[1359] It was from these reports, as well as from personal interviews, that Washington formed his opinion as to the temper of the Canadian and Northern Indians. A few quotations will illustrate what he had a right to think, e. g. (p. 35) report of committee, August 3, 1775, appointed to confer with Lewis, a chief of the Caughnawaga tribe. "Question. Has the governor of Canada prevailed on the St. Francois Indians to take up arms against these colonies? Answer. The governor sent out Messi'rs St. Luc and Bœpassion to invite the several tribes of Indians to take up arms against you.... They answered nobody had taken up arms against them, and they would not take arms against anybody to trouble them, and they chose to rest in peace." Again (p. 80), the committee appointed to confer with the St. Francois tribe reported, Aug. 18, 1775: "Q. If Governor Carleton should know you offered us your assistance, are you not afraid he would destroy you? A. We are not afraid of it; he has threatened us, but if he attacks us we have arms to defend ourselves." Once more (p. 81): "Q. Do you know whether any tribes have taken up arms against us? A. All the tribes have agreed to afford you assistance, if wanted." Also (p. 89), Aug. 21st, £10 was appropriated for the use of five Indians belonging to the St. Francois tribe, "one being a chief of said tribe; the other four, having entered into the Continental army, are to receive eight pounds of said sum as one month's advance wages for each of them;" and (p. 148) Oct. 9, speech of two head sachems of the St. John's tribe. "Penobscot Falls, September 12, 1775. We have talked with the Penobscot tribe, and by them we hear that you are engaged in a war with Great Britain, and that they are engaged to join you in opposing your and our enemies. We heartily join with our brethren in the colony of Massachusetts, and are resolved to stand together, and oppose the people of Old England, that are endeavoring to take your and our lands and liberties from us."
[1360] "A company of minute-men, before the 19th of April, had been embodied among the Stockbridge tribe of Indians, and this company repaired to camp. On the 21st of June two of the Indians, probably of this company, killed four of the regulars with their bows and arrows, and plundered them" (Frothingham's Siege of Boston, p. 212). A letter of July 9th says: "Yesterday afternoon some barges were sounding the river of Cambridge (Charles) near its mouth, but were soon obliged to row off, by our Indians (fifty in number), who are encamped near that place" (Ibid. p. 212, note). On the 25th (June): "This day the Indians killed more of the British guard." On the 26th: "Two Indians went down near Bunker Hill, and killed a sentry" (Ibid. p. 213). Frothingham's authority is given as "John Kettel's diary. This commences May 17, and continues to Sept. 31, 1775." Through the kindness of Mr. Thomas G. Frothingham I have examined the original diary, which, in addition to the extracts given, contains several others showing that our riflemen picked off the British sentries. The Boston Gazette and Country Journal (August 7, 1775) contains the following: "Watertown, August 7. Parties of Rifle Men, together with some Indians, are constantly harassing the Enemy's advanced Guards, and say they have killed several of the Regulars within a Day or two past." (Ibid. 14th): "We hear that last Thursday Afternoon a number of Rifle men killed 2 or 3 of the Regulars as they were relieving the Centries at Charlestown lines." The fact that two Indians were wounded by our own sentries in August is recorded in Craft's Journal, etc. (Essex Institute Hist. Coll., iii. p. 55). As there were no Indians with the English, this must have been an accidental collision.
[1361] The correspondence of Allan and Haldimand is in the Quebec Series, vol. xvii. (Public Record Office), and is chronicled in Brymner's Report on the Dominion Archives (1883). Cf. further in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1858, p. 254, Mag. of Amer. Hist., 1882, p. 486; W. S. Bartlet's Frontier Missionary (1853); G. W. Drisko's Life of Hannah Weston (Machias, 1857); Journal of sloop "Hunter" in Hist. Mag., viii. 51; Ithiel Town's Particular Services, etc. There is a portrait and memoir of Frederic Kidder in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1887.—Ed.
[1362] Cf. N. S. Benton's Herkimer County; Harold Frederic in Harper's Mag., lv. 171; Dawson's Battles, ch. 36; Lossing's Field-Book, i. ch. 12, etc.
[1363] This work was reviewed in the Monthly Review, iii. p. 349; The New York Review, iii. p. 195; Christian Examiner and General Review, xxvi. p. 137; Christian Review, iii. p. 537; No. Amer. Rev., Oct., 1839, by J. H. Perkins. (Cf. Poole's Index.)
The two volumes originally published in 1838 were edited by the son in 1865. An abridgment of it, known as the Border Wars of the Rev., makes part of Harper's Family Library.
