*** Stone's Life of Brant, i., 53.
Attempted Removal of Mr. Kirkland.—Hostile Movements of the Johnsons.—Indian Councils.—Rev. Samuel Kirkland.
of liberty as soon as actual hostilities should commence. * Another circumstance confirmed these suspicions. Brant was the secretary of Colonel Guy Johnson, the superintendent of Indian affairs after the death of Sir William, and his activity in visiting the tribes and holding secret conferences with the sachems was unceasing. Suddenly his former friendly intercourse with Mr. Kirkland, the faithful Christian missionary, was broken off in 1774, and, at Brant's instigation, an Oneida chief preferred charges against the pious minister to Guy Johnson, and asked for his removal. It was well known that Mr. Kirkland was a Whig, ** and this movement of the wily sachem could not be misinterpreted. But the Oneida nation rallied in support of the minister, and his removal was for a time delayed.
During the summer of 1775 the Johnsons were very active in winning the Six Nations. from their promises of neutrality in the coming contest.3 A council of the Mohawks was 1775. held at Guy Park in May, which was attended by delegates from the Albany and the Tryon county Committees. Little Abraham, brother of the famous Hendrick who was killed near Lake George, was the principal chief of the Mohawks, and their best speaker on the occasion. Guy Johnson, the Indian agent, was in attendance at the council, but the result was unsatisfactory to both parties. The delegates, cognizant of the disaffection and bad faith of the Indians, could not rely upon their present promises; and Guy Johnson, alarmed by the events at Lexington and Concord, and by intimations which he had received that his person was in danger of seizure by order of the General Congress, broke up the council abruptly, and immediately directed the assembling of another at the Upper Castle, on the German Flats, whither himself and family, attended by a large retinue of Mohawks, at once repaired. But this council was not held, and Johnson, with his family and the Indians, pushed on to Fort Stanwix. His sojourn there was brief, and he moved on to Ontario, far beyond the verge of civilization. Brant and the Butlers attended him, and there a large council was held, composed chiefly of Cayugas and Senecas.
Thus far no positive acts of hostility had been committed by Guy Johnson and his friends, yet his design to alienate the Indians and prepare them for war upon the patriots was undoubted. His hasty departure with his family to the wilderness, accompanied by a large train of Mohawk warriors, and the holding a grand council in the midst of the fierce Cayu-
* See letter of the Palatine Committee to the Committee of Safety at Albany, dated May 18th, 1775.
** Samuel Kirkland was son of the pious minister, Daniel Kirkland, of Norwieh, Connecticut. He learned the language of the Mohawks, was ordained a missionary to the Indians at Lebanon in 1766, and removed his wife to the Oneida Castle in 1769. The next spring he removed to the house of his friend, General Herkimer, near Little Falls, where his twin children were born, one of whom was the late Dr. Kirkland, president of Harvard College. The very air of Norwieh seemed to give the vitality of freedom to its sons, and Mr. Kirkland early imbibed those patriotic principles which distinguished him through life. His attachment to the republican cause was well known, and, after the battles of Lexington and Concord, the provincial Congress of Massachusetts, desirous of securing either the friendship or neutrality of the Six Nations, sent a letter to him inclosing an address to the Indians, and requesting him to use his influence in obtaining the ends in view. Mr. Kirkland succeeded in securing the attachment of the Oneidas to the patriot cause, and continued his religious labors among them during the war, when the other tribes, through the influence of Brant and the Johnsons, had taken up arms for the king. He officiated as chaplain to the American forces in the vicinity of his labors, and accompanied Sullivan in his expedition in 1779. The state of New York, in consideration of his patriotic services, gave him the lands of the "Kirkland patent," in the town of Kirkland. After 40 years' service for his God and country, he fell asleep at Paris, Oneida county, on the 28th of March, 1808, in the 67th year of his age.