If, then, the moral of the fable is thus applicable to aboriginal history in general, it is equally so in regard to very many of their chiefs, whose names have been forgotten, or only known to be detested. Peculiar circumstances have given prominence, and fame of a certain description, to some few of the forest chieftains, as in the instances of Powhatan in the south, the mighty Philip in the east, and the great Pontiac of the north-west. But there have been many others, equal, perhaps, in courage, and skill, and energy, to the distinguished chiefs just mentioned, whose names have been steeped in infamy in their preservation, because "the lions are no sculptors." They have been described as ruthless butchers of women and children, without one redeeming quality save those of animal courage and indifference to pain; while it is not unlikely, that were the actual truth known, their characters, for all the high qualities of the soldier, might sustain an advantageous comparison with those of half the warriors of equal rank in Christendom. Of this class was a prominent subject of the present volume, whose name was terrible in every American ear during the war of Independence, and was long afterward associated with every thing bloody, ferocious, and hateful. It is even within our own day, that the name of Brant [FN-1] would chill the young blood by its very sound, and cause the lisping child to cling closer to the knee of its mother. As the master spirit of the Indians engaged in the British service during the war of the Revolution, not only were all the border massacres charged directly upon him, but upon his head fell the public maledictions for every individual act of atrocity which marked that sanguinary contest, whether committed by Indians, or Tories, or by the exasperated regular soldiery of the foe. In many instances great injustice was done to him, as in regard to the affair of Wyoming, in connexion with which his name has been used by every preceding annalist who has written upon the subject; while it has, moreover, for the same cause, been consigned to infamy, deep and foul, in the deathless song of Campbell. In other cases again, the Indians of the Six Nations, in common with their chief, were loaded with execrations for atrocities of which all were alike innocent—because the deeds recorded were never committed—it having been the policy of the public writers, and those in authority, not only to magnify actual occurrences, but sometimes, when these were wanting, to draw upon their imaginations for accounts of such deeds of ferocity and blood, as might best serve to keep alive the strongest feelings of indignation against the parent country, and likewise induce the people to take the field for revenge, if not driven thither by the nobler impulse of patriotism. [FN-2]
[FN-1] Almost invariably written Brandt in the books, even in despite of his own orthography, which was uniformly Brant.
[FN-2] See Appendix A—the well-known scalp-story of Dr. Franklin—long believed, and recently revived and included in several works of authentic history.
Such deliberate fictions, for political purposes, as that by Dr. Franklin, just referred to, were probably rare; but the investigations into which the author has been led, in the preparation of the present work, have satisfied him, that from other causes, much of exaggeration and falsehood has obtained a permanent footing in American history. Most historians of that period, English and American, wrote too near the time when the events they were describing occurred, for a dispassionate investigation of truth; and other writers who have succeeded, have too often been content to follow in the beaten track, without incurring the labour of diligent and calm inquiry. Reference has been made above to the affair of Wyoming, concerning which, to this day, the world has been abused with monstrous fictions—with tales of horrors never enacted. The original causes of this historical inaccuracy are very obvious. As already remarked, our histories were written at too early a day; when the authors, or those supplying the materials, had, as it were, but just emerged from the conflict. Their passions had not yet become cooled, and they wrote under feelings and prejudices which could not but influence minds governed even by the best intentions. The crude, verbal reports of the day—tales of hear-say, coloured by fancy and aggravated by fear,—not only found their way into the newspapers, but into the journals of military officers. These, with all the disadvantages incident to flying rumors, increasing in size and enormity with every repetition, were used too often, it is apprehended, without farther examination, as authentic materials for history. Of this class of works was the Military Journal of Dr. James Thatcher, first published in 1823, and immediately recognized as historical authority. Now, so far as the author speaks of events occurring within his own knowledge, and under his own personal observation, the authority is good. None can be better. But the worthy army surgeon did not by any means confine his diary to facts and occurrences of that description. On the contrary, his journal is a general record of incidents and transactions occurring in almost every camp, and at every point of hostilities, as the reports floated from mouth to mouth through the division of the army where the journalist happened to be engaged, or as they reached him through the newspapers. Hence the present author has found the Doctor's journal a very unsafe authority in regard to facts, of which the Doctor was not a spectator or directly cognizant. Even the diligent care of Marshall did not prevent his measurably falling into the same errors, in the first edition of his Life of Washington, with regard to Wyoming; and it was not until more than a quarter of a century afterward, when his late revised edition of that great work was about to appear, that, by the assistance of Mr. Charles Miner, an intelligent resident of Wilkesbarre, the readers of that eminent historian were correctly informed touching the revolutionary tragedy in that valley. Nor even then was the correction entire, inasmuch as the name of Brant was still retained, as the leader of the Indians on that fearful occasion. Nor were the exaggerations in regard to the invasion of Wyoming greater than were those connected with the irruption into, and destruction of, Cherry Valley, as the reader will discover in the course of the ensuing pages. Indeed, the writer, in the preparation of materials for this work, has encountered so much that is false recorded in history as sober verity, that he has at times been disposed almost to universal scepticism in regard to uninspired narration.
