CORNPLANTER.
In a speech which he once wrote to the Governor of Pennsylvania, he says of himself:
“When I was a child, I played with the butterfly, the grasshopper, and the frogs; and as I grew up, I began to pay some attention, and play with the Indian boys in the neighborhood; they took notice of my skin being a different color from theirs, and spoke about it. I inquired of my mother the cause, and she told me that my father was a resident in Albany. I still ate my food out of a bark dish. I grew up to be a young man, and married me a wife, and I had no kettle or gun. I then knew where my father lived, and went to see him, and found he was a white man, and spoke the English language. He gave me food while I was at his house, but when I started to return home, he gave me no provisions to eat on the way. He gave me neither kettle nor gun.”
It was the fate of all those who had as much white as red blood in their veins, to be rejected by the white parent; and they therefore had no alternative but to wed themselves to Indian customs, and be Indians in name, if not in reality. This sometimes infused a bitterness into their spirits, and made them doubly ferocious, when called to defend themselves against white enemies.
During all the revolutionary war, Cornplanter was the ally of the British; but when the hatchet was buried, [[222]]and especially when the Indian was deserted by those for whom he had so faithfully fought, he became the friend of the United States, and never after wavered in his loyalty to the Republic. In one of his war excursions, he sought his father’s dwelling, and surprising him, made him a prisoner. The old man was in terror at falling into the hands of an Indian; and, perhaps, would have feared more, if he had known that his captor was his son. But he did not recognize him till Cornplanter, after obliging him to march ten or twelve miles into the forest, leaving him all the while to imagine his fate, stepped up before him and said:
“My name is John O. Bail—commonly called Cornplanter. I am your son! You are my father! You are now my prisoner, and subject to the customs of Indian warfare. But you shall not be harmed—you need not fear. I am a warrior! Many are the scalps I have taken! many prisoners I have tortured to death! I am your son! I was anxious to see you, and greet you in friendship. I went to your cabin and took you by force. But your life shall be spared. Indians love their friends and their kindred, and treat them with kindness. If now you choose to follow the fortunes of your red son, and to live with our people, I will cherish your old age with plenty of venison, and you shall live easy. But if it is your choice to return to your fields, and live with your white children, I will send a party of my trusty young men to conduct you back in safety. I respect you, my father; you have been friendly to Indians, and they are your friends.”
The father, of course, preferred his home and his white children; and the promise was faithfully fulfilled, of escorting him in safety back to his cabin. One can easily imagine that the young Cornplanter intended to [[223]]“heap coals of fire on his head,” though he had never heard the Scripture injunction; and in this instance, certainly acted according to the golden rule, of doing as he would be done by. His father had rejected him; had never performed the parent’s duty of sheltering him, or giving him food or clothes, or bestowed upon him a word of affection, or manifested in him any interest. That he had a son among them, may have softened his feelings towards Indians, and prompted him to befriend them; but our impressions concerning the promptings of Indian blood, would lead us to expect retaliation for such neglect. We might expect him to ask, Why should the father love and cherish his white children, and leave him to run wild in the forest? Very likely these thoughts passed through his mind, but no Christian mother ever more thoroughly inculcated the precept, “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,” than the untaught Indian woman in the wilderness. If Cornplanter had fallen upon his white brethren and sisters in anger, and meted out to them vengeance, on account of their being the Benjamins of their father’s household, we should have called it consistent with Indian character. But though he had it in his power at any time to cause them to be slain, or taken captive, he left them by their firesides in safety and peace. That he sometimes thought of the injustice he was experiencing, is evident from the ironical allusions he made to the peculiar embarrassment of neglected children, in his speeches.
At one time, he, with several other Chiefs, was at a great dinner, given upon the ratification of a long-pending treaty. Wine being part of the entertainment, Cornplanter took his glass and said:
“I thank the Great Spirit for this opportunity of [[224]]smoking the pipe of friendship and love. May we plant our own vines, be the fathers of our own children, and maintain them!”
The Indian name of Cornplanter was Ga-ne-o-di-yo, or Handsome Lake; and he had a half-brother, who became distinguished among the Iroquois as the founder of a new religion. Having spent his youth in dissipation, he suddenly reformed, and announced that he had been commissioned by the Great Spirit as an apostle, endowed with supernatural gifts, and having a new revelation. At the time of his conversion—if such it may be termed—he resided with Cornplanter, in a little village on the Alleghany River, in the State of Pennsylvania.