Wicked white men often tempted him, in order to overcome his temperance resolutions and lead him into sin; but he was always firm, and brought no dishonor, in any way, upon the cause which he had espoused.
During the last war, he was on the side of the United States, and the remainder of his life received a pension of two hundred dollars a year, as compensation for his bravery, and a wound which he received in performance of his meritorious services.
He died in 1835, and lies in the Mission Burial-Ground, about four miles from Buffalo, where are also most of the distinguished men and women of the nation who have died in the last half century. It is a consecrated spot indeed to the Indian and to the mission, for there are the lost and loved ones of their own little families, and the first fruits of their labors among a pagan people, who received Christian burial. It was once a fort, and the soldiers’ graveyard; and warriors of many nations, and Christian pilgrims, and little children, whom Jesus took in his arms and blessed, now mingle their dust beneath the same green mounds; and some of them will awake at the sound of the last trump on the resurrection morn, and enter together the New Jerusalem. [[220]]
CHAPTER XI.
INDIAN MAGNANIMITY ILLUSTRATED BY THE LIFE OF CORNPLANTER.
Wars develop warriors, and give an opportunity to the brave to display their heroism. Had there been no American Revolution, Washington would probably have remained a quiet farmer on his estates, unknown to fame; and had not war been the most glorious occupation in which men could engage, thousands of others would have gone down to the grave unhonored and unsung.
With the Iroquois, war and oratory being the only fields of distinction, it is only the lives of orators and warriors that we have to record, in writing Indian history.
Cornplanter was scarcely less famous than Brandt, as his feet were, all his life, upon the war-path. The year of his birth cannot be ascertained with accuracy, but must have been as early as 1735. Like Farmer’s Brother, he was in the battle which ended so disastrously for the British in Braddock’s defeat, in 1755; and to the Indians alone the French owed all their victories, in the “old French war,” as in an Indian country, with the primitive inhabitants so numerous as they were then, he who secured their alliance, must be morally certain of securing victory. Allowing Cornplanter to have been twenty years old at that time, and he could scarcely have been younger, his [[221]]birthday was three years later than that of Washington. His father was a white man, and his mother an Indian of the Seneca nation, and his birthplace Conewango, in the valley of the Genesee River. There is very little for me to relate of him, though he lived more than a hundred years, and was ever on the alert, because I cannot follow him to the battle ground, and he lived in a time when it was thought little else was worth relating concerning a great man, except his great deeds.
