THAYENDANEGEA.* PRE-EMINENT among the Indians of the United States, during the whole period of our colonial history, were the confederated tribes of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Senecas, by the French commonly called the Iroquois, and by the English the Five Nations, and afterwards, the Six Nations, in consequence of the accession of the Tuscaroras to the league. When the French entered Canada, they found these Indians where Montreal now stands, and engaged in war with a neighboring tribe called the Adisondocs. This war continued, with sundry vicissi tudes, until the Iroquois proved at length victorious, and the power of the Adisondocs was completely broken; but meanwhile the Iroquois saw fit, or perhaps were compelled by the operations of the French, to recede along the St. Lawrence towards Lake Ontario, by reason of which that part of the river St. Lawrence bore the name of Iroquois, preserved in the treaty of 1783, in the definition of the boundaries of the United States on the side of Canada. Establishing the seat of their power in the region of the Lakes Ontario and Erie, the Iroquois drove before them the less energetic, or less powerful bands which previously occupied the country, and spread themselves or their authority and influence south and west over an extensive territory, which now comprehends New York, Western Pennsylvania, and most of Ohio. This great movement of the Iroquois, displacing the tribes immediately in contact with them, which tribes again pressed upon, and displaced, others beyond, diffused far and wide a knowledge of the warlike bands whose advance originated the general disturbance of preexisting relations. Among the remotest Indians of New England, the Mohawk was a name of terror. The fugitive Hurons and Ottowas bore the name and the fame of the Iroquois inland to the Sioux of the Upper Mississippi. But that, which above all other things distinguished the Five Nations, and which, probably, more than their superiority in courage and prowess, enabled them to overpower so many hostile tribes, was their political organization. In general, the Indians of North America have been so utterly savage as not to possess enough either of municipal or political organization to enable them to act together efficiently for any length of time, as tribes; and still less have their scattered bands been capable of as Life of Joseph Brandt-Thayendanegea, including the Indian war of the American Revolution. By William L. Stone, 2 vols. 8vo. New York. Published by George Dearborn & Co. 1838. sociating together permanently in great masses, for objects either of defence or of conquest, in opposition to a common foe. Occasionally, and for temporary objects, they have been held in league awhile, by the talents of a Pontiac, or a Tecumseh; but these have been exceptions to the general rule. The Senecas, Onondagas, Mohawks, Oneidas, and Cayugas, on the contrary, exhibited the rudiments of a well constituted and stable confederacy, each tribe having its own separate usages and interior government, but all, for a long period, conducting great undertakings in concert, for the common good. From union they derived the strength and spirit by and through which they vanquished or overawed the other Indian tribes; and in the same way they secured and retained the respect of the Europeans of New York and of Canada, with whom, by their geographical position, they were perpetually brought in contact. At a very early date, they became the allies of the English of New York against their common enemy, the French of Canada; and were, of course, active in the border wars of the northern frontier; and thus they continued, until the war of independence, which divided their friends, divided them, and led to the dissolution, in effect, of their confederacy, and the downfall of their power. Thayendanegea, by birth a Mohawk, and of the tribe which, by the custom of the Six Nations, usually furnished the war-chief, had borne arms in the French and Indian wars, and other frontier transactions prior to the Revolution; and when the war of the Revolution broke out, sided with the English, and served them efficiently in the numerous incursions and detached conflicts of which our northwestern settlements were the scene for nearly twenty years. We say twenty years; for neither the hostilities of the Indians, nor indeed those of Great Britain, ceased until Wayne's victory subdued and humbled the former, and compelled the latter to surrender the frontier posts which, in violation of the treaty of Paris, she had so long retained, and to desist for a while from open machinations against our peace. During this period, then, Thayendanegea, as principal chief of the Mohawks, and of such others of the Six Nations as adhered to the same cause, was the active and indefatigable ally of England, and enemy of the United States; and his name, coupled with so many reminiscences of savage cruelty, of which he was the real or supposed instigator and agent, has descended to our times invested with a bad eminence of peculiar infamy. It is distinctive of the North American savages to follow usages of war at once cowardly and ferocious; to prowl around the solitary house, and massacre its defenceless inmates; to shun fair encounters in the open field; to burn, destroy, and lay waste, in sheer vindictiveness, or wanton malice; to slaughter women and children with unrelenting blood-thirstiness; and to glory in carrying off the scalps of sucking babes, equally as those of manful opponents won in the heat of battle. Now that these things have passed away from our own doors-from the immediate neighbourhood of so large a part of the population of the United States-much sickly sentimentality is wasted upon the men whose only pride is in the perpetration of such deeds; and whom, thus far, neither persuasion nor example has been able to reclaim from their inveterate habits of dissolute idleness in time of peace, and unmitigated barbarism in time of war. As the leader of some of the fierce bands armed against us by Great Britain at that period, Thayendanegea, we repeat, by his English name of Brandt, has come down to us, in the histories of that day, and in the tales of border tradition, the object of execration, and of horror. Notoriously and unquestionably, he was a commissioned leader of the Indian auxiliaries of Great Britain, commanding a portion of those troops the mere employment of which at all was justly stigmatized then, and ever since, as deeply disgraceful to the mother country. He was known to have been present, as war-chief of the Mokawks, in numerous scenes of massacre and carnage. In his case, as in that of other commanders, common fame, whether rightfully or not, held him responsible for the savage acts of his savage followers. All the contemporaneous accounts concurred in imputing to him the traits of character common to his race and his position; or as Mr. Stone himself says: "In the meagre sketches of his life hitherto published, although an occasional redeeming virtue has been allowed by some, anecdotes of treachery and blood have been introduced, to sustain the imputed disposition of relentless ferocity;" and we may add, that with all the light that Mr. Stone, a most friendly biographer, and the family of the subject, have been able to throw upon the question, too many of those "anecdotes of treachery and blood" are, in point of fact, undenied, and undeniable. And Campbell, in the well remembered passage of Gertrude of Wyoming, has expressed the ideas concerning Thayendanegea, handed down to us by our fathers. Outalissi, the Oneida chief, speaks: "But this is not the time,'-he started up, And smote his breast with woe-denouncing hand,- 'The Mammoth comes,-the foe, the monster Brandt, 'With all his howling, desolating, band; These eyes have seen their blade, and burning pine, 'Awake at once and silence half your land.