ease and plenty among his son's followers, or return to the settlements of the whites. O'Bail preferred the latter course, and was escorted accordingly to a place of safety. We shall speak further of this noted warrior, in describing his successful rival, the great orator Red-Jacket.

The usual horrors attendant upon Indian warfare marked this campaign of Johnson's: but we are not without evidence that the principal leader of the savages was inclined to no cruelty further than that necessarily incident to the Indian mode of conducting hostilities. On one occasion, he sent one of his runners to return a young infant that had been carried off with other captives and plunder. The messenger delivered a letter from Brant, directed "to the commanding officer of the rebel army," in which the Mohawk chief avers that "whatever others might do," he made no war upon women and children. He mentioned the two Butlers, and other tory partisans, as being "more savage than the savages themselves."

The Indians of the Six Nations, engaged in the royal cause, made Niagara their winter head-quarters. Thence their scouts and war-parties continued to molest the border country through the ensuing spring and summer, but no very important engagement took place until October (1781). On the 24th of that month, the inhabitants of the country south of the Mohawk, near the mouth of Schoharie creek, were astonished by the unexpected inroad of an overwhelming force of the enemy. The army, under the command of Major Ross, amounted to nearly a thousand men, including Indians. They had made their way from Buck's Island, in the St. Lawrence, to Oswego, and thence, by Oneida lake, to the Mohawk valley, so suddenly and secretly, that no news of their approach had preceded them.

The invaders commenced the usual course of ravage and destruction, but their success was but of short dura

tion. They were disastrously routed and put to flight by the provincials, under Colonel Willet, aided by a body of Oneida warriors. The notorious Walter N. Butler perished during the last engagement with the Americans. He was shot and scalped by an Oneida Indian.

This was the last important procedure connected with the war of the revolution, in which the Iroquois bore a part. They proved, throughout the contest, most dangerous and efficient allies, rendering an immense extent of the richest and most beautiful portion of the state of New York unsafe for the Americans.

AFTER the conclusion of peace and the recognition of the independence of the United States, arrangements were made between the British government and those of the Six Nations who still wished to reside under the jurisdiction of the parent country, to secure them an asylum in Canada. Thayendanegea was the principal negotiator on the part of the Indians, and, at his instance, the country bordering on Grand River, which empties into Lake Erie, about thirty miles westward from Buffalo, was granted by the crown to "the Mohawks, and others of the Six Nations, who had either lost their possessions in the war, or wished to retire from them to the British." They were to be secured in the possession of a tract extending six miles in breadth, on each side of the river, from its mouth to its source.

The course to be taken by the United States respecting

the Iroquois resident within their limits, was a subject which led to much discussion and dissension. A conference was finally held at Fort Stanwix, between deputies from all the six tribes and United States commissioners; and, after much violent debate, in which the celebrated Red-Jacket took a prominent part, it was settled that the Indians should cede to the government all jurisdiction over lands in eastern New York, and confine themselves to a district specified at the west. All prisoners were to be delivered up, and several hostages were given to secure performance of their stipulations on the part of the Six Nations.

Many of the Indians were greatly dissatisfied with this treaty. Red-Jacket (in opposition to Corn-Planter) strenuously advocated a continuance of hostilities. His speech at Fort Stanwix upon the subject gained him a wide reputation for oratory. Brant, who was then about starting for England to push the claims of his tribe for remuneration for their losses in the war, postponed his embarkation, and wrote a letter of remonstrance to Colonel Monroe, complaining especially of the retention of one of his relatives, a Captain Aaron Hill, as one of the hostages.

The Mohawk chief did not lay aside his purpose of visiting the royal court in his people's behalf. He arrived in England in the month of December, 1785, and never was ambassador received with more flattering attention. His intelligence and dignity, together with the remembrance of his long and faithful services, commended him to all. He was fêted by the nobility and gentry; his acquaintance was sought by the most learned and celebrated dignitaries of the age; and the native shrewdness evinced in his speeches and remarks drew forth universal applause. His attempt to awaken an interest at court, in favor of the claims of his nation, was successful; and a royal order was obtained for the indemnity of those whose losses had been specified, and for an examination of further demands.

In the United States, Indian affairs continued unsettled, and ominous prospects of future disturbance on the western frontier called for wise and cautious action. A great council was held in December, 1786, by many tribes of Indians, among whom the Six Nations were the most prominent, at Huron village, not far from the mouth of Detroit river. The object was to concert some general plan of resistance to encroachments upon their lands by the inhabitants of the United States. It is said that an unfriendly feeling towards the new government was promoted by English officials in their communications with the Indians, in reference to the retention, by the crown, of Oswego, Detroit, Niagara, and other posts.

For many years, subsequent to the peace with England, bloody skirmishes, and scenes of plunder and rapine, kept the western border in continual distress; and when the United States undertook the reduction of the hostile tribes in 1790 and 91, it was found that the feeling of disaffection on the part of the red men was indeed extensive. Upon the occasion of St. Clair's disastrous defeat by the Miamis and their associates, under the renowned chief, Little Turtle, it is asserted by the biographer of Brant that the old Mohawk warrior and the warlike tribe to which he belonged bore a conspicuous part.

No man, born of a savage stock, has ever associated with the enlightened and intelligent upon terms of greater equality than did Thayendanegea. While he retained all his partiality for his own people, and never lost sight of their interests, he fully appreciated the advantages of education and civilization. A long life, spent for the most part amid scenes of strife and danger, in which the whole powers of his active mind and body seemed called forth by the stirring scenes in which he mingled, did not unfit him for the pursuits of literature and the arts of peace. He was indefatigable in his endeavors to elevate the social

position of his tribe, and devoted no little time and attention to the translation of scriptural and other works into the Mohawk tongue, for their benefit. His earlier specimens of composition, which have been preserved, are, as might be expected, rudely and imperfectly expressed, but they evince great shrewdness and intelligence. The productions of his latter years are strikingly forcible and elegant.

We cannot go into a detail of the tedious and somewhat obscure negotiations with the American government in which the chief of the Six Nations took part in behalf of his people, nor chronicle the events of private interest and domestic troubles which disturbed his declining years. The old warrior died in November, 1807, at the age of sixty-four.

In the war of 1812, the Mohawks, under John Brant, son and successor of Thayendanegea, took the part of their old friends and allies, the English, and did good service in various engagements upon the northern frontier.

In the early part of the nineteenth century, few names stand more prominent in Indian annals than that of the Seneca chief and orator, Saguoaha, or Red-Jacket. We hear of him, indeed, in much earlier times, as opposed to Brant, at the time of Sullivan's campaign. The Mohawk chief always regarded him with contempt and dislike, speaking of him as an arrant coward, and a man of words merely. Saguoaha held the whites generally in suspicion, and his great effort appears ever to have been for the preservation of his nation's independence and individuality.

We have already mentioned the part which he took at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, and his opposition to the cession by his nation of their eastern lands. Corn-Planter or O'Bail, who favored the proposal, was high in authority at that time among the Senecas; but Red-Jacket, more by his eloquence and sagacity in council than by any warlike