('-

History Reserve
Gift of
Prof. Charles H. Smith
1911

SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
AND
E\iZ S>ix Nations

'MAKERS OF AMERICA"

SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON

AND

Cl^e ^ix 0atiom

BY

WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS
AUTHOR OF "the MIKADO's EMPIRE," " COREA THE HERMIT
NATION," "MATTHEW CALERAITH PERRY," ETC.

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD, AND COMPANY
Publishers

Copyright, 1891,
By Dodd, Mead, and Co.

All rights reserved.

SEititestto ^«sa:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

E»ctitcattott.
Like my friend, the late Judge John SandeiS, of Scotia,
Schenectady County, N. Y., ¦who took off his hat when meeting
descendants of the heroes of Oriskany, the bloodiest, the most
stubbornly contested, and perhaps the decisive battle in the War
of the American Revolution, the writer makes his bow to ihe
people of the Mohawk Valley, and to them, and to the viemory
of their brave ancestors, dedicates this sketch of one of the Makers
of America.

PREFACE.

The Mohawk Valley in which Sir William Johnson
spent his adult life (1738-17 74) was the fairest por
tion of the domain of the Six Nations of the Iroquois
Confederacy. In this valley I lived nine years, seeing
on every side traces or monuments Of the industry,
humanity, and powerful personality of its most famous
resident in colonial days. From the quaint stone
church in Schenectady which he built, and in whose
canopied pews he sat, daily before my eyes, to the
autograph papers in possession of my neighbours ; from
sites close at hand and traditionally associated with
the lord of Johnson Hall, to the historical relics which
multiply at Johnstown, Canajoharie, and westward, —
mementos of the baronet were never lacking. His
two baronial halls still stand near the Mohawk. I
found that local tradition, while in the main generous
to his memory, was sometimes unfair and even cruel.
The hatreds engendered by the partisan features of
the Revolution, and the just detestation of the savage
atrocities of Tories and red allies led by Johnson's
son and son-in-law, had done injustice to the great
man himself. Yet base and baseless tradition was in
no whit more unjust than the sectiona,! opinions and

vni PREFACE.
hostile gossip of tKe New England militia which his
torians have so freely transferred to their pages.
In the following pages no attempt at either lauda
tion or depreciation has been made. My purpose has
been simply to set forth the actions, influence, and
personality of Sir William Johnson, to show the char
acter of the people by whom he was surrounded, and
to describe and analyze the^political movements of his
time. I confess I have not depicted New York people
in the sectional spirit and subjective manner in which
they are so often treated by New England writers. The
narrow and purely local view of some of these who have
written what is called the history of the United States,
greatly vitiates their work in the eyes of those who do
not inherit their prejudices. Having no royal charter,
the composite people of New York, gathered from
many nations, but instinct with the principles of the
free republic of Holland, were obliged to study care
fully the foundations of government and jurisprudence.
It is true that in the evolution of this Commonwealth
the people were led by the lawyers rather than by the
clergy. Constantly resisting the invasions of royal
prerogative, they formed on an immutable basis of
law and right that Empire State which in its con
struction and general features is, of all those in the
Union, the most typically American. Its historical
precedents are not found in a monarchy, but in a re
public. It is less the fruit of English than of Teutonic
civilization. Living also but a few yards away from the home of
Arendt Van Curler, the " Brother Corlaer " of Indian

PREFACE. ix
tradition, and immediately alongside the site of the
old gate opening from the palisades into the Mohawk
country, I could from my study windows look daily upon
the domain of the Mohawks, — the places of trea
ties, ceremonies, and battles, of the torture and burn
ing of captives, and upon the old maize-lands, even
yet rich after the husbandry of centuries. Besides
visiting many of the sites of the Iroquois castles, I have
again and again traversed the scenes of Johnson's ex
ploits in Central New York, at Lake George, in East
ern Pennsylvania, and other places mentioned in the
text. With my task is associated the remembrance
of many pleasant outings as well as meetings with lo
cal historians, antiquarians, and students of Indian
lore. I have treated more fully the earlier part of
Johnson's life which is less known, and more briefly
the events of the latter part which is comparatively
familiar to all. I trust I have not been unfair to the
red men while endeavouring to show the tremendous
influence exerted over them by Johnson; who, for
this alone, deserves to be enrolled among the Makers
of America.
My chief sources of information have been the John
son manuscripts, which have been carefully mounted,
bound, and are preserved in the State Library at Al
bany. They were indexed by my friends, the late
Rev. Dr. H. A. Homes, and Mr. George R. Howell,
the accomplished secretary of the Albany Institute.
To the former I am especially indebted. The printed
book to which I owe special obligations is the late
William L. Stone's " Life and Times of Sir William

X PREFACE.
Johnson, Bart." These two superbly written octavo
volumes, richly annotated and indexed, make any
detailed life of Johnson unnecessary, and form a no
ble and enduring monument of patient scholarship.
For generous assistance at various points and in
details, I have to thank, and hereby do so most heart
ily, Mr. Edward F. De Lancey, of New York ; Mr.
William L. Stone, of Jersey City; Prof A. L. Perry,
of Williams College ; Mr. Berthold Fernow, keeper of
the State Archives, Albany ; Rev. J. A. De Baun,
D. D., of Fonda ; Rev. J. H. Hubbs, of Grand Rap
ids, Mich. ; Rev. Henry R. Swinnerton, of Cherry
Valley; Mr. R. A. Grider, the chief American spe
cialist and collector of powder-horns and their art
and literature ; Mr. A. G. Richmond, archaeologist
ih Indian relics, of Canajoharie, N. Y. ; Mrs. I. E.
Wells of Johnson Hall at Johnstown; Mr. Ethan
Akin, of Fort Johnson at Akin near Fonda ; James
Fuller, Esq., of Schenectady, N. Y. ; and Major J. W.
MacMurray, U. S. N. ; besides various descendants of
the militiamen who served under the illustrious Irish
man who is the subject of the following pages.
W. E. G.
Boston, Mass.,
May 21, rBgi.

CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE.

1609,

1400-1600 A. D. Occupation of the region between the
Niagara and the Hudson River by the
Indian tribes of the Long Hanse.
July 29. Defeat of the Iroquois near Ticande-
roga, N. Y., by Champlain.
Sept. 1-23. Hendrick Hudson explores the river
as far as the Mehawk.
1613. Hollanders, build on Manhattan and Nassau
Islands.
1617. Iroquois form an alliance with the Butch.
1623. Jesse Be Forest and the Walloons settle and found
New York City. — Fort Orange built. — Settle
ment at Albany.
1630. Patroon Kilian Van Rensselaer. — Arrival of
Arendt Van Curler.
1642. Van Curler enters the Mohawk Valley and ransoms
Isaac Jogues.
1661. Van Curler founds the city of Schenectady.
1664. English Conquest of New Netherlands.
1667. Kryn leads the Caugljnawaga Indians to Canada.
1690. Massacre at Schenectady.
1710. Palatine Germans in New York.
1713. The Tuscaroras join the Iroquois Confederacy.
1715. Sir William Johnson born.
1723. Palatines settle in Mohawk Valley. — Oswego
founded.

xn CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE.
1738. Johnson settled at Warrensburgh, N. Y.
1740. Johnson made head of the Indian Department.
1754. The Congress and Council at Albany.
1755. Battle of Lake George.
1757. Massacre at German Flats.
1759. Surrender of Niagara to Johnson. — Fall of Que
bec and the French power in America.
1763. Conspiracy of Pontiac. — Johnstown founded, and
Johnson Hall built.
1768. Treaty at Fort Stanwix.
1770. January i8, First bloodshed of the Revolution.
1771. First battle of the Revolution at Alamance, N. C.
1772. Division of Albany County. — Johnstown made the
county-seat of Tryon County.
1774. Death of Sir William Johnson.
1777. Battle of Oriskany.
1778. Massacre at Cherry Valley. •
1779. Brant at Minnisink — General SuUivan's Expedi
tion against the Six Nations.
1782. New York's Western lands transferred to the
nation. .
1783. Tories banished from the Mohawk Valley.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Chapter Page
I. The First Settlers of the Mohawk
Valley  i
II. Johnson as an Indian Tkader ... ii
III. The Six Nations and the Long Housb^ 35
IV. The Struggle for a Continent . . di
V. A Chapter in the Story of Liberty . 80
VI. A Typical Frontier Fight with In-
-^ DIANS  92
VII. At the Ancient Place of Treaties . log
VIII. The Battle of Lake George . . . 132
IX. British Failures Preparing for Am
erican Independence  146
X. The "Heaven-born General" . . . 167
XI. Decline of the Indian as a Political
Factor  178
XII. Life at Johnson Hall ...... 194
XIII. Johnson's Family; La.st Days ; Eutha
nasia  206

SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON

THE SIX NATIONS.

CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST SETTLERS OF THE MOHAWK VALLEY.
The Mohawk Valley was first settled by men
escaping from feudalism. The manor-system, a sur
viving relic of the old days of lordship and villeinage,
had long cursed England, Germany, and Holland,
though first outgrown and thrown off in the latter
country. It was from this system, almost as much as
from Church laws, that the Pilgrim Fathers were glad
to escape and find free labour as well as liberty of con
science in Holland, — the land where they "heard,"
and found by experience, " that all men were free."
The Netherlands was the political training-school of
the Pilgrims, and of most of the leaders of the Puri
tans, who before 1640 settled New England. In
America they were more fortunate than their more
southern neighbours, m that they were freed from the
semi-feudalism of the Dutch Patroons and the manor-
lords of Maryland and Virginia. The Hollanders, on

2 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
coming to New Netherlands and settling under the
Patroons, enjoyed far less liberty than when in their
own country. They were practically under a new
sort of feudalism unknown in their " Patria." Their
Teutonic- instincts and love of freedom soon, however,
drove them to relinquish their temporary advantages
as manor-tenants, and to purchase land from the In
dians and settle in the "Woestina," or wilderness.
These Dutch farmers cheerfully braved the dangers
and inconveniences of " the bush," in order to hold
land in fee simple and be their own masters. -
It was this spirit of independence that led a little
company of worthy sons or grandsons of men who
had fought under William the Silent, to settle in the
" Great Flat," or Mohawk Valley. They were led by
Arendt Van Curler, who, though first-cousin of the
absentee Patroon Van Rensselaer, of Rensselaerwyck,
had educated himself out of the silken meshes of
semi-feudalism. Finding men like-minded with him
self, who believed that the patroon or manor system
was a bad reversion in political evolution, he led out
the Dutch freemen, and founded the city of Schenec
tady. On the land made sacred to the Mohawks for
centuries, by reason of council-fires and immemorial
graves, this free settlement began. Here, not indeed
for the first time in New Netherlands, and yet at a
period when the proceeding was a novelty, the set
tlers held land in fee simple, and demanded the rights
of trade.
It was before 1660 that these men, who would
rather have gone back to Patria, or Holland, than

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 3
become semi-serfs under a manor-lord, came to Van
Curler, or "Brother Corlaer" as the Iroquois called
him, and asked him to lead them westward. In Fort
Orange, July 21, 1661, in due legal form, by pur
chase from and satisfaction to the Mohawk Indian
chiefs, the Indian title was extinguished. Thus, by a
procedure as honourable and generous as William
Penn's agreement with the Lenni Lenapes under the
great elm at Shackamaxon, was signalized the entrance
of Germanic civilization in the Mohawk Valley.
Early in the spring of 1662 Van Curler led his
fourteen freemen and their famiUes into their new
possession. Travelling westward, up what is now
Clinton Avenue in Albany, until they reached Nor
man's Kill, they struck northward, following the In
dian trail of blazed trees, until after a circuit of twenty
miles they reached their future home, on a low pla
teau on the banks of the Mohawk. On this old site
of an Indian village they began the erection of their
houses, mill, church, and palisades. The aboriginal
name ofthe village, from which the Mohawks had
removed, pointed to the vast piles of driftwood de
posited on the river-flats after the spring floods ; but
not till after the Enghsh conquest did any one apply
the old Indian name of the site of Albany — that is,
" Schenectady " — to Van Curler's new settlement.
Both French and Indians called the village "Corlaer,"
even as they also called the Mohawk River "the
river of Corlaer," and the sheet of water in which he
was drowned, not after its discoverer, Champlain, but
" Corker's Lake." Nevertheless, since the Mohawks

4 SIR W/LLIAM JOHNSON
had already retired from the Hudson River, and " the
place outside the door of the Long House" was no
longer Albany, but " Corlaer," they and the Europe
ans, soon after 1664, began to speak of the new set
tlement as " Schenectady ; " especially, as by their
farther retirement up the valley, " Corlaer " was now
the true " Schenectady ; " that is, outside the door of
the Iroquois confederacy or Long House. Schenec
tady enjoys the honour of being more variously
spelled than any other place in the United States;
and its name has been derived from Iroquois, Ger
man, and Japanese, in which languages it is possible
to locate the word as a compound. It is a softened
form of a long and very guttural Indian word.
Then was begun, by these Dutch freeholders, the
long fight of fifty years for freedom of trade with the
Indians. Their contest was against the restrictive '
jealousy of Albany, including both Colony and Manor.
With Dutch tenacity they held on, until victory at
last crowned their persistence in 1727.
In a word, in its initiation and completion, the
opening of the Mohawk Valley to civilization forms
a noble episode in the story of American freedom.
One of the first places in New York on which the
forces representing feudalism and opposed to free-
holding of land, and on which mediaeval European
notions arrayed against the ideas which had made
America were beaten back, was at Schenectady, in
the throat of the Mohawk Valley. Here was struck
by liberty-loving Hollanders a key-note, of which the
long strain has not yet ceased.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. S
The immigrants who next followed the Dutch pio
neers, — like them, as real setders, and not as land-
speculators and manor-builders, — and who penetrated
still farther westward up the valley, were not English,
but German. These people, who, as unarmed peas
ants in the Rhine Valley, had been unable to resist
the invasion of Louis XIV. or to face the rigours of
poverty in their desolated homeland, made the best
sort of colonists in America. Brought by the British
Government to settle on remote frontiers, to bear the
brunt of contact with Indians, Spaniards, and French
men, these sturdy Protestants soon proved their abil
ity, not only to stand their ground, but to be lively
thorns in the sides of despotic landlords, crown-agents,
and governors.
The " first American rebel " Leisler, born at Mann
heim in Germany, was a people's man. In his own
rude way he acted with the intent of making ideas
dominant then, which are commonplace now. His
"rebellion" grew out of a boast made by the British
Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson, that the Dutch colo
nists were a conquered people, and not entitled to
the right of English citizenship. Hanged, by order
of a drunken English governor, near the site of the
Tribune Building, May i6, 1691, it is more than
probable that he will yet have his statue in the metro
politan city of America. He belongs to the Hst of
haters of what is falsely named aristocracy, the un-
American state-church combination, and other relics
of feudalism which survive in England, but which had
been cast off by the Dutch Republic, in whose service

6 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
as a soldier he had come to America. His place in
the hst of the winners of American liberty is sure.^
Under Governor Hunter's auspices, in 1710, nearly
three thousand Germans from the Palatinate setded
along the Hudson and in New York. By a third
immigration, in 1722, ten per cent was added to the
population by the Palatines, who settled all along
the Mohawk Valley, advancing farther westward into
the "Woestina."- At German Flats and at Palatine
Bridge their " concentration " was greatest. So jeal
ous were the money-loving English of their wool-
monopoly, that these Germans were forbidden under
extreme penalties to engage in the woollen manufac
ture. The same intense jealousy and love of lucre
which, until the Revolution, kept at home all army
contracts that could possibly be fulfilled in Great
Britain, prescribed the ban which was laid on the
Mohawk Valley Palatines. With chains thus forged
upon the Germans, who were expected to furnish
" naval stores," there was no encouragement for them
to raise sheep or improved stock. In this way it
happened that Sir William Johnson was later enabled
to boast that he was the first who introduced fine
sheep and other live-stock in the Mohawk Valley.
The characteristics of these Germans were an in
tense love of liberty, and a deep-seated hatred against
feudalism and the encroachments of monarchy in
every form. The great land-owners, both Dutch and
English, who wished to use these people as serfs,
1 See " The Leisler Troubles of 1689," by Rev. A. G. Ver-
milye, D.D. New York. 1891.

AND THE SIX NATIONS: 7
found that they possessed strange notions of liberty.
Poor as they were, they were more like hornets to
sting than blue-bottles to be trapped with molasses.
The Hessian fly had a barb in his tail. Loyal to the
Crown, they refused to submit to the tyranny of the
great landlords. It was one of these Germans, a poor
immigrant, that first fought and Won the battle of the
freedom of speech and of the press. Now, intrenched
in the Constitution of the United States, it is to us
almost like one of the numerous " glittering generali
ties " of the Declaration of Independence, at which
EngUshmen smile, but which Americans, including
the emancipated negroes, find so real. Then the
freedom of the press was a dream. In 1722 John
Peter Zenger, who incarnated the spirit and con
science of these Palatine Germans, was editor of the
" New York Weekly Journal." He was reproached
as a foreigner and immigrant, for daring to criticise
the royal representatives, or ever to touch upon the
prerogatives of Governor Cosby, the king's foolish
representative. Zenger was imprisoned, but man
aged to edit his paper while in jail. At his trial he
was defended by Hamilton, a lawyer from a coloriy
whose constitution had been written by the son of a
Dutch mother, in Holland, where printing had been
free a century or more before it was even partially
free in England. James Alexander Hamilton was
the Scottish lawyer who had left his European home,
to the detriment of his fortune, in order to enjoy
richer liberty in Pennsylvania. He it was who first
purchased Independence Square in Philadelphia, for

8 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
the erection thereon of the State House, in which the
Liberty BeU was to hang, and "proclaim liberty to
all the land, and to all the inhabitants thereof."
Going to New York at his own expense, he, with
out fee, defended Zenger and secured his acquittal.
This event marks an important point in the making
of America and in the story of American freedom.
It was in its effects as significant as the skirmish
at Lexington. The doctrine, novel at that time in
England but not in Holland, was advanced, that the
truth of the facts in the alleged libel could be set up
as defence, and that in this proceeding the jury were
judges both of the law and the facts.
Though hundreds of Germans left New York for
the greater advantage of land and the liberty of- Penn
sylvania, which had been settled under' repubhcan
influences, yet those Palatines who rooted themselves
in the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys proved one of
the best stocks which have made the American peo
ple. They were never popular with the men or
women who wanted to make America a new London
or a new England, with courts and castles, aristocracy
and nobles, so called, entail and primogeniture, the
landlords of feudal domain, and other old-world bur
dens. Honest, indifstrious, brave. God-fearing, truth
ful, and clean, they soon dotted the virgin forest with
clearings, farms, and churches. Whatever else in
their wanderings they lost or were robbed of, they
usually managed to hold to their hymn-books and
Bibles, and, in the case of the Reformed Church
men, their Heidelberg Catechism. Their brethren

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 9
in Pennsylvania — the holy land of German- Ameri
cans — published the first Bible in America, printed
in a European tongue ; and many early copies found
their way northward. They lived on terms of peace
with the Indians, treating these sons of the soil with
kindness, and helping them in generous measure to
the benefits of Christianity. The most honest and
influential of Johnson's Indian interpreters were of
Dutch or German stock.
Though other nationaHties — Scottish, Irish, Eng
lish — afterward helped to make the Mohawk Valley
at first polyglot, and then cosmopolitan, it was by
people of two of the strongest branches of the Teu
tonic race that this fertile region was first settled.
The dominant idea of these people was freedom
under law, reinforced by hearty contempt for the
injustice which masquerades under the forms of pre
rogative and of " majesty." For all the self-styled,
insolent vicegerents of God, in both Church and State,
they felt a detestation, and were glad to find in Amer-
~ica none of these. If found, they felt bound to resist
them unto the end. Theirs was the democratic idea
in Church and State, and they expressed it strongly.
It was this spirit which explains the rude and rough
treatment, by Germans of both sexes, of arrogant royal
agents and landlords in the Schoharie Valley, and
which at the erection of churches built by public
money, in which only a liturgical sect could worship,
led to turbulence and riot. Certain historic old edi
fices now standing were once finished only after the
king's bayonets had been summoned to protect masons

10 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
and carpenters from people who hated the very sight
of an established or government church, built even-
partly by taxation, but shut to those of the sects not
officially patronized.
Among such a people, strong in the virtues of un
spoiled manhood ; exhilarant with the atmosphere
and splendid possibihties of the New World ; trained
in the school of Luther's Bible and the Heidelberg
Catechism ; taught by Dutch laws commanding pur
chase of land from the aborigines, and by the pow
erful example of Van Curler and their dominCs or
pastors, to be kind to the Indians, — Sir William John
son, one of the greatest of the makers of our America,
came in 1738. It was the daughter of one of the
people t)f this heroic stock that be married. At a
susceptible age he learned their ideas and way of
looking at things, especially at their method of justly
treating the Indians of the Six Nations, who were
looked upon as the rightful owners of the soil.
Among these people Johnson lived all his adult life.
He was ever in kindly sympathy with them, never
sharing the supercilious contempt of those Who were
and who are ignorant alike of their language, abilities,
and virtues.

AND THE SIX NATIONS.

CHAPTER II.
JOHNSON AS AN INDIAN TRADER.
There is probably no good foundation for the local
tradition, mentioned by Gen. J. Watts De Peyster,
in his Life of Gen. John Johnson (Preface, p. ii,
note) , that the family name of WiUiam Johnson was
originally " Jansen, and that the first who bore it and
settled in Ireland was a HoUander, who, like many of
his countrymen, went over afterward with WiUiam III.
in 1690, won lands and established themselves in Ire
land." The subject is not mentioned in the Encyclo
paedia Britannica, and but slightly treated in English
works of reference, while he has been unjustly slighted
by American writers of history. According to his
own account, William Johnson was born in Smith-
town, County Meath, near Dublin, Ireland, in 1715.*
His mother was Anne Warren, sister of the brothers
Oliver and Peter, who became famous officers in
the British Navy; and his father, Christopher John-
1 The young and charming Lord James Radcliffe, Earl of
Derwentwater, the idol of the Jacobites, was beheaded 24th of
February, 1716; that is, on the very day, it is claimed by Col.
T. Bailey Myers, that Sir William Johnson was born, and the
wild fervour of a Jacobite loyalty was still alive when Sir John
was a boy. — De Peyster's Life of Gen. John Johnson, Introd.,
p. xvi.

