helicopter designed to fly and fight under the harshest of conditions. It’s operated by a flight crew of three, and during combat or rescue operations will carry two or three pararescuemen and possibly a crew chief, like me. In combat configuration we were equipped with titanium armor and three machineguns. At 16 tons, it can take a beating from ground fire, fly on only one of two engines and lose majors portions of its rotor blades, as long as it has enough air beneath them.

On this day the crew would run out of air in which to fly.

Being the number one pick for an assignment has its benefits. It tells you that you are highly regarded; people trust you. This was a compliment that I had to turn down, however. “Thanks, Chief,” I said. “can’t fly today, got a bad gut.” I didn’t like to begin a flight with an upset stomach, and the Chief didn’t want us to, either. It’s not good business, anyway, because a sick crewmember is a useless one; he might as well stay home.

“Okay, pick someone,” he said. “it’s just crankin’ and bankin’ and rabbit-chasin’; no guns today.”

I suggested a replacement. John, a young sergeant who worked for me, had proven himself trustworthy.

John was in his mid-twenties and had come to us as a crew chief on B-52 bombers. What I remember best about him was his willingness to do any job and his excitement to learn. He seemed to be happy to be working on the world’s most sophisticated helicopter, the HH-53.

I also recall he had a slight fear of heights, especially when walking around 12 or 15 feet above the ground on the rounded, and quite often oily, surfaces of the HH-53. There was that one day I was sitting on top of the stabilizer making an adjustment to the tail rotor. I asked John to bring me a tool. To do so, he would have to walk out on the tail boom with no handholds, no safety net or harness, just the air around him and the pavement below. I told him he would be okay, he was safe, it just took some getting used to.

As he carefully walked out to the end of the tail boom, he shifted the weight of the helicopter causing it to bounce a little, almost imperceptibly, except to John, who could feel every quiver in the airframe. Of course, it didn’t help that with every step he took, I would bounce a little to try and make the little quivers turn into what must have seemed to him like big, roiling waves. He got quite a laugh out of that, once he was safely back on the ground.

John was more than just a good mechanic and technician, he was the father of two small children, a boy and a girl. He often spoke about his wife and kids.

As he was coming off the flight line, I grabbed him by the arm. “Hey, call Operations, you’re going for a ride today, unless you got something better to do.”

When I offered him the chance to fly his face lit up and he bolted for the phone to give his wife the news and tell her that he’d be home for dinner. I never called mine when I flew. I just went, damn the consequences. He was so excited; it was his first flight.

So, off John goes with two pilots, two flight engineers and the absolute joy of a child looking forward to a day at the county fair. But this ride was better than that at any fair. John went flying, I went home to bed.

About mid-day the phone rang.

“The helicopter is down. Missing, west of the base, in the mountains. Forest Service reports a plume of smoke. Black smoke. Oily smoke. Chief wants you to come in, we’re launching.”

By the time I reported to the squadron, the crew of an H-1 rescue helicopter had arrived at the crash scene. They report survivors and ask for a larger helicopter and more pararescuemen. And body bags.

I flew out to the crash site the next day with another crew chief. There was little left of 32,000 pounds of combat helicopter and crew. We could identify burned armor, parts of gearboxes, pieces of rotor blade. And an empty boot, still laced up.

I sat there on a hillside viewing the scene of so many wasted dreams, and was dumbstruck.

A rancher found part of a main rotor blade more than a mile away.

From what we could tell, the helicopter approached the mountains from the east, flying close to the ground in a terrain-following combat mode, maybe 500 feet from the ground. As they traveled west, the forested ground started sloping upward, almost imperceptibly to an aircrew flying more than a hundred miles an hour. At some time in the flight, as the aircraft began getting closer to the ground and running out of precious air space, it started chopping down pine trees like a fully armed, multi-million dollar lawnmower. This probably lasted for maybe, five seconds.

To think that for a final, horrifying five seconds as the crew realized there wasn’t a Goddamn thing they could do but die.

And, die they did. When the helicopter, an HH-53 air rescue and special operations helicopter designed to fly under any conditions, flew into the hard, New Mexico landscape, the front end crumpled like tissue paper. The pilots’ titanium armor seats ripped loose from their moorings and carried their occupants deep into the soil and then emerged again with the remains, skittering like children’s toys thrown across a room. The operational flight engineer, seated in a sling-like nylon seat between and just behind the pilots, instantly became part of the landscape. His non-operational counterpart was probably sitting behind him and to the left, from where he was thrown into, and through the avionics compartment behind the co-pilot. Then again, maybe not. It could have just enveloped him as it traveled backwards with the rest of the quickly evaporating aircraft. Or, was the rear of the helicopter merely moving forward at a hundred or so miles an hour sweeping men and machinery with it as it ceased to be anything recognizable?

But John, John was thrown free. Like most crew chiefs, he was probably standing in the back of the aircraft, holding onto the airframe so he would be safe as the aircraft twisted and turned through the countryside like a ride at the fair.

Yeah, John was thrown free, but not without being enveloped in burning jet fuel and hydraulic fluid that must have made him look like a Fourth of July flare as he slammed into the ground at close to 150 miles an hour.

The initial rescue crew recovered John, ministered to his wounds (they reported having a difficult time determining exactly what was John and what was…God only knows) and flew him directly to the base hospital. Once there his burned clothing and skin and pieces of New Mexico were cut from his now unrecognizable, young form.

John lasted, (I won’t say “lived”) another few weeks and died with his wife by his side.

So, I come back to my issue. One early New Mexico morning I had a chance to fly and I turned it down because of a stomachache. A friend took my place, and in my place he died. He suffered for days and I was too afraid, too cowardly, to even go and see him as he lie on his deathbed in my place.

John left behind a family, two children, a boy, not much more than a toddler, and a girl, not much older than that. And he left a wife, now a very young widow, who was so proud of her man. Because of me they lost the promise of a happy life as a family, growing and laughing and sharing each other’s love. Because of me.

And yet I remained to go on with my life. Unscathed. Untouched. Unbroken and unburned. All because someone else went in my place and did my duty.

What I would give now to make it right. What I would give now to see that fine young man who trusted me as I assured him he would be safe, high up on a helicopter, so close to the ground.