But this is not all. On entering one of the dwellings, he found a woman employed in household matters. "Are you thus engaged," inquired the chief, "while all your neighbors are murdered around you?" The woman replied that they were in favor of the King. "That plea will not avail you today," replied the warrior. "They have murdered Mr. Wells's family, who were as dear to me as my own." "But," continued the woman, "there is one Joseph Brant: if he is with the Indians, he will save us." "I am Joseph Brant!" was the quick response; "but I have not the command, and I know not that I can save you; but I will do what is in my power." At the moment of uttering these words, he observed the Senecas approaching. "Get into bed quick," he commanded her, "and feign yourself sick." The woman obeyed, and when the Indians came up, he put them off with that pretext. Instantly as they departed, he rallied a few of his Mohawks by a shrill signal, and directed them to paint his mark upon the woman and her children. "You are now probably safe," he remarked—and departed. [FN]
[FN] It is an Indian practice thus to mark, their captives, and the known mark of a tribe or chief is a protection from danger at other hands.
Another instance, from the same authority, [FN] will serve farther to illustrate the conduct and bearing of this distinguished Indian leader on that occasion: After the battle was over, he inquired of one of the captives for Captain McKean, who had retired to the Mohawk Valley with his family. "He sent me a challenge once," said the chief; "I have now come to accept it. He is a fine soldier thus to retreat!" It was said in reply: "Captain McKean would not turn his back upon an enemy where there was a probability of success." "I know it," rejoined Brant; "he is a brave man and I would have given more to take him than any other man in Cherry Valley; but I would not have hurt a hair of his head."
[FN] Campbell's Annals.
These were generous sentiments, worthy of a generous soldier. Indeed, the whole conduct of the Mohawk chief on that melancholy day was anything rather than characteristic of the "monster" Brant has been represented to be. Of the conduct of the leader of the expedition, Captain Walter N. Butler, a less charitable judgment must be formed—not so much perhaps on account of the atrocities committed—because these, too, may have been beyond his control, or suddenly perpetrated without his knowledge—but because the expedition was entirely one of his own undertaking. It was said that Colonel John Butler was grieved at the conduct of his son at this place; remarking, on one occasion, in regard to the murder of Mr. Wells and family—"I would have gone miles on my hands and knees to save that family, and why my son did not do it, God only knows." It has also been asserted that the Colonel accused Brant of having incited the Indians secretly to commit the excesses in question, in order to bring odium upon his son, under whose command, as the reader has already been informed, he had been placed, strongly in opposition to his own wishes. But the Mohawk repelled the charge, and appealed to his former conduct, particularly in the case of Springfield, as a vindication of his character from the imputation of wanton cruelty. On the other hand, it has been laid to the charge of Butler, that when, on the night preceding the massacre, some of his rangers desired secretly to apprise their friends in the village of the storm which was to burst upon them in the morning, he peremptorily denied the request—apprehending that if a few were ever so cautiously admonished of the approaching danger, the tidings would be bruited and the whole village escape. [FN]
[FN] Campbell's Annals.
These things may, or they may not, be true. But in either case the loyalist Butlers, father and son, should be justly dealt by, although they have not been as yet. At least the world has never heard what they might possibly have said in their own defence—nay, what they did say—in regard to the affairs of Wyoming and Cherry Valley; and candor requires the admission, that the narratives of those events which have descended to us, were written too soon after their occurrence to warrant a belief in the entire impartiality of the writers. But as truth constitutes the great excellence of history, and as a just opinion can rarely be formed upon testimony altogether exparte after fifty-eight years of silence, it may be allowed to the Butlers, though dead, to speak a word for themselves. The elder Butler lived at Niagara many years after the close of the contest; and, though employed in the British Indian Department, his conduct was such, both in public and private life, as to command the respect of those who knew him.