"To Sir Evan Nepean, Under Secretary, at Home."
There are a frankness and manliness of tone and spirit in this letter, which will illustrate a striking feature in the character of the writer, and are worthy of high approbation. It is the only paper of any consequence connected with the Captain's mission to England, in addition to those already cited, that remains.
The chieftain's visit must have been most agreeable, since, in addition to the success which crowned his labors in regard to the claims of the Indians, no pains were spared to render his residence in London one of uninterrupted gratification. He was caressed by the noble and the great, and was alike welcome at court or at the banquets of the heir apparent—who, with all his faults, was "the first gentleman in the realm;"—a fine classical scholar himself, and a lover of genius and intellect—-of letters and men of letters—of sparkling wit, as well as wine. Among his most frequent guests were Fox, Burke, and Sheridan, and others of that splendid galaxy of eloquence and intellect—the master spirits of the opposition in the House of Commons—who were at that time basking in the sunshine of the Prince's favor, and living in the hope of more substantial things to come. Though deficient in his literary acquisitions, Brant, with great strength of mind and shrewdness of observation, had, moreover, sufficient taste and cultivation to appreciate society, even of this elevated and intellectual character. The natural reserve of the Indian temperament he could assume or throw off at pleasure, and with a keen sense of the ludicrous, he could himself use the weapons of humor and sarcasm with a good share of skill and dexterity.
Several anecdotes have been preserved in well-authenticated tradition, illustrative of these traits of character. One of these is the following:—Among the gentlemen of rank with whom Brant was acquainted, was a nobleman of whom it was scandalously reported that his place was purchased by the illicit favors bestowed upon another by his beautiful wife. On one occasion his Lordship undertook to rally the forest chief upon the subjects of the wild and rude manners and customs of the Indians, to which they pertinaciously adhered notwithstanding all the attempts made to improve them by the arts of civilization. Some of their absurd practices, of which the English, as his Lordship remarked, thought very strange, were particularised. Brant listened very patiently until it became his turn to speak, when he replied that there were customs in England, also, of which the Indians thought very strange. "And pray what are they?" inquired his Lordship. "Why," answered the chief, "the Indians have heard that it is a practice in England for men who are born chiefs to sell the virtue of their squaws for place, and for money to buy their venison!" The Mohawk occupied a position which enabled him to say what he pleased with impunity. But in the present instance the rebuke was doubly withering,—from the gravity and assumed simplicity with which it was uttered, and the certainty that the titled gentleman could not mistake the direction of the arrow, while he could neither parry nor avoid, nor appear to notice it.
During his stay in London, a grand fancy ball, or masquerade, was got up with great splendor, and numerously attended by the nobility and gentry. Captain Brant, at the instance of Earl Moira, was also present, richly dressed in the costume of his nation, wearing no mask, but painting one half of his face. His plumes nodded as proudly in his cap as though the blood of a hundred Percies coursed through his veins, and his tomahawk glittered in his girdle like burnished silver. There was, likewise, in the gay and gallant throng a stately Turkish diplomat of rank, accompanied by two houris, whose attention was particularly attracted by the grotesque appearance of the chieftain's singular, and, as he supposed, fantastic attire. The pageant was brilliant as the imagination could desire; but among the whole motley throng of pilgrims and warriors, hermits and shepherds, knights, damsels, and gipsies, there was, to the eye of the Mussulman, no character so picturesque and striking as that of the Mohawk; which, being natural, appeared to be the best made up. He scrutinised the chief very closely, and mistaking his rouge et noir complexion for a painted visor, the Turk took the liberty of attempting to handle his nose. Brant had, of course, watched the workings of his observation, and felt in the humor of a little sport. No sooner, therefore, had Hassan touched his facial point of honor, under the mistaken idea that it was of no better material than the parchment nose of the Strasburgh trumpeter, than the Chieftain made the hall resound with the appalling war-whoop, and at the same instant the tomahawk leaped from his girdle, and flashed around the astounded Mussulman's head as though his good master, the Sultan, in a minute more, would be relieved from any future trouble in the matter of taking it off. Such a piercing and frightful cry had never before rung through that salon of fashion; and breaking suddenly, and with startling wildness, upon the ears of the merry throng, its effect was prodigious. The Turk himself trembled with terror, while the female masquers—the gentle shepherdesses, and fortune-telling crones, Turks, Jews and gipsies, bear-leaders and their bears, Falstaffs, friars, and fortune-tellers, Sultans, nurses and Columbines, shrieked, screamed and scudded away as though the Mohawks had broken into the festive hall in a body. The matter, however, was soon explained; and the incident was accounted as happy in the end as it was adroitly enacted by the good-humored Mohawk. [FN]
[FN] This incident was somewhat differently related by the British Magazine, which represented that the weapon was raised by Brant in sober earnest; he having taken the freedom of the Turk for a real indignity. But such was clearly not the fact. His friends never so understood it.
But neither the pleasures of society, nor the follies of the Prince of Wales, nor the special business of his mission, nor the views of political ambition which he was cherishing, made him forgetful of the moral wants of his people. Notwithstanding the ceaseless activity of his life, he had found time to translate the Gospel of Mark into the Mohawk language; and as most of the Indian Prayer and Psalm Books previously in use had been either lost or destroyed during the war, the opportunity of his visit was chosen by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to bring out a new and superior edition of that work, under Brant's own supervision, and including the Gospel of Mark as translated by him. This was the first of the Gospels ever translated entire into the Mohawk language. The book was elegantly printed in large octavo, under the immediate patronage of the King. It was printed in alternate pages of English and Mohawk; and the volume contained the psalms and occasional prayers before published, together with the services of communion, baptism, matrimony, and the burial of the dead. It was embellished with a number of scriptural engravings, elegant for the state of the arts at that day; the frontispiece representing the interior of a chapel, with portraits of the King and Queen, a bishop standing at either hand, and groups of Indians receiving the sacred books from both their Majesties. [FN]
[FN] A handsome copy of this valuable book, in morocco gilt, has been loaned to the author by Mrs. Kerr. It belonged to the widow of the old chief, and contains the record of his death.