Crown of Serpents (48 page)

“I am satisfied,” said the Tiler. He then turned around and gave three sharp raps on the door. In a moment, three knocks were returned from within and the door swung open. A younger man in a similar tuxedo and blue and gold apron appeared. He held a staff topped with a metallic Masonic square and compasses over a half moon. Jake knew this particular symbol to be that of the Junior Deacon of the Lodge and the only member allowed to answer what was called the outer door.

“Brother Tiler,” asked the Deacon. “What is the cause of the alarm?”

“Brother Major Robert Jake Tununda,” announced the Tiler in a commanding voice so all inside the Lodge could hear. “Master Mason of Land, Sea, and Air Lodge Number One of Iraq, properly clothed and vouched for, seeks admittance to return the remains of Brother Mason Lieutenant Thomas Boyd of the Continental Army.”

The Junior Deacon nodded. “Brother Tununda, I am so honored. Please enter and follow me.” He motioned Jake inside and closed the door behind him.

THE END.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With thanks to David W. Corson and Eileen Keating of the Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections for their research assistance; to Cornell University Professor Art Bloom and Hobart William Smith Professor John Halfman for their suggestions and opinions regarding the truths and lore of the underground lake connections; to Lee J. Wemett for information on the history and legends of Hemlock and Conesus Lakes; to Dennis Money and Tom Klotzbach of Seneca White Deer, Inc. for providing information about the white deer herd of the Seneca Army Depot; to Seneca County IDA and Seneca Army Depot Base Project Manager Tom Enroth and Chief of Security John Cleary for the base tour and history inquiries; to WWII European-theater Army veteran Robert Lounsbery for allowing me use of his memoirs on the 666th Field Artillery Battalion and for details of his time spent on the construction of the Seneca Army Depot; to WWII veteran Harry Hunter Morgan for his history as a guard at the Depot; to writer, lecturer, and consultant Doug George-Kanentiio of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation for his source information on the Iroquois culture; to Onondaga Clan Mother Ada Jacques for her clarifications; to librarians Margaret Anderson, Ann Sullivan, Barbara Kobritz, and Steve Massey-Crouch of Tompkins Cortland Community College Library for research assistance on Sullivan-Clinton campaign journals, the Luke Swetland memoir, and production assistance; to U.S. Army CW3 John A. Robinson for army protocol corrections; to Robert Spiegelman, author of
Fields of Fire
, for reference verification; to critical readers Lisa Karpovage, Thomas Karpovage Sr., Gene Baier, Chris Bissen, Kathy Zahler, Lisa Ford, Alexis Dengel, Sean Barry, Lauren Wright, Thomas Ventura, Kyle Downey, the late John Colella, Bootsy Colella, Phil Colella, Jen Drumluk, Gene Conrad and Shari Hurny for their wide ranging improvements; to Joan Notebloom, former Town Clerk of Romulus for her valuable insight; to Eric Lindstrom, Patrick Gillespie, and Peter Voorhees for passing on important Ithaca area information; to Tompkins County Historian Carol Kammen for providing local research sources; to Larry Turner, Groveland Historian, for clearing up inaccuracies in Boyd’s ambush; to Bill Stinson and Steve Mount for lending me their rare copies of the History of Seneca County (1786-1876); to VW Tom Savini, Director of the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library of Grand Lodge in New York for inquiry into the Freemason’s Code; to Karen D. Osburn, archivist for the Geneva Historical Society, for finding several articles in relation to Seneca Lake; to Luzerne County Historical Society and Northumberland County Historical Society for research assistance; to Sampson State Park Ranger Tom Watts, Sampson WWII Navy Veterans Association, Inc., and Sampson Air Force Base Veterans Association for their valued correspondence and knowledge on base structures; to Bill Hecht for his incredible effort in providing a free source of online information on the history, geology, and geography of the Finger Lakes as well as discussing the possibility of underground caves; to Cornell Army ROTC Captain Kurt W. Belawske for officer training course information; to Lt. Pete Tyler of the Ithaca Police Department as well as the New York State Troopers for answering my law enforcement related questions; to Al Heitmann for access to his property at Cranberry Marsh; to the Waterloo Volunteer Fire Company and the Seneca Falls Fire Department for honoring me with their service — sometimes literally under fire; to the office personnel at Sampson State Park for providing emergency relief from bee stings; to Stevi Mittman, author and TC3 instructor for her writing tips; to my fellow Masonic brothers of Hobasco Lodge No. 716 for their fraternity; a special thanks to Laura Karpovage; and finally to my sons Jake and Alex for their inspiration.

