In all this discussion I have assumed that Sir John Johnson's orderly-book contained all the orders with reference to rations. As such orders were not a necessary part of the record, it may he doubted whether other orders not affecting that corps would not be found in St. Leger's order-book.
[1373] Mary Jemison puts the loss of the Senecas alone above what Claus and Butler reported the total Indian loss. Claus states the British loss at three officers, two or three privates, and thirty-two Indians killed (N. Y. Col. Doc., viii. p. 720). Col. Butler puts the English loss in the action at four officers killed and two privates wounded; the Indian loss at thirty-three killed and twenty-nine wounded (Parl. Reg., viii. p. 226). Mary Jemison (p. 116) says: "Previous to the battle of Fort Stanwix the British sent for the Indians to come and see them whip the rebels; and at the same time stated that they did not wish to have them fight, but wanted to have them just sit down, smoke their pipes, and look on. Our Indians went, to a man, but, contrary to their expectation, instead of smoking and looking on, they were obliged to fight for their lives; and in the end were completely beaten, with a great loss of killed and wounded. Our Indians alone had thirty-six killed and a great number wounded. Our town exhibited a scene of real sorrow and distress when our warriors returned, recounted their misfortunes, and stated the real loss they had sustained in the engagement. The mourning was excessive, and was expressed by the most doleful yells, shrieks, and howlings, and by inimitable gesticulations."
[1374] The exaggerated rumors of the losses at Minisink which first reached Sullivan's camp were immediately displaced by more accurate accounts. "The accts we rec'd from the Delaware at Minisings on the 29th are more favorable than at first represented. The Tories and savages made a descent upon that settlement, and, having burned several houses, barns, etc., were attacked by a Regt. of Militia, who repulsed and pursued them a considerable distance. Forty men were killed on our side, the Colo. and Major included" (Major Norris's journal in Publications of the Buffalo Hist. Soc., i. p. 225).
The account which appears in the Boston Gazette and Country Journal, Sept. 6, 1779, is singularly free from exaggeration. Indeed, it underrates the whole affair. It speaks of the destruction of the town as "an excursion on old Minisink", and says the militia marched to the assistance of their neighbors and followed the savages thirty miles into the wilderness. An action ensued in which upwards of twenty of the enemy were killed, and our losses, killed, wounded, and missing, were upwards of thirty. The later accounts are in E. M. Ruttenber's Orange County (Newburgh, 1875); Charles E. Stickney's Minisink Region (Middletown, 1867); in the N. Y. Columbian, copied in Niles's Principles and Acts, and in Dr. Arnell's Address to the Med. Soc. of Orange Co.; and the addresses at the dedication of the monument at Goshen (showing forty-five names of the slain), in Samuel W. Eager's Outline Hist. of Orange County.
[1375] Almon's Remembrancer, viii. 51. The Boston Gazette and Country Journal (July 27, 1778) contains a letter from Samuel Avery, July 15, 1778, giving the "disagreeable intelligence, brought by Mr. Solomon Avery, this moment returned from Wyoming, on the Susquehanna River", which says: "The informant conceives, that of about five thousand inhabitants one half are killed and taken by the enemy prisoners, and the other half fleeing away naked and distressed." The same paper (August 3) contains the Poughkeepsie account.
[1376] Botta's account is reprinted in the Penna. Register (i. 129; cf. vi. 58, 73, 310; vii. 273).
[1377] Miner, in 1806, called Judge Marshall's attention to some of the errors in his account. In 1831 the judge revived the correspondence on the subject, and expressed his intention to avail himself of the information furnished by Mr. Miner.
[1378] William L. Stone, in the Life and Times of Red Jacket, referring to his father's Life of Brant, says (p. 75): "Indeed, until this work appeared, it was universally believed that Brant and his Mohawk warriors were engaged in the massacre of Wyoming. Gordon, Ramsay, Thacher, and Marshall assert the same thing." Thacher in his account of Wyoming, under date of August 3, does not mention Brant's name, but charges the responsibility for the atrocities upon Col. John Butler.
Ramsay (ii. 323, etc.) mentions Brant's name, but does not charge upon the invaders an indiscriminate slaughter. He says the women and children were permitted to cross the Susquehanna and retreat through the woods to Northampton County. Stone claimed an alibi for Brant in his Border Wars, while Caleb Cushing (Democratic Rev.) thought the case not proved; but Stone, again, in his Wyoming, reasserted it, and Peck, in his Wyoming (3d ed., N. Y., 1868), sustains Stone. The question is also discussed by Thomas Maxwell in Schoolcraft's Indian Tribes, v. 672.
On this subject see "Letter to the Mohawk chief, Ahyonwaegho, commonly called John Brant, Esq., of the Grand River, Upper Canada, from Thomas Campbell, Jan. 20, 1822", published in the New Monthly Magazine, London, 1822 (vol. iv. p. 97).