The references for the Kennebec march of Arnold are given in another chapter; but in Senter's Journal, there mentioned, we have the details of Arnold's interview with the Indians at Sartigan, and of the inducements which he offered them for enlisting. The fact that Indians joined the American army at this point is corroborated by Judge Henry, in his Account,[1358] while the topic is also treated in E. M. Stone's Invasion of Canada (Providence, 1867).
Many of the more important acts and resolves of the several colonies, apposite to this inquiry, are in the American Archives. The importance which circumstances gave to the position taken by the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts Bay causes great interest to attach to the proceedings of that body. Many conferences between committees and different Indians were held, the accounts of which are found in A Journal of the Honourable House of Representatives of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay in New England. Begun at the Meeting House in Watertown in the County of Middlesex on Wednesday the Nineteenth day of July, Anno Domini, 1775.[1359] These will also be found in a reprint of the Journals for 1774-1775, entitled Journals of each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774-1775, etc., Boston, 1838.
General Gage, in his letter to Stuart, complained of two things: the employment of Indians by the rebels and the shooting of his sentries. It has been shown that the acts of the Massachusetts Bay Provincial Congress justified his first assertion. As to the second, see Frothingham's Siege of Boston.[1360]
The Military operations in Eastern Maine and Nova Scotia, during the revolution, chiefly compiled from the journals and letters of Col. John Allan, by Frederic Kidder (Albany, 1867), completes the story of the attempt to secure the services of the Eastern Indians, and gives the reasons alleged by the Indians for not complying with the treaty entered into at Cambridge, to furnish a regiment.[1361]
The events which took place in the Mohawk Valley during the summer and fall of 1775 were of far-reaching importance. Their history is recorded in the correspondence of such men as Washington and Schuyler, in the meetings of local committees, and in conferences with Indians. Accounts of many of them are to be found in the N. Y. Col. Docs. and in the American Archives. There is besides a mass of material in the possession of scattered families, much of which has been worked over by local historians.[1362] The most important of all these later works is the Life of Joseph Brant (Tha-yen-dan-e-gea), including the Border Wars of the American Revolution, etc., by William L. Stone.[1363]
The prodigious labor performed by Colonel Stone in the classification and orderly arrangement of the immense amount of his material will be gratefully appreciated by the investigator to-day, even though he has at command publications by the state and national governments containing much of the same material. Since Colonel Stone's day other laborers have been diligently at work in the same field, gleaning facts and collecting historical material of various kinds. Their work has revealed some errors in the Life of Brant,[1364] which are not of such importance, however, as to displace the work from its position as the chief authority on the subject. The habits and modes of life of the Indians and the organization of the confederacy of the Six Nations were not understood as thoroughly when Colonel Stone wrote as they are to-day. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that Morgan, in his League of the Iroquois, does not agree with Stone in the assertion that Brant was the principal war-chief of the confederacy. A portion of Stone's ground had been earlier covered by William W. Campbell in his Annals of Tryon County, or the Border Warfare of New York during the Revolution (N. Y., 1831),[1365] a work still looked upon as authority upon many points, republished (1849) as The Border Warfare of New York during the Revolution, or the Annals of Tryon County. Another volume devoted to the same topics, but widely different in character and in execution, is Jephtha R. Simms's History of Schoharie County and Border Wars of New York (1845), republished in 1882, with additional matter, as The Frontiersmen of New York, showing customs of the Indians, vicissitudes of the pioneer white settlers, and Border Strife in two wars, with a great variety of romantic and thrilling stories never before published,—both editions showing an industrious care to amass, with little skill in presentation.
The Revolutionary War divided the councils of the Six Nations. Had they acted as a unit in favor of the English, the problem would have been more difficult for the provincials. The friendly warnings of the Oneidas were of constant use to the Americans throughout the struggle. Their position materially changed the problem which was set for St. Leger, and though they did not then act aggressively, their unfriendly attitude must have caused his retreating column uneasiness. These Indians were probably of greater service as neutrals—who in that character were able to penetrate the enemy's country and report what was going on—than they would have been had they taken up the hatchet on the American side at the outset. Their attitude was largely due to the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, the missionary.[1366]
In the account of the border wars, as in all other respects, Lossing's Field-Book is a useful publication, based upon ordinarily accepted authorities, with local anecdotes, traditions, and descriptions interjected by the author.[1367] A contemporary narrative (Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., ii.), called an "Historical Journal", was necessarily written without opportunity for critical revision.
We have a narrative of events from the English side in Stedman's American War, where it is said that Montgomery was "joined by several parties of Indians" (i. p. 133), and that Ethan Allen's party numbered "about one hundred and fifty men, composed of Americans and Indians." One inducement for Burgoyne's employment of Indians was "a well-grounded supposition that if he refused their offers they would instantly join the Americans." Wyoming, we learn, "fell a sacrifice to an invasion of the Indians" (ii. p. 73). He speaks of "the Indian settlements of Unadilla and Anaguago, which were also inhabited by white people attached to the loyal cause."
Thacher's Military Journal, a contemporaneous account of current events on the American side, as they appeared or as they were told to the author, is often of help in fixing the date of some event about which there is a dispute, even when the description itself of the action is meagre, or consists of mere mention. Thus he puts the destruction of Cobleskill in 1778, when Campbell says it was in 1779,—an error on the part of the later writer, unless there was more than one raid upon that insignificant settlement, as stated by Stone.[1368] Thacher's account of the battle of Oriskany and siege of Fort Stanwix is brief, but it shows that the first stories about the affair were quite reasonable.