In conclusion of this Introduction, a short history of the origin of the present work may not be impertinent. It was the fortune of the author to spend several of his early years, and commence his public life, in the valley of the Mohawk—than which the country scarce affords a more beautiful region. The lower section of this valley was entered by the Dutch traders, and settlements were commenced, originally at Schenectady, very soon after the first fort was built at Albany, then called Fort Orange, by Henry Christiaens in 1614. The Dutch gradually pushed their settlements up the Mohawk on the rich bottom lands of the river, as far as Caughnawaga. Beyond that line, and especially in the upper section of the valley west of the Little Falls, and embracing the broad and beautiful garden of the whole district known as the German Flats, the first white settlers introduced were Germans—being a division of the Palatinates, who emigrated to America early in the eighteenth century, under the patronage of Queen Anne. Three thousand Germans came over at the time referred to, about the year 1709, a portion of whom settled in Pennsylvania. The residue ascended the Hudson to a place called East Camp, now in the county of Columbia. From thence they found their way into the rich valley of the Schoharie-kill, about the year 1713, and thence to the German Flats, of which they were in possession as early as 1720. The first colony, planting themselves in Schoharie, consisted of between forty and fifty families. Some disagreements soon after arising among them, twelve of these families separated from their companions; and, pushing farther westward beyond the Little Falls, planted themselves down upon the rich alluvial Flats at the confluence of the West Canada Creek and the Mohawk.
At the time of its discovery, that valley was occupied by the Mohawk Indians, the head of the extended confederacy of the Five Nations—the Iroquois of the French, and the Romans, as Doctor Colden has denominated them, of the New World. Of this confederacy, the Mohawks were the head or leading nation, as they were also the fiercest. [FN] The Five Nations early attached themselves to the English, and were consequently often engaged in hostilities with the French of Canada, and especially with the Hurons and Adirondacks or Algonquins—powerful nations in alliance with the Canadians. Another consequence was, that the Mohawk valley, and indeed the whole country inhabited by the Five Nations, were the theatre of successive wars, from the discovery down to the close of the war of the American Revolution. There is, therefore, no section of the United States so rich in historical incident, as the valley of the Mohawk and the contiguous territory at the west.
[FN] "I have been told by old men in New England, who remembered the time when the Mohawks made war on their Indians (the Mohicans), that as soon as a single Mohawk was discovered in their country, their Indians raised a cry from hill to hill, A Mohawk! A Mohawk! upon which they all fled, like sheep before wolves, without attempting to make the least resistance or defence on their side; and that the poor New England Indians immediately ran to the Christian houses, and the Mohawks often pursued them so closely, that they entered along with them, and knocked their brains out in the presence of the people of the house." [Colden's Six Nations.] The excellent Heckewelder, in his paramount affection for the Lenni Lenape, enters into a long argument to disprove Colden upon this point; maintaining that the Mohawks were never of more terrific fame than the Delawares. The authorities, however, are against the good Moravian missionary, to which the writer may add the weight of the following incident, of comparatively recent occurrence:—Some ten or twelve years ago, a wandering Mohawk had straggled away from the ancient home of his tribe, as far as the State of Maine, and presented himself, one day, in the streets of a small town not far from the Penobscot river. Indian forms and faces were not strangers in this little community, there being a remnant of the Penobscots yet existing in the neighbourhood, who were in the habit of visiting the place, four or five times a year, for the purchase of such necessaries as their means could command. It happened that a party of them had come in on the very day of the Mohawk's arrival; and as he was lounging through the street, he came suddenly upon them in turning a corner. The recognition, on their part, was instantaneous, and was evidently accompanied by emotions of alarm and distrust. "Mohawk, Mohawk," was muttered by one and another, and so long as he remained in sight, their eyes were fixed upon him with an evident expression of uneasiness. As for the Mohawk, he condescended only to give them a passing glance, and went on his way with the same lounging, indifferent step that he had exhibited from the first. He was a superb-looking fellow, of about 25, full six feet in height, and could easily have demolished three or four of the dwarfish and effeminate Penobscots.
At the time of the author's residence in the Mohawk country, the materials of that history, especially that portion of them connected with events subsequent to the conquest of Canada by Great Britain, were for the most part ungathered. The events of the war of the Revolution, which nowhere else raged so furiously, and was nowhere else marked with such bitter and entire desolation, were then fresh in the recollections of the people; and many a time and oft were the recitals listened to with thrilling interest, and laid up in the store-house of memory, as among the richest of its traditionary treasures. Nor was the interest of these verbal narratives diminished by visiting the sites of the old fortifications, strolling over the battle-fields, and noting the shot-holes in the walls of such houses as had stood out the contest, and the marks of cannon balls upon the trunks of trees yet remaining on fields which had been scenes of bloody strife.