Moses Van Campen

I was nurtured in the school of the rifle and the tomahawk

Moses Van Campen (January 21, 1757 - October 15, 1849) was a Revolutionary War soldier.

Quotes

Sketches of Border Adventures, 1842

Moses Van Campen in: John Niles Hubbard, Sketches of Border Adventures: In the Life and Times of Major Moses Van Campen, a Surviving Soldier of the Revolution, R.L. Underhill & Company, 1842.

• I was nurtured in the school of the rifle and the tomahawk

• My good fellows we shall soon have sport--there are but five of them...we'll have something more to do--there are ten of them...we shall now, my brave fellows, have enough of it, for we are nearly equally manned.

• I had no orders, sir, to kill my own men.

Quotes about Moses Van Campen

• Danger, was to him, little else than a name.
  • John Niles Hubbard. Sketches of Border Adventures: In the Life and Times of Major Moses Van Campen, a Surviving Soldier of the Revolution, R.L. Underhill & Company, 1842. p. 139

• His Christianity was pure, his views of religion sound and scriptural, and his fidelity and integrity of character were like his own well aimed rifle, true to the mark
  • [Reverend Thomas Aitken in Van Campen's obituary http://mosesvancampen.com/] 

• Moses Van Campen's hatred for the Indians did not soften until the vespertine shadows gathered about him and his long life entered its final stage.
  • Henry W. Clune, The Genesee, Syracuse University Press, 1963. p. 140

• Believing that the only good Indian was a dead Indian, Van Campen was dedicated to an effort to effect the extinction of the race. He fought Indians. He killed a quantity of them. He strung their dried scalps on the waistband of his breaches, even as the savages themselves displayed such grisly tokens as symbols of their prowess.
  • Henry W. Clune, The Genesee, Syracuse University Press, 1963. p. 140