All through the winter, the British garrisons at Fort Bull and Fort Williams had been on a half-rations following the freezing of the Mohawk river, and many men were suffering from scurvy. On 12 March, a messenger from Fort Williams told Sir William Johnson, the Superintendent of Northern Indian Affairs, that an Indian traveler had told them that a force of 300 French and Indians were heading towards the Oneida Carry, which caused Johnson to call up about 1, 000 New York militiamen and start marching up the Mohawk river valley, only to send the New York militia home three days later when Johnson received word that it was a false rumor. Lieutenant Colonel James Mercer at Fort Oswego had been planning on abandoning the fort on 25 March to head back to Schenectady when 14 bateaux arrived in the middle of March, which persuaded him to stay on. However, despite the opening of the supply line along the Hudson and Mohawk to bring up supplies from Albany, the garrisons at both Fort Williams and Fort Bull were still weakened by their long winter of hunger. One consequence of their isolation and physical weakness was no patrolling had been done, and the British had no idea that an expeditionary force had left Montreal at the end of February heading for the Oneida Carry. The American historian Fred Anderson wrote that name Fort Bull was a misnomer as the fort was "...was not so much a fort as a way station: a collection of storehouses and barracks, enclosed in a single palisade".