12 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
son, Esq. Writers and biographers enlarge upon
the ancient and honourable lineage of his mother's
family, but say little about his father's. To an
American this matters less than to those who must
have a long line of known ancestry, real, reputed, or
manufactured. After some schooling at a classical academy, Wil
liam was trained to a mercantile career. When about
twenty-two years old, he fell in love with a lass whom
his parents refused to permit him to marry. This
obstacle, like a pebble that turns the course of the
rivulet that is to become a great river, shaped anew
his life. The new channel for his energies was soon
discovered. His uncle, Capt. Peter Warren, R. N., who had
just returned from a cruise, heard of his nephew's
unhappy experience, and made him the offer of a
position promising both wealth and adventure. Land
speculation was then rife; and Captain Warren, like
many other naval officers, had joined in the rush for
lucre by buying land in the fertile Mohawk Valley.
This was in addition to land which was part of his
wife's dowry, so that his estate was large, amounting,
it is said, to fifteen thousand acres. He appointed
young Johnson his agent, to work his farm and sell
his building-lots. The young Irishman at once re
sponded to the proposition. He crossed the Atlantic,
and promptly reported in New York.
Captain Warren, then about thirty years old, had
married Susan, the oldest daughter of Stephen De Lan
cey ; and it was probably to the old house, then thirty-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 13
eight years old, which stUl stands (in which Wash
ington took fareweU of his generals in 1783), that
the young Irishman came. He was possessed of a
fine figure, tall and strong, was full of ambition and
energy, with a jovial temper, and a power of quick
adaptation to his surroundings. In short, he was a
typical specimen of that race in which generous im
pulses are usually uppermost, and one of the mighty
army of Celtic immigrants who have helped to make
of the American people that composite which so
puzzles the insular Englishman to understand.
New York and Albany people were already getting
rich by inland as well as foreign trade, and the naval
officer wished to invest what cash he could spare
from his salary or prize money in a mercantile ven
ture, to be begun at first on a modest scale in a
frontier store. " Dear Billy," as his uncle addressed
him in his letters, was not long in discovering that
the ambition of nearly every young man was to get
rich, either in the inland fur or West India trade, so
as to own a manor, work it with negro slaves, and
join in the pomp and social splendour for which the
colony was already noted. It is more than probable
that the ambition to be rich and influential was strongly
reinforced during his stay on Manhattan Island.
The journey north, made according to the regular
custom, was by sloop up the Hudson, past the PaU
sades, the Highlands, the CatskiUs, and the Flats, to
Albany. After a few days in the only municipality
north of New York, — a log city with a few smart
brick houses, — spent in laying in supplies, the young

14 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
immigrant would pass through the pine-barrens, and
after a day's journey reach the State Street gate of
palisaded Schenectady.
In the house of the tapster, or innkeeper, he would
probably stay aU night. He would find the Street of
the Martyrs (so named after the massacre of 1690),
and of the Traders, together with Front, Ferry,
Church, and Niskayuna Streets, lined with comfort
able, one-storied, many-gabled dwellings, with here
and there neat houses, aU or partly of brick. Each
house stood with its cosey bivalve door, shut at the
bottom to keep out pigs and chickens and to keep
in the babes, and open at the top to admit light and
air. The scrupulously neat floors spoke of the hered
itary Dutch virtue of cleanliness. On the table could
be seen a wealth of plain but wholesome food, such
as few farmer-folk in the old countries of Europe
could boast of. The biU of fare would include the
well-cured hams for which " the Dorp " was famous,
all kinds of savoury products of the hog, besides every
sort of bread, pie, cake, and plain pastry, baked to a
shining brown in the ample ovens of stone or brick,
which swelled like domes outside of the houses, at
the rear of the kitchens. Savoury and toothsome were
the rich " crullers " which Captain CroU, the good
church-elder and garrison-commander of^ensselaer-
wyck, had invented during a winter-season of meat-
famine. On many a house veered iron weather
cocks, especially on the few brick fronts monogramed
with dates in anchors . of iron ; while on the new
church, only four years old, but the third in the his-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. IS
tory of the growing town, glittered the cock of Saint
Nicholas in gilt. It rested over a belfry which held
a most melodious bell, cast at Amsterdam, in dear
old " Patria," in the rim of which; as well-founded
tradition insisted, many a silver guilder, spoon, and
trinket had been melted. Perhaps Johnson, like
many a European and even New England militia
man, did not understand why the Dutch built their
stone fortress-like churches at the intersection of
two streets. Some even hinted at stupidity ; but the
Dutchmen, for the same reason that they loopholed
the walls, so located their chief public buildings at the
centre of the viUage as to be able to sweep the cross
streets with their gun-fire in case of an attack by
French or Indians, or both.
In Schenectady, Johnson would find that many of
the men were away in the Indian country, with their
canoes and currency of strouds, duffels, and trinkets,
trading for furs. He would soon learn that many
could speak the Indian tongue, some of the younger
men and girls being excellent interpreters ; while he
would notice that wampum-making, or " seewant,"
for money, made by drilling and filing sheUs, was a
regular and legitimate industry. Possibly the young
churchman may have stayed over a Sunday, and in
the large stone edifice, capable of seating over six
hundred persons, heard, if he did not understand, the
learned Domine Reinhart Erichzon preach. After
the Uturgy and psalms, read by the clerk or fore-
reader, the domine, in gown and bands, ascended the
wineglass-shaped pulpit to deliver his discourse.

1 6 - SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
In any event, whether Johnson's stay was long or
short in the Dorp, we should see him making exit
through the north gate, and either going landward
along the Mohawk, which is hardly possible, or, as is
more probable, loading his goods and outfit on one
of the numerous canoes always ready, and rowing or
being rowed up the river. The twenty-four miles or
so of distance could be easily covered, despite the rifts
and possible portages, in a single day. Evening would
find him, either in camp on the new estate or hos
pitably lodged in some log-house of the Dutch or
German settlers. He was now in the heart of what
the Dutch have been wont to call the Woestina, or
wilderness, but which was now too much settled to
be any longer so spoken of, — the term beginning to
be then, as it is now, restricted to a locaUty near
Schenectady. Warren's Bush, or Warren's Burg, was the name of
the farm which the young Irishman was to cultivate.
Warrensburg was the written name, but almost any
new settlement was usuaUy spoken of as " bush." It
lay on the south side of the Mohawk, some distance
east of the point where the creek, fed by the western
slopes of the CatskiUs, empties into the river, and was
named Schoharie, from the great mass of driftwood
borne down. No more fertile vaUeys than these,
watered b^ the rain or melted snows of the CatskiUs
and Adirondacks, exist. Besides the river-^flats that
were kept perenniaUy fertUe by nearly annual over
flows and a top dressing of rich silt, the old maize-
lands of the Mohawk were vast in extent, and all

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 17
ready for the plough. The region west of Albany
was then spoken of by the colonists as " the Mohawk
country," from the chief tribe of the Iroquois tvho
inhabited it. Let us glance at the human environ
ment of the new settler.
Besides a few small houses of white men, standing
singly along the river, there were viUages and fortified
large towns of the Mohawks, called, in the common
English term of the period, " castles." The scattered
lodges of the Indians were found near most of the
settlements, such as Schenectady, Caughnawaga, Stone
Arabia, or Fort Plain, and often their cabins were
found inside the white men's fortifications, as in Fort
Hunter ; but in the palisaded Indian towns, hundreds
and even thousands were gathered together. All the
white settlements along the Mohawk or Hudson were
near the river, the uplands or clearings beyond the
flats not being considered of much value. On the
Hudson, besides Albany, were Half Moon and Sara
toga, which latter stood, not over the wonderful ra
vine from which gushes the healing waters of the
mineral springs, but several miles to the eastward.
Along the Mohawk were Schenectady, Crane's Village,
Fort Hunter, Warrensburg, a hamlet, Caughnawaga
(or Fonda), Canajoharie, Palatine, German Flats, and
Burnet's Field, now called Herkimer. Over in Cherry
VaUey were, later on, Scottish settlers, and in Scho
harie more Germans.
Besides JeUis Fonda at Caughnawaga (now Fonda),
who was a great Indian trader, and afterward major
of militia, Johnson's most congenial neighbour was a

1 8 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
fellow Irishman, John Butler. He had come out
from the old country as a lieutenant of infantry in
the iU-fated expedition for the reduction of Canada
in 1 711 ; when, through stormy weather and the igno
rance of the pUots, the greater part of the fleet under
Sir Hovenden Walker was destroyed in the St. Law
rence, and over a thousand men drowned. As one
of the purchasers, with Governor Cosby and others,
ofa tract of sixty thousand acres of land, seven miles
from the site, later called Johnstown, in which stood
Johnson HaU, Lieutenant Butler cultivated and im
proved his portion. To each of his two sons, Walter
and John, he gave a large farm, and both he and his
sons were very influential among the Indians. The
father served as lieutenant, holding the same rank
for seventy years; and the two sons were afterward
captains in the Indian corps, under Johnson, in the
Lake George campaign. To this famUy the new
settler, Johnson, became warmly attached ; and the
friendship remained unbroken untU the coming of
death, which the Arabs call the Severer of Friendships.
This Une of settlements formed the frontier or line
of outposts of civiUzation. On every side their front
agers were the Iroquois, or Indians of Five Nations,
whUe right among them were the Mohawks. Only
one English outpost faced Lake Ontario. This was
the trading-station of Oswego. Here in 1722, the
daring governor, WUliam Burnet, aiming at the mo
nopoly of the fur-trade, in defiance of the French,
and in the face of the Seneca Indians' protest, un
furled the British flag for the first time in the region

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 19
of the Great Lakes. He built the timber lodge at
his own expense, and encouraged bold young men,
mostly from Albany and the valley setdeme'nts, to
penetrate to Niagara and beyond. These commer
cial traveUers — prototypes of the smart, well-dressed,
and brainy drummers of to-day, and in no whit their
inferiors in courage, address, and fertility of resource —
went among the western Indians. They learned their
language, and so opened the new routes of trade
that within a twelvemonth from the unfurling of the
British flag at Oswego there were seen at Albany the
far-off lake tribes and even the Sioux of Dakota.
Trade received such a tremendous stimulus that in
1727 Governor Burnet erected a regular fort at Os
wego, where, in 1 75 7, a French traveller found sixty
or seventy cabins in which fur-traders lived. A prom
ising settlement, begun by the Palatine Germans at
Herkimer, was called Burnet's Field, or, on the later
powder-horn maps. Fort Harkiman.
The fur-trade in our day caUs for the slaughter
annuaUy of two hundred mUUon land quadrupeds ;
drives men to ravage land and. ocean, and even to rob
the water animals of their skins ; sends forty million
peltries annuaUy to London alone, and is stiU one of
the great commercial activities of the world. It was
relatively much greater in Johnson's day ; and to gain
a master's hand in it was already his ambition. It
was the year 1738, the date of the birth of George
III. of England, whom later he was to serve as his
sovereign. Arriving in the nick of time, Johnson be
gan at once the triple activities of setthng his uncle's

20 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
acres with farmers, of opening a country store, and
of clearing new land for himself. This latter was
rapidly accomplished, Indian fashion, by girdling the
trunks one year, thus quickly turning them into leaf
less timber, and planting either corn or potatoes the
next season, in the now sunli^ted and warm ground.
Or the standing timber was cut down and by fire
converted into potash, two tons to the acre, which
was easUy leached outj and was quickly salable in
Europe. Corn or maize was the crop which above aU others
enabled the makers of America to hold their own and
live ; and corn was the grain most plentifully raised
in the Mohawk VaUey, though wheat was an early
and steady crop. Corn meal is stUl sold in England
as " Oswego flour," — a name possibly invented by
Johnson, who became a large exporter of grain and
meal. To be landlord's agent, pioneer settler, farmer, and
storekeeper aU in one, Johnson needed assistance in
various ways and resolved to have it. He hadi from
the first come to stay for life and grow up ivith the
country. He was probably in America less than a
year before he took as his companion, Catharine, the
daughter of a German Palatine settler named Weissen-
burg, or Wisenberg.* Kate was the only wife John-
^ Mr. E. F. De Lancey, the well-known writer on American
history and genealogy, knew personally the grandchildren of
Sir William Johnson, and has embodied valuable information
about him and them in his notes to Jones's "History of New
York during the Revolutionary War." In his letter to the wri
ter, dated March 28, 1891, he kindly sent a transcript from a

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 2t
son ever had, and the only woman with whom he
lived in wedlock. She is described as a sweet-tem
pered maiden, robust in health, fairly dowered with
mental abilities, and with a good influence over her
husband. No record of the marriage ceremony has
yet been found ; but the couple, if not joined in wed
lock by some one of the Dutch or German clergymen
of the VaUey, as is most likely, had their wedding
before the Rev. Thomas Barclay, an English Episco
pal missionary. Mr. Barclay laboured at Fort Hunter,
and in the little English church officiated for years,
as weU as at Albany and Schenectady ; but the rec
ords of Fort Hunter have not survived the accidents
of time. When in 1862 the dust of this maker of
America' was disturbed, and hjs bones sealed up in
granite for more honourable burial, a plain gold ring
was found, inscribed on the inside, "June. 1739. 16."
This date may have been that of his marriage with
"Lady" Johnson, his own lawful wife, who probably
needed no title to adorn the beautiful character which
tradition bestows upon her. Johnson, when a bar
onet with laurelled brow, and a fame established on
two continents ; the head of a family in which were
letter in Mrs. Bowes's own handwriting — " Information my
father gave me when with him. Catharine Wisenberg, a na
tive of Germany, married to Sir W. Johnson, Bar't in the U.
States of America, died in 1759." Mrs. Bowes was a daughter
of -Sir John Johnson, who was a son of Sir William Johnson.
It is probable that the spelling Wisenberg is only the phonetic
form of Weissenburg. The local gossip and groundless tra
ditions, like those set down by J. R. Simms, are in all proba
bility worthless.

2 2 SIK WILLIAM JOHNSON
two baronetcies, father and son, — an honour unpar
alleled in American colonial history, — made a will,
preserved in Albany, in which he desired "the remains
ofhis "beloved wife Catharine " interred beside him.
Of Molly Brant, his later mistress, he spoke and
wrote as his housekeeper; of the Palatine German
lawfuUy wedded to him, as his beloved wife.
Doubtless, also, for the first years of married life,
through her exemption from family cares, though
these weighed lightly in early colonial days, in the
absence of the artificial life of the cities, she was
enabled to attend to the store, while her husband
worked in the field, rode with grist to the mUl, or
traded with the Indians in their villages. Their first
child, John, was not born untU they had crossed the
Mohawk River, and occupied Mount Johnson, in
1742. We can easily sum up the inventory of a country
store on the frontier over one hundred and fifty years
ago, whose chief customers were farmers, trappers,
bos-lopers or wood-runners, hunters, and Indians. On
the shelves would be arranged the thick, warm, woollen
cloth caUed " duffel," which made " as warm a coat as
man can sell," and the coarse shoddy-like stuff named
" strouds ; " in the bins, powder, shot, buUets,lead, gun-
flints, steel traps, powder-horns, rum, brandy, beads,
mirrors, and trinkets for the Indians, fish hooks and
lines, rackets or snow-shoes, groceries, hardware, some
of ihe commonest drugs, and buUding articles.
In trading, a coin was rare. The money used was
seewant, or wampum, but most of the business done

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 23
was by barter ; peltries, corn, venison, ginseng, roots,
herbs, brooms, etc., being the red man's stock in
trade. The white settlers paid for their groceries and
necessities of civilization in seewant, or wampum, pot
ash, and cereals. One of the earliest in the collection
of Johnson's papers at Albany is a letter to " Dear
BUly" from Captain Warren at Boston, suggesting a
shipment in the spring, from the farm at Warrens
burg, of grain and other produce to Boston by way
of Albany.
Being of robust health, with a strong frame and
commanding figure, jovial in disposition and easy in
manners, Johnson was not only able to show habitual
industry, but in the field-sports and athletic games to
take part and make himself popular alike with the
muscular young Dutch and Germans and with, the
more lithe red men. The famous castle or palisaded
vUlage of the Mohawks on the hiU-slopes back of
AuriesvUle, now visible to all passengers by raUway,
and marked by the shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs,
was but a short distance to the westward. Here
Johnson soon became known as a friend as well as
an honest trader. His simple and masterly plan was,
never to lie, cheat, or deceive, and never to grant
what he had once refused. To the red men much
of a white man's thinking was a mystery ; but truth
was always simple, and as heartUy appreciated as it
was easily understood.
, As early as May 10, 1739, we find this man of
resdess activity planning to locate a branch trading-
house on the Susquehanna, two hundred miles to the

24 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
south. Already he had seen the advantages and
prospect of speedy wealth in the fur-trade, a privi
lege won years before by his Schenectady neighbours.
He now entered diligently into it, employing a num
ber of runners or bos-lopers, who scoured the woods
and valleys populated with Indians, in his interest,
diverting the trade from Albany to his own post.
This was the beginning of jealous quarrels between
him and the Albanians. That his eye was keenly
open to every new advantage or possibility of pro
gress, was seen in his buying as early as 1739, after
one year's residence in the valley, a lot of land across
the Mohawk, on which ran a stream of water, the
Chucktununda Creek, with abundance of potential
miU-power. To ride horseback with bags fifteen
miles to Caughnawaga every time meal was needed,
was too much loss of time and energy. The German
women had long carried bags of wheat and maize
from Schoharie to Schenectady, traversing the dis
tance on foot, bearing com in coming and grist in
returning, on their backs. There was a mill at Caugh
nawaga, and one owned by the Dutch Church at
Schenectady, both sufficiently distant. Johnson saw
at once in a mill ease and revenue. The Indian
name of the stream, Chucktununda, is said to mean
" stone roofs or houses," and was applied to other water
courses with banks of overhanging rocks which formed
shelter during rain. This coveted spot became later
the famous " Mount " Johnson, on which the stone
fortress-mansion stiU stands, at Akin, three miles
west of Amsterdam and visible to all railway travel-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 25
lers as they fly between the great Lake City and New
York. The appearance of the Mohawk Valley, though stUl
unchanged in its great cosmic features of sky, moun
tain, and main watercourses, was vastly different a cen
tury and a half ago. On its surface were many minor
features quite different from those which to-day greet
the eye of traveller, denizen, or palace-car inmate.
Then the primeval forest, rich in game, covered hiU
and dale, except along the river-flats, where were
great expanses of meadow in the wide level of the
valley. Here were maize-fields surrounding the In
dian vUlages for miles.
Owing, however, to the largeness of forest area, the
streams were of greater proportions and much more
numerous than at_j)resent. Fish were vastly abun
dant, and so tame as to be easily caught, even with
the hand of Indian or white skilled in wood and
water craft. Animal life was rich and varied to a de
gree not now easily imaginable or even credible, did
not the records of geology, of contemporary chroni
cles, and the voices of tradition all agree on this point.
Then the " wUd cow " or bison, though rapidly dim
inishing, owing to the introduction of fire-arms, was
StiU a source of fur and food. Besides the elk, deer
were plentiful on the hills, often seen drinking at
night and early in the morning at the river's brink,
and occasionally were kiUed inside of the new settle
ments. A splendid specimen of elk horns from a
buck shot by Johnson on his own grounds, was pre
sented by him to Chief Justice Thomas Jones, who

26 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
wrote a loyalist history of New York during the Revo
lutionary War, and long adorned the hall of Fort
Neck mansion on Long Island. Smaller fur-bearing
animals were beyond the power of arithmetic. Wolves
were uncomfortably numerous, active, and noisy. To
their ceaseless nocturnal music there were slight
pauses of silence, except when some gory battle-field
or scalping-party's raid or unusual spoil of hunters
became the storm-centre, and gathered them together
from a radius of many mUes. Most notable of all the
animals, in physical geography, in commerce, and
for clothing, was the beaver. This amphibious crea
ture of architectural instincts was the great modifier
of the earth's surface, damming up tens of thousands
of the hill streams which fed the great rivers, and thus
causing a vast surface of the land, otherwise dry, to
be covered with water, while it greatly changed the
appearance of the landscape. There are to-day thou
sands of grassy and mossy dells which even the inex
perienced eye sees were once the homes ofthe beavers,
whUe thousands of others have long since, under the
open sun, become fertUe meadows. The beaver, by
yielding the most valuable of the furs, furnished also
the standard of value in trade. The beaver as seen
on the seal of the city of York, like the prehistoric
pecus, or cattle, which made pecum.z.r^ value, or the
salt of the ancient sahry or rice in old Japan, was
quoted oftener than coin.
The Indian trails of New York were first obliterated
by wagon-roads or metaled turnpikes, and then cov
ered by iron rails and wooden ties. The flanged iron

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 27
wheels Lave taken the place of the moccasin, as loco
motor and freight- carrier ; but in Johnson's time the
valleys, passes, and portages or " carries " were aU
definitely marked, and generally easily visible, on ac
count of the long tramping of intunied feet. ' There
are places to-day on the flinty rock polished by long
attrition of deer-leather soles ; and wherever the nat
ural features of the landscape point to the probable sav
ing of linear space, there skilled search usually reveals
the old trail. One of the first proofs of the genius of
Johnson and the entrance in his mind of continental
ideas was his thorough study of the natural highways,
trails, and watercourses of the Iroquois empire, and
the times and methods of their punctual migrations.
He soon found that while late autumn, winter, and
spring was their season for trapping and shooting
their game, June, July, and August formed the period
when the peltries were brought in for sale. In early
autumn they went fishing, or their travelling-parties
were on peaceful errands, such as attending those
councU-fires which filled all the atmosphere with
blue haze. As a rule, the Indians avoided the
mountains, and dwelt in the vaUeys and weU-watered
regions, where fish and game for food, osiers and
wood fibres for their baskets, clay for their rude pot
tery abounded, and where pebbles of every degree of
hardness were at hand, to be spUt, cUpped, drilled,
grooved, or polished for their implements of war,
ceremony, and religion. In savage life, vast areas
of the earth's surface are necessary for his hunt
ing and nomad habits. Agriculture and civiUzation,

28 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
which mean the tUling and dressing of the earth,
enable a tribe to make a few acres of fertile soil suf
fice, where one lone hunter could scarcely exist.
The constant trenching upon the land of the wUd
hunter and fisherman, by the farmer and manufac
turer, who utUize the forces of Nature, and the resist
ance of the savage to this process, make the story of
the "Indian question."
Apart from the pretext of religion, equally common
to aU, the main object of French, Dutch, and EngUsh
traders was fur, as that of the New England coast
men was fish. The tremendous demand of Europe
and China kept the prices of peltries high, and it was
in this line of commercial effort that fortunes were
most quickly made, most of the early profits being
reckoned at twenty times the amount of outlay. UntU
1 630 a strict monopoly of two trading-companies shut
out all interlopers from the Indian country.
In 1639, at the foundation of Rensselaerwyck, trade
was nominally thrown open to aU. What was formerly
done covertly by interlopers and servants of the com
pany, became the privileges of every burgher. Though
StiU rigidly denied to outsiders, traders' shops soon
sprung up along the muddy streets of the colony, and
an immense business was done over the greasy coun
ters. The gallon kegs of brandy, caUed ankers; a
puncheon of beer ; a pile of shaggy woollen stuffs, then
called duffles, and now represented most nearly by
Ulster or overcoat cloth ; a stiU coarser fabric caUed
strouds, for breech clouts and squaws' clothes, with
axes and beads, formed the staple of the cheaper

AND THE SIX NATIONS 29
order of shopkeepers. In the better class of dealers
in " Indian haberdashery," and in peltries, potash,
and ginseng, the storehouses. would have an immense
array of all sorts of clothes, hats and shoes, guns,
knives, axes, powder, lead, glass beads, bar and hoop
iron for arrow-heads, and files to make them, red lead,
molasses, sugar, oU, pottery, pans, kettles, hoUow ware,
pipes, and knick-knacks of aU sorts. It was not long
before the desire to forestall the markets entered
the hearts of the Dutch as well as the French; and
soon, matching the courier du bois, or hardy rangers
of the Canadian forests, emerged the corresponding
figure of the bos-lopers, or commercial drummers.
This prototype of the present natty and wide-awake
metropolitan, in finest clothes, hat, and gloves, with
most engaging manners and invincible tongue, was a
hardy athlete in his prime, able to move swiftly and
to be ever alert. He was well versed in the human
nature of his customers. Skilled in woodcraft, he
knew the trails, the position of the Indian villages,
the state of the tides, currents, the news of war and
peace, could read the weather signs, the probabihties
of the hair and skin crops, the fluctuations of the
market, and was usuaUy ready to advance himself by
fair advantage, or otherwise, over his white employer
or Indian producer. Rarely was he an outlaw, though
usually impatient of restraint, and when in the towns,
apt to patronize too liberally the liquor-seller.
In this way the market was forestaUed, and the
choicest skins secured by the Albany men, who knew
how to select and employ the best drummers. So

