The American Indians / Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

That he was, however, a man of an extraordinary firmness, courage and decision of character, is without doubt. But his fate and fortunes have not been such as to give much encouragement to chiefs of the native race in lending their influence to European, or Anglo-European powers, who may be engaged in hostilities against each other on this continent. Pontiac had realized this before him, and Tecumtha realized it after him. Neither attained the object he sought. One of these chiefs was assassinated, the other fell in battle, and Brant himself only survived the defeat of his cause, to fret out his latter days in vain attempts to obtain justice from the power which he had most loyally served, and greatly benefited. Had he been knighted at the close of the contest, instead of being shuffled from one great man to another, at home and abroad, it would have been an instance of a noble exercise of that power. But George III. seemed to have been fated, at all points, neither to do justice to his friends nor his enemies.

Such was Brant, or Thayendanegea, symbolically, the Band of his tribe,[10] to whose lot it has fallen to act a more distinguished part in the Colonies, as a consummate warrior, than any other aboriginal chieftain who has arisen. And his memory was well worthy of the elaborate work in which his biographer has presented him, in the most favourable points of view, amidst a comprehensive history of the border wars of the revolution, without, however, concealing atrocities of which he was, perhaps sometimes unwillingly, the agent.

[10] The name is usually translated, two-sticks tied, or united.

A word, and but a word, will be added, as to some points connected with this chief's character, which are not in coincidence with the generally received opinion, or are now first introduced by way of palliation, or vindication. We confess, that so far as the presence or absence of the Great Mohawk in the massacre of Wyoming, is concerned, the statements are either inconclusive, or less satisfactory than could be wished. There was quite too much feeling sometimes evinced by his family, and particularly his son John, to permit us to receive the new version of the statement without some grains of allowance. An investigation is instituted by Col. Stone as to the immediate ancestry of Brant, and much importance is attached to the inquiry, whether he was descended from a line of hereditary chiefs. We think the testimony adverse to such a supposition, and it affords no unequivocal proof of talents, that notwithstanding such an adventitious circumstance, certainly without being of the line of ruling chiefs, he elevated himself to be, not only the head chief and leader of his tribe, but of the Six Nations. Courtesy and popular will attach the title of chief or sachem to men of talents, courage or eloquence among our tribes generally; and while mere descent would devolve it upon a chiefs son, whatever might be his character, yet this fact alone would be of little import, and give him little influence, without abilities: whereas abilities alone are found to raise men of note to the chieftainship, among all the North American tribes, whose customs and character are known.

It has constituted no part of our object, in these general outlines, to examine minor points of the biography or history, upon which the information or the conclusions are not so satisfactory as could be wished, or which may, indeed, be at variance with our opinions. One fact, however, connected with this name, it is not deemed proper to pass sub silentio. Brant is made to take a part in the Pontiac war, a contest arising on the fall of the French power in Canada in 1759, and which closed in 1763. Brant was at its close but twenty-one years of age, and had not, it is probable, finally returned from his New England tutors. At any rate, there is no reason to suppose, that, at that early period of his life and his influence, he could have had any participation in the events of that war.

In the life of Red Jacket, or Sagóyewata, we have a different order of Indian intellect brought to view. He was an orator and a diplomatist, and was at no period of his life noted for his skill as a warrior. Nay, there are indubitable proofs that his personal courage could not always be "screwed up to the sticking point." But in native intellect, he was even superior to Brant. He was, indeed, the Brant of the council, and often came down upon his opponents with bursts of eloquence, trains of argument, or rhapsodies of thought, which were irresistible. And of him, it may be symbolically said, that his tongue was his tomahawk, and the grandiloquent vocabulary of the Seneca language, his war-club. Nor has any native chieftain wielded the weapon to more purpose, or with a longer continued effect than the great Seneca orator. The specimens of his eloquence which have appeared in our newspapers for forty years or more, are still fresh in the memory, and it was due and meet that these should be collected and preserved in a permanent shape, together with such particulars of his life and career as could be obtained. This task has been performed by Col. Stone, in a manner which leaves nothing more to be attempted on the subject. Much zeal and industry have been evinced in eliciting facts from every quarter where it was probable information could be had. And he has brought together a body of contemporaneous proofs and reminiscences, touching this chief, which a few years would have put beyond the power of recovery, and which a position less prominent than he occupied as a public journalist, might have rendered it difficult for another to collect. We need only refer to the names of Gen. P.B. Porter, Rev. J. Breckenridge, Mr. Parish, and Mr. Hosmer, to show the character of this part of his materials.

Other chiefs of the native stock, have produced occasional pieces of eloquence, or admired oratory, but Red-Jacket is the only prominent individual who has devoted his whole career to it. That he did, indeed, excel, producing effects which no reported speech of his ever equalled or did justice to, there are still many living to attest. In the question of land sales, which arose between the white and red races, there were frequent occasions to bring him out. And these, in the end, assumed a complicated shape, from either the vague nature, or ill understood conditions of prior grants. In all these discussions, he preserved a unity and consistency in the set of opinions he had adopted. He was opposed to further sales, to removal, to civilization, and to the introduction of Christianity among his people. What Brant had done in politics, Red-Jacket repeated in morals. Both took the wrong side, and both failed. But it is to be said of the Seneca orator, that he did not live to see the final defeat of that course of policy which he had so long and so ably advocated.

It was remarked by Mr. Clinton, and the fact had impressed others, that the Iroquois, or Six Nations, excelled the other natives in eloquence. Of this, their history, during the Supremacy of Holland and England in New York, as given by Colden, furnishes ample proofs. The speech of Garangula, against the Governor General of Canada and his wily policy, is unexcelled, as a whole, by anything which even Red-Jacket has left in print, though much of the effect of it is due to the superior and heroic position occupied by the tribes for whom he spoke. Logan, unexcelled by all others for his pathos and simplicity, it must be remembered, was also of this stock,—Mingo, or Mengwe, as the Delawares pronounced it, being but a generic term for Iroquois; so that the transmission of this trait, from the proud era of the Iroquois confederacy down to modern days, is quite in keeping with the opinion quoted.

It is to be wished that Col. Stone would supply another link in the chain of Iroquois history, by favoring the public with the life of the noted Oneida chief, Shenandoah, for which materials must exist in the Kirkland family.

The lives of the two men, Uncas and Miontonimo, whose leading acts are described in one of the volumes named in our caption, belong to an earlier period of history, and a different theatre of action. The scene changes from western New York to the seaboard of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and, to some extent, Massachusetts. Uncas was the good genius, the tutelary spirit, if we may so say, of the colony of Connecticut; and the best monument which that State could erect to his memory, would be to change the unmeaning and worn out name of one of her counties, New London, for that of the noble and friendly chief, of whose forest kingdom it once formed a part. From the first day that the English colonists set foot within it, to the hour of his death, Uncas was the unwavering "friend of the white man," as his biographer justly calls him. He was of that race, whom history has, without making a particle of allowance for savage ignorance and hereditary prejudice, branded under the name of Pequods. They were of that type of languages and lineage, which was very well characterized generically, at least as far south as the original country of the Delawares; but which assumed a sub-type after crossing the Hudson, and was known east of that point under one of its superinduced forms, as the Mohegan. This term had been dropped by the Pequods, if it was ever their specific cognomen, but it is a proof, and we think a very conclusive proof, of the yet freshly remembered affiliation with Taminund[11] and the Manhattans, that Uncas, the moment he revolted from King Sassacus, assumed the name of a Mohegan, and put himself at the head of that tribe, as it then existed within the boundaries of Connecticut. Or rather, he constituted the revolted Pequods a new tribe, under an old and respected name, and he thus laid the foundation of the Uncas dynasty. Placed thus by circumstances in a position in which he sought an alliance with the early colonists, and finding his security in theirs, he was in fact the only leading chief of the times who, really, heartily, and faithfully sought their prosperity and growth to the end. The rise of Uncas and Connecticut thus began at one era; and as the alliance was founded on mutual interest and safety, it only grew stronger with time. A man of less force of character or natural sagacity than Uncas, would have vacillated when he saw the colonists becoming more powerful and himself more weak as years rolled on, and would have been seduced to enter into alliances for arresting the white man's power, as other native chiefs had done. But all history concurs in showing that, under every circumstance, and there were many of the most trying kind, he carried himself well, and avoided even a suspicion of his fidelity.