Though Captain Brant was able to pass his later years in comparative ease, his life was marred by the occurrence of two untoward events. His eldest son, Isaac, was a reprobate over whom the father exercised little influence. Isaac had been guilty of acts of violence and had begun to threaten Joseph Brant himself. He was jealous of the numerous children of Catherine Brant and took occasion to offer her various insults. In 1795 both father and son were at Burlington Heights, at a time when the Indians were receiving supplies from the provincial government. Isaac, crazed with liquor, tried to assault his father in one of the lower rooms of an inn, but he was held in check by several of his youthful companions.

Captain Brant drew a dirk which he usually carried with him, and in the excitement of the moment inflicted a slight wound on Isaac's hand. The cut was not serious, but Isaac would not allow it to be properly treated, and subsequently died from an attack of brain fever. The War Chief was sorely grieved at the result of his hasty action, and fretted about it until the end of his days. He is said to have hung the dirk up in his room and to have often wept as he gazed upon it. The other source of trouble to Brant was the revolt against his rule of a small minority among the tribes. This movement was led by Brant's old adversary, Red Jacket, and another chief, the Farmer's Brother. A council was held by the dissenters at Buffalo Creek in 1803, and Joseph Brant was formally deposed as head of the confederacy of the Six Nations. But as this meeting had not been legally convoked, its decisions were of no validity among the Nations. The following year, at another council, legitimately assembled, the tribesmen openly declared their confidence in the War Chief's rule.

Because of Brant's many services to the crown, the British government gave him a fine stretch of land on the north-west shore of Lake Ontario, near the entrance to Burlington Bay. On his estate, known as Wellington Square, he erected a large two-storey house, in which he might spend the remaining years of his life. A number of black slaves whom he had captured in the war were his servants and gave him every attention. Brant is said to have subjected these negroes to a rigid discipline and to have been more or less of a taskmaster in his treatment of them. In his declining years he was wont to gaze over the waters of Lake Ontario, remembering the country stretching from the southern shore where once he had struggled, and the valley of the Mohawk, where had been the lodges of his people.

But the giant pine-tree of the forest was now beginning to bend. Tall and erect, it had out-topped and outrivalled every other tree of the woodland. Men knew that that pine-tree was tottering. In the autumn of 1807 the Captain of the Six Nations was in the grip of a serious illness. Friends and neighbours came to bring solace and comfort, for he was widely revered. Racked with pain, but uncomplaining, he passed the few weary hours of life which were left. On November 24, 1807, the long trail came to an end. Close by Brant's bedside. John Norton, [Footnote: Norton was a Scotsman who, coming to Canada early in life, settled among the Mohawks and won a chief's rank among them. He played an important part in the War of 1812.] a chieftain of his tribe, leaned to catch the last faltering word.

'Have pity on the poor Indians,' whispered the dying War Chief; 'if you can get any influence with the great, endeavour to do them all the good you can.'

The body of Captain Brant was taken to Grand River and buried beside the walls of the church he had helped to rear. In the centre of the busy city of Brantford—whose name, as well as that of the county, commemorates his —stands a beautiful monument, picturesque and massive, to his worth and valour; in the hearts of the people of Canada he is enshrined as a loyal subject, a man of noble action, and a dauntless hero. Seldom in the annals of Canada do we find a character so many-sided as the Captain of the Mohawks. He was a child of nature, and she endowed him with many gifts—a stout and hardy frame, a deportment pleasing and attractive, and an eloquent tongue. It was these natural endowments that gave him endurance in the conflict, pre-eminence in council, and that won for him the admiration of his contemporaries.

The education which Brant received was meagre, but he could hardly have put what knowledge he had to better advantage. After he had been relieved from the arduous life of the camp, he began to satisfy again his desires for self-culture. His correspondence towards the close of his life shows a marked improvement in style over that of his earlier years. There is no lack of convincing evidence that Brant had a penetrating and well-balanced intellect; but his chief glory is the constant efforts he put forth for the moral and religious uplift of his people.

With respect to Brant's abilities as a military leader, there will continue to exist differences of opinion. That he possessed the craftiness of his race in a superlative degree, and that he used this to baffle his opponents on the field of battle, cannot be denied. Some will go further and assert that he had a remarkable genius in the art of stratagem. Whatever powers he had he used, from his boyhood days, in the interests of British rule in America, and the services rendered by this last great leader of the Six Nations in the War of the Revolution were not among the least of the influences that enabled Great Britain to maintain a foothold on the North American continent. Joseph Brant in the War of the Revolution and his descendants in the War of 1812 played essential parts in firmly basing British institutions and British rule in Canada.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The principal authority for material on Joseph Brant is William L. Stone's Life of Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), 2 vols. (1838). This includes an account of the border wars of the American Revolution and sketches of the Indian campaigns of Generals Harmar, St Clair, and Wayne. A brief biography entitled Memoir of Captain Joseph Brant, 'compiled from authentic records,' was published anonymously in Brantford in 1872. History of Brant County (1883), Part II, pages 85-149, is devoted almost exclusively to Brant and his family. Samuel G. Drake's Biography and History of the Indians of North America from its First Discovery has one chapter (pp. 577-93) given exclusively to Brant. The chapter in the same work dealing with Red Jacket will also be found of interest to the student of Brant's career. William L. Stone, Jr.'s Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, 2 vols. (1865), contains much valuable information regarding the events which shaped the early career of Brant. B. B. Thatcher in his Indian Biography, 2 vols., dismisses Brant with an unsympathetic and prejudiced paragraph, but several of his chapters, particularly the one dealing with Red Jacket, throw much light on the struggles in which Brant took part.