30 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
fascinating and profitable was this life in the woods,
that agriculture was at first neglected, and breadstuffs
were imported. The evil of the abandonment of indus
try, however, never reached the proportions notorious
in Canada, where it sometimes happened that ten
per cent of the whole population would disappear in
the woods, and the crops be neglected. When, too,
-Schenectady, Esopus, and the Palatine settlements
in the Mohawk Valley were fully established, the far
mers multiplied, the acreage increased, and grain was
no longer imported. It was, from the first, the hope
and desire of the Schenectady settlers to break the
Albany monopoly, and obtain a share of the lucrative
trade. This was bitterly opposed for half a century,
and many were the inquisitorial visits of the Albany
sheriffs to Schenectady and the Valley settlements, to
seize contraband goods ; but usually, on account of
the steady resistance of both magistrates and citizens,
they who came for wool went home shorn. The fool
ish Governor Andros went so far as to lay upon the
little vUlage an embargo, — one of the silly precedents
of the " Boston Port BiU," — by a most extraordinary
proclamation forbidding any wagons and carts to ply
between the city of Albany and the Dorp of Schenec
tady, except upon extraordinary occasions ; and only
with the consent of the Albany magistrates could
passengers or goods be carried to the defiant Uttle
Dutch town. All such official nonsense ultimately
proved vain, and its siUiness became patent even
to the Albany monopoUsts ; and Schenectady won the
victory of free trade with the Indians.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 31
This point of time was shortly after the coming of
Johnson, who thus arrived at a lucky moment ; and
at once entering to reap where others had sown, he
became a man of the new era. He found the situ
ation free for his enterprise, which soon became ap
parently boundless. He cultivated the friendship not
only of the Indians, but of the white wood-runners,
trappers, and frontiersmen generally ; and by his easy
manners, generosity, and strict integrity, bound both the
red and the white men to himself. He was a " hail-
fellow-well-met " to this intelligent class of men, and
all through his wonderful career found in them a tre
mendous and unfailing resource of power. Johnson
laid the foundations of permanent success, deep and
broad, by the simple virtues of truth and honesty.
He disdained the meanness of the petty trader. His
word was kept, whether promise or threat. He re
fused to gain a temporary advantage by a sacrifice of
principle, and soon the poorest and humblest learned
to trust him. His word, even as a young man, soon
became bond and law. The Indians, who were never
able to fathom diplomacy, could understand simple
truth. Two of the most significant gestures in the
sign language of the Indians are, when the index fin
ger is laid upon the mouth and moved straight for
ward, as the symbol of verity; and the same initial
gesture expresses with sinuosities, as of a writhing
serpent, symbolical of double dealing, prevarication
or falsehood. The tongue of the truth-speaker was
thus shown to be as straight as an arrow, while that
oi the liar was like a worm, or the crooked slime-line

32 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
of a serpent. In this simple, effective way Johnson's
business enlarged like his land domains from year to
year, whUe on knowledge of the Indians and their
language, and of the physical features of the Mohawks'
empire, he soon became an authority. As early as
1743 he succeeded in opening a direct avenue of
trade with Oswego, doing a good business not only in
furs, but in supplying with provisions and other neces
saries both the white trappers and petty traders who
made rendezvous at the fort. He was now well
known in Albany and New York, and soon opened
correspondence with the wealthy house of Sir WiUiam
Baker & Co., of London, as well as with firms in
Atlantic seaports and the West Indies.
He prepared for a wider sphere of influence by im^ -
proving his land north of the Mohawk River. He
began the erection on it of a strong and roomy stone
house, — one of the very few edifices made of cut stone
then in the State, and probably the only one west of the
Hudson River. This house is stUl standing, and kept
in excellent repair by its owner and occupant, Mr.
Ethan Akin. It is two and a half stories high ; its di
mensions are 64 by 34 feet ; the walls, from foundation
to garret, are two feet thick. There is not to-day a flaw
in them, nor has there ever been a crack. The roof,
now of slate and previously of shingles, was at first of
lead, which was used for buUets during the Revolu
tionary War. Part of the house seems to have been
sufficiently finished for occupancy by the summer of
1742, for here, on the 5th of November, his son John
was born. Around the house he planted a circle of

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 33
locust-trees, two or three of which stiU remain. His
grist-miU stood on Chucktununda Creek, which flowed
through his grounds; and near it was the miller's
house. This branch of his business — flour manufac
ture — was so soon developed that cooperage was stim
ulated, and shipments of Johnson's Mohawk Valley
flour were made to the West Indies and to Nova
Scotia. Grand as his stone dwelling was, a very pa-
troon's mansion, — and it is probable that one of
Johnson's purposes in rearing what was then so splen
did a mansion was to impress favourably the Indians,
— he became none the less, but even more, their
famUiar and friend. He joined in their sports, at
tended their councils, entertained the chiefs at his
board, feasted the warriors and people in his fields,
and on occasions put on Indian costume. In sum
mer this would mean plenty of dress and liberal
painting, but in winter, abundance of buckskin, a war-
bonnet of vast proportions, and a duffel blanket. Yet
all this was done as a private individual and a mer
chant, having an eye to the main chance. He as yet
occupied no official position. His domestic life in
these early days at the Mohawk VaUey must have
been very happy; and here were born, evidently in
quick succession and probably before the year 17-45,
by which time the stone house was finished, his two
daughters, Mary and Nancy. About sixty yards north
of the mansion was a hill on which a guard- house
stood, with a look-out ever on the watch. On ac
count of this hUl the place was often spoken of as
" Mount " Johnson. In time of danger a garrison
3

34 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
of twenty or thirty men occupied this point of wide
view. Despite his many cares, Johnson enjoyed reading
and the study of science. He ordered books and
periodical Uterature regularly from London. His sci
entific taste was especially strong in astronomy. To
the glorious canopy of stars, which on winter nights
make the mountain-walled valley a roofed palace of
celestial wonders, Johnson's eyes were directed when
ever fair weather made their splendours visible. In
autumn the briUiant tints of the sumach, dogwood,
swamp-maple, sassafras, red and white oak, and the
various trees of the order of Sapindacece fiUed the
hiUs and lowlands with a glory never seen in Europe.
His botanical tastes could be enjoyably cultivated, for
in orchids, ferns, flowering plants, and wonders of the
vegetable world, few parts of North America are
richer than the Mohawk VaUey.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 35

CHAPTER III.
THE SIX NATIONS AND THE LONG HOUSE.
The military nerves of the continent of North
America lie in the water-ways bounding,' traversing,
or issuing from the State of New York. Its heart is
the region between the Hudson and the Niagara.
In these days of steam-traction, when transit is
made at right angles to the rivers, and thus directly
across the great natural channels of transportation.
New York may be less the Empire State than in the
days of canoes and bateaux. Yet even now its
strategic importance is at once apparent. In the old
days of conflict, first between the forces of Latin and
Teutonic civilization, and later between British king
craft and American democracy, it was the ground
chosen for struggle and decision.
Before the European set foot on the American
continent, the leading body of native savages had dis
covered the main features. of this great natural for
tress and place of eminent domain. Inventors of the
birch-bark canoe, the red man saw that from this
centre all waters of the inland ocean made by the
great lakes, the warm gulf, and the salt sea, could be
easily reached. With short land-portages, during
which the canoe, which served as shelter and roof at

S6 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
night and house and vehicle by day, could be car
ried on the shoulders, the Indian could paddle his
way to Dakota, to Newfoundland, or to Hudson's Bay
on the north, or the Chesapeake and the Mississippi
and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. In his moc
casins he could travel as far. From New York State
the pedestrian can go into twenty States and into
two thirds of the territory of the United States with
out leaving the courses of vaUeys. No other State
can so communicate between the east and the west
without overcoming one or more mountain ridges.
The T-shaped Hudson-Mohawk groove in the earth's
crust unites the vaUeys east of Massachusetts. With
such geographical advantages, added to native abili
ties, the Iroquois were able to make themselves the
virtual masters of the continent of North America.
Here, accordingly, was buUt the Long House ; that
is, was organized the federation of the Five Nations.
Like the Pharaohs, Sultans, Mikados, and European
princes of the world which we call old, because
of its long written history, these forest sovereigns
named their government after their house. The
common edifice of the Iroquois was a bark structure
fifty or more feet long, and from twelve to twenty
feet wide, with doors at either end. In each dwelling
lived several famiUes.
So also, in the Great Long House, stretching from
the Hudson to the Niagara, dwelt at first five families.
The Mohawks occupied the room at the eastern end
of the house, in the throat of the Mohawk VaUey, the
scheneftady, or "place just outside the door," being

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 37
on the " mountain-dividing '' or Hudson River. More
exactly, the place of " Ye treaties of Schenectady " was
at the mouth of Norman's KiU, a little south of Albany.
Here was the place of many ancestral graves, where
multitudes of the dead lay, and where Hiawatha, their
great civilizer, dwelt.
Of all the tribes the Mohawks were, or at least
in England and the colonies were believed to be, the
fiercest warriors. It was after them that the roughs
in London in the early part of the eighteenth century
were named, and the term was long used as a syn
onym with ferocious men. The tea-destroyers in
Boston" Harbor in 1774 also took this name. Next
westward were the Oneidas, inhabiting the region
from Little Falls to Oneida Lake. The Onondagas
at the centre of the Long House, in the region be
tween the Susquehanna and the eastern end of Lake
Ontario, had the fireplace or centre of the confed
eracy. The Cayugas lived between the lake named
after them and the Genesee Valley. The Senecas
occupied the country between Rochester and Niagara.
The evidence left by the chips on the floors of their
workshops, show that their most ancient habitations
were on the river-flats and at the edges of streams.
Later, as game became scarcer, they occupied the
hills and ledges farther back. On these points of
vantage their still later elaborate fortifications of wood
were built. As the rocks of New York make the Old
Testament of geology, so the river-strands and the
quarries are the most ancient chronicles of unwritten
history, in times of war and peace.

38 • SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
How long the tribes of the Long House lived to
gether under the forms of a federated republic, experts
are unable to tell. It is believed that they were origi
nally one large Dakota tribe, which became separated
by overgrowth and disse"nsions, and later united, not
as a unity, but as a confederation. The .Work of Dr.
Cadwallader Colden, who in 1727 published his "His
tory of the Five- Nations," has been too much rehed
upon by American arid English writers. It was one of
the very first works in English on local history pub
lished in the province of New York. Utterly ignoring
the excellent writing of the Dutch scholars, Domine
Megapolensis, De Vries, and the lawyer, Van der
Donck, who wrote as men famUiar with their subject
at first hand ; ignoring also the personal work of
Arendt Van Curler, -^ Colden compiled most of his
historic matter from French authors.
'According to the tradition of the Algonkin In
dians of Canada, which Colden gives at length, the
Iroquois were at first mainly occupied in agriculture,
and the Algonkins in hunting. The various wars had
developed in the Iroquois the spirit of war and great
powers of resistance, so that they held their own
against their enemies. Another of the many bloody
campaigns was to open on the shores of the lake
named after Champlain, when Europeans appeared
on the scene, and trustworthy history begins. Cham
plain, it seems, did not desire to join in the Indian
feuds, but was compeUed to do so in order to retain
the friendship of the Hurons. This first use of fire
arms in Indian warfare meant nothing less than revo-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 39
ution in politics, in methods of war, in the influence
of chiefs, and -in other elements of Indian civilization.
What gunpowder began, alcohol completed.
This much seems certain, that at the opening of
the seventeenth century the whole continent was a
dark and bloody ground, in which war was the rule
and peace the exception ; iii which man hunted man
as the beasts and fishes destroy and devour one an
other. The Iroquois, speaking substantially one lan
guage, were as an island in a great Algonkin ocean.
Unlike mere fishermen and hunters they were agricul
turists, and many hundred square mUes were planted
with their maize, squashes, pumpkins, beans, tobacco,
and other vegetables, edible or useful. They were
able to store up com for long campaigns and to brave
a season of famine. The streains furnished thdm with
fish, and they hunted the deer, elk, bison, and smaller
animals for flesh or furs ; but their noblest game was
man. To kill, to scalp, to save alive for torture, to
bum his viUages and houses, to wreak vengeance on
his enemies, was rapture to the savage.
Before they knew gunpowder, the Iroquois, equipped
with flint weapons and clothed in bark armour, often
fought in the open field and with comparative personal
exposure. Their battles were by masses of men who
were led by chiefs, and. their tactics and strategy re
sembled those of white men before the introduction of
fire-arms. One famous field in the open ground near
Schenectady was long pointed out in Indian tradition
as the place where the great battle between the Iro
quois and the Algonkins had been fought before the

40 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
coming of the whites. For the defence of their vU
lages they built palisades with galleries for the defend
ers to stand on, and with appliances at hand to put
out fires, or to repel assaults and drive off besiegers.
Theirs was the age of stone and wood ; but their civiU
zation was based on agriculture, which made them
superior to that of their neighbours, whom they had
compelled to be tributary vassals.
The apparition of the white man and the flash of
Champlain's arquebus, vomiting fire and dealing death
by invisible balls, changed all Indian warfare and civi
lization. Gunpowder wrought as profound a revolu
tion in the forests of America as in Europe. Bark or
hide shields and armour were discarded ; bows and ar
rows were soon left to children ; the line and order of
battle changed ; fighting in masses ceased ; the per
sonal influence of the chiefs decreased, and each
warrior became his own general. Individual valour
and physical strength and bravery in battle counted
for much less, and the dwarf was now equal to the
giant. An equaUy great revolution in industry took place
when the stone age was suddenly brought to a close
and the age of metals ushered in. The iron pot and
kettle, the steel knife, hoe, hatchet, and the various
appliances of daily life made more effective and dura
ble, almost at once destroyed the manufacture of stone
and bone utensils. The old men lost their occupa
tion, and the young men ceased to be pupils. This
loss of skiU and power was tremendous and far-reach
ing in its consequences ; and its very suddenness trans-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 41
formed independent savages into dependents upon
the white man. In time of famine or loss of trade,
or intermption of their relations with the traders
caused by political complications, the sufferings of
the Indians were pitiable.
Champlain's shot dictated the reconstruction of In
dian warfare; but the Iroquois took to heart so
promptly the lesson, that the Algonkins north of the
St. Lawrence were able to profit little by their tem
porary victory. Full of hate to the French for inter
fering to their disadvantage, the Mohawks at once
made friends with the Dutch. ,
Both Hudson and Champlain had visited Mount
Desert 'Island, and thence separating had penetrated
the continent by the great water-ways, both reaching
the heart of New York within a few mUes of each
other. WhUe the French founded Quebec, and set
tled at Montreal, the Dutch made a trading settlement
on the Hudson at Norman's Kill, Tawasentha. This
" place of many graves " and immemorial tradition
was the seat of their great civUizer and teacher, Hia
watha, who had introduced one phase of progress. It
was now destined to be the gateway to a new era of
change and development. As in Japan, at the other
side of the globe, at nearly the same time white men,
gunpowder, and Christianity had come all together.'
It was not out of disinterested benevolence that the
confederate savages sought the friendship of the Hol
landers. They came to buy powder and ball, to arm
themselves with equal weapons of vengeance, and to
protect themselves against the French.

42 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
But if Champlain was a mighty figure in the imagi
nation of the red man of the Mohawk VaUey, there
was coming a greater than he. This new man was to
impress more deeply the imagination of all the Iro
quois, and his name was to live in their language as long
as their speech was heard on the earth. Champlain was
a bringer of war ; " Corlaer " was an apostle of peace.
Arendt Van Curler is a perfectly clear figure in the
Indian tradition, and in the history and documentary
archives of the Empire State. Having no descend
ants to embalm his name in art or literature, he has
not had his monument. Yet he deserves to have his
name enrolled high among the makers of America.
The ignorance, errors — and there is a long list of
them — of writers on American and local history con
cerning Arendt Van Curler, have been gross and inex
cusable. It were surely worth whUe to know the
original of that " Corlaer " after whom the Indians
named, first the governors of New York, and later
the governors of English Canada, and finally Queen
Victoria, the Empress of India. To the Iroquois mind,
Corlaer was the representative of Teutonic civiUzation.
Other governors of colonies and prominent figures
among the pale-faces, they caUed by names coined
by themselves, just as they named their own warriors
from trivial incidents or temporary associations. Even
the King of Great Britain was only their unnamed
" Father ; " but as our ablest American historian, Fran
cis Parkman, has said : " His [Van Curler's] impor
tance in the eyes ofthe Iroquois, and their attachment
to him are shown by the fact that they always used

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 43
his name (in the form of Corlaer) as the official des
ignation of the governor of New York, just as they
called the governors of Canada, Onontio, and those
of Pennsylvania, Onas. I know of no other in
stance in which Iroquois used the name of an indi
vidual to designate the holder of an office. Onontio
means ' a great mountain ; ' Onas means ' a quiU or
pen ; ' Kinshon, the governor of Massachusetts, ' a
-fish."'i Rev. I. A. Cuoq, in his " Lexique de la Language
Iroquoise," also remarks that the title Kora, the pres
ent form of [Van] Curler, given even yet to the kings
and queens of England and to the English governors
of Canada, is a purely Iroquois creation ; while that
of Onontio, used of the French king and governors,
was given for the first time to Montmagny, the suc
cessor of Champlain. Quite 'differently from their
method in the case of Van Curler, they translated^
with the aid of the French missionaries, Montmagny's
name, rendering it freely by Onontio, which means,
stTictly speaking, " the beautiful mountain," rather than
"the great mountain." The term Onontio was used
until the end of the French dominion in America,
whereas Kora [or Corlaer] is still in vogue ; Queen
Victoria being to the Canadian Indians Kora-Kowa, or
the great Van Curler.
As first-cousin of KUian Van Rensselaer, Arendt
Van Curler, a native of the country near Amsterdam,
but probably of Huguenot descent, reached America
in 1630, and became superintendent and justice of
1 Letter to the writer, Feb. 7, 1890.

44 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
the colony at Rensselaerwyck. From the very first
he dealt with the Indians in aU honour, trath, and jus
tice. He was a man of sterUng" integrity, a Dutch
patriot, and a Christian of the Reformed faith, but
also a man of continental ideas, a lover of all good
men, and a Catholic in the true sense of the term.
He rescued from death and torture the Christian pris
oners in Mohawk villages ; and his first visit into, or
" discovery " of the VaUey as far as Fonda in Septem
ber, 1642, was to ransom Father Jogues. His de
scription of " the most beautiful land on the Mohawk
River that eye ever saw," and the journal of his jour
ney, probably sent with his letter of June 16, 1643,
to the Patroon, form the first written description of
the VaUey. He mastered the vernacular of the sav
ages, visited them at their councU- fires, heard their
complaints, dealt honestly with them, and compelled
others to do the same. The first covenant of friend
ship, made in 161 7, between the Dutch and the Iro
quois, and its various later renewals, he developed
into a policy of lasting peace and amity. The scat
tered links of friendship between the Dutch and the
confederacy of Indians he forged' into an irrefragable
chain, which, until the English-speaking white men
went to war in 1775, was never broken. In 1663 he
saved the army of CourceUes from starvation and
probably destruction. Winning alike the respect of
the French in Canada, and of their enemies, the Mo
hawks, he was invited to visit the governor^ Tracy, in
Quebec. On his journey thither in 1667, he was
drowned in Lake Champlain near Rock Regis, the

AND THE SIX NAIIONS. 45
boundary-mark between the Iroquois and Algonk,in
Indians. This lake, like the Mohawk River, and the
town of Schenectady which he founded, the Indians
and Canadians called Corlaer.
Rarely, if ever, was a council held in Albany or at
Johnson's house or at the Onondaga fireplace, that
Corker's name was not mentioned, and their " cov
enant chain " with him referred to under the varied
figures of rhetoric.
Van Curler's policy was continued and expanded
by Peter Schuyler, a son of Van Curler's warm per
sonal friend, Philip Schuyler. As the Iroquois in
speaking never closed the Ups, but used the orotund
with abundance of gutturals, they were unable to pro
nounce properly names in which labial consonants
occurred. They could not say Peter ; so they called
their friend " Quider." The policy of Johnson was
simply a continuation and expansion of that of these
two Hollanders, Van Curler and Schuyler. There
was no name of any white man that Johnson heard
oftener in the mouths of the Indians than that of Cor
laer ; and yet, in the index of seventy thousand refer^
ences to the Johnson manuscripts in Albany there is
no reference to this founder of the Dutch policy of
peace with the Indians.
In their political and social procedures, in public
discourse, and in the etiquette of councils, no deni
zens of European courts were more truly bond slaves
to etiquette and custom than these forest senators.
In certain outward phases of life — especially noticed
by the man of hats, boots, and clean underclothing —

46 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
the Indian seems to be a child of freedom, untutored
and unsophisticated. In reality he is a slave com
pared to the enlightened and civilized man. He is
by heredity, training, and environment fettere'd almost
beyond hope. His mind can move out of predes
tined grooves only after long education, when a new
God, new conceptions, induced power of abstract rea
soning, and an entirely new mental outlook are given
him. First of all, the savage needs a right idea of
the Maker of the universe and of the laws by which
the creation is governed ; and then only does his men
tal freedom begin. So far from being free from pre
scribed form, he is less at liberty than a Chinese
or Hindu. His adherence to ceremonial runs into
bigotry. The calumet must be smoked. The open
ing speech must be on approved models. The wam
pum belts are as indispensable in a treaty as are seals
and signatures in a Berlin conference or a Paris treaty.
To challenge tradition, to step out of routine, to think
for himself, and to act according to conviction, is
more dangerous and costly to him than to one who
has lived under the codes of civilization.
To gain his almost uninvincible influence over tLese
red republicans of the woods, Johnson, like his previous
exemplars, had to let patience have her perfect work.
He had to stoop to them in order to lift them up.
He even learned to outdo them in ostentation of
etiquette, in rigid adherence to form, in close atten
tion to long speeches without interruption, in con
vincing eloquence, in prolixity when it was necessary
to subdue the red man's brain and flesh by the power

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 47
of the tongue, and in shine and glitter of outward
display. Like a shrewd strategist, this typical Irish
man knew when to exercise his native gift of garrulity
in talking against time, and when also to condense
into fiery sentences the message of the hour.
One chief reason, however, why the Iroquois pre
ferred to talk with him more than with the average
colonial grandee, was because they were not when
before him at the mercy of interpreters. Despite the
fact that time was of little value to the savage, it
was rather trying to an Indian orator, after dilating
for an hour or two in all the gorgeous eloquence of
figurative language, to the manifest acceptance of his
own kinsmen at least, to have an interpreter render
the substance of his oration in a few sentences. Un
accustomed to abstract reasoning, the Indian was
perforce obliged to draw the images of thought en
tirely from the environment of his life on land and
water. Hence his speech superabounded with meta
phors. He thoroughly enjoyed the discourse of one
of his pale-faced brothers whose flowery language,
whUe insufferably prolix to his fellow-whites, ran on
in exuberant verbosity. In such a case, as Johnson
soon learned to know, the sons of the forest felt com-
pUmented and flattered. Rarely was a speaker in
terrupted. Extreme rigidity of decorum was the rule
at their councils. On great and solemn occasions the
women were caUed as witnesses and Usteners to hold
in their memory words spoken or promises given.
There were other resources of human intercourse
besides words. The wampum strings that reminded