HISTORICAL TIMELINE

1142 A.D.
: Atotarho, the ancient Onondaga wizard, reigned the lands as a brutal murdering dictator. After a meeting with Deganawida, Hiawatha, and Jecumseh he suddenly reformed his ways. The evil snakes were combed from his hair and he emerged as a key founding figure in the birth of the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

1779
: By this year the Iroquois Confederacy had expanded into the mightiest empire in North America until it was almost entirely destroyed during the Sullivan-Clinton campaign of the Revolutionary War. The Confederacy still remains intact to this day.

September 5, 1779
: American scouts of the Sullivan campaign rescued Luke Swetland in the Seneca Indian village of Kendaia. The Seneca had captured Swetland in Pennsylvania a year before. An elder clan mother spared his life and adopted him into the tribe. After the war, in his memoirs, Swetland wrote that the scouts, mistaking him for a Tory, stole a silver broach from his shirt and threatened his life. He also wrote of finding a secret cave in the side of a hill not far from the village, a place he took refuge during the cold winter months of his captivity.

September 13, 1779
: American Lieutenant Thomas Boyd, a Freemason, along with two soldiers in his scout detachment, were taken prisoner by British and Iroquois troops during what is now called the Groveland Ambush. Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant, also a Freemason, allegedly received the secret Masonic hail sign of distress from the prisoner Boyd. Later that night Brant was called away on other duties and was unable to offer protection. Boyd was turned over to Freemason British Colonel John Butler and the Seneca warriors under Little Beard. The next day Boyd suffered the most heinous torture death of the American Revolution. Read my research article into this tragic mission, titled
Betrayed By A Mason
?, in the next section

Early 1940s
: The U.S. government enacted eminent domain and acquired seventeen square miles of farmland in central Seneca County, New York for construction of the Seneca Army Depot and the Sampson Naval Training Base. Both bases were key weapons storage and training facilities during the second half of the 20th century.

1941
: According to a construction worker and WWII veteran, during the Depot’s construction a well shaft was sunk and struck an underground flow of water. Dye was added to detect the direction of the current and was soon discovered in Cayuga Lake to the east. Some say this is evidence of a real underground river linking the two largest Finger Lakes of Seneca and Cayuga. Others who have conducted research on this possibility have concluded it an absurdity.

Present Day:
After the Depot became fenced in during the forties the famous white deer herd of the area was corralled and thus protected. They’ve since grown to become the largest white deer herd in the world.

BETRAYED BY A MASON?

The Tragic Mission of
Lieutenant Thomas Boyd

by Michael Karpovage

This article was first published by
The Plumbline: A Quarterly Bulletin of the Scottish Rite Research Society.
Fall 2010, Volume 17, No. 3.
Visit www.scottishrite.org

M
oments before deploying on the longest military campaign of the Revolutionary War, Freemason Thomas Boyd was given a final ultimatum by his repeatedly spurned and pregnant lover. In front of his superior officers she warned Boyd, a lieutenant with Morgan’s Rifle Corps of the Continental Army, “If you go off without marrying me, I hope and pray to the great God of heaven that you will be tortured and cut to pieces by the savages.” An embarrassed Boyd, his pride tarnished, responded by drawing his sword and threatening to stab her unless she removed herself.1 She acquiesced. Unfortunately for the young lieutenant, he should have heeded her ominous prediction for that was exactly the fate that befell him.

Thomas Boyd’s death was one of the most heinous acts of torture and murder recorded during the Revolutionary War. Did it really occur because of the curse of a scorned lover? If you believe that centuries’ old quote, “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorn’d,”2 then you might believe there was a divine retribution against Boyd.