There is some account of the early life of Brant in J. N. Norton's Pioneer Missionaries (N. Y., 1859), and of his posterity by W. C. Bryant, of Buffalo, in Amer. Hist. Record, July, 1873; reprinted in W. W. Beach's Indian Miscellany. S. G. Drake told Brant's story in the Book of the Indians, and in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., ii. 345; iii. 59. There are references to letters of Brant among the Haldimand Papers, in the Index of MSS. (Brit. Mus.), 1880, p. 195. Mr. Lyman C. Draper, of Madison, Wisconsin, has been an amasser of material respecting Brant for forty years, but has not yet published his studies.
[1364] Col. Stone speaks of two conferences held in 1775, one at Ontario and one at Oswego. He says: "Tha-yen-dan-e-gea had accompanied Guy Johnson from the Mohawk Valley first westward to Ontario, thence back to Oswego" (Brant, i. p. 149). Lossing, upon the evidence at his command, adopted the same opinion: "Johnson went from Ontario to Oswego" (Schuyler, i. p. 355). I have made some effort to discover the site of Ontario, which apparently was to the "westward" of Oswego, but have been unable to find it, and have been forced to the conclusion that the officers who dated their letters from Fort Ontario at Oswego, and who spoke of the post in their correspondence, used the words Ontario and Oswego indifferently to express the same place. Guy Johnson dates several letters at Ontario. Col. Butler, in his correspondence in connection with the St. Leger expedition, dates his letters first at Niagara, then at Ontario. On Guy Johnson's map of the country [see ante, p. 609] the site is designated as Fort Ontario, and no other Ontario is put down. Guy Johnson reported that St. Leger had gone "on the proposed expedition by way of Ontario" (N. Y. Col. Doc., viii. p. 714). We know that he went by Oswego, and except that Col. Butler writes from Ontario, we have no mention of Ontario in any of the accounts of this expedition. Gen. Haldimand, in speaking of the proposed reëstablishment of the post, calls it Oswego (Ibid. viii. p. 777). Guy Johnson, in the same connection, calls it Ontario (Ibid. p. 775) and Fort Ontario (Ibid. p. 780). Rev. Dr. Wheelock, describing Johnson's movements, said he had withdrawn with his family by the way of Oswego (N. H. Provincial Papers, vii. p. 548).
Shortly after Johnson's arrival in Montreal he wrote a brief account of his transactions to the Earl of Dartmouth, in which he spoke of the conference at Ontario, but said nothing of a second at Oswego (N. Y. Col. Doc., viii. p. 636). This journal, certified by Joseph Chew, Secretary of Indian Affairs, appears to account for his motions continuously during this period, and speaks only of the conference at Ontario. He arrived at Ontario June 17th, embarked at that point July 11th for Montreal, and arrived at the latter place July 17th, with 220 Indians from Ontario (Ibid. viii. p. 658; Ketchum's Buffalo, i. p. 243). Mr. Berthold Fernow informs me that in Guy Johnson's account for expenses in the Indian Department in 1775 this item occurs: "July 8, 1775. For cash given privately to the chiefs and warriors of the 6 Nations during the treaty at Ontario, £260." No other conference in that immediate neighborhood is mentioned in the Johnson MSS. An instance of indifference in the application of the two names will be found in Mrs. Grant's Memoirs of an American Lady. Mr. B. B. Burt, of Oswego, writes to me that "there was not any Ontario west of Oswego except the lake", and kindly calls my attention to several instances in the records which tend to show the confusion in the use of these names. Among others he refers to a letter of Sir William Johnson's, in which he speaks of Ontario and Oswego, apparently meaning the same place (N. Y. Col. Doc., vii. p. 530). A similar instance, as I believe, is to be found in the letter of Capt. Walter N. Butler to Gen. Clinton, Feb. 18, 1779, quoted in Stone's Brant, i. p. 384. In this latter case it is not surprising that the identity of the two places was not suspected by Col. Stone. At first sight Butler seems to be speaking of two distinct spots. In Orasmus H. Marshall's Niagara Frontier, embracing Sketches of its early history and French and English local names (1865), Ontario as a town or site is not mentioned. O'Reilly's Rochester contains an Indian account of the alliance, which makes no mention of Ontario (see pp. 388, 389). On the other hand, the Duc de la Rochefoucault Liancourt's Travels through the United States of North America, the country of the Iroquois and Upper Canada, in the years 1795, 1796, and 1797, mentions a place called Ontario on the Genessee River, but he gives no other description of it than of the log-cabin where he spent the night.
Hough, in his Northern Invasion of October, 1780, gives his reason for disputing Stone's statement that the Oneida settlements were destroyed by the enemy in the winter of 1779-1780. The reasons for believing that Hough was correct are stated elsewhere.