48 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
one of rosaries, or the belts made of hundreds and thou
sands of black and white shells, served as telegrams, let
ters missive, credentials, contracts, treaties, currency,
and most of the purposes in diplomacy and business.
The principal chief of a tribe had the custody of these
archives of State. A definite value was placed upon
these drUled, polished, and strung disks or oval cylin
ders of shell. The Dutch soon learned to make a
better fabric than the Indian original, and they taught
the art to the other colonists. Wheeden, in his
" Economic History of New England," has shown
how great an aid to commerce this, the ancient money
of nearly all nations, proved in the early days when
coined money was so scarce. The belts used as news
letters, as tokens of peace or war, as records of the
past, or as confirmations of treaties, were often gener
ous in width and length, beautifully made, and fringed
with coloured strings. Schenectady was a famous
place of wampum or seewant manufacture ; and HiUe
Van Olinda, an interpreter, received in 1692 two
pounds eight shillings for two great belts. Two others
of like proportions cost three pounds twelve shillings. A
large quantity of this sort of currency was always carried
by the French to win over the Indians to their side.
The same commercial and diplomatic tactics were also
followed by the English, and especially by Johnson.
The Iroquois had also a rude system of heraldry.
A traveller over the great trails or highways, or along
the shores of the great water-ways most often trav
ersed, would have seen many tokens of aboriginal art.
The annals of the Jesuit missionaries and of travellers

AND THE SIX NATIONS 49
show that besides the hideously painted or carved
manitou or idols found at certain weU-known places,
the trees and rocks were decorated with the totem
signs. The wolf, the bear, the tortoise, were the living
creatures most frequently seen in effigy on tent, robes,
or arms. Or they were set as their seal and sign-man
ual on the title-deeds of lands bartered away, which
the white man required as proofs of sale and absolute
alienation, though often the red man intended only
joint occupancy. In the Iroquois Confederacy there
were eight totem-clans, which formed an eight-fold
bond of union in the great commonwealth. Less im
portant symbols were the deer, serpent, beaver, stone
pipe, etc. In their drawings on trees or rocks there
were certain canons of art well understood and easily
read. A canoe meant a journey by water; human
figures without heads, so many scalps ; the same hold
ing a chain, as being in alliance and friendship ; an
axe, an emblem of war, etc. A rude fraternity, with
secrets, signs, and ceremonies, — the freemasonry ofthe
forest, — was also known and was powerful in its in
fluence. In family life, inheritance was on the female
side ; and on many subjects the advice of the women
was sought and taken, and as witness-auditors they
were a necessity at solemn councUs, as well as made
the repository of tradition.
Exactly what the religion of the Indians was it
would be hard to say. To arrange their fluctuating
and hazy ideas into a system would be impossible.
Whatever the real mental value of their words "man
itou " and "wakan," or other terms implying deity,
4

so SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
or simply used to cover ignprance or express mystery,
it is evident that the blind worship of force was the
essence of their faith. Living much nearer to the
animal creation than the civiUzed man, they were
prone to recognize in the brute either a close kinship
or an incarnation of divine power. Extremes meet.
The current if not the final philosophy of the scien
tific mind in our century, and that of the savage, have
many points in common. AU animated life was linked
together, but the red man saw the presence of the
deity of his conception in every mysterious movement
of animate or inanimate things. Even the rattlesnake
was the bearer of bane or blessing according as it was
treated. Alexander Henry, the traveUer from Phila
delphia, relates that on meeting a snake four or five
feet long, which he would have killed, the Iroquois
reverently caUed it " grandfather," blew their tobacco
smoke in puffs toward it to please the reptUe, and
prayed to it to influence Colonel Johnson " to take
care of their famiUes during their absence, to show
them charity, and to fill their canoes with rum."
When, afterward, they were on the lake and a storm
arose, Henry came very near being made a Jonah to
•appease the wrath of the rattlesnake-manitou, but for
tunately the tempest passed and it cleared off.
The Indians invented the birch or elm bark canoe,
the racket or snow-shoe, the moccasin, all of which
the white frontiersmen were quick to uttize when
they saw their value. They also taught the settlers
the use of new kinds of food, and how to get it from
the soil or the water. To tread out eels from the

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 51
mud, catch fish with the hand or with fish-hooks of
bone, and to tUl the ground, even in the forest, for
maize, squashes and pumpkins, were lessons learned
from . the red man. Frontier and savage life had
many points in common, and not a little Indian blood
entered into the veins of Americans. There were hun
dreds of instances of women as well as men rescued
from their supposed low estate as captives who pre
ferred to remain with the Indians in savage life. Often
white settlers were saved from death by starvation by
friendly red men or half-breeds ; while half the plots
of the savages failed because of the warnings given by
friendly squaws, or boys who were usually not full-
blooded. Great changes took place within the Iroquois Con
federacy after the advent of the white man. His
fire-arms, Uquor, fences, and ideas at once began to
modify Indian poUtics, hunting, social life, and re
ligion. The unity of interests was broken, and divi
sion and secession set in, as steady currents, to weaken
the forest republic. Large numbers of the Iroquois
emigrated westward to live and hunt in Ohio and be
yond, and joined the Ottawa confederacy. Others
left in bands or groups, and made their homes in
Pennsylvania, Virginia, or the Southwest, to get away,
if possible, from the white man's fences and fire-water.
Others followed their reUgious teachers into Canada,
and made setdements there. These losses were only
in a measure made good by the addition to, the Long
•House ofa whole tribe from the South, the Tuscaroras,
./whose ancestral seats had been in the Carolinas.

52 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
North Carolina was one of the majority of the
original thirteen States first settled by a variety of col
onists, — French, German, Swiss, Scottish, and Irish,
as well as English. At first red and white men lived
at peace ; but soon the inevitable " question " came,
and the Indians imagined that they could show them
selves superior to the pale faces. Making what white
historians caU a " conspiracy," but striking what they
believed to be a blow for home and freedom, they
rose, and in one night massacred in or near Roa
noke alone one hundred and thirty-seven of the white
settlers. Their murderous act at once drew out
the vengeance of Governor Craven of South Caro
lina, who sent Col. John Barnwell, an Irishman, who
marched with a regiment of six hundred whites and
several hundred Indian aUies. Without provision
trains, but subsisting as Indians do in a wUderness
unbroken by viUages, farms, or clearings, BamweU
struck the Tuscaroras in battle, and reduced their
numbers by the loss of three hundred warriors. Pur
suing them to their fortified castle, he laid siege and
compeUed surrender. By successive blows, this " Tus
carora John," by death or capture, destroyed one
thousand fighting men, and compelled the remainder
of the tribe to leave the graves of their fathers, and
emigrate northward. Only a remnant reached New
York. The Tuscaroras joined the Iroquois Confede
racy in 1 7 13, and the federated forest republic then
took upon itself the style and title of the Six Nations.
Nearly a century afterward, when the Iroquois Con
federacy was a dream, and the Southern Confederacy

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 53
beginning to be woven of the same stuff, the descend
ant of " Tuscarora John," who had added a new
tribe to the Long House, gave at Montgomery, Ala
bama, the casting vote that made Jefferson Davis
President of a new one in the many forms of federa
tion on the North American continent. About the
same time the great English historian. Freeman, neg
lecting for the nonce the distinction between history
and prophecy, began his work on the "History of
Federal Government, from the Achaian League to the
Disruption of the United States of America," only one
volume of which was published, the events of 1863-
1865 compelling the completion of the work to be
indefinitely postponed.
How far the various attempts of the red man to
combine in federal union for common strength or
defence, and especially those in the stable political
edifice in New York, were potent in aiding the forma
tion of the American Commonwealth, is an interesting
question worthy of careful study. That it was not
without direct influence upon the minds of those con
structive statesmen like FrankUn, Hamilton, Madison,
Monroe, who came so numerously from States nearest
the Long House, and most familiar with Iroquois
politics, cannot be denied. The men of the English-
speaking colonies which had been peopled from con
tinental and insular Europe, were inheritors of classic
culture. They naturaUy read the precedents fur
nished by Greece and Rome; but they were also
powerfully affected by the living realities of the fed
eral republics of Holland and Switzerland, as well as

54 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
in the aristocratic republic of Venice, whUe in the one
nearest England many of them were educated. It is
not too much to affirm, however, that the power of
this great example at home, on the soil and under
their eyes, was as great in moulding opinion and con
solidating thought in favour of a federal union oif
States, as were the distant exemplars of the ancient
world, or in modern Eiirope. Though we give him
no credit, and spurn the idea of political indebted
ness to the red man, with almost the same intolerant
fierceness that some of the latter-day New England
Puritans deny obligations to the Dutch Republic that
sheltered and educated their fathers, yet our govern
ment is in a measure copied from that of the forest
republicans, whose political edifice and conquests
shaped the history and civiUzation of this continent.
In still retaining the sonorous names given to our
mountains, valleys, and rivers, and in transferring
these to our ships and men-of-war; in giving the
effigy of the Indian a place on our municipal coats of
arms and seals of State, we are proving that in our
memory at least of the aboriginal dwellers on the
soU they are not wholly forgotten. These graphic
symbols are, indeed, but shadows ; but beyond all
shadow is substance.
WhUe the white man's gunpowder and bullets, war,
diseases, fire-water, and trade wrought profound
changes for better or worse, usually the latter, the
Indians were not stolid or unreceptive to his religion.
Both the Roman and the Reformed teachers won
many disciples in the Long House. Almost as soon

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 55
S,s the learned Domine Megapolensis arrived at Fort
Orange, he began to learn the language of the Mo
hawks. He was soon able to preach to them and to
teach their children. This was three years before
John EUot began his work in Massachusetts. The
pastors at Schenectady did the same, translating por
tions of the Bible and of the liturgy of the Nether
lands Reformed Church, and of the Book of Common
Prayer. The missionary efforts of the Dutch Chris
tians soon bore definite and practical results. The
Reformed Church records show large numbers of In
dians baptized or married or buried according to
Christian rites. There are also frequent instances of
adult communicant membership in the Mohawk, Hud
son, Raritan, and Hackensack VaUeys. Hundreds of
Indian children were trained in the same catechetical
instruction, and in the same classes with those of the
whites. As a general rule, the Hollanders and other
peoples from the Continent lived in kindness and
peace with their red brethren. The occasional out
breaks of the savages in massacre, fire, and blood
were not by those of New York, but from Canada.
The Indians were set on Hke dogs by the French,
who stimulated the thirst for blood by political and
religious hatreds ; and the English repaid in kind.
Rarely was the peace broken between the people of
New Netherlands and New York except by causes
operative in, and coming from Europe.
The first Roman Catholic who entered the bounds
of the State of New York was Isaac Jogues, who was
captured by the Mohawks while ascending the St.

56 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Lawrence River. One of the sweetest spirits and
noblest characters that ever glorified the flesh he
dwelt in, Isaac Jogues was brought captive into the
Mohawk Valley to be reserved for fiendish torture.
Ransomed by Arendt Van Curler, and assisted to
France by Domine Megapolensis, these three men of
the Holy Catholic Church became ever after true
friends. The surface discords of church names were
lost in the deeper harmonies of their one faith and
love to a common Saviour. Bressani was later as
sisted in like manner. Returning willingly, by way of
Quebec, after his fingers, once chewed to shapeless
lumps between the teeth of the Mohawks, had been
kissed by nobles and ladies in the court at Versailles,
Jogues reached, four years later (1647), the scene of
his martyrdom and nameless burial. His severed
head, mounted upon one of the palisades of the In
dian castle, was set with its face to Canada, whence
he came, in insult and defiance.
Nevertheless, the French Jesuit missionaries, with
unquaiUng courage and fervent faith, persevered ; and
Poncet, Le Moyne, Fremin, Brayas, and Pierron
passed to and fro through Albany to continue the
work in what they had already named as the Mission
of the Martyrs. In 1667 St. Mary's Chapel was
estabUshed at the Indian viUage which stood on the
site of Spraker's Basin. In 1669 St. Peter's Chapel
was built of logs on the sand-flats at Caughnawaga
near Fonda, by Boniface. Here in 1676 the Iro
quois maiden Tegawita — the White LUy of the Mo
hawks, the now canonized saint — was baptized by

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 57
James de Lamberville. From 1642 to 1684 was the
golden age of early missions of the Roman form of
the Christian faith in New York. Then it was abruptly
brought to a close, not because of Indian animosity or
Protestant opposition, but by the Roman CathoUc
Governor Dongan in the interests of British trade.
Perhaps this interruption was not wholly dictated
by greed, but was strongly influenced by political in
terests. This fact must be noted. When Catharine
Ganneaktena, an Erie Indian woman adopted into the
Oneida tribe, was led to serious thought by Bruyas, to
whom she taught the language in 1668, and with her
Christian husband was persecuted by the pagans, the
couple left for Montreal. Here she was baptized and
confirmed by Bishop Laval. Instructed by Raffeix,
who was somewhat of a statesman, Catharine invited
several of her family in New York to Canada, and
early in 1670 they founded the Indian village of La
Prairie, where members of the Iroquois Confeder
acy might come to settle. According to the code
of laws established in this Christian community, every
one must renounce belief in dreams, polygamy, and
drunkenness. This settlement was destined to be a
powerful influence, not only in the Christianization of
the Indians, but upon the politics of New York. In
1674, the wife of Kryn, "the great Mohawk," who
had conquered the Mohegans, became a Christian, and
her husband abandoned her. Happening in his wan
derings to visit the Christian village of La Prairie,
Kryn was impressed with the peace and order reign
ing in it, and after a time became a Christian.

5^ SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Returning to his home on the Mohawk, Kryn told
what he had seen, and persuaded forty of his fellows
from Caughnawaga (now Fonda, New York) to follow
him. They reached La Prairie on Easter Sunday,
1676. From this time forth Kryn was an active mis
sionary, on one occasion talking over a whole party
of sixty Mohawks sent by Dongan on a raid against
the French, and converting four of them to Christian
ity. He also persuaded the Oneidas and Onondagas
to keep peace with the French, and in this was aided
by the remarkable influence of Garakonthie, the Chris
tian protector of " the black coats." It was Kryn
who led, and it was these " praying Indians " from
Canada who with the French were sent by Frontenac
to destroy Schenectady in 1690; and it was he who
just before the attack harangued them to the highest
pitch of fury. His especial pretext for revenge was
the murder of sixty Canadian Indians by the Iroquois
about six months previously.
For many years La Prairie was the gathering- place
of seceders from the confederacy who had adopted
the religion of their French teachers. In 1763 the .
village had three hundred fighting men ; during the
Revolution the number increased, and at present the
Indian reservation at Caughnawaga, about twenty
miles from Montreal, contains about thirteen hundred
Roman Catholic Indians. These facts explain why
the Mohawks and others of the confederacy had so
many relatives 'fighting for the French, and why the
political situation in New York, untU the faU of
French dominion, was so complex. As a rule, the

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 59
Iroquois preferred the more sensuous religion of the
French, while eager also for the strouds, duffels, guns,
and blankets of the Dutch. Under Gallic and British
influences, their hearts were as often divided as their
heads were distracted. They were like tourists from
Dover to Calais, when in the choppy seas which seethe
between the coasts of England, France, and Holland.
In 1684 Jean de Lamberville, the last Jesuit settler
in New York among the Iroquois, departed for Can
ada amid the lamentations of the Onondagas who
escorted him. In a few generations all traces of the
work of the French missionaries had vanished from
the Mohawk Valley. In our days, when under the
farmer's plough or labourer's pickaxe, the earth casts
out her dead, the copper rings with the sign of the
cross tell the touching story of the Indian maiden's
faith. Under the eloquent pen of John Gilmary Shea
the thriUing story of labour and martyrdom glows.
The Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs at AuriesviUe
shows that even modern piety can find fresh stimulus
in recalling the events which have made the Mohawk
Valley classic ground to devout pilgrims as weU as to
the scholar and patriot.
For over a century — from 1664 until 1783 — the
diplomatic, mUitary, and eleemosynary operations of
British agents and armies among the Iroquois were
actively carried on. These were prolonged and costly,
and had much to do with making the enormous pub
lic debt of England, stiU unpaid. The effect was to
affect powerfully the imagination of the British public.
It was not merely the fiction of Cooper which created

6o SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
the tendency of the Englishman just landed at Castle
Garden to look for painted and feathered Indians on
Broadway. The author of " Leatherstocking " did
but stimulate the imagination already fed by the nar
ratives of returned veterans. Thousands of soldiers,
who had heard the war-whoop in forest battles, told
their stories at British hearthstones until weU into this
century. They, with Cooper, are responsible for the
idea that forests grow in Philadelpliia. The fear still
possessing English chUdren that American visitors,
even of unmixed European blood, may turn red or
black, is one prompted by tradition as weU as by
literary fiction.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 6 1

CHAPTER IV.
THE STRUGGLE FOR A CONTINENT.
For the possession of the North American conti
nent two nations, France and England, representing
the two civilizations, Roman and Teutonic, which
dominate respectively Southern and Northern Europe,
contended. France, in America, embodied the Ro
man or more ancient type of civilization, in which
government and order were represented by the priest
and the soldier, while the people had Uttle or nothing
to do with the government, except to obey. External
authority was everything ; inward condition, little or
nothing. The French system was not that of real col
onization, but of military possession ; and the desired
form of social and political order was that based on
monarchy and feudalism. In the despotism of a Church
subordinate to a mler in Italy, and ofa State represented
by a monarch, the individual was lost, and the people's
function was simply to submit and pay taxes. They
were taught to look upon their privUeges and enjoy
ments as the gifts of the sovereign and of the Church.
Authority emanated from the government, which rep
resented God, and represented Him infallibly.
The Enghsh colonists, whose leaders had been
largely trained in the Dutch Republic, represented
the best elements of Teutonic civUization, those of

62 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
English blood being more English than the English
men left behind, and more Teutonic than the Ger
mans. Most of the principles and institutions wrought
out in the experience of the colonists, especially those
now seen to be most peculiarly American, were not of
British, but of continental origin. New England was
settled mostly by immigrants who had left England
before 1640 ; and nearly all their leaders had come by
way of Holland, receiving their political and military
education in the United States of Holland, and under
its red, white, and blue flag.
The strong hereditary instincts of Germanic free
dom were best represented in the seventeenth cen
tury by the Hollanders, who in the little republic
had long livedunder democratic institutions. Nearly
all the leading men who settled New England had
come to America after a longer or shorter stay in
Holland, where they imbibed the republican ideas
which they transported as good seed to America. The
Pilgrims, who were the first settlers of Massachusetts ;
many of the Puritans who came later to Boston and
Salem ; the leaders of the Connecticut Colony, —
Hooker, Davenport, and many of their company, —
had all been in Holland. The mUitary commanders
— MUes Standish, John Smith, Samuel ArgaU, Lyon
Gardiner, Governor Dudley, and others — had been
trained in the Dutch armies. Thus it came to pass
that while the makers of New England were English
in blood and language, their peculiar institutions were
not of England, but directly borrowed from the one
republic of Northern Europe.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 63
The Middle States were all settled under the Neth
erlands influences. Even in New York, where through
the patroon system semi-feudal institutions very much
like those of aristocratic England had begun, the in
nate love of liberty in the people ultimately broke
through these as a seed through its shell. The full
growth was the typical American State of New York,
whose constitution possessed more of the features of
the National Constitution of 1787 than any other of
the original thirteen States. Feudalism and its ideas
were thus for the most part left behind or soon out
grown. The Church, even when united with the State,
as was the case in some of the colonies, was of demo
cratic form. The system of landholding and regis
try, the town-meeting, and the written and secret bal
lot, — all Germanic ideas, — with many customs and
practical political ideas brought from Holland, made
the people free, developed the individual man, and
gave the colonies a reserve of strength and endurance
impossible in Canada.
In their plan of strategy, the French idea was to
limit the English domain within and east of the AUe-
ghany Mountains by a chain of forts stretching from
Quebec along the Great Lakes, down the Ohio and the
Mississippi to New Orleans.^ This was a scheme of
magnificent distances, involving enormous energy and
expense, especially while the English held the sea-
coast and bases of supplies. It was evident that for
any hope of success in their mighty territorial scheme
the aborigines must be secured as allies. In this work
the priest could cfo more than the soldier. Hence

64 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
the zeal and energy of the spiritual orders were in
voked, and put under tribute to the grand design of
GaUicizing America.
On the other hand, to overcome the plans of the
French, there must be that which could neutralize the
wUes of the Jesuit as well as the abiUty of the soldier.
In every war between France and England, Americans
must bear a part ; and until the ultimate question
should have been decided, the Indian held, on this
continent, the balance of power. Neutrality to red
or white man was impossible. The spring, the dom
inating idea of diplomacy and war in Europe was this
doctrine of the balance of power ; but in America it
was less a speculative notion than a practical reality.
The American Indian would be the decisive element
until one or other of the two nations and civUizations
became paramount.
A fresh disturbance of this doctrinal stabUity in
European politics occurring near the middle of the
eighteenth century, at once caused the scales to os-
cUlate in America, gave the French the first advan
tage, and compeUed WiUiam Johnson to follow up
Van Curler's work, and to be the most active agent
and influence among the Mohawks which had been
felt since the death of" Brother Corlaer." This series
of episodes is called in Europe "The War of the
Austrian Succession." It was begun by Frederick the
Great of Prussia, against Maria Theresa of Austria.
In America it is known in history as the " Old French
War." The "Old" French War (not that of 1753) was

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 65
declared by Louis XV., March 15, 1744. The news
was known all along the Canada borddlrs by the end
of April. The tidings travelled more slowly in the
Enghsh language ; and it was the middle of May, after
the French had attacked the English garrison at
Canso and compeUed it to surrender, before the start
ling facts aroused the colonies. Already the Indian
hatchets had been sharpened, and the plan of raid
and slaughter well made, when the governor of New
York, relying on the Indians as the great breakwater
against the waves of Canadian invasion, caUed a coun
cU of the chiefs of the confederated Six Nations at
Albany, which met June 18, 1744.
The settlers soon found that, in this as in previous
wars, the French and Canadian Indians were the more
aggressive party, whUe the military authorities of New
York relied on a defensiv-e policy. The governor,
George Clinton, — not the ancestor of the CUntons in
the United States, but the sixth son of the Earl of
Lincoln, — had arrived in September, 1 743. He was
an old sea-dog, an ex-admiral, who knew as much
about civU government as one of his powder-monkeys
on shipboard. It seemed to be the policy of the
British Government to send over decayed function
aries and politicians who were favourites at court, but
in every way unfitted for the great problems of state
in the complex community whose borders were on
Canada, where French power was intrenched. Too
many of these nominees of the Crown considered it to
be their first duty to build up their private fortune.
Nevertheless, it was CUnton — who had probably been
7 5