But historical evidence, direct from battlefield participants, tells a different story. Boyd’s death was not the result of a spurned lover’s curse; rather it was a classic example of Masonic brothers pitted against each other on opposite sides of a battle. Their beliefs, duties, and loyalties were put to the ultimate test to uphold Freemasonry’s most sacred tenet: relief of a distressed brother. For upon Boyd’s capture at the end of his ill-fated final mission, he made the ultimate gesture of a Freemason when he feared for his life. He asked a highly unlikely enemy Freemason for protection and surprisingly he received it. However, his relief was short-lived when another enemy Freemason stepped into the picture. Soon thereafter Boyd experienced exceedingly brutal acts of torture and finally, death. And herein lies the question: was Thomas Boyd – along with the most sacred tenet of Freemasonry – deliberately betrayed by a fellow Mason whose loyalties to a King meant more than saving the life of a brother?

The Mission

In the summer of 1779, Major General John Sullivan marched his 5,000 Continentals into the Finger Lakes region of New York. Known as Sullivan’s Expedition, it was ordered by General George Washington as an invasion into Iroquois Confederacy lands in retaliation for several brutal massacres by British Rangers and Indian warriors. This enemy force had conducted a terror campaign against American frontier settlements supporting the fledgling rebel army. Washington wanted all enemy villages and crops destroyed – a scorched earth policy to disrupt the Tory’s, and their Indian allies’ ability to wage war. Sullivan had, for the last two months, executed his orders to the fullest by destroying over 40 villages and soundly defeating his enemy at the Battle of Newtown on the New York-Pennsylvania border. His foes had since retreated back into their wilderness lands. Leading Sullivan’s troops, acting as his eyes and ears, were the famous scouts of Morgan’s Rifles. Thomas Boyd led a company of these marksmen and pushed miles ahead of the main army on the heels of their fleeing enemy, sometimes entering villages where corn still boiled in a kettle.

On September 12, 1779 the army marched toward the Seneca Indian stronghold of Genesee Castle – also known as Little Beard’s Town, after the Seneca chief who lived there. It was their last campaign objective. Upon reaching Conesus Lake the army halted and encamped because of a destroyed bridge over a marshy area. Across that bridge and leading west up a forested ravine-filled bluff ran several Indian trails to the objective. But the correct path remained unclear to Sullivan because of inaccurate maps and unreliable intelligence. A nighttime reconnaissance mission to locate the proper trail was ordered.

Sullivan knew the scout leader Boyd was a man of daring disposition and summoned him to his tent. He gave Boyd specific orders to select four of his most trustworthy scouts to locate the correct path to the objective, make no enemy contact, and report back before daylight. Although described as reliable, courageous, and honorable, Boyd was also reckless, cocky, and overconfident. On this assignment his latter character traits resulted in a series of deadly mistakes. Instead of taking the specified four men, Boyd defied direct orders and took 26 men and two Oneida Indian guides – hardly the stealthy unit called for. This fateful decision led to the deaths of most of the men in his party.

On the opposite side of the battlefield, positioned in the area Boyd was about to penetrate, was Colonel John Butler, a Tory and the leader of Butler’s Rangers. Butler was a Freemason. His unit was based out of Fort Niagara with an area of operations that included the western New York and the Pennsylvania wilderness. His son, Walter, was a captain with the Rangers and was notorious for his inhumane acts on battlefield victims.

Allied with the Rangers were Brant’s Volunteers, a contingent of Iroquois warriors and white Tory frontiersmen, led by Chief Joseph Brant, a Mohawk Indian and captain in the British Army. He was also the first Native American on record to become a Freemason.3 Prior to their defeat at Newtown, the Rangers and Indians were undeniably the fiercest combination of guerilla fighters in the Revolutionary War. But Brant often did not get along with Butler, due to the barbarous acts at the hands of the younger Walter. Although they distrusted each other and vied for power, they worked for a common cause – to kill rebel soldiers and civilians who supported independence from King George III’s colonies. During their reign of terror, these guerillas murdered, dismembered, scalped and kidnapped many American settlers. They slew livestock and burned down villages. They became infamous figures despised by the Americans, each earning a price on his head. It wasn’t until the massacres at Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania and Cherry Valley in New York that George Washington finally issued orders for an all-out campaign to destroy this continued threat. In his orders to Sullivan, Washington directed him “to lay waste all the settlements around…that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed [emphasis in the original].”4