[FN-1] They were buried at a place now called Groveland, where the grave was very recently to be seen.
[FN-2] The place is now called Leicester.
[FN-3] On the road now running from Moscow to Genesee.
The valley of the Genesee, for its beauty and fertility, was beheld by the army of Sullivan with astonishment and delight. Though an Indian country, and peopled only by the wild men of the woods, its rich intervales presented the appearance of long cultivation, and were then smiling with their harvests of ripening corn. Indeed, the Indians themselves professed not to know when or by whom the lands upon that stream were first brought into cultivation. Nearly half a century before, Mary Jemison had observed a quantity of human bones washed down from one of the banks of the river, which the Indians held were not the remains of their own people, but of a different race of men who had once possessed that country. The Indians, they contended, had never buried their dead in such a situation. Be all this, however, as it may, instead of a howling wilderness, Sullivan and his troops found the Genesee flats, and many other districts of the country, resembling much more the orchards, and farms, and gardens of civilized life. But all was now doomed to speedy devastation. The Genesee castle was destroyed. The troops scoured the whole region round about, and burnt and destroyed every thing that came in their way. Little Beard himself had officiated as master of ceremonies at the torturing of Boyd; and his town was now burnt to the ground, and large quantities of corn, which his people had laid up in store, were destroyed by being burnt or thrown into the river. "The town of Genesee contained one hundred and twenty-eight houses, mostly large and very elegant. It was beautifully situated, almost encircled with a clear flat, extending a number of miles; over which extensive fields of corn were waving, together with every kind of vegetable that could be conceived." [FN-1] But the entire army was immediately engaged in destroying it, and the axe and the torch soon transformed the whole of that beautiful region from the character of a garden to a scene of drear and sickening desolation. Forty Indian towns, the largest containing one hundred and twenty-eight houses, were destroyed. [FN-2] Corn, gathered and ungathered, to the amount of one hundred and sixty thousand bushels, shared the same fate; their fruit-trees were cut down; and the Indians were hunted like wild beasts, till neither house, nor fruit-tree, nor field of corn, nor inhabitant, remained in the whole country. The gardens were enriched with great quantities of useful vegetables, of different kinds. The size of the corn-fields, as well as the high degree of cultivation in which they were kept, excited wonder; and the ears of corn were so remarkably large, that many of them measured twenty-two inches in length. So numerous were the fruit-trees, that in one orchard they cut down fifteen hundred. [FN-3]
[FN-1] Sullivan's Account.
[FN-2] It has already been seen that this wide-spread destruction was the result of the express instructions of General Washington. It was in reference to this fact, that, when addressing President Washington at an Indian council held in Philadelphia, in 1792, Cornplanter commenced his speech in the following strain:—"Father: The voice of the Seneca nation speaks to you, the Great Counselor, in whose heart the wise men of all the Thirteen Fires have placed their wisdom. It may be very small in your ears, and we therefore entreat you to hearken with attention: for we are about to speak to you of things which to us are very great. When your army entered the country of the Six Nations, we called you the Town Destroyer; and to this day, when that name is heard, our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the necks of their mothers. Our counselors and warriors are men, and cannot be afraid; but their hearts are grieved with the fears of our women and children, and desire that it maybe buried so deep as to be heard no more."
[FN-3] Ramsay. See, also, History of the British Empire, 2 volumes—anonymous. While Sullivan was at Genesee, a female captive from Wyoming was re-taken. She gave a deplorable account of the terror and confusion of the Indians. The women, she said, were constantly begging the warriors to sue for peace; and one of the Indians, she stated, had attempted to shoot Colonel Johnson for the falsehoods by which he had deceived and ruined them. She overheard Butler tell Johnson that after the battle of Newtown it was impossible to keep the Indians together, and that he thought they would soon be in a miserable situation, as all their crops would be destroyed, and they could not be supplied at Niagara.
It is in connexion with this campaign that the name of the celebrated Seneca orator, Sagayewatha, or Red Jacket, first occurs in history, or rather, will now for the first time thus occur, since it has never yet been mentioned at so early a date by any previous writer. It is well known by all who are acquainted with Indian history, that Brant and Red Jacket were irreconcilable enemies. The origin of this enmity has never yet been known to the public, and it has by some been imputed to the jealousy entertained by Brant of the growing reputation of his younger and more eloquent rival. But such is not the fact Brant ever acknowledged the great intellectual powers of Red Jacket, but always maintained that he was not only destitute of principle, but an arrant coward. In support of these opinions, he asserted that Red Jacket had given him much trouble and embarrassment during this campaign of General Sullivan, and was in fact the principal cause of the disgrace and disasters of the Indians. In relating a history of the expedition to a distinguished American gentleman, [FN] Brant stated that after the battle of Newtown, Red Jacket was in the habit of holding private councils with the young warriors, and some of the more timid sachems, the object of which was to persuade them to sue for peace, upon any—even ignominious terms; and that at one time he had so far succeeded as to induce them to send privately, and without the knowledge of the principal war chiefs, a runner into General Sullivan's camp, to make known to him the spirit of dissatisfaction and division that prevailed among the Indians, and to invite him to send a flag of truce with certain propositions calculated to increase their divisions and produce a dishonorable peace. Brant, who was privately informed of all these proceedings, but feared the consequences of disclosing and attempting to suppress them by forcible means, despatched, secretly also, two confidential warriors to way-lay the flag when on its route from the American to the Indian camp, and to put the bearer of it to death, and then return secretly with his despatches. This was accomplished as he directed, and all attempts at farther negotiations thereby prevented. It was certainly a bold measure; and how far Brant's conduct therein is susceptible of justification, or even palliation, will depend on a variety of minute circumstances which it is now too late to ascertain.