Domestic relations of Brant—Account of his family—Bad character of his eldest son—his death by the hand of his father—Condolence of the Chiefs—Grief of the father at the event—Anxiety for the education of his sons—Proposed memorial to the Duke of Portland—Letter of Brant to Colonel Smith—Correspondence with the Wheelock family—Letter from Brant to James Wheelock—Two of his sons sent to school at Plymouth—Various letters from and to the Wheelocks—Correspondence upon other subjects—Reply to the question, whether the Indians have beards—Letter from Bishop Peters—Views of Brant on imprisonment for debt—Tumuli—Opinion of Brant touching their origin—Indian tradition of white settlements cut off in a single night—Investigations of Samuel Woodruff—-Brant's inquiries in Paris—The discoveries of the Northmen—Review of the life and character of Brant—His death.
The life and character of the Mohawk Chief in his domestic relations, remain to be considered. These have never been accurately illustrated or understood; or rather, they have been greatly misrepresented and misunderstood, from the circumstance of a severe family affliction, the particulars of which have never been truly set before the public. Those even partially acquainted with the domestic history of Brant will readily perceive that reference is here made to the death of one of his sons by his own hands. Several accounts of this unfortunate transaction have been published by travelers, missionaries, and others, but most of them darkly shaded, and reflecting in a greater or less degree upon the father. In the preparation of material for the present work, great efforts have been made to arrive at the truth in regard to this painful incident.
Captain Brant, it will be recollected, was thrice married. By his first wife, the daughter of an Oneida Chief, he had two children, Isaac and Christiana. His great solicitude for the well bringing up of those children has been noted in the early history of his life. By his second wife, the sister of his first, he had no children. By his third he had seven, [FN] the eldest of whom, Joseph, was born in 1783.
[FN] Joseph, Jacob, John, Margaret, Catharine, Mary, and Elizabeth, (the present Mrs. Kerr.) Joseph, John, and Mary, are dead.
Isaac, the eldest of the children, was partly educated at a school in the Valley of the Mohawk, and his education was completed at Niagara. His disposition, bad, from his youth, grew worse as he increased in years, and was not improved by his associations at the military post of Niagara, after the war of the Revolution. Many of the officers on that station were free, sometimes to excess, in their living; and in the progress of his intercourse with them he became addicted to strong drink. When in his cups, he was always quarrelsome, even toward his parents—forgetting the honor due from a son to a father, and particularly disrespectful to his step-mother. As the younger family grew up, he became jealous of them, imagining that they received a larger share of parental favor than his sister and himself. Nothing could have been more groundless than were his suspicions, since from the concurrent testimony of the survivors of the family, and the aged contemporaries of the old Chief yet living at Grand River, no parent was ever more scrupulous in the impartial bestowment of his affection among all his children than Captain Brant. As an evidence of this fact, it may be mentioned, that when in England, in 1786, he sat for his likeness in miniature, which he transmitted in a golden locket to Christiana, the sister of Isaac. Isaac himself, moreover, notwithstanding his untoward conduct, received the most indubitable evidence of parental affection. With a view of keeping him more immediately under his own eye, and if possible reclaiming him, his father had caused him to be married to a beautiful girl, the daughter of a chief of the Turtle tribe, and installed him in the capacity of his own secretary. [FN] But all to no purpose. The demon of jealousy had gained possession of his bosom; and during his drunken frolics, among his Indian associates, he often threatened to take the life of his father. Still, he was treated with kindness, and his step-mother invariably kept silent during his paroxysms of insult and abuse.
[FN] MS. notes of conversations with Brant, by Samuel Woodruff.
His career, however, in addition to his intemperance, without the circle of his own family, was marked by outrage and blood. On one occasion, long before the catastrophe fatal to himself, soon to be recorded, he grievously assaulted a young man, who was riding on horseback on the King's highway—killed the horse, and sadly maimed the young man himself. His father was obliged to pay a large sum of money by way of compensation for the outrage.
Subsequently to this brutal affair, and not long before the painful incident with his father soon to be noted, he killed a white man at the Mohawk (Grand River) village, outright, and in cold blood. The name of his victim was Lowell, a harness-maker by trade. He was busily engaged in his shop at work, when Isaac Brant entered, and said—"Lowell, I am going to kill you." The man, supposing him to be jesting, at first laughed at the threat; and then remarked—"Why should you kill me? I have never injured you, neither have we ever quarreled." The savage then deliberately drew a pistol and shot him.