66 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
influenced by his feUow-sailor, Captain Warren — who
summoned WiUiam Johnson, the trader, into public
life. Despite the superiority of the British fleet, the
French moved inore quickly, and were first in Amer
ica with reinforcements. The open water-way from
Canada into the heart of New York was the mUitary
nerve of the continent. It made the Hudson and
Mohawk VaUeys the objective point of the French
invaders. The war, though not yet declared, was to
last five years, and, as we shaU see, developed all the
inherent energies of Johnson, the young Irishman, who
had already shown powers of leadership. The mili
tary policy of the French was to keep the English
frontier in a state of ceaseless alarm, by small parties
of stealthy savages striking their blows unexpectedly
aU along the line from Oswego to Hoosic. The story
of the numberless petty raids is well told in Drake's
" Particular History ; " but in some cases the details are
now extant only in written accounts found in the
Johnson papers, in church records, in family Bibles,
and on tombstones in Mohawk Valley and in New
England. Johnson soon found himself where the Robinson
Crusoe of poetry wished to be, — " in the midst of
alarms ; " but his temper rose into the heights of un
shakable calm as the dangers increased. Invited,
with his wife and three infant chUdren, to come and
live in Albany tUl the war was over, he declined, and
remained at Mount Johnson, losing no opportunity to
win, to keep, and to increase his influence over the

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 67
Iroquois. His abilities and power were, as we have
seen, brought to the notice of the new governor, in
directly through his uncle, but immediately through
the introduction of Chief Justice De Lancey, a brother
of his uncle's wife. In the month of April, 1745,
WiUiam Johnson received a commission as one of the
justices of the peace in the county of Albany, which
then extended from Coeymans to Herkimer.
At this point the strictly private life of Johnson
ended, and his political career began. The situation
of Mount Johnson was within easy reach of all impor
tant places in the province which were likely to be
the seat of war. An easy day's ride on horseback
would bring him to Albany, whence, by either land or
water, the country was opened northward to Crown
Point, or southward to New York. Thence, over a
cross route by way of Saratoga Springs, a strong man
well mounted could, by hard riding, reach Mount
Johnson from the foot of Lake George in a day and
part of a night. Westward also, by river or land
route, there was easy access to all the tribes of the
Long House and to all the Mohawk Valley settlements.
Johnson's uncle. Captain Warren, had by the cap
ture of a privateer distinguished himself at sea, and
receiving promotion to the grade of Commodore, was
ordered to command the naval forces for the reduc
tion of Louisburg. By his energy and abUity strict
blockade was maintained while the American citizen
soldiery under Pepperell tightened the coils of in
vestment. When the " Vigilante," a French frigate
laden with reinforcements in men and provisions, had

68 SIR 'WILLIAM JOHNSON
been decoyed and captured, the fortress was surren
dered. Warren became an admiral ; and Pepperell, a
merchant like Johnson, was made a baronet, — the
former one day, the latter one month, after receipt of
the news in England.
Chronology was in this case a key to English jeal
ousy of the colonists, whose growing strength and
republicanism monarchical Britain feared. The joy of
the Americans was excessive. It culminated in Bos
ton, where "Louisburg Square" stiU presei-ves the
name. The gladness on this side of the Atlantic
equaUed the astonishment, flavoured with jealousy,
which fell upon Europe. One would have thought
that it would salt wholesomely the inborn contempt
which the regular officers of the king's troops felt to
ward provincial fighters, but it did not; and Brad-
dock, Loudon, Abercrombie, and their foolish imitators
were yet numerously to come. Indeed, this success
of provincial Americans induced a jealousy that was
to rankle for a generation or more in British breasts,
to the serious disadvantage of both Great Britain and
the colonies, as we shaU soon see.
Meanwhile, Indian affairs were in a critical con
dition, and the signs of danger on the frontier were'
ominous. For reasons not here to be analyzed, there
were bad feelings between the Iroquois and the Albany
people. Rumours of the purpose of the English to
destroy the Indians were dUigently kept in circula
tion by both lay and clerical Frenchmen. Those who
wore canonicals and those who wore regimentals were
equaUy industrious in fomenting dissatisfaction. The

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 69
uneasiness of the Mohawks was so great that they sent
several chiefs to confer with their brethren, the Caugh
nawaga Indians, in Canada. It was generally be
lieved that the French would attack Oswego. There
is also evidence that attempts were made to kidnap
Johnson, against whom, as a relative of Admiral War
ren, as one of the captors of Louisburg, and as the
man who especially influenced the Iroquois in favour
of the EngUsh, the French had an especial grudge.
It was known that from the fort at Crown Point scalp
ing parties issued at intervals ; but mere rumours
turned into genuine history when Longmeadow, Mas
sachusetts, was attacked and burned by French In
dians. On Nov. 17, 1745, the poorly fortified Dutch
village of Saratoga on the Hudson was attacked by an
overwhelming force of over six hundred French and
Indians, After easy victory the place was given over
to the torch, and the sickening story of the massacre
of Schenectady was repeated.
In French civiUzation the priest and the soldier
always go together. They are the two necessary fig
ures, whether in Corea, Africa, Cochin China, or
Canada. The soldier, Marin, was in this case led by
the priest, Picquet. Besides the massacre, in which
thirty persons were killed and scalped, sixty were
made prisoners ; and the whole fertile farming country,
blooming with the flower and fruit of industry, was
desolated for many miles. Many of the captives were
negroes, and a majority of the whole number died of
disease in the prisons of Quebec. One of the best
accounts of this massacre — meagre in details — is con-

70 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
tained in a letter to Mr. Johnson from Mr. Sanders, of
Albany. It was nine days after this event that John
son received the urgent letter inviting him to move
for safety to Albany. i
A line of fire and blood, ashes and blackness, was
now being drawn from Springfield to Niagara. All
men were under arms, and each was caUed to watch
every third night. No house was safe, except pali
saded or built of logs for defence. The forts were
repaired and garrisoned. The bullet moulds were
kept hot, and extra flints, ramrods, and ammunition
laid out all ready, while weary sentinels strained ear
and eye through each long, dark night.
Out from the gateway of Crown Point, like centri
fugal whirlwinds of fire, swept bands of savages, who
swooped down on the settlements. Almost under the
shadow of the palisades of Albany, Schenectady, and
the viUages along the Hudson and Mohawk VaUeys,
men were shot and their scalps taken to decorate
Canadian wigwams. The little "God's Acre" in
every settlement on the Mohawk began to fatten with
victims who had died out of their beds. Perhaps none
of these ancient sleeping-places has been reverently
emptied in order to consign their memorials of once
active life to more enduring public honour in the
modern cemeteries, but the number of perforated
skulls surprises the beholder. In these mute witnesses
to the disquiet of the past, he reads the story of
ancestral danger and suffering. The devout frontiers
man made his way to church on the Lord's Day with
his loaded gun on his shoulder, its flint well picked

AND THE SIX NA TIONS. 7 1
and its pan well primed. He took his seat at the end
of the pew, only after sentinels had been posted and
arms made ready for instant use. Slight wonder was
it that the effects of aU-night vigils, and the unusual
posture of repose in a pew, rather than the length of
the Domme's sermon, induced sleep even in meeting.
Most of the churches were loop-holed for defence,
and even in the few old houses occasionally found
with projecting second floor, we see an interesting
survival of the old days, when from both church and
dweUing a line of gun-barrels might at any hour deco
rate the eaves with gargoyles spouting fire and death.
Away from the villages, the farmers, building a block
house on some commanding hill, and if possible over
a well or spring, kept a sentinel on the roof while they
laboured in the fields. Horn in hand, the watcher
surveyed the wide stretches of valley, or scrutinized
the edges of the clearing, to give warning of the ap
proach of skulking red or white murderers. Yet hu
man nerves would weary, and after constant strain for
months with no near sign of danger, vigilance would
often relax at the very moment when the enemy
opened fire and raised his yell. Men would laugh to
day at warnings, while, perhaps, the boys in play
would set up mock sentinels at the gateways, who on
the morrow would be scalped or be bound and on
their way to Canada.
The twofold plan of campaign decided on in Eng
land was the old one first formulated by Leisler in
1690, looking to the invasion and subjugation of
Canada, attempted again in 1711, when a German

72, SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
regiment in New York was raised for the purpose, and
which was frustrated by the disaster to the British fleet.
The land and naval forces of New and Old England
were now to make rendezvous at Louisburg, and move
up the St. Lavrrence to Quebec, while the provincial
militia of the middle and lower colonies, combined
with the Iroquois if possible, should capture the French
fort, St. Frederick, at Crown Point, and the city of
Montreal. The disastrous inaction of King George and the
London lords, arising probably from jealousy of the
provincials, and the ramours of a great French fleet
under D'AnviUe to be sent against New England,
caused the abandonment of the expedition to Quebec.
This, however, was not known by submarine electric
cable ; and meantime New York politics, at which we
must now glance, had become interesting.
Two friends, the Chief- Justice De Lancey and Gov
ernor Clinton, quarrelled over their cupa at a convivial
gathering, and this took place just after the latter had
rejfewed the former's commission for life. Happen
ing, too, on the eve of the great council of the Six
Nations, which Clinton had summoned at Albany, just
when that town was pestiferous with small-pox and
bilious fever, the outlook for successfiil negotiations
was not very promising. Messrs. Rutherford, Livings
ton, and Dr. Cadwallader Colden were the only mem
bers of his councU who came with Clinton, while of
the expected Indians only three had arrived. These,
for the two scalps with the blood hardly dried on the
hair, were rewarded with strouds and laced coats, and

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 73
sent to drum up recruits, while the governor waited a
month for the tardy, suspicious, and sullen savages to
appear before him.
Matters looked dark indeed. Yet when Mohawk
runners, despatched by Johnson on a scouting expedi
tion to Crown Point, arrived, bringing news of French
preparations for a descent upon Schenectady and the
VaUey, and possibly upon Albany, the governor was
unable to see the imminent danger. He still waited ;
he StiU believed wholly in the defensive policy, and
seemed satisfied, because for the fort on the Hudson
at Saratoga, now Easton, a sum equal to about eight
hundred dollars had been voted by the Assembly.
This sum enabled the colonial engineers to build a
palisade one hundred and fifty feet long, with six re
doubts for barracks, all of timber, and to mount on
platforms twelve cannon of six, twelve, and eighteen
pound calibre. In this way the summer was wasted
in waiting; for the Indians came not, and Clinton's
ambition to be a powerful diplomatist with the Indians
was for the present baffled.
Believing this was a matter between French and
English alone, strongly inclining to neutrality, and
diligently persuaded thereto by the French Jesuits, the
Iroquois sulked at home. Not only did they flatly
refuse to meet the governor, but some of the chiefs
went openly over to the French.
Meanwhile the white settlers were, according to
Johnson's report, abandoning their farms along the
Mohawk, and concentrating in the block-houses or
palisaded towns. Besides having sent Indian scouts

74 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
to the Champlain country, Johnson wrote urgent let
ters to Clinton stating the case, and asking him to
open his eyes to the facts. To protect Johnson's
stores of eleven thousand bushels of grain, whUe
standing his ground, the governor sent a lieutenant
and thirty men. Another militia company was de
spatched to the upper Mohawk Castle. Having done
these things, Clinton, who had as early as the 4th of
August officially notified Governor Shirley of Massa
chusetts that he would proceed against Crown Point
with the warriors of the Five Nations, was at his wits'
end. He had alienated Colonel Schuyler and the
members of the Board of Indian Commissioners,
mostly faithful and trusted men well known in the
provinces. In the quarrel of the governor with De
Lancey, these ranged themselves on the side of the
chief justice.
It is too clumsy an attempt at explanation of the
difficulty between the king's agent, Clinton, and the
Board of Indian Commissioners, to ascribe the causes
chiefly or entirely to the " rascality " of the commis
sioners, who " abused their office for private pecula
tion," or to the ambition of De Lancey. It is not
necessary in one who appreciates the great abUities of
Johnson to describe him as a white lily of honesty and
purity. English authors, the Tory historians of the
Revolution, and the prejudiced writers of Ameri
can history, who reflect their own narrowness and
sectional views, take delight in maligning the charac
ter of the men of colonial New York simply because
they were Dutch. As matter of unsentimental fact.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 75
there is much to be said on both sides. The people of
New York were not anxious to send the Indians on
the war-path, nor to furnish white soldiers to guard
their squaws and pappooses while they were away from
their vUlages. They were not at aU persuaded of the
superior honesty either of the governor or his advis
ers and appointees. The greater facts are also clear,
that the New York Assembly was vigilantly jealous of
the people's liberties, and was determined at aU haz
ards to limit the royal prerogative as far as possible.
Since his quarrel with De Lancey, the governor had
shown excessive zeal in maintaining the rights of the
king. On the other hand, most of the steps neces
sary to make New York an independent state had, as
the British Attorney-General Bradlee declared, already
been taken by his Assembly, which of twenty-seven
members had fourteen of Dutch descent. These men
were determined to teach the king's agent that he
must bow to the will of the people, who were more
important than king and court, and make no advance
in monarchical ideas. They saw that the governor
was under the close personal influence of CadwaUader
Colden, a radical Tory, who they suspected prepared
most of Clinton's State papers ; and they set tbemselves
in array against this intermeddler on royalty's behalf
Again the petty jealousy which burned steadily in all
the colonies made these Dutchmen enjoy paying back
the New Englanders in their own coin some ofthe slights
and insults of the past. The former had long looked
down in contempt on the settlers of New Amsterdam,
and their sons now repaid them in kind, and were on

76 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON '
the whole rather glad to snub Shirley and to annoy
Clinton for so deferring to the wishes of the latter.
Clinton seemed lacking in tact, and was unable to
conciliate the members of the Board of Indian Com
missioners, who one and aU, led by Schuyler, resigned.
In a word, Clinton had begun his administration by
trying to bully and drive the Dutchmen. Now, those
who know the men of this branch of the Teutonic race
have always found by experience that when their hearts
are won they are easUy led. AU attempts to drive
them, however, usually result as Alva's and Philip's
plans resulted in the Netherlands, where three hun
dred thousand Spaniards were buried ; or as in South
Africa, where Dutch boers hold their own against
British aggression. It took Clinton some years to
learn the lesson, but it was the same experience of
failure and retreat.
At his wits' end, Governor Clinton turned to the man
for the hour. WiUiam Johnson was offered the ap
pointment of Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and at
once accepted. Thus, at thirty-one years, opened in
fuU promise the splendid career of the Irish adventurer.
While no man in the province or continent com
prehended more clearly the gravity of the situation,
no one better understood aU the elements in the case,
the ground of faith in the immediate improvement
of affairs, and the ultimate suprema,cy of the British
cause. Johnson was a man of continental ideas.
Without losing an instant of time he at once set him
self to the task of getting hold ofthe chief men ofthe
Six Nations. He first sent wampum belts to the Penn-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 77
sylvanian Indians and the Esopus tribe, asking their
co-operation with the Albany CouncU. He put on
Indian dress, and for weeks gave himself up to their
pastimes. Sparing not paint, grease, ochre, feathers,
games, or councils, he arrayed himself as one of their
own braves. He encouraged them to get up war-
dances, in order to excite their martial spirit. He was
speedUy successful in turning the tide of opinion in one
whole canton of the Confederacy in favour of attending
the Albany Convention.
It was probably about this time that Johnson was
formaUy adopted into the Mohawk tribe, made a chief,
and received that name which was ever afterward his
Indian title. This habit of the Iroquois, of especially
and significantly naming prominent personages, is stiU
in vogue. When some Dakota Indians visited Boston
in 1889, after seeing Charlestown and Bunker Hill
Monument, they caUed on Governor Brackett, and
named him the " Great Rock in the Clouds."
The title which the Mohawks gave their new white
chief and leader in 1 746, was, according to the anarchic
and unscientific spelling of the time, War-ragh-i-yah-
gey. The term may be translated " Chief Director of
Affairs." It may -with economy of vocables be spelled
Wa-ra-i-ya-g6. Other matters contributed to this success, and util
ized the work of others. Conrad Weiser, the Penn-
sylvanian German interpreter, had been recently
among the tribes as far as Ohio, influencing them in
favour of the EngUsh. A happy accident — the coming
of a delegation of Chickasaws from the West and

78 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
South to invade Canada, and to invite the Senecas to
take part and pilot them — awoke this most western
division of the Iroquois Confederacy to the importance
of the accession. The simultaneous offers of alliance
and aid by other scattered tribes led to a complete
change of views. In a word, the Senecas resolved to
sit at the Albany caucus. With the tribes at each end,
the west and the east of the Long House, thus in sub
stantial accord, Johnson directed the Mohawks to
send out runners to the whole confederation. Thus
the work of winning over the other few tribes, at least
so far as attendance at Albany was concemed, proved
to be comparatively easy.
Even the feuds and quarrels which at the time
divided the Long House seemed to work for Johnson's
fame and the English cause. For some reason in
Iroquois poUtics, occult to a white man, the house
was divided against itself: the Senecas, Onondagas,
and Mohawks composed one great faction ; the Onei
das, Cayugas, and Tuscaroras formed the other and
weaker. The latter tribe from the CaroUnas, which
had joined the Confederacy a generation before, in
1 71 2, were far from being won over so as to take up
arms for the English. When the fighting braves and
counseUing old men came to pow-wow with the large
faction, the first thing done by them was to give the
Mohawks, especially, a vigorous scolding /or having
acted so presumptuously and independently without
taking councU of the whole Confederacy. After Uvely
debate and rejoinder, it was agreed by all to go to
Albany, but with the river between the factions on

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 79
their journey. So, along the banks of the Mohawk
the delegates of the Confederacy marched as far as
Schenectady, when quitting the river, the trail across
country and to Norman's Kill was followed. All but
three of the Mohawk chiefs had been won to the
English side. Of these, two of the Bear-totem clan
lived at the upper castle at Canajoharie, and the third
of the Tortoise -totem clan at the lower castle on the
hill near Schoharie Creek. These dignitaries were
finaUy persuaded by Rev. Mr. Barclay, then living
among the Mohawks, and the famous Dr. CadwaUader
Colden, who knew the Indians well, and later became
the historian of the Six Nations.
It was a decisive moment in the history of America
when on the Sth of August, 1 746, the two rival divi
sions marched down old Patroon Street, the Clinton
Avenue of to-day, and into State Street to Fort Fred
erick. Leading the Mohawk band in all the parapher
nalia of Indian dress and decoration, with abundant
ochre and plumes, was the pale-faced man, Johnson,
who could whoop, yeU, leap, dance, run, wrestle, play
racket, and eat dog-hash — drawing the line at the
cannibal feast, — with the best champions in any of
the six tribes. The double column moved past Fort
Frederick, where now stands the Episcopal Church,
the Indians firing their guns and the fort its ordnance.
Then the gates of the sallyport swung open, and in
the largest room of the fort the red men squatted and
were served with food.

8o SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON

CHAPTER V.
A CHAPTER IN THE STORY OF LIBERTY.
When the conference opened, August 19, Dr.
Cadwallader took the place of Governor Clinton, who
was down with fever. The two delegates from Massa
chusetts, Mr. NeUes and Colonel Wendell, were also
present, but none from Connecticut appeared. Col-
den's speech was a bubble of rhetoric, fairly dazzling
with the prismatics of a lively imagination. It re
hearsed facts, fancies, and prophecies appropriate to
the situation. The colossal but purely mythical
preparations supposed to be made in Great Britain,
in the reality of which the sailor-govemor himself
heartily believed, were duly set forth. Then the
wrongs suffered by the Indians at the hands of the
" perfidious " French were detaUed, until the braves
were stirred in eye and nostril, and the chiefs grunted
out, " Yo-hay ! yo-hay ! " (" Do you hear ! do you be
lieve 1 "), and general applause in Indian fashion fol
lowed as the interpreter finished each sentence. The
war spirit was further roused by flatteries which fell
like oU on the flames, kindling the fiercest enthusiasm.
After the usual promises of gifts and equipment, with
assurance of reward and booty in the future, the
orator wound up by narrating the murder of some

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 8i
white men, their brothers, even since their arrival in
Albany, and caUing upon his hearers for immediate
and permanent revenge.
Taking it aU in all, this speech of Clinton and Col-
den's is a fair sample of the lies, false promises, and
irresponsible assertions on which the red man has
been fed, from the first coming of the whites, to the
battle with the Sioux, near Pine Ridge Agency, in
January, 1 89 1 . The proper peroration of the speech,
according to Indian etiquette, was the casting down
of a wampum war-belt with verbal assurances and in
symbolic intent that the British would live and die
with their brethren the Iroquois. When this was
done, a war-whoop was raised that must have been
heard in every cabin and iron-monogramed brick-
house in the colony and manor.
On that very day, as was soon afterward learned,
the French were at Fort Massachusetts,'' which had
been buUt by Col. Ephraim WiUiams. It stood in
the meadows east of Williamstown, under the shadow
of old Greylock, beyond the present town of North
Adams. After two days' siege the brave garrison sur
rendered and were led away to Canada. The French
1 I visited the site of Fort Massachusetts, March 12, 1891.
Though long ago levelled by the plough, the spot has been
marked by Prof. Arthur Latham Perry, of Williams College,
who planted the handsome elm-tree which now flourishes there.
The sword, watch, and many other interesting relics of Colonel
Williams, moulded or rusted, from Fort Massachusetts, from
the battle-grounds of Lake George, Bloody Pond, and other
places famous in colonial warfare, are carefully preserved in the
college cabinet. A monument with the names of the garrison
should mark the site of Fort Massachusetts. 6

82 SIK WILLIAM JOHNSON
lost forty-seven men. The fort was afterward, in
1747, rebuUt, and was the scene of more than one
attack by the enemy.
The council-fire was then raked up, so that the
braves might have time to sleep, smoke, and delib
erate for reply. When the council re-opened on the
24th, the governor was present, and the first orator at
the rekindled fire was an Onondaga chief. After the
usual efflorescence of forest rhetoric, he promised in
the name of the Seven Nations — a small army of
eight hundred braves from Detroit and the Lake
country, the Missesagues, having temporarily joined
the confederates for the common purpose — to dig
up the hatchet against the French and their allies.
They further agreed to roast alive any French priest
who came among them. The next day was devoted
to distributing the presents sent from the king and
the governors of Virginia and Massachusetts ; the new
tribe, Missesagues, receiving one fourth. On the 26th
the kettle was hung over the 'fire, and a great war-
dance held, in which, after unusual smearings of paint,
the weird, wUd, and guttural, but pathetic songs were
sung. After a few private interviews with the chiefs,
and fiirther tickling of their palms with presents and
their stomachs with fire-water, the councU-fire was put
out by separation and scattering. Part of the Valley
Indians remained in Albany, in token of their loyalty
to the EngUsh, whUe most of them returned to their
castles to organize war-parties. Unfortunately an
epidemic of the small-pox broke out at this time all
along the VaUey, carrying off hundreds of the In-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 83
dians, among whom were the two delegates from the
Missesagues. Other councUs were held with lesser bodies of In
dians ; and Johnson, despite the raging of the small
pox among the VaUey Indians, endeavoured to keep
the savages on the war-path toward Canada ; but little
was accomplished -during the summer. While the
coming French fleet was destroyed by storm, Johnson
increased his fortune by being appointed government
contractor for Oswego, and his fame by being com
missioned by Clinton as Colonel of mUitia. The only
campaign in 1747 was one of paper and ink, Shirley
and Clinton being the chief combatants. There were
also raids and fights on the New England borders, but
little took place that needs to be chronicled here.
Clinton and De Lancey kept up their quarrels ; the
former warning Johnson of his Ulustrious relative,
venting his wrath on the Dutch legislators, and taking
high-handed vengeance on Judge Daniel Horsmanden.
This champion of the Assembly and people, and one
of the ablest jurists in the province, was most obnox
ious, politically, to the king's representatives. He was
also personally offensive as being the co-worker with
Chief-Justice De Lancey.
On the 1 2th of September Horsmanden was sus
pended from service as a member of the councU.
The fact was published in the journal ; but no reason
was given for this, except that the governor an
nounced that he would explain his action to the king.
Horsmanden was also removed from his other posi
tions, — as commissioner to meet the representatives

_ 84 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
of the other colonies, and as judge and recorder of
the city. This act of the governor's stUl further
irritated the " stubborn Dutchman," whose hostility
now turned into a war to the knife. Even though
savages were ravaging the suburbs of New York, it is
doubtful whether they would have been turned from
their determination to fight absolutism, in the person
of Clinton. When the governor announced the re
turn of Johnson from his fruitless search after the
enemy at Crown Point, the temper of the Assembly
was not improved. They were tired of having the
praises of Johnson sounded in their ears. They still
refused, in the face of Johnson's contract, whUe still
in force, to furnish extra guards for the fulfilment of
his stipulation in provisioning Oswego. They also
adhered to their determination not to yield to the
governor's demands, so long as he thwarted their
purposes. In affirming their former resolutions, they,
nevertheless, offered to indemnify Johnson if through
accident he became a loser by fulfiUing his contract.
MeanwhUe, the governor held counsel with the
New England commissioners, and despite the remon
strances of the members, bluffed off his little Par
liament until October 5. The frontier was stiU
exposed. It was hard to get volunteers for Oswego,
largely owing to the abominable drunkenness of the
officers there, and the lack of good discipline. Two
companies from Colonel Schuyler's regiment were
therefore drafted for the purpose. It being practi
cally impossible to maintain the weak force at Saratoga,
this post, which had been named Fort CUnton, was

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 85
burned by order, and the ordnance and stores removed
to Albany. In this unpleasant state of affairs Colonel
Johnson was summoned to New York, and on October
9 was examined by the committee of the Executive
Council. He exposed the grave state of affairs, in
that the Indians had been kept from hunting for a
whole year, and were now destitute. Unless some
thing were speedily done, he felt he must abandon
Mount Johnson and his interests in the Mohawk Val
ley. He even imagined that his leaving would be the
general signal for an exodus of aU the white people
from the Mohawk basin. He recommended the erec
tion of forts both in the Seneca and the Oneida dis
tricts. He beUeved that these measures, with plenty
of presents, and the ferreting out of the miscel
laneous ramseUers who debauched the Indians, would
make safe the northern frontier and save the colony.
Clinton's message to the Assembly, October 6,
was presented with high praises of Johnson, a vindi
cation of himself, and an exhortation to act promptly
and liberally, as the Iroquois sachems were waiting
with Johnson in the city to see what would be done
in their behalf. The conquest of Crown Point was
still in view ; and men, money, and supplies were asked
for. It was intimated that the Crown, (the mother
country) had already done its fuU part, and that the
colonies should now do theirs.
StiU the Assemblymen, who thought the Indians
ought to have been aUowed to go on their hunting,
ought to have been kept friendly, but not stirred up
to fight the French or be sent to Canada, and ought

86 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
to have stayed in New York to guard their own old
men and squaws instead of having white men drafted
to do it, distrusted the servant of the king and the
tool of Colden, and doubted the fitness of the gover
nor's appointees to office. They questioned the wis
dom of the governor's general policy ; and they inti
mated, with only too good reason, that the money
so freely distributed for the Indians was not properly
and publicly accounted for. They voted promptly
aU that was necessary for the expedition against
Canada. They fully realized the necessity of hold
ing firm the loyalty of the Six Nations; and to
keep it, they offered at once to vote the sum of
eight hundred pounds, provided the persons chosen
to distribute the people's money were suclras they
approved of. In regard to the forts on the distant
frontier, so near Canada, they considered that the
other colonies should share the expense of perma
nently guarding the king's dominions.
In answer to these defiant resolutions, which practi
caUy impeached the governor, Clinton sent a curt and
insulting note of less than one hundred words. The
Dutchman's ire now blazed fiercely. After the signi
ficant ceremony of locking the door and laying the
key on the table, they proceeded to issue a manifesto,
marshaUing in review the whole proceedings since
June 6, 1746. They censured him for removing the
former commissioners of Indian affairs, and for practi
cally making Dr. Colden the real administrator of
affairs in the cabinet, and Colonel Johnson in the
field. They sneered at the pretensions and vanity of

AND. THE SIX NATIONS. 87
the governor in his constant boasting of what he
claimed to have done. They charged him with treat
ing the people of the colony with contempt, and with
insulting them by vUe epithets. They complained of
the many brief and inconvenient adjournments to
which he had needlessly subjected them. Especially
were they enraged in their feelings at the deference
paid, at their expense, to the commissioners from Mas
sachusetts and Connecticut. They claimed that they
ought to have been kept in session, in order that they
might have been advised with, and their opinions con
sulted from time to time as to the matters under
consideration. In this last point, especially, the Dutch blood was
roused ; for although in monarchical England the power
of making treaties is vested in the sovereign, yet in the
Dutch Republic, then a living reality before their eyes,
the States-General, hke the United States Senate,
shared with the Stadtholder or President the right of
treaty-making, and had the power of veto upon all
compacts. Even in Great Britain, the exercise of the
treaty-making power by the king was subject to parlia
mentary censure, and ministers negotiating a disad
vantageous treaty were Uable to impeachment. This
right had been several times exercised in the sixteenth
and even in the fifteenth century.
The address wound up by this declaration : " No
treatment your Excellency can use toward us, no in
conveniences how great soever that we may suffer in
our own persons, shall ever prevail upon us to aban
don, or deter us from steadily preserving the interest
of our country."

88 SIR WILLI4M JOHNSON
A committee waited upon the governor on the 9th
of October, to present the address ; but the angry
executive would not hear it, nor receive a copy, and
three days later repUed with aU the artillery of rheto
ric and abuse which he and his secretary were able to
load into the document. It was as full of vitupera
tion as a carronade of latef day was of langrage shot.
Ak to their complaint that the money intended for In
dian presents was not honestly distributed, he charged
the House with telUng " as bold a falsehood as ever
came from a body of men." He was in no way ac
countable to the Assembly for the manner in which
he distributed the money of the Crown. He charged
them with violating both the civil and military pre
rogatives of the king. "Nor wiU I," he said, "give
up the least branch of i-t [the military prerogative]
on any consideration, however desirous you may be
to have it, or to bear the whole command." He
also asserted, with some attempt at humour, that their
farce of locking the door and placing the key upon
the table — a symbolic act charging breach of privi
lege upon the executive — was a high insult to King
George's authority, and in so far, an act of disloyalty.
He charged that they were assuming the rights and
privUeges of the House of Commons, and renouncing
their subjection to the Crown and Parliament. He
had his Majesty's express command not to suffer
them to bring some matters into the House, nor to
debate upon them ; and he intimated that he had
a right to stop proceedings when they seemed to
him improper or disorderly. After a tirade upon

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 89
their insolence and unbecoming conduct, his perora
tion was a warning not to infringe upon the royal
prerogative. Safety-valves having thus been opened through
the ink-bottles, the war of words ceased, and both
governor and legislators proceeded to dUigence in
business. In expectation that Massachusetts and
Connecticut would bear their quota of expense, the
governor was requested, October 15, to carry out
his plan of sending gunsmiths and other mechanics
to live among and assist the tribes of the Confeder
acy westward of the Mohawks. Four days after,
however, news came from England ordering the dis
banding of aU the levies for the expedition to Can
ada. This was disheartening alike to the governors
and the people of the colonies ; but some compromise
measures were amicably agreed upon between Clinton
and the Assembly.
Peace, in New York City at least, seemed almost
at hand, when Clinton again attempted folly in trying
to muzzle the press. The Assembly had ordered
Parker, the public printer, to publish the address and
remonstrance of the Assembly, in which they asserted
the rights of the people. The governor commanded
him to desist. Parker stood by the people and their
Assembly, as against the king and his foolish gov
ernor. After Cosby's ignominious failure to restrain
the liberty of the press by imprisoning Zenger, this
act of Clinton's seemed like that of a madman or a
man who had no memory. The Assembly ordered
Parker to print their manifests, and to furnish each

90 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
member with two copies, " that their constituents
might know it was their firm resolution to preserve
the liberty of the press."
In a word, all this wrangle between colonial gov
ernor and Assembly was really the cause of popular
liberty against monarchy, of ordered freedom under
law against despotism. It was part of the chequered
story of liberty, in which the people of New York
were in no whit behind those of any of the colonies,
but rather led them. Clinton, by his blunders, and
Colden, by his toryism, helped grandly forward the
American revolution, while the names of Parker and
Zenger belong with those of the promoters of order
and freedom. When on the 25th day of November,
1747, — significant date, for on that day, only thirty-
seven years later. King George's troops and mercena
ries evacuated that very city of New York, in which
Clinton had Ulustrated the folly of monarchy, — after
addressing, or rather berating, the people's represen
tatives, he concluded his address with the significant
"words : —
" Your continued grasping for power, with an evi
dent tendency to the weakening of the dependency
of the province on Great Britain, accor^anied by such
notorious and pubhc disrespect to the character of
your governor, and contempt of the king's authority
intrastcd with him, cannot longer be hid from your su
periors, but must come under their observation, and is
of most dangerous example to your neighbours."
It was, indeed, true that New York was setting
what was in the eyes of the Tories a most dangerous

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 91
example to her neighbours. Most of the people of
this colony were descendants of those who had come
from the Dutch Republic, where the taxation without
consent had been resisted for centuries, and where
resistance to monarchy and feudal ideas had been ex
alted into a principle. It was this determined spirit,
reinforced by the lovers of liberty, whether of Hugue
not, Irish, Scottish, or Welsh blood, or men from the
mother country who believed that the rights of Eng
lishmen were stjU theirs, that made New York lead all
the thirteen original colonies in outgrowing the colo
nial spirit. New Yorkers first took the steps which
must logically and actually lead to separation from
the transatlantic country, whose language was indeed
spoken in America, but by colonists who had con
tinued the institutions not of monarchical England,
but of republican Holland.

92 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON

CHAPTER VI.
A TYPICAL FRONTIER FIGHT WITH INDIANS.
To reorganize the demoralized mUitia of the north
ern counties. Governor Clinton in November offered
the command of the entire frontier to Johnson, who
after due consideration accepted. Besides having the
confidence of the people, among whom he was per
sonally popular, Johnson, being backed by the Exe
cutive Council, was able to do the work expected of
him, and bring about much needed reform, especially
in improving the quality of the officers and the gen
eral discipline. The able-bodied men of the Mohawk
VaUey, mostly Dutch and German, with a few English,
IrisK, and Scots, were organized into nine companies
of militia. Each village or settlement had its com
pany of one hundred men, the most westward being
at German Flats. Schenectady had two companies,
and at Albany there were several ; whUe all the farm
ers living in the open country, between forts or pali
saded villages, were likewise enrolled.
Johnson's wealth' as farmer, fur-trader, army-con
tractor, and salaried officer was now steadily increasing.
Even the victualling of Oswego ceased to be a losing
enterprise, since the Assembly, in February, 1748,
voted two hundred pounds to reimburse him for the

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 93
extraordinary charges to which he had been put. The
same Assembly, however, voted one hundred and fifty
pounds to Mr. Horsmanden, whom Chnton had arbi-
trarUy deposed from the Council, and also appointed
an agent to reside in London to represent them and
act with them and for the people against the governor.
In this the Dutch legislators were following a prece
dent which their fathers had estabhshed, in having
agents to represent them to the States-General in
HoUand, and which they continued under EngUsh
rule, when they sent Peter Stuyvesant to the Court of
King Charles II. in 1667.
The expedition to Canada being wholly given up, it
was necessary to conciliate the Indians with presents.
In April, Johnson set out to Onondaga, the central
council-fire of the Iroquois Confederacy, to meet the
delegates of all the tribes, in order to ascertain their
temper and invite them to a great council at Albany.
His other purposes in going were to circumvAit the
schemes of Joncaire the French Jesuit, and talk the
Indians into giving their permission ts have forts
erected in their country. As usual, he was not too
squeamish in the use of means to accomplish his pur
pose. He wrote from Albany, April 9, 1748, to
Captain Catherwood : " I shall leave no stone unturned
to accomplish what I go at, either by fair or foul
means ; for if they are obstinate — I mean the Onon
dagas — I shall certainlyx talk very harsh with them,
and try what that will do."
Leaving Mount Johnson with a guard of fifty men,
with Captain Thomas Butler and Lieutenant Laurie as

94 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
officers, he set off, in bateaiix heavUy laden with pres
ents and provisions, up the Mohawk. To move these
loaded boats against the current, by punting, pushing,
puUing, sailing, or floating their way along, was slow
work, but was safely accomplished. Some of the In
dians had come with pleasant remembrances of the
courtesy of Mount Johnson. They felt deeply that
sort of gratitude which has been defined as a " Uvely
sense of favours to come." Having arrived some
days before, and waited with attenuated rations, they
were ravenous when Johnson and his stores arrived
on April 24. After a salute of fire-arms and the
unfurling of a British flag, three bark houses were
assigned to the company, whUe Johnson was escorted
to a large new lodge in which the mats were fresh 'and
clean. That night a feast was given to the Indians
out of the stores brought, all business being deferred
untU next day.
With all formality of pipes and tobacco, splendour
of Indian and civilized costume, the councU opened
next morning. It was a contest of tongues, and one
garrulous Irishman was here to enter the lists and
to pit himself, with seemingly interminable proUxity
of speech and the fixed ammunition of Indian rhetoric,
against a host of tireless tongues. With plenty of talk
to fill their ears and abundance of good things to
tickle their stomachs, Johnson succeeded in strength
ening the covenant of Corlaer ; and the issue of the
council was, on the whole, all that, even to Johnson,
could be expected. In reporting results, Johnson sug
gested to the governor that proper regulation of the

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 95
sale of rum among the Indians was the first thing to
be considered.
CUnton, while happy in knowing that the Iroquois
would come to the Albany council, was brooding over
the tendency everywhere manifest in the colonies to
assert their independence. Johnson's fuU report of
the tongue-victory at the Onondaga council was laid
before the Assembly, June 21. The governor added,
that to hold the Indians loyal to the English it woulcl
be necessary to prosecute the expedition against Crown
Point, and at once make arrangements for exchange
of prisoners. In this latter suggestion, and with that
recommending a severe enactment against rumsellers,
the Assembly at once concurred. A few days after
came news of the treaty of peace at Aix-la-Chapelle.
Johnson, by unremitting exertion, had succeeded in
securing the largest attendance of Indians that had
ever assembled in Albany. They came from all the
tribes of the Confederacy and from the lake region
westward, besides remnants of New England and Hud
son River Indians. Many of these Indians had never
seen a civilized town, and greatly enjoyed the regular
meals and other comforts of civilization, while inter
ested in studying houses with chimneys, carpets, glass
windows, and other things- unknown to forest life.
Great preparations had been made to receive them
and to keep them in the best of humour. What with
the clerks, quartermasters, interpreters, and others of
the official class, the mUitia and the citizens, the farm
ing folk who had flocked into the city to see the
sights, in addition to villagers from the region around.

96 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Albany had never before beheld so large a population,
nor shown such picturesque activity in her streets. In
the oldest city in any of the colonies north of the
municipality on Manhattan Island, these few days in
the month of July were long remembered.
The eighteenth day of July had come ; and aU the
Indians expected, hundreds in number, had already
arrived, and were beginning to think " Brother Cor
laer " was as dilatory as his war operations had all along
been. Governor Shirley and the Massachusetts com
missioners, however, had come ; and all lay down at
night expecting the great palaver would be but a day
or two off. But before Clinton was to arrive, they
were to learn how near the enemy was even at that
moment. In the evening exciting news was brought them
from Schenectady. A batde had been fought between
a party of Canadian Indians and the miUtia and vU-
lagers just beyond Schenectady, in which twenty whites,
had been killed and a number taken prisoners. The
drums at once beat to quarters, and Captain Chew with
one hundred militiamen and two hundred of the In
dians, told off from those in convention, marched at
once in pursuit. The Indians from Albany expected
to head off the raiders, -and hence went along the
usual trails to Canada ; but this time the Canada
savages had retreated along the Sacandaga road and
creek, " by a different road from what they used
to go," as Onnasdego, an Onondaga sachem, said to
Clinton in his oration a few days afterward. John
son remained in Albany attending to his horde of

AND THE SIX NATIONS 97
guests ; whUe Captain Chew and his band made vain
pursuit. On the 2 2d, the day of the opening of the
council, he received a letter from Albert Van Slyck,
dated " Schonaictaiday, July 2 ist, 1 749," giving a brief
detail of the bloody affray. Van Slyck was an honest
Dutch farmer, whose defective powers in English com
position were in contrast with his courage ; and his
Dutch-EngUsh account is difficult to make certain
sense of, especially in its blotted, time-stained, and
torn condition in the Johnson manuscripts at Albany ;
but, except some entries in the family Bibles of peo
ple in or near the town, this is the only known con
temporaneous writing by one who was in the fight.
It is not mentioned even in Parkman's " Montcalm and
Wolfe," nor in the colonial or more recent histories, ex
cept Drake's, though sometimes referred to inaccurately.
Further, it was difficult, uiitU 1752, for an intelligent
Hollander or American of Holland descent, whose an
cestors since 1581 had adopted the calendar of Chris
tendom to keep the run of English chronology, which
was eleven days behind the rest of the world. For
over a century and a half, England was very much in
the condition of Russia of the present day, as com
pared with the rest of Europe. The English used
" the old style," or the calendar of JuUus Caesar, while
the continental nations made use of the modern or
Gregorian calendar. It may be that this explains
why Van Slyck dated his letter one year ahead, 1 749,
instead of 1 748.
Van Slyck's letter describes an event which for a
generation formed a leading topic at the evening fire-
7

98 • SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
sides of the people of Schenectady, and of many in
Connecticut. The tremendous loss in men, chiefly
heads of famiUes, that feU upon this frontier town is
almost unknown to history ; yet the fight at Beechdale
was one of the most stubbornly contested little battles
of the Old French War. Instead of being " an au
tumnal foray" upon a party of woodmen, it was a
stand-up, hand-to-hand fight by the Schenectady men
against savages who were consummate ambuscaders,
and weU versed in aU the arts of woodcraft and the
tricks most likely to confound raw miUtiamen.
The battle-field lies on the Toll Farm, three mUes
west of Schenectady, and is visible from the car-win
dows to the right of a train on the New York Central
Railroad going westward. A company of Schenectady
men were at Maalwyck, a place not far from the town,
on the north side of the river. Messrs. Dirk Van
Voast and Daniel Toll, with Toll's negro slave, Ryck-
ert, left their comrades to find their horses which had
strayed off. A few minutes after they had left, firing
was heard in the direction in which they had gone, by
the Van Slyck brothers, Adrian and Albert, one of
whom was afterward in the fight and wrote the mea
gre account which is now among the Johnson papers.
They at once sent a messenger, their negro slave, to
Schenectady to give the alarm, which was doubtless
sounded out from the belfry of the strong fortress-
church by the Widow Margarita Veeder, the klok-
luyer or beU-ringer at that time. The summons
came first before noon. The negro delivered his
message, bidding the men go out to Abraham De

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 99
Graaf s house at Beukendal, where Van Slyck would
meet them.
At this time there was a company of New England
militia in the town under the command of Captain
Stoddard, who was then absent, his place being fiUed
by Lieut. John Darling. The militiamen were from
Connecticut, and were raw levies unused to Indian
warfare. . They started off accompanied by five or six
young men and Daniel Van Slyck, another brother of
the writer. The party numbered about seventy men
in aU. Another company of armed men, whose num
ber is not stated, left for the scene of conflict a few
minutes later, to see if they could find or see Daniel
ToU. Toll and Van Voast, after leaving the Van Slycks at
Maalwyck, had reached a place two miles away, near
the house of De Graaf, and called in Dutch, Poopen-
daal, or later, Beukendal or Beech Dale. Within or
beyond the dale, was a weU-known place on hard
clayey soil, fuU of deer-licks at which the deer used to
come to lick the salt. ' At this kleykuil, or clay-pit, the
two men imagined they heard, about ten o'clock, the
sound of horses' hoofs stamping on the hard ground,
but with a regularity that seemed very suspicious.
Approaching warily nearer, they discovered that the
noise came from a party of Indians playing quoits.
Almost as soon as the two white men came in sight,
they were fired on by the savages, who had seen their
coming. Toll was instantly killed, and Van Voast
was wounded and made prisoner. The black man,
Ryckert, fled toward Schenectady.

100 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
The wily savages now prepared to ambuscade the
party which they knew would soon appear from Sche
nectady. For this purpose they laid a sensational trap
in a field, somewhat off from the path and in a defile
near the creek, which was surrounded with forest and
bush. Taking the dead body of Mr. Toll, they set it
up against a fence and tied a live crow in front of the
corpse. This curious sight of a wild crow flying up
and down before an apparently living man they knew
would at once excite the attention, especially of the
impulsive and unwary young men who, as they sup
posed, would be the first on the field. The sequel
proves they were not disappointed.
Lieutenant Darling and his Connecticut men
marched out, cautiously searching for the enemy, but
seeing no trace of any. At Mr. Simon Groot's unoc
cupied house they found Adrian Van Slyck, who with a
few men had arrived and learned from the negro boy
Ryckert, that his master, Mr. ToU, had been shot.
Though nearly paralyzed with fear, he offered to
point out the place where he fell. The negro was
furnished with a horse, and acted as pilot to the ad
vance party of about forty men. Soon after they
had gone, Ackes Van Slyck arrived and remained
with his men near the lipuse.
Pretty soon the strange phenomenon of a crow play
ing near a man arrested their attention, and they at
once marched into the trap to see the curious sight.
Very soon they discovered that the man was a corpse,
and the crow was tied to it with a string. At this mo
ment when nearly aU were in the defile along the creek.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. lOI
and off their guard, the crash of the enemy's guns
enlightened them as to the situation. They found
themselves in a ravine or hollow curved like a horse
shoe, and nearly surrounded on both sides by woods,
from which puffs of white smoke and flashes of fire
were issuing from unseen enemies. Eight or ten of
the whites were at once stretched dead on the clay
ground, and then the yelling savages leaped out of
cover with knife and hatchet.
The militiamen soon broke and ran, but the Sche
nectady men bravely stood their ground. It took a
moment to deliver their fire, and then with musket
clubbed or thro-wn aside, the fighting became, for a
few minutes, a series of desperate encounters between
white and red man, in which it happened more than
once that both buried their knives in each other.
After the battle the bodies of Glen, De Graaf, and
other noted Indian fighters were found alongside their
dead enemies with whom they had wrested in deadly
stmggle. In this hand-to-hand fight twelve of the
party of whites were kiUed, and five made prisoners ;
Lieutenant Darling's company losing seven men, who
were shot dead, and six missing.
Adrian Van Slyck and a company of New York
militiamen now reached the scene, where the little
band of whites were found behind trees and stijmps
holding the enemy at bay ; Lieutenant Darling having
been killed at the first fire, Ackes Van Slyck was di
recting the fight. No sooner had the New York
reinforcements got into the line of Indian fire, than
they all fled in the most cowardly manner. Adrian

I02 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Van Slyck and the two or three Schenectady men
who stood by him in this part of the field were shot
down. The rest of the original party of whites now retreated
out through the western entrance of the vale, and
joined by Albert Van Slyck and a few men from
the village, reached the house of Abraham De Graaf
near by. This substantial edifice — still standing, but
used as a dried-apple bleacher when the writer visited
it — was not then occupied, but was new and strong,
and stood on commanding ground. The fact of its
being empty shows the condition of affairs ; the peo
ple who lived in isolated farm-houses being at this
time gathered almost wholly in palisaded vUlages or
other fortified places.
Hastily entering, they barred the door, and reach
ing the second story, tore off aU the boards near the
floor and eaves, and prepared for a Stubborn de
fence. With their keen marksmanship they kept the
enemy at bay, completely baffling the savages, who
peppered the house in vain. WhUe this siege was
going on, the two Indian lads left in charge of Dirk
Van Voast, eager to see the fight, tied their prisoner
to a tree, and climbing up the slope of the ravine,
became absorbed in the firing. Van Voast succeeded
in reaching his knife, cut the thongs binding him,
and ran off to Schenectady, meeting another squad of
armed men from the viUage hastening to the scene.
These were led by Jacob Glen, and Albert Van Slyck,
the writer describing the event.
Van Slyck had hoped to gather enough men to get

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 103
out and surround the Indians so as to capture the
whole band ; but Garret Van Antwerp, fearing lest the
town would be left without a garrison in case of attack,
would suffer no more to leave the palisades. How
ever, this last reinforcement reached the battle-ground
in time to drive off the savages, who were fighting the
previously sent party from behind trees, and to save
the bodies of Adrian Van Slyck and the dead men
near him from being scalped and stripped. Seeing
this last party approaching, the savages drew off, re
treating up the Sacandaga road. All the whites, in
cluding the last comers, the scattered out-door fighters
behind trees, and the little garrison in the house, now
united. They proceeded at once to count up their
loss, and to gather up the dead men and load them on
wagons for burial in Schenectady.
What the loss of the Indians was in this battle, as
in most others, the white men were never able to find
out. Except at the scene of the first firing and am
buscade, Indian corpses were not visible. The first
purpose ofthe redskins, as soon as the opening fury
of battle slackened, was to conceal their loss. To run
out from cover, even in the face of the fire, and draw
away the corpses of their friends, was their usual habit,
and to this they were thoroughly trained. Exposure
in such work was more cheerfully borne than in regu
lar combat, though usually the dead body was reached
by cautious approach, and with as much conceal
ment as possible in the undergrowth. A noose at
the end of a rope was skilfully thrown over the head
of the corpse, and the end of the rope carried back

104 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
into cover. As skUfully as a band of medical stu
dents or resurrectionists can put a hook under the
chin of a corpse and hoist it up from under the
coffin-lid half sawed off, tbe savages in ambush would
draw the body of their faUen comrade out of sight,
to be quickly concealed or buried. Indian fighters
often told stories of dead men apparently turning
into, snakes and gliding out of sight. Owing to this
habit of the Indians, it was very difficult to arrive
at the exact execution done by the white man's
fire. As most of the Schenectady men were trained
Indian fighters, the loss of the savages was probably
great. This was a sad day for Schenectady. One third
of the white force engaged were dead or wounded.
Twenty corpses — twelve of them Schenectady fathers,
sons, or brothers, and eight Connecticut men — were
laid on the floor of a barn, near the church, which
is still standing. The sorrowing wives, mothers, and
sisters came to identify the scalped and maimed
dear'ones. Thirteen or fourteen men were missing,
while the number of wounded was never accurately
known. In the Green Street burying-ground, east of
the "Old Queen's Fort," the long funeral procession
followed the corpses, while Domine Van Santvoord
committed dust to dust.
Many are the touching traditions of sorrow con
nected with this "Beukendal massacre." So it, in-,
deed, appeared to the people of Schenectady, because
of so many of their prominent men thus suddenly
slain. To them it was in some sense a repetition of

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 1 05
the awful night of Feb. 8, 1690. Yet, instead of'
its being a massacre, it was a stand-up, hand-to-
hand fight in Indian fashion, and a typical border-
batde. In the superb and storied edifice of "The
First Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Schenec
tady, in the county of Albany," — so caUed in the old
charter given by King George IL, and so rich in
the graphic symbols of " the church in the Nether
lands under the Cross," as well as of local history, —
a tablet epitomizing the history of the church in its
five edifices was set in its niche after the two hun
dredth anniversary of the founding of the church, cele
brated June 21, 1880. It is " in pitiful remembrance
of the martyrs who perished in the massacres of Feb
ruary 9th, 1690, and July i8th, 1748." From the
rear church window one may still look, in 1 891, on
the barn on the floor of which the bodies were brought
and laid for identification on the day when the sturdy
Dutch-American Albert Van Slyck signed his letter
to " Coll. WUliam Johnson at Albany," " your Sorrow-
full and RevengfuU friend on those Barbarous Enemys,
and am at all Times on your Command."
CUnton, accompanied by his sateUite, Dr. Colden,
and some Other members of his council, arrived in
Albany, July 20. The next day, after those neces
sary ceremonies to which the Indians are as great
bond-slaves as their civUized brethren, the council
fairly opened. A great palaver ensued, and talk flowed
unceasingly for hour after hour, until many ears
needed rest even more than the few busy tongues.
The governor wound up his long address by refer-

Io6 S/R WILLIAM JOHNSON
ring to the battle of Beukendal, so recent and so
near by.
After three days of smoke and thought, a wordy
warrior from Onondaga replied for the Confederacy
in prolix detail. The day was closed with a dance
by the young braves, and the king's health was drank
in five barrels of beer.
On the foUowing day the River Indians spoke,
expressing gratitude for favours past, and asserting
that if they had been present when news of the Sche
nectady battle reached Albany, they would have
cheerfully joined in pursuit, even to the gate of Crown
Point. By this time it was no longer possible to suppress
the news of peace in Europe, and the poor savages
who had been goaded into digging up the hatchet and
neglecting their hunting, and who were thirsting for
revenge, were now left in the lurch, and told to go
quietly home. Nevertheless, most, of the colonists
were satisfied with the result of the council, and John
son's popularity increased. The Iroquois were pleased
when they found that both Shirley and Clinton were
about to send back all the French prisoners to Can
ada, and to ask for the return of both the white, red,
and black captives, who had been carried away from
their homes south of the St. Lawrence.
Lieutenant Stoddard and Captain Anthony Van
Schaick went to Canada, and into the Indian country ;
but their success was not gratifying. Only twenty-
four prisoners accompanied Lieutenant Stoddard
when he left Canada, June 28, 1750. The white boys

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 1 07
and girls who had nearly or wholly forgotten their
old home and kin, and had been adopted into the
tribes, declined, or were forced to decline, going
back. Occasionally white women had abjured their
religion, and in other cases the red squaws threat
ened' sure death to the adopted captives should they
try to return, even at the French governor's orders.
With the Indians, however, exchange was more easy,
though the savages were unable to understand the de
lays of diplomacy between Clinton and GalUssonifere ;
and to pacify them, Johnson was often at his wits'
end. However, by his personal influence, by visits of
condolence, by social participation in their games and
feasts, by persistent patience, public eloquence, pri
vate persuasion, and the frequent use of money and
other material gifts, he won fresh laurels of success.
In spite of the diplomacy of La Gallissonifere, the
ceaselessly active Jesuit priests, French cunning and
strategy on the one hand, and English and Dutch
weakness and viUany on the other, he held the whole
Iroquois Confederacy loyal to the British Crown. The
greatness of Johnson is nobly shown in thus foUing
"the French and aU their resources.
This year, amid manifold commercial, military, and
domestic cares, he entertained the famous Swedish
botanist, naturalist, and traveller, Peter Kalm, with
whose name the evergreen plant Kalmia is associated.
He had come at the suggestion of Linnaeus to inves
tigate the botany and natural history of North Amer
ica. He arrived at Fort Johnson with a letter from
Dr. Colden, who was as fond of physical science as he

loS SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
was of his Toryism. After dispensing courtly hospi
tality, Johnson furnished him with a guide to Oswego
and Niagara, and a letter to the commandant at the
former place. Kalm's "Voyage to North America "
was translated and published in London in 1777, and
the map accompanying it is of great interest. After
him was named that family of evergreens in which is
found the American laurel, Kalmia latifolia, which has
been proposed as the national flower of the United
States.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 109

CHAPTER VII.
AT THE ANCIENT PLACE OF TREATIES.
The Old French War, or the War of the Austrian
Succession, was foolishly begun in Germany, and fool
ishly ended in Europe, Asia, and America. The peace
which came without honour settled nothing as re
garded the questions at issue in America. In re
ality this treaty guaranteed another American war.
Louisburg was again handed over to the French in
exchange for Madras. All prisoners in the three con
tinents were to be released without ransom, and a
return of all conquered territory and property was
agreed to. The balance of power now rested level
on its fulcrum, ready for some fly's weight to tilt it
and cause the scale-pans to bounce.
In what part of the world first ? With unspeakable
disgust the raw troops and scarred veterans, and the
people generally of the colonies, received the news.
Not a few thought it was time to think of not only
fighting their own battles, but of making their own
treaties. The continental or American spirit, already
a spark, was fanned almost to a flame.
MeanwhUe, in home politics. New York was stead
ily advancing in the pathway that was to merge
into the highway of national independence. To a

no SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
New England writer, accustomed to the unbridled
laudation of his own State and ancestiy as those who
led the Teutonic-American colonies in the straggle
for liberty, the doings in the New York Assembly may
seem " teapot-tempest poUtics." To those less preju
diced, it is a noble chapter in the story of freedom,
when they see an ultra-Tory British governor fast rele
gated to a position of impotence, though backed by
the able Tory, Cadwallader Colden, whUe the people's
wiU is manifested in persistent Hmitation of the royal
prerogative. This was the state of affairs in May, 1750, when,
on the death of Philip Livingston, Col. William
Johnson was appointed to a seat in the governor's Ex
ecutive CouncU. The Livingstones were sturdy men
of Scottish descent, descended from a Presbyterian
minister who had been banished for non-conformity.
Like so many of the founders of America, the Pilgrim
Fathers and most of the chief settlers of Connecticut,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
the Carolinas, and Georgia, he reinforced his demo
cratic ideas by some years' residence in the Dutch
Republic, living gladly under the red, white, and blue
flag of the United States of HoUand. The Living
stones in America married into famUies of Dutch
descent, and thereby were stiU further imbued with
Republican ideas. Robert and Philip had been secre
taries of Indian affairs, and had thus gained great favour
and influence over the Iroquois. Of their descend
ants, one was a signer of the Declaration of Indepen
dence, and others were officers in the Revolutionary

AND THE SIX NATIONS. in
army, while others are even yet adorning the annals
of freedom, progress, and order.
Clinton was, no doubt, very glad to have, in place
of a Livingstone, one who was so loyaUy devoted to
the Crown, and so good a personal friend as Johnson
near him. Johnson, however, was not sworn in and
seated until 1751.
The state of affairs was growing worse and worse, -
and Chnton the fooUsh had attempted to stay the tide
of democracy by having no Assembly called for two
years. When, however, it met on Sept. 4, 1750,
Johnson's biUs for six hundred and eighty-six pounds,
for provisions sent to Oswego, were cheerfully paid;
but the vote was so made that the governor's claims
were, as he thought, invaded. However, for good
reasons, and fearing the loss of trade, he submitted.
Could Johnson's invaluable services have been ac
knowledged without also making recognition of Clin
ton's pretensions, the Assembly would have been more
liberal. The remarks and strictures of the biographer
and eulogist of Johnson about the Dutch traders of
Albany, and " the love of gain so characteristic of that
nation " {sic) seem strange when the same love of
gain was, and is, equally characteristic of Englishman,
Yankee, Scotsman, Huguenot, and Quaker. No one
wiU justify the members of the New York Colonial
Assembly in all their acts, especially those which were
clearly contemptible ; but we cannot see that John
son, Clinton, or the English loved either lucre or
liquor any less than the Albany Dutchmen. Indeed,
it was the well-founded suspicion that Clinton was

1 1 2 SIR WILLIAM JOHh'SON
using his office largely to recruit his broken fortunes
that made the representatives resist him at every
point. Johnson, however, finding that the Assembly
and the governor could never be reconciled, and that
his first biU of two thousand pounds would be likely,
under existing circumstances, to remain unpaid, re
signed his office of Superintendent of Indian Affairs.
To his Iroquois friends he announced this step by
sending wampum belts to aU the chief fortified towns
of the Confederacy.
Neither war nor peace had settled the question of
the boundary lines between the French and EngUsh
possessions in America. The French claimed the
Ohio and Mississippi Valleys by right of prior discov
ery by La Salle and others. The English based their
ownership on occupation by the Iroquois or their
vassals, and because the Five Nations were aUies of
Great Britain. Both parties now began anew to oc
cupy the land. The race was westward through the
Ohio VaUey to the Mississippi. The starting-points
were from tidewater Virginia and from Montreal.
Not on parallel lines, but toward the apex of a tri
angle, and straight toward collision, the movement
began. The Ohio Company was formed with a grant
of six hundred thousand acres by the. English Gov
ernment, chiefly to speculators in Virginia. George
Washington was one of the first to be smitten with
the fever of speculation, and to the end of his days
he made investments in the Western lands as eagerly
as many do now in Western farm mortgages.
La GaUissoni&re instructed Celoron de Bienville, one

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 1 13
of the four famous brothers of a remarkable family,
to occupy definitely the Ohio Valley in the name of
Louis XIV., King of France. Like a sower going
forth to sow, BienviUe went in a canoe with a sack
full of leaden plates, depositing one in the soU at the
mouth of every important tributary, so as to publish
to the world that from the source of the Ohio to its
mouth, the country watered by it belonged to France.
Up to 1891 several of these plates have been dug up,
— coming thus to resurrection like faint memories of
vanished dreams.
While thus the lines of empire were once more
drawn between Celt and Teuton, the same masters
again held the key to the situation, — the Iroquois.
To win these over to French aUiance or vassalage, all
the arts of peace were now to be employed by the
ablest inteUects employing the strongest forces of re
ligion, education, diplomacy, cunning, and material
gifts. France with her compact mihtary and religious
system in America was a unity. Soldier, priest, and
semi-feudal tenant were parts of one machine moved
by one head. With the unity of a phalanx and the
constrictive power of a dragon, she expected to crash
to atoms, or at least coop up between mountains and
sea, the English colonies. The heterogeneous coUec-
tion of people from north continental and insular
Europe, of many languages and forms of reUgion,
dwelling between the Merrimac and the Everglades,
were held together only by the one tie of allegiance
to the British Crown.
Francis Picquet, priest, soldier, and statesman, saw

114 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
the necessity of securing the loyalty of the Six Na
tions; and receiving the French Governor's assent,
estabUshed himself at La Presentation, on the St.
Lawrence River, between Oswego and Montreal, a
fort and a chapel. Ostensibly his mission was the
conversion of the Iroquois. No more strategic point
could have been selected. Whether for peace, war,
trade, voyaging, or education and general influence,
the site was supremely appropriate. When Johnson
heard of the man called, according to which side of
the border his name was spoken, " Apostle of the Iro
quois" or "Jesuit of the West," he was alarmed,. es
pecially when he learned that this lively hornet, Jon
caire, was busy in fomenting trouble among the tribes -
in the vaUeys of the Ohio and Mississippi. Before
long, this Jean Cceur had succeeded in reviving be
tween the Iroquois and western tribes and the Cataw-
bas an old feud. Very soon Clinton received word
from Gov. James Glenn, of South Carolina, that the
Senecas were on the war-path and murdering the
Catawbas. In this action the Senecas were repeat
ing one of the numerous southern raids to which their
grandfathers had been addicted, and one of which
Col. John Washington, ancestor of George, assisted
to repel. At Johnson's suggestion, Clinton now in
vited all the tribes composing the Confederacy or in
aUiance with the Iroquois to meet at the ancient
place of treaties, — the ground on which now stands
the new Capitol at Albany, — whUe Clinton himself
caUed upon the governors of all the colonies to form
a plan of union for uniting the tribes and resisting

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 115
French aggression. On the 28th of June, 1751, the
tribes met in Albany, again to renew the covenant
first confirmed by Arendt Van Curler. There were
present delegates from Connecticut, Massachusetts,
and South Carolina, and Indians from the Great
Lakes, besides six Catawba chiefs and representa
tives of the Six Nations.
The first point made by the Iroquois was that
Colonel Johnson should be reappointed Superintend
ent of Indian Affairs. They begged leave to try to
influence him by sending a string of wampum to him
at Mount Johnson. They despatched a swift footman
to his house. A man is a finer animal than a horse,
and, in the long ran, swifter and more enduring.
They chose two human soles rather than four horse's
hoofs for their messenger. Johnson met the wampum-
bearer at Schenectady; but when at Albany, despite
the eloquence of Clinton and the Indians, he firmly
declined serving again while his salary depended upon
the Assembly. He now took the oath of office and
his seat in the governor's CouncU. He retained this
dignity while he lived.
The great council formally opened on the 6th of
July, 1 751. Besides the usual eloquence there was
much singing, with ceremonial dances and enjoyment
of that aboriginal custom and product, — the pipe and
tobacco. The sucking and actual whiffing of the cal
umet, the metaphorical burying of the hatchet and
planting of the tree of peace, signified that war was
over between the Southern and Northern Indians.
The confederates living above the not yet made Ma-

Il6 1 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
son's and Dixon's line clasped hands across the bloody
chasm with the Southerners, and peace again reigned
from Pilgrim Land to the Salzburger Germans in
Ogelthorpe's country. The " late unpleasantness " was
past. After the usual drinking of fire-water and dis
tribution of presents, the councU adjourned, and the
Indians went home.
While the Pennsylvania traders were establishing
posts on the Ohio, under British authority, the French
were also busy. Early in September, from a French
deserter, Johnson learned the startUng news that a
great fleet of canoes manned by twelve hundred
Frenchmen and two hundred Adirondack Indians, had
passed Oswego, bound for the Ohio. News also ar
rived by a Cayuga chief that at Cadaracqui a large
French man-of-war was being built for the reduction
of Oswego. This fort was then in command of Lieu
tenant lindsay, founder of the Scottish settlement at
Cherry VaUey.
Johnson was in New York attending to his duties as
a member of the CouncU, when the harassing news
was received. In addition to the anxiety this caused
him, he was selected by Clinton to do what proved to
be a disagreeable task to himself, and in the eyes of
the people's representative a repulsive one. Indeed
it seemed to them to be doing the governor's dirty
work. When the House sent to the Council an act
for paying several demands upon the colony, it pleased
Clinton and the CouncU to demand vouchers, and
Johnson w.as sent to the Assembly to request them.
The offended and angry representatives of the people

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 117
declared that the demand was extraordinary and un
precedented, and declined to consider the request
untU the first of May. The Council, angry in turn,
sent Johnson back with a bill of their own originating,
— in clear violation of right precedent and propriety,
"applying the sum of five hundred pounds for the
management of Indian affairs and for repairing the
garrison at Oswego."
As might be expected, this biU was not allowed even
a second reading, but a motion was at once passed
" that it was the great essential and undoubted right
of the representatives of the people of this colony to
begin aU bUls from raising and disbursing of money,"
and that the biU of the Council should be rejected.
In an address to the governor it was intimated that
the one thousand pounds recently voted for entertain
ing the Indians at the councU at Albany had been used
for other purposes than the public good. After four
days of foolish resistance, the governor, knowing he
was unable to make headway when so clearly in the
wrong, passed all the bills. Then, gratifying a per
sonal spite at the expense of the public, he dissolved
the Assembly.
All this was what those who think the story of
American liberty was fought out chiefly in New Eng
land would call the " teapot-tempest politics of the
New York Assembly." Yet here was the great prin
ciple upon which republican government is founded,
and for which HoUand revolted against Spain, and the
American colonies against England ; " our great exam
ple," as Franklin declared, being the Dutch republic.

ii8 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
The Dutch^had, centuries before, beyond the dikes
of HoUand, developed and fought for the doctrine of
"no taxation without consent; " and Clinton, Colden,
and their coadjutors were clearly in the wrong.
Further, the representatives were right in hinting that
Clinton and his flatterers were too anxious to improve
their own fortimes, and to make the people pay for
their needless junketings enjoyed in the name of pub
lic service. Those who read the local history of the
Hudson and Mohawk Valleys know how burdensome
to the people was the silly and costly pageantry of
royal governors on their travels.
Johnson, probably with his eyes needfully opened,
on reaching his home after the dissolution of the As
sembly, found the outlook for the ultimate occupation
of the mid-continent by the English rather gloomy.
The French held the frontier of New York on its three
strategic lines, — Crown Point, La Presentation, and
Niagara. They were now planning to plant a mission,
which should mean a fort and a church, at Onondaga
Lake, near which had perhaps been — if we so inter
pret the inscription on the Pompey stone — a Spanish
settlement once destroyed by the Senecas. Even if
the stone, inscribed with the symbols and chronology
of Christendom, were that of a captive, it is a mournful
but interesting relic.
When Johnson heard the news, the Jesuits had al
ready succeeded in winning the consent of the chiefs
even at this ancient hearth of the Iroquois Confeder
acy. Such a move must be checkmated at once.
Despite the raw and inclement weather of late autumn.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 119
and his desire for rest and reading, Johnson deter
mined on a journey with its attendant exposure. He
set out at once for Onondaga. Summoning the chief
men, he asked them, as a proof of their many profes
sions 'of friendship, to give and deed to him the land
and water around Onondaga Lake, to the extent of
two mUes in every direction from the shores, for which
he promised a handsome present. Unable to resist
their friend, the sachems signed the deed made out
by Johnson, who handed over money amounting to
three hundred and fifty pounds, and left for home.
Writing to Governor CUnton, he offered the land to the
Government of New York at the price he had paid.
Thus were the designs ofthe French again foiled.
With the country at peace, and himself released
'from the responsibUity of Indian affairs, Johnson be
gan to indulge himself more and more in literary pur
suits, the development of the Mohawk VaUey, the
moral and intellectual improvement of the Indians, and
the social advantage of the white settlers. He had
already a pretty large collection of books from London
in his mansion, but he sent an order, August 20, 1 75 2,
to a London stationer for the " Gentlemen's Maga
zine," the " Monthly Review,!' the latest pamphlets,
and "the newspapers regularly, and stitched up."
He persuaded many of the Mohawks to send their
children to the school at Stockbridge, Mass., founded
by John Sergeant in 1741, and served after his deatij
by America's greatest inteUect, Jonathan Edwards.
His uncle, the admiral, had already given seven hun
dred pounds to the support of this school. Johnson's

I20 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
correspondence was with the Hon. Joseph Dwight,
once Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Repre
sentatives, who had married Mr. Sergeant's widow, and
was deeply interested in Indian education.
In 1753 Rev. Gideon Hawley, who had taught the
children of the Mohawks, Oneidas, and Tuscaroras at
Stockbridge, was sent from Boston to establish a mis
sion school on the Susquehanna River, west of Albany.
Visiting Mount Johnson, the young missionary was re
ceived by the host in person at the gate. He spent a
night enjoying the hospitality, and left with Johnson's
hearty godspeed. Hawley was able to pursue his
work quietly until the breaking out of the war in 1 756.
After serving as chaplain to Col. Richard Gridley's
regiment, he spent from 1757 to 1807, nearly a half-
century of his long and useful life, among the Indians
at Marshpee, Mass.
Johnson was also in warm sympathy with the efforts
of Dr. Eleazar Wheelock, who since 1743, when he
began with Lamson Occum, a Mohegan Indian, had
been steadily instructing Indian youths at Lebanon,
Conn. "Moor's Indian Charity School," as then
caUed, was set upon a good financial basis when in
1776 Occum and Rev. Nathaniel Whitten crossed
the ocean, and in England obtained an endowment of
ten thousand pounds ; WiUiam Legge, Earl of Dart
mouth, being president of the Board of Trastees. At
this school, among the twenty or more Indian boys,
Joseph Brant, sent by Johnson, was educated under
Dr. Wheelock. Later the Wheelock school was trans
ferred to Hanover, N. H., and named after Lord Dart-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. I2i
mouth. On the college seal only, the Indian lads are
StiU seen coming up to this school instead of attend
ing Hampton in Virginia, or Carlisle in Pennsylvania.
However, ancient history and tradition, after long
abeyance, were revived when, in 1887, a fuU-blooded
Sioux Indian, Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman, was
graduated from Dartmouth's classic haUs.
Various other attempts were made by Johnson, es
pecially during the last decade of his life, to interest
the British authorities in Church and State in the
spiritual improvement of the Indians. The evidences
of his good intentions and generous purposes are seen
in his correspondence. Interesting as they are, how
ever, they bore little fruit, owing to the outbreak of
the Revolution which divided both the red and the
white tribes. The baronet built a church for the In
dians at Canajoharie, and supported religious teachers
for a while at his own expense. In 1767, being a
man above his sect, he would have had the Indian
school, which grew into Dartmouth College, removed,
and established in the Mohawk Valley. Sectarian in
fluence and ecclesiastical jealousies at Albany pre
vented his plan from being carried out. The VaUey
was thus without a coUege, untU Union, founded and
endowed almost entirely by the Dutchmen of Sche
nectady, was established in 1786, free from sectarian
control, as its name implies. Under Eliphalet Nott's
presidency of sixty-two years, its fame became na
tional, and within its waUs have been educated some
of the most useful members of the aboriginal race
caUed, by accident, Indians.

122 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Admiral Warren died in Dublin, July 29, 1752,
of fever ; and Johnson received the news shortly be
fore setting out to attend the Executive CouncU in
New York, which met in October.
Fortunately for the Commonwealth, Governor Clin
ton had taken other advice than that so liberally
furnished in the past by the particular member so
obnoxious to the Assembly ; and his opening message
was commendably brief, being merely a salutation,
which was as briefly and courteously returned. Now
that the Tory firebrand was " out of politics " for a
while, peace once more reigned. An era of good
feeling set in, and harmony was the rale untU Clinton's
administration ended. A new Board of Indian Com
missioners was chosen, by a compromise between the
governor and his little parliament. Plans for paying
the colonial debt, for strengthening the frontier, and
for establishing a college were all carried out.
Oswego was the watch-house on the frontier. In
the early spring of 1753 the advance guard of a
French army left Montreal to take possession of the
Ohio VaUey. Descried aUke by Iroquois hunters at
the rapids of the St. Lawrence and by the officers
at Oswego, the news was communicated to Johnson
by foot-ranners with wampum and by horseback-
riders with letters. Thirty canoes with five hundred
Indians under Marin were leading the six thousand
Frenchmen determined to hold the domain from
Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico.
Whether troubled the more by the encroachments
of the warlike French, or by the English land-specu-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 123
lators and enterprising farmers who were now clearing
forests and settling on their old hunting-grounds, the
Indians could scarcely tell. Dissatisfied at having lost
officially their friend Johnson, disliking the commis
sioners, seeing what they considered as their property,
the Ohio, invaded by the French, while the New York
Government seemed to be inert or asleep, they sent
a delegation to lay their complaints before the gov
ernor and Council in New York. There they roundly
abused the whole government, and threatened to break
the covenant chain. As matter of fact, the trouble
concerning land patents arose out of transactions set
tled before Clinton's time, which could not at once be
remedied in curt Indian fashion. All legal land alien
ations in New York were, after the custom originating
in Holland, and thence borrowed by the American
colonists and made a national procedure in all the
United States, duly registered ; and into these exami
nation must be made. Both house and governor,
however, agreed in choosing Johnson as the man for
the critical hour, and requested him to meet the tribes
at the ancient council-fire at Onondaga. Johnson,
hearing that the Iroquois had broken faith and again
attacked the Catawbas in the Carolinas, hastened
matters by summoning one tribe, the Mohawks, to
meet him at his own home.
Again the stone house by the Mohawk became the
seat of an Indian council, and was enveloped in clouds
of tobacco smoke. Johnson, compeUing them to
drink the cup mingled with upbraiding and kind
ness, while bountifully filling their stomachs from his

124 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
larder, sent them away in good humour, and most
of them burning with loyalty. Besides thus manifest
ing his singular power over the Mohawk savages, he
met the representatives of the United Confederacy
at Onondaga, September 9. The result of the cere
monies, the eloquence, the smoke, and the eating
was that the confederates, though sorely puzzled to
know what to do between the French and the English,
promised loyalty to the brethren of Corlaer. They
would, however, say nothing satisfactory concerning
the Catawbas, some of whose scalps, and living mem
bers reserved for torture, even then adorned their
viUages. Governor CUnton had grown weary of the constant
battle which he was, probably with the stolid ignorance
of many men of his time and class, fighting against the
increasing power of popular liberty. He saw it was
vain to resist the spirit which the Dutch, Scots, and
French Huguenots had brought into New York with
them, or inherited from their sires, and he longed for
a rest and a sinecure post in England. He liked
neither the New York people nor the climate. When
therefore his successor. Sir Danvers Osborne, arrived
on Sunday, October 7, Clinton hailed the day as one
of the happiest of his life. He shortly after sailed
for home, to spend the remainder of his years in a
post for which he was better fitted, — the governorship
of Greenwich Hospital. He died in 1761, fourteen
years before the breaking out of the war which his
own actions had strongly tended to precipitate. His
son. Sir Henry, led the British regulars and mercena-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 125
ries who were bluffed in North Carolina, driven off at
Fort Moultrie, and finally won victory at Long Island.
He failed to relieve Burgoyne, fought the drawn bat
tle at Monmouth, captured Charleston, dickered with
Arnold, left ComwaUis in the lurch, and returning
baffled to England, shed much ink in defending him
self against his critics. Another family of Clintons
shed high lustre on the American name and the Em
pire State. One added another river paraUel to the
Mohawk, flowing past Johnson's old home, and join
ing the waters of the Great Lakes to those of the
Hudson and the Atlantic, making the city of New
York the metropolis of the continent.
Sir Danvers Osborne's career in America was a
short tragedy in three acts. It lasted five days. He
came to be ground as powder between the upper miU-
stone of royal prerogative and the nether disk of
popular rights. He came from an aristocratic and
monarchical country, whose government believed that
it was the source of power to the people, to colonists
whose fathers had been educated mostly under a re
public, where it was taught that the people^ were,
under God, the originators of power. Charged with
instructions much more stringent than those given to
his predecessor, he was confronted in the town-hall
by the city corporation, whose spokesman's opening
sentence was that " they would not brook any infringe
ment of their liberties, civil or religious." On meet
ing his Council for the first time, he was informed
that any attempt to enforce the strict orders given him
and to insist upon an indefinite support, would be

126 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
permanently resisted. That night the unfortunate
servant of the king took his own life. He com
mitted suicide by hanging himself on his own garden
wall. De Lancey, the chief-justice, was now called to the
difficult pQSt of governor, and to the personally deli
cate task of serving King George and his former as
sociates, whom he had so dUigently prodded against
Clinton, Colden, and Johnson. This was especially
difficult, when the Assembly found, in the instructions
to Sir Danvers Osborne, how diligently the late gover
nor and his advisers had slandered and misrepresented
them to the British Government. The good results
of a change in the executive were, however, at once
visible, and the Assembly promptly voted money for
the defence of the frontier, for the governor's salary,
for his arrears of pay as chief-justice, for Indian pres
ents, for his voyage to Albany, and indeed, for every- •
thing reasonable. They added a complaint against
Clinton, and a defence of their conduct to the Crown
and Lords of Trade, which De Lancey sent to
London. The clouds of war which had gathered in the Ohio
VaUey now broke, and M. Contrecoeur occupied Fort
Du Quesne. George Washington began his career on
the soil of the State of Pennsylvania, in which his
longest marches, deepest humiUations, fiercest battles,
and most lasting civil triumphs were won ; and on the
4th of July, 1754, honourably surrendered Fort Neces
sity. The French drum-beat was now heard from
Quebec to Louisiana. The English were bknished

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 127
behind the AUeghanies, and their flag from the Ohio
Valley. It was now vitally necessary that the colonies should
form a closer union for defence against French aggres
sion and the inroads of hostUe savages. The Iroquois
tribes had been able to unite themselves in a stable
form of federalism. Why could not the thirteen
colonies become confederate, and act with unity of
purpose? Besides so great an example on the soU
before them, there was the New England Confedera
tion of 1643, which had been made chiefly by men
trained in a federal republic. Both the Plymouth
men and many of the leaders of New England had
lived in the United States of Holland, and under the
red, white, and blue flag. There they had seen in
actual operation what strength is derived from union.
Concordia res parva crescunt ("By concord little
things become grand"), was the motto of the Union
of Utrecht, familiar to all ; but in New York the repub
lican motto Een-dracht maakt Macht (" Union makes
strength") needed no translation, for its language was
the daily speech of a majority of the people.
It seemed now, at least, eminently proper that the
Congress of Colonies should be in the state settled
first by people from a repubUc, and at Albany, the
ancient place of treaties, and at the spot in English
America where red and white delegates from the
north, east, west, and south can even now assemble
without climbing or tunnelling the Appalachian chain
of mountains.
By direction of the Lords of Trade, the govern-

128 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
ments of all the colonies were invited to meet at Al
bany, so that a solemn treaty could be at one time
made with aU the Indian tribes, by aU the colonies, in
the name of the king.
For treaty-making with the Iroquois, the most
powerful of all the Indian tribes, there was only
one place, ^ Albany. Dinwiddle, of Virginia, vainly
wanted it at Winchester, Va., while Shirley, of Massa
chusetts, jealous of NewYork, and a genuine politician,
wished to keep himself before the voters, and to come
after the elections were over. His party was more
than his province or the country. As the Indians had
already, according to orders from England, been no
tified, the New York Assembly declined to postpone
time or place.
In Albany the streets were cleaned and repaired by
order of the City Council, and the delegates were
given a public dinner at the municipal expense. The
Congress met in the City Hall on the 19th of June,
1 754, twenty-five delegates from nine colonies being
present ; and whether in personal or in representative
dignity formed the most august assembly which up to
this time had ever been held in the Western World.
The colonies were named in the minutes according
to their situation from north to south. All were
represented, except New Jersey, the Carolinas, and
Georgia. The business proper began when Johnson read a
paper, which was the official report of the Board of
Commissioners on Indian Affairs, in which the polit
ical situation was exposed. In it propositions were

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 1 29
made to build forts in the Onondaga and Seneca
countries, with a missionary in each place ; to forbid
the sale of ram, and to expel and keep the Frenchmen
out of the Indian castles. The speech, prepared as
the voice of the Congress, was delivered June 28 to
the Indians who were present, and who had to be
urged by the governor to attend. After various con
ferences and much speech-making on either side,
including an address by Abraham, a scorching phi
lippic by King Hendrick, — both Mohawk sachems
and brothers, — and the distribution of gifts, the In
dians went home apparently satisfied. To the edifi
cation of delegates from some of the colonies, where
Indians were deemed incapable of understanding truth
and honour, they found that Governor De Lancey and
Colonel Johnson treated them as honest men who un
derstood the nature of covenants. Whereas the laws
of Joshua and Moses had been elsewhere appUed only
too freely to Indian politics by the elect of Jehovah, the
New York authorities reaUy believed that the Ten
Commandments and the Golden Rule had a place in
Indian politics.
Other questions of vital interest to the colonies
were discussed. On the fifth day of the session of
the Congress, while waiting for the Indians to assem
ble, a motion was made and carried unanimously that
" a union of all the colonies " was absolutely neces
sary for their security and defence. A committee of
six was appointed to prepare plans of union, and from
the ninth day until the end of the session this impor
tant matter was under debate. On the 9th of July
9

t30 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
the Congress voted "That there be a union of his
Majesty's several governments on the continent, so
that their councils, treasure, and strength may be em
ployed in due proportion against their common en
emy." On the loth of July the plan was adopted,
and ordered to be sent to London for the royal
consideration. How far this Albany plan of union, which looked to
a Great Council of forty-eight members meeting at
Philadelphia under a President-general, resembled or
foreshadowed the National Constitution of 1787, we
need not here discuss. Certain it is, that though the
exact plan proposed was rejected, both by the colo
nies and by Great Britain, the spirit of the movement
lived on. Between the year 1754 and that of 1776
was only the space of the life of a young man. Be
tween the " Congress" — the word in this sense was
a new coinage, dating from the meeting of colonial
delegates in Albany, after the burning of Schenectady
in 1690 — in the State House at Albany and the one
in Carpenter's Hall in PhUadelphia, the time was even
less. Certain it is that the assembly of representa
tives of the colonies at Albany in 1690 was the first
occasion of the popular use of the word " Congress "
as now used, and usually written with a capital,
while that in 1748 made it a word of general accept
ance in the English language. Before that time and
meeting it had "other significations not so august; but
whUe these have fallen away, the other and chief sig
nification in English remains. Further, from this time
forth the " Continental " — that is, the American as

AND TIIE SIX NATIONS. 131
distinct from the British, the independent as discrimi
nated from the transatlantic — idea grew. In com
mon speech, the continental man was he who was
more and more interested in what all the colonies did
in union, and less in what the king's ministers were
pleased to dictate. More and more after the Albany
Congress Wycliffe's idea prevailed, — that even King
George's " dominion was founded in grace " and not
on prerogative. More and more the legend on the
coins, " Georgius Rex Dei Gratia," faded into the
nature of a fairy tale, while the idea grew that the gov
ernments derive their authority from the consent of
the governed. To those wedded to the idea that re
ligion can live only when buttressed by politics, that
a church owes its life to the state, this increase of
democratic doctrines was horrible heresy, portending
frightful immorality and floods of vice. A State with
out a King, a Church without politically appointed
ralers and the support of pubhc taxation, a coin with
out the divine name stamped on it, were, in the eyes
of the servants of monarchy, as so many expressions
of atheism. Not so thought the one member of the
Albany Congress who lived to sign the Declaration of
Independence and the National Constitution of 1787.,
— Benjamin Franklin, who incamated the state
founded politically by Penn ; nor the Quaker, Stephen
Hopkins, of Rhode Island, who lived to put his sign-
manual to Jefferson's immortal document, July 4,
1776.

132 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON

CHAPTER VIIL
THE BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE.
By the movements in Western Pennsylvania, the war
had already broken out, though the diplomatists on the
transatlantic side had not yet said so. By the first
week in May, the raids on the northern border began
by the destruction of Hoosic, within ten miles of Fort
Massachusetts. The half-naked or starving refugees
reaching Albany furnished a vivid object-lesson of
reality. Under Johnson's vigUance and activity, the
people in the forts, block-houses, and palisaded vU
lages were kept on guard night and day. In this work
¦ he was ably seconded by Governor De Lancey. Pol
itics make strange bed-feUows ; and the late critic and
opponent, now that he occupied the seat of the per
son whom he had, largely out of party spirit, op
posed, became a warm friend of his friend Johnson,
the untiring frontiersman.
When in New York, Feb. 28, 1755, Johnson learned
of the official declaration of war, and the saiUng from
Cork, Ireland, of General Braddock with one thousand
regulars, bound for Alexandria, Va. ; and to this place
Johnson with Governor De Lancey made a journey.
At the council held by the five royal governors, ex
peditions against Nova Scotia, Crown Point, Niagara,

AND THE SIX NATIONS. I33
and Fort Du Quesne were planned; Johnson was
again made Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and ap
pointed as major-general to command the forces for
the reduction of Crown Point.
The story of the success of one of these expeditions
and the failure of two of them under Braddock and
Shirley, is known to all. We may now glance at that
under Johnson. After a great council held in June,
attended by eleven hundred of aU ages and sexes,
to the devastation of Johnson's larder. King Hen
drick and many hundred fighting men promised to be
ready for war. After various delays, the motley army
gathered from the colonies left Albany August 8, 1755,
and on the 28th Johnson reached the Lake of the
Holy Sacrament. A true courtier, he changed the
name given by Isaac Jogues, which had superseded
the Indian term, Andiatarocte ; and in honour of his
sovereign George, and "to ascertain his undoubted
right there," called the beautiful water by the name
it StiU bears. The modern fanciful name " Horicon "
seems to be nothing more than a printer's mistake,
glorified by a romancer.
Parkman's magic pen has drawn the picture of the
movements of Dieskau, the German, and his French
and Indian forces opposed to the provincial army, and
has briUiantly described the camp and forces at Lake
George, when, on the morning of Sept. 8j 1755, the,
Canadians, Indians, and French, numbering fifteen
hundred, being, unknown to the EngUsh, only an
hour's march distant, one thousand men saUied out
from the camp to capture Dieskau and his forces.

134 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
The spirit of Braddock seemed to be stiU in the air ;
and the men — New England and New York militia — ;
sallied out jauntily, expecting easy victory, but in real
ity to what proved "the bloody moming scout."
They were led by Col. Ephraim WiUiams — whose wUl,
creating what is now Williams College, had been made
a few days before at Albany — and by Lieutenant-
Colonel Whiting. In three divisions the little army
marched out and soon disappeared from view in the
forest, just before nine o'clock A. m. The two col
umns, French and English, were thus approaching
each other in a narrow road, like trains on a single
track in a tunnel.
Not knowing what the issue might be, Johnson
made preparation for all risks. He at once ordered
trees felled and laid lengthwise. With these and the
wagons, bateaux, and camp equipage, he constructed
a rough Une of (defence, which faced all along the one
side of the camp which an assaulting party might be
reasonably expected to attack, — that is, on that side of
the rough quadrangle which was parallel to the lake.
At that portion fronting the road, he planted three of
his heaviest pieces of cannon, one thirty-two and two
eighteen-pounders. Another was posted a little way
round to the left, while five howitzers of smaller cali
bre, with the mortars, one of thirteen-inch, and four
of smaller calibre, were stationed to throw shell in
the morasses and woods on the flanks. The superb
artillerist. Major WiUiam Eyre, with a company of Brit
ish sailors, served the guns.
The situation then was as foUows : Colonel WiUiams's

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 135
party was marching southward along the stump-em
bossed road cut by Johnson's axemen a few days be
fore. After advancing two mUes he halted for the
other divisions to come up, 'and then moved in a solid
body. With what seems incredible carelessness, neg
lecting to send out scouts, they moved on, Braddock-
like, unsuspicious of danger, imagining that the French
were miles away. ,
On the contrary, Dieskau's scouts had watched their
departure from the camp, and quickly reported the
news to the German baron. He at once ordered his
regulars to halt, and sent the Canadians and Indians
into the forest, three hundred paces ahead, with orders
to lie flat on the ground behind trees, rocks, and bushes,
and make no noise or sign untU the regulars had fired,
when aU were to rise and surround the English.
Here, then, was a horseshoe ambuscade in a swampy
spot. It was another case of " the fatal defile." The
regulars were, to the party approaching them, invisible,
for they lay behind a sweU of ground. AU was as si
lent as the grave when the head of Colonel WiUiams's
line entered the trap. Had it not been for the treach
ery of the Indians, or the warning signal of the French
Iroquois to their kindred, given by the discharge of a
gun, — though it may be possible that this unexpected
shot was an accident, — the English would have been
nearly annihilated. But before the party had passed
the calks of the horseshoe at the ends of the ambus
cade, the war-whoop and the countless puffs of smoke
and whistling bullets told the whole story. The silent
wilderness at once became hell.

136 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Colonel WiUiams at once took in the situation, and
mounting a rock to direct his men, ordered them
to spread out on the hill to the right. He was soon
shot through the head. Hendrick had fallen at the
first fire. The Americans were rallied by Nathan
Whiting, and retreated stubbornly, contesting the
ground rod by rod, and firing from behind trees and
rocks at the Canadians and Indians, who foUowed the
same tactics. Where they met reinforcements sent
out by Johnson, their firing was more steady and
destractive. It was near Bloody Pond that Lieutenant Cole and
the three hundred men sent out from camp by John
son met them, and ably covered their retreat, so that
the wounded were brought in, and the main body
reached the camp in good order about ten o'clock.
La Gardeur, the officer to whom Washington had sur
rendered a few months before, commanded the Cana
dian Indians in this battle, and was slain. The sav
ages, seeing the EngUsh out of the way for the pres
ent, at once fell back to scalp and plunder the slain
Americans. Dieskau ordered them off, refusing to let
them stop and thus lose time. Though obeying, they
were angry and insubordinate, and later in the day
sneaked out of the fight, to return like dogs to their
vomit of war. Dieskau ordered the bugles to sound
the assembly, and re-formed his forces, hoping by a
rash on Johnson's camp to capture it at once. Un
fortunately for him, he had to reckon with Indians and
bushrangers instead of with trained soldiers.
Once inside the camp, the Massachusetts men were

AND THE SIX NATIONS. , 137
ranged on the right, the Connecticut men on the left,
with the New York and New Hampshirs men be
tween. Five hundred troops were posted on the
flanks in reserve. Lying down flat on their stomachs
behind the hastily thrown up barricade, they lay
awaiting the enemy, whom they expected at a double-
quick pace.
Everything now depended on the steadiness of the
mUitia. The officers threatened death to all who
flinched from the foe. All eyes were bent on the
woods in front, and especially down the road whence
they expected to see the regulars rash on them with
levelled bayonets. Could raw provincials, commanded
by a fur-trader and a lawyer, face the veterans of
Europe ?
Three long, cold iron noses poked out at them
were too much for Dieskau's Indians. The black-
mouthed cannon, intercepting with their round cir
cles a charming view of the blue lake ahead, took
away the courage of the bush-rangers, and both reds
and whites scattered and took to the woods. To the
exasperation of Dieskau, aU his hfe used to regular
military formations, his great host melted away from
his sight in the undergrowth and behind trees;
where, now creeping forward, now squatting or lying,
they began a dropping fire in the front and on the
flanks of the Americans. In traditional European
style, the French regulars, in white uniforms and
with glittering bayonets, marched up and delivered
their volleys from double ranks.
Platoon-firing was then the orthodox method of

