The sacking of New Canaan was the destruction led by Ulysses and perpetrated by the White Legs against the Mormons at the city of New Canaan in 2281.
Prelude[]
Caesar, angered by Joshua Graham surviving his execution, tasked the White Legs, a raider tribe in Utah that had been petitioning Caesar to be assimilated into Caesar's Legion, to wipe out all New Canaanites, promising to absorb them into the Legion if they succeed.[2] To achieve this, Caesar sent an envoy, Ulysses, to train the White Legs into a more formidable force. Ulysses taught the White Legs how to fight and honed their ferocity, as well as armed them with powerful weapons and how to properly use them.[3] To achieve the total destruction of New Canaan that Caesar wanted, Ulysses had to get the White Legs to kill a certain way. Young and old, armed and unarmed, the able and the weak, no one was to be spared in the coming raid. He told them that the New Canaanites valued generations and that every generation must be killed.[4]
The White Legs watched over New Canaan from a distance, taking note of guards on duty and waiting for an opportunity when most of the main force was away to strike.[1]
Destruction[]
The New Canaanites didn't think the White Legs were a legitimate threat and didn't anticipate them mounting an attack, especially at night when guard shifts were being rotated. The White Legs struck the settlement at night while Graham and many other New Canaanites were away, indiscriminately killing anyone they could, regardless of age or ability to fight or defend.[1][5] The White Legs followed Ulysses' teachings exactly. As a gesture of shock and awe, the White Legs burned down the Canaanite bishop's home with the elderly man trapped within.[6]
Aftermath[]
After New Canaan was razed, Salt-Upon-Wounds had the corpses of the slain nailed to the neighboring cliffs and the area salted so nothing could grow.[7][8] The surviving Mormons who escaped, about thirty in total,[1] including Daniel and Joshua Graham, regrouped and moved onward toward Zion Canyon.
On a night after the raid, the White Legs braided their hair into dreadlocks in order to honor Ulysses and to possibly curry favor for Legion assimilation. Ulysses was more appalled by the gesture than anything. In his view, the hair that symbolized history and meaning for his tribe, the Twisted Hairs, was being bastardized by the White Legs and their ways of wanton violence with no meaning for the dreadlocks' symbolism. Seeing this triggered a realization in Ulysses: he had single-handedly caused the destruction of the history of a tribe of people just as it was done to him by Vulpes Inculta at Dry Wells for the Legion before.[9]
Appearances[]
The Sacking of New Canaan is mentioned in the Fallout: New Vegas add-ons Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, and Lonesome Road.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 The Courier: "If you don't acknowledge your past now, it'll come back to you later."
Daniel: "[SUCCEEDED] True enough. We can't escape it no matter how hard we try. Best we can do is own up, trust in the Lord to forgive. Joshua was gone, so were a lot of the other New Canaanites. White Legs must have been watching for a long while, counting who remained. We didn't think the White Legs were a real threat. Maybe it was overconfidence. Maybe sloth. Either way, we didn't see them coming. They attacked at night. They killed without regard to age or infirmity. Armed or unarmed. They beat children to- Beat them to death in their beds while they were sleeping. And now we're all that's left. Maybe thirty of us. Pride goeth before destruction."
(Daniel's dialogue) - ↑ The Courier: "I came here with the Happy Trails Caravan Company to make contact with the New Canaanites."
Joshua Graham: "Happy Trails. I remember. They were good friends. I have bad news for your employers. New Canaan was destroyed, its citizens scattered. All because of the White Legs. And Caesar, of course. The White Legs want to join the Legion. Caesar's rite of passage is the destruction of the New Canaanites, almost assuredly because of me. The good news is that we can help you find your way back. Daniel, one of the other New Canaanites, has made many maps of the region. The bad news is that we can't help you right now. Not with everything that's going on."
(Joshua Graham's dialogue) - ↑ Ulysses log Y-17.21
- ↑ Ulysses log Y-17.22
- ↑ The Courier: "Well, I'm guessing you're pretty mad about something."
Joshua Graham: "The White Legs didn't just force my people out of New Canaan. They butchered everyone who wasn't fast enough to get away. The elderly, the ill, children. Those who stopped to help the wounded. It made no difference to them. They can't be reasoned with, the White Legs. Daniel believes that if we leave, if the Sorrows leave, the White Legs will stop. He doesn't understand what this kind of tribe is like."
(Joshua Graham's dialogue) - ↑ The Courier: "You're the man in charge. If something's troubling you, it could affect all of us."
Daniel: "[SUCCEEDED] I never thought I'd be in charge of anything. Don't know why. Bishop Mordecai was old. He had been sick for years. He couldn't walk anymore. It wasn't a problem for the rest of us. He made it out to be more trouble than it really was. Just his way, I guess. When the White Legs came... he was upstairs. We couldn't get him out in time. The house caught fire at the base and worked its way up. Fast. He didn't die of smoke. I wish he had. Sometimes I wake up and for a minute or two, I think all of it was a dream. But it's not. It wasn't. I wish all of this were some fevered vision of what could have been. Instead of what is, what we let happen."
(Daniel's dialogue) - ↑ Follows-Chalk: "Way I heard it, Salt-Upon-Wounds butchered everyone in New Canaan and nailed their corpses to the cliffs."
(Follows-Chalk's dialogue) - ↑ Waking Cloud: "When Salt-Upon-Wounds took New Canaan, he ordered the White Legs to salt the earth so nothing could grow again. What kind of monster could do that?"
(Waking Cloud's dialogue) - ↑ Ulysses log Y-17.23