Jane McCrea - Reaction To Killing

Reaction To Killing

When Burgoyne heard of the killing he went to the Native American camp and ordered the culprit to be delivered, threatening to have him executed. He was told by General Fraser and Luc de la Corne, the agent leading the Native Americans, that such an act would cause the defection of all the Native Americans and might cause them to take revenge as they went back north. Burgoyne relented, and no action was taken against the Indians.

News of her death traveled relatively quickly by the standards of the time. News accounts were published in Pennsylvania on August 11 and on August 22 as far away as Virginia. Often the accounts became more exaggerated as they traveled, describing indiscriminate killings of large numbers of Loyalists and Patriots alike. Burgoyne's campaign had intended to use the Indians as a means to intimidate the colonists; however, the American reaction to the news was not the one hoped for. The propaganda war received a boost after Burgoyne wrote a letter to the American general Horatio Gates, complaining about American treatment of prisoners taken in the August 17 Battle of Bennington. Gates' response was widely reprinted:

That the savages of America should in their warfare mangle and scalp the unhappy prisoners who fall into their hands is neither new nor extraordinary; but that the famous Lieutenant General Burgoyne, in whom the fine gentleman is united with the soldier and the scholar, should hire the savages of America to scalp europeans and the descendants of europeans, nay more, that he should pay a price for each scalp so barbarously taken, is more than will be believed in England. Miss McCrae, a young lady lovely to the sight, of virtuous character and amiable disposition, engaged to be married to an officer of your army, was carried into the woods, and there scalped and mangled in the most shocking manner

News accounts elaborated on her beauty, describing her as "lovely in disposition, so graceful in manners and so intelligent in features, that she was a favorite of all who knew her", and that her hair "was of extraordinary length and beauty, measuring a yard and a quarter". One of the only contemporary accounts by someone who actually saw her was that of James Wilkinson, who described her as "a country girl of honest family in circumstances of mediocrity, without either beauty or accomplishments." Later accounts embellished on details; historian Richard Ketchum notes that the color of her hair has been described as everything from black to blonde to red; he also cites an 1840s examination of an alleged lock of her hair that described it as "reddish".

Her death, and those of others in similar raids, inspired some of the resistance to Burgoyne's invasion leading to his defeat at the Battle of Saratoga. The effect expanded as reports of the incident were used as propaganda to excite rebel sympathies later in the war, especially before the 1779 Sullivan Expedition.

David Jones, apparently bitter over the experience, never married, and settled in Canada as a United Empire Loyalist. The story eventually became a part of American folklore. An anonymous poet wrote "The Ballad of Jane McCrea" that was set to music and became a popular folk song. In Philadelphia in 1799 Ricketts' Circus performed "The Death of Miss McCrea", a pantomime co-written by John Durang. John Vanderlyn painted the portrait (shown above) in 1803, and James Fenimore Cooper described similar events in his novel The Last of the Mohicans. There are several markers in and near Fort Edward commemorating her death.