Beadle's Pocket Novels No. 249: Gray Hair, the Chief

Gray Hair, the Chief, or the Mohawk Riflemen

This serialized novel by W. J. Hamilton, published by Beadle and Adams in 1874, dramatizes the American Revolutionary War in the Mohawk Valley. Roland Wingate, a half-breed Tory ranger and dispossessed refugee, leads royalist troops and Mohawk warriors against Whig colonists, attempting to recover his family's seized lands. He encounters Alpheus Diggs, a cowardly Yankee trader and spy, whom he threatens with death and coerces into betraying Gray Hair—an Onondaga chief fighting for the Whigs—to the royalists. Diggs strikes Roland and escapes into the forest, where Gray Hair himself appears, kills several Mohawk warriors with his hatchet, and rescues Diggs. Roland, searching for his betrothed, Edda Sinclair, abandons his regiment to find her. The narrative combines frontier combat with romantic entanglement during this period of Revolutionary-era frontier violence.