History of the settlement of Upper Canada (Ontario,) with special reference to the Bay Quinté. William Canniff
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the purpose, with instructions “to lay waste the whole of their towns, to destroy all their cattle and property.” “The Colonel obeyed his orders to the letter, and left nothing but blackened ruins behind him.” It was merely a march of destruction, for the Indians were not there to oppose their steps. The villages and property that were destroyed belonged to the Onondagas, although they had not taken a decided stand with the loyalist party. It was enough that they were Indians, and would not join the rebels. But this was merely a prelude to what was preparing, in pursuance of a resolution of the rebel congress. The infamous duty of commanding this army of destruction, town destroyers the Indians called them, was entrusted to General Sullivan, whose nature was adequate to the requirements of the command.
On the 22nd August, 1779, five thousand men were concentrated at Tioga, upon the Susquehanna. The men were prepared for their uncivilized duty by promises of the territory over which they were about to sow blood and fire. The Indians had no adequate force to oppose their march westward over the Six Nations territory. Brant with his warriors, with the Butlers and Johnsons made a gallant resistance upon the banks of the Chemung, near the present town of Elmira. But, after suffering considerable loss, the vastly superior force compelled them to flee, and there remained nothing to arrest the devastating rebel army, and during the whole month of September they continued the work of despoliation.
It has been the custom of almost all American historians to give the Indians attributes of the most debasing character. At peace, unworthy the advantages of civilization; at war, treacherous and ferociously cruel. For this persistent and ungenerous procedure it is impossible to conceive any cause, unless to supply an excuse for the steady course of double-dealing the Americans have pursued toward the original owners of the soil, and provide a covering for the oft-repeated treachery practised toward the credulous Indian by the over-reaching New Englander. To the Mohawk Nation particularly, since they proved true allies of the British, have American writers found it agreeable to bestow a character noted for blood and rapine. Nothing can be more untrue than the character thus gratuitously portrayed, nothing more at variance with the essential nature of the Indian, when free from European intrigues, and the cursed fire-water. The aboriginal races of North America are not by nature, blood-thirsty above Europeans. That they are honest, just and true, capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, with a due appreciation of well-kept faith, is well attested by the conduct which has ever been observed by them toward, not alone the Pennsylvanians, but every man found to be a Quaker. No instance can be found recorded throughout the long bloody wars of the Indians, where a hair of the head of a single man, woman or child of that denomination was injured by the Indian; and thus because the upright Penn never defrauded them. The Americans, while British colonists, with the exception alluded to, made themselves obnoxious to almost all Indian tribes. They never secured that hearty and faithful alliance that the French did. There seemed to be something in the air, especially of the New England States, which in a few generations blinded the eye, by which the golden rule is to be observed.
The Americans, who have ever set themselves up as the champions, par excellence, of liberty, to whom the “down-trodden of the old world” could look for sympathy, if not direct support, have signally failed to observe those lofty principles at home toward the natives of the soil, while they continued for eighty years to keep in chains the sable sons of Africa. They have found it convenient and plausible to prate about the political “tyranny of European despots;” but no nation of northern Europe has shown such disregard for the rights of their people as the United States have exhibited toward the original owners of the soil. Avarice has quite outgrown every principle of liberty that germinated ere they came to America. The frontier men, the land-jobber, the New England merchant, as well as the Southern Planter, have alike ignored true liberty in defrauding the Indian, in sending out slavers, and in cruel treatment of the slave. Then can we wonder that the noble-minded Indian, naturally true to his faith, should, when cheated, wronged—cruelly wronged, with the ferocity natural to his race, visit the faithless with terrible retribution?
The unbiassed records of the past, speak in tones that cannot be hushed, of the more noble conduct of the natives, than of those who have sought to exterminate them. The Mohawks, although brave warriors, fought not for the mere love of it. They even at times strove to mediate between the French and New Englanders.
To the Mohawks, the American writer has especially bestowed a name bloody and ignoble. And all because they listened not to their wily attempts to seduce them to join the rebels, but preferred to ally themselves with the British. No doubt the Indian had long before discriminated between the rule of British officers, and the selfish policy of local governments. And hence, we find, in every scrap of paper relating to the Mohawks, unfounded accounts of savage doings. But taking, as true, the darkest pages written by the Americans against the Six Nations, they present no parallel to the deeds of brutal vengeance enacted by the American army under Sullivan, when he traversed the fruitful country, so long the home of the Iroquois. Says an American writer: “When the army reached the Genesee Valley, all were surprised at the cultivation exhibited, by wide fields of corn, gardens well stocked, their cattle, houses, and other buildings, showing good design, with mechanical skill, and every kind of vegetable that could be conceived. Beautiful as was the scene in the eyes of the army, a few days changed it to utter desolation; neither house, nor garden, grain, fruit tree, or vegetable, was left unscathed.”
Says Stone: “Forty Indian towns were destroyed. Corn gathered and ungathered, to the amount of 160,000 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.” And the poor Indian women, and children, and old men, were thus left at the approaching winter to seek support at the British garrisons. Truly the rebels of ’76 were brave and civilized!
Thirteen years after, one of the chiefs said to Washington, “Even to this day, when the name of the town-destroyer is heard, our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the necks of their mother; our sachems and our warriors are men, who cannot be afraid, but their hearts are grieved with the fears of our women and children.” Thus the brave Sullivan, with his thousand rebels, made war against old men, women and children, who were living in their rightful homes. This was fighting for liberty!
The blood of the Indian, as well as the slave, has risen up to reproach the American, and it required much of fresh blood to wash away the stains remaining from their deeds of cruelty and rapine, inflicted during their revolutionary war, under the name of liberty. The soldiers of Sullivan were stimulated in their evil work by promises of the land they were sent to despoil; and the close of the war saw them return to claim their promises, while the rightful owner was driven away. A certain portion of the Six Nations having received pledges from the United States Government for their welfare, remained to become subjects of the new nation. But excepting Washington himself, and General Schuyler, not one heeded their promises made to the Indian. The most unjust proceedings were begun and ruthlessly carried on by individuals, by companies, by legislators, by speculators, to steal every inch of land that belonged by all that is right, to the Senecas. How unlike the benignant and faithful conduct of the British Government in Canada.
Brant continued during the war to harass the enemy in every possible way, and in the following year, August, planned a terrible, but just retaliation for the work of Sullivan’s horde. It was now the turn of the rebels to have their houses, provisions and crops, despoiled. But all the while “no barbarities were permitted upon the persons of defenceless women and children, but a large number of them were borne away into captivity.” Again, in October, Johnson and Brant, with Corn Planter, a distinguished Seneca chief, invaded the Mohawk Valley. In this foray, the same conduct was observed toward women and children. On one occasion, Brant sent an Indian runner with an infant, that had been unintentionally carried from its mother with some captives, to restore it. Still, again the following year, the Indians under Brant, and the Royalists under Major Ross, were found over-running their old homes along the Mohawk and Schoharie. On this their last expedition, they were met by the rebels in force under Colonel Willet, with some Oneida warriors, and defeated them. Colonel Walter N. Butler, whom the rebels have so often tried to malign, was shot and scalped by an Oneida Indian, under the command of the rebel Willet.
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