— 'Red is the cup they drink, but not with wine: Awake, O wretch! to night, or see no morrow shine! 'Scorning to wield the hatchet for his tribe, This notorious personage is the subject of Mr. Stone's work, or rather, in the execution of the original purpose of preserving the memory of the great number of interesting events, of which the Indian country of New York, and especially the valley of the Mohawk, was the theatre, Mr. Stone adopted the plan of associating the history of those events with an account of the life of Thayendanegea. Though called the Life of Joseph Brandt,' it is, therefore, a much more extensive and important work; including, in part, as the title page indicates, the border wars of the American Revolution, and sketches of the Indian campaigns of Generals Harman, St. Clair, and Wayne, and other matters connected with the Indian relations of the United States and Great Britain.' Indeed, these other matters'-other, that is, than the life of Brandtoccupy the chief part of the work, and are of the greatest value, and the more permanent historical interest; and we should have been better pleased with the work, if Thayendanegea had been a less prominent figure in the piece. He was, it is true, the most conspicuous Indian of that time, and that section of the country; he performed the acts of blood proper to such an auxiliary; but his condition was that of a simple captain, as he himself states, (vol. ii. pp. 408,) in the British service; he played a secondary and subordinate part in the great drama, of which he is here made the hero; and he is thus lifted into an apparent position of relative importance, altogether undeserved by him, or any other of the savage instruments of the vengeance of England against her revolted colonies. We object, in general, to the posthumous canonization, which a misdirected sympathy, as we think, and erroneous impression of the facts, is so prone to bestow on every savage, who like Thayendanegea, or Oseola, happens to distinguish himself by peculiar ferocity or activity, against our own people, and our own blood. And, in the particular case before us, we see that the effect of making Thayendanegea the hero of a work of this magnitude, has been to seduce Mr. Stone into an over-estimate of the personal character of Brandt, and of his importance in history. Thus it is, we conceive, that much ingenuity and acuteness are expended, in several instances, in the attempt, on the one side, to disclose the mind, or the hand of Thayendanegea, and to do him honor, in connection with great affairs, wherein his participation is either purely conjectural or imaginary, and wholly subordinate; and, on the other, to free him from the generally received imputation of odium in reference to smaller events within his appropriate scope and sphere. This we think to have been a fault of arrangement or plan, which, though it may not impair the general interest of the work, and may, perhaps, add to it, is nevertheless a defect, because it is injurious to symmetry of design, and because it introduces questionable facts, and still more questionable conclusions, into a book whose value and attractiveness will give to it an extensive currency, and which, from the novelty and original sources of much of its contents, will possess great intrinsic historical importance. At the same time, Mr. Stone has explored successfully, a rich and productive mine of facts. The valley of the Mohawk, and the contiguous country west of it, was the seat of the Five Nations. There the French and English so often met, negotiated, and made war. There it was that the Five Nations, the Romans of the new world, as Caldero grandiloquently calls them, displayed their eloquence and their bravery, elicited by the conflicting relations of their European neighbours of Canada and New York. There, in the long contest of the Revolution, and in the Indian wars which followed, were manifested all the traits of courage, hardihood, perseverance, enterprise, intelligence, and patriotism, which distinguished our own forefathers; and the sagacity, fortitude, physical endurance, fierceness, and blood-guiltiness, of the savages around them. Vindictive expeditions of the expatriated tories, wasting with fire and sword the country they had abandoned; operations of the inhabitants for the defence of their homes, and the support of their independence; and all the vicissitudes of battle, captivity, and thrilling adventure, belong to the local history of that region. In addition to which, during the Revolution, it was the scene of many, among the most remarkable acts and brilliant enterprises, on a large scale, of the national forces of England and of the United Colonies. All these things render the tract of country in question, peculiarly rich in historical incident. Mr. Stone having spent some of his early years in the valley of the Mohawk, in the midst of localities marked by such interesting events, and of those who had acted and suffered in them, was prompted, in the process of time, to conceive the idea of collecting and preserving the papers, letters, and fleeting recollections, appertaining to the past, ere they should pass into oblivion with the generation in whose possession, or memory, those original elements of history subsisted; and the present work, covering only the latter part of the period of his researches, is the result of that design; a life of Sir William Johnson, the celebrated English agent among the Indians of New York, being promised, which shall narrate the events of the former part of that period, anterior to the Revolutionary war. In the prosecution of this task, the author, in addition to the matter previously in print, has had the use of a great mass of manuscript materials, consisting of journals, letters, and other papers, of many of the distinguished men of that day, including those of General James Clinton, of General Gansevoort, of Sir William Johnson, and of Brandt himself, preserved by his family in Canada. |