Re: New Book

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: 
: Leave it to our beloved (and strange) Doc Mary to be enthralled with the gruesome.  What else would you expect from a woman who takes pure pleasure in mounting gnomes on sticks like Shaka did to his enemies?  On weekends she replaces Charon on the boat taking souls across the river Styx to hell....cackling madly and cheerfully all the way.  She's strange, but we love her.

: Billygnome

: : For all of the many historical buffs in Mohicanland, there's
: : an excellent new book out called "The Great Warpath: British
: : Military Sites From Albany to Crown Point" by David R. Starbuck.
: : The author is an archeologist and has done work at Fort
: : Edward, Fort William Henry, etc. It's loaded with fascinating
: : stuff -- being attracted to the offbeat as I am, the things
: : that caught my eye were the photographs of some skeletons
: : of soldiers and colonials found at Fort William Henry --
: : some with musket balls buried in the bones, skulls with
: : scalping marks and tomahawk wounds, some with shreds of
: : uniforms around them -- and remnants of lice found in
: : the uniform buttons! The author mentions that very few
: : pieces of clothing were found with the skeletons -- clothing
: : was in short supply in those days, so people were usually
: : buried naked. He references an eyewitness account of the
: : aftermath of the masscre at Ft. William Henry:
: :    
: : "The fort was entirely demolished; the barracks, out-
: : houses, and buildings were a heap of ruins; the cannon,
: : stores, boats and vessels were all carried away. The
: : fires were still burning, the the smoke and stench
: : offensive and suffocating. Inumerable fragments, human
: : skulls and bones and carcasses half consumed, were still
: : frying and broiling in the decaying fires. Dead bodies,
: : mangled with scalping knives and tomahawks in all
: : the wantoness of Indian fierceness and barbarity, were
: : everywhere to be seen. More than one hundred women,
: : butchered and shockingly mangled, lay upon the ground,
: : still weltering in their gore. Devastation, barbarity,
: : and horror everywhere appeared, and the spectacle 
: : presented was too diabolical and awful either to be 
: : endured or described." So said Major Israel Putnam,
: : and in spite of what he said he did a damned fine job
: : of describing it, I think. 

: : One last gory tidbit -- an unexploded mortar shell was
: : discovered inside the ruins, and embedded on the surface
: : was a human scalp with black hair -- suggesting that on
: : impact it had peeled the scalp from one of the defenders
: : of the fort. History is so very dull and boring, ain't it?

: : Doc M


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