His speech riveted the attention of his hearers for nearly three hours. He prevailed. "THE IRON BROW OF SUPERSTITION RELENTED UNDER THE MAGIC POWER OF HIS ELOQUENCE."—The Indians divided and a majority appeared in his favor.
"Perhaps,"—says the distinguished author just quoted,—"the annals of history cannot furnish a more conspicuous instance of the triumph and power of oratory, in a barbarous nation, devoted to superstition, and looking up to the accuser as a delegated minister of the Almighty." [Footnote: Governor Clinton's Historical Discourse.]
The victory which Red Jacket thus achieved recoiled heavily on Cornplanter, and gave him a blow, from which he never afterward fully recovered. He retired to his reservation, on the waters of the Alleghany river, within the boundaries of Pennsylvania, where he devoted himself, during the remainder of his long life, to the elevation and improvement of his people. He did not, after the example of his great rival Red Jacket, spurn the improvements of civilization, but engaged in agriculture after the example of the whites, and welcomed to his abode the teachers of christianity, and himself openly avowed his belief in its doctrines.
Cornplanter was a native of Ca-na-wan-gus, on the Genesee river, a half breed, the son of an Indian trader, from the valley of the Mohawk, a white man named John O'Bail. Of his early life little is known further than he himself intimated, in a letter written long afterward, to the governor of Pennsylvania:—In which he said,—"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; and 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 victuals 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 victuals, while I was at his house, but when I started to return home, he gave me no provision to eat on the way. He gave me neither kettle or gun."
He was with his people when they fought in alliance with the French in the year 1755. The principal part of the force which met and defeated the English under General Braddock was Indian, and it was through their prowess mainly, if not entirely, that the victory was gained.
What part Cornplanter took in that engagement is not known, but in the war of the Revolution, he was a war-chief, and ranked high in the estimation of his people.
In a speech addressed to President Washington in 1790, he related the manner in which the Indians came to be in alliance with the English.
"Many nations inhabited this country; but they had no wisdom, therefore they warred together. The Six Nations were powerful and compelled them to peace; the lands to a great extent were given up to them; the French came among us and built Niagara; they became our fathers and took care of us. Sir William Johnson came and took that fort from the French; he became our father and promised to take care of us, and did so until you were too strong for his king.
"When you kindled your thirteen fires separately, the wise men that assembled at them told us that you were all brothers, the children of one great father, who regarded the red people also as his children. They called us brothers, and invited us to his protection; they told us that he resided beyond the great water, where the sun first rises; that he was a king whose power no people could resist, and that his goodness was as bright as that sun. What they said went to our hearts; we accepted the invitation, and promised to obey him. What the Seneca Nation promise, they faithfully perform; and when you refused obedience to that king, he commanded us to assist his beloved men, in making you sober. In obeying him we did no more than yourselves had led us to promise. The men that claimed this promise told us that you were children, and had no guns; that when they had shaken you, you would submit. We hearkened to them and were deceived."
As a leader he was very active and brave, and as a partisan of the English, bore a prominent part in all of the principal engagements, in which the Indians were concerned during that war. He was on the war-path with Brant during the campaign of General Sullivan against the Indian towns in the Genesee country in 1779, and also when under the command of Brant and Sir John Johnson, the Indians subsequently avenged the invasion of Sullivan, by the fearful destruction they wrought in the valley of the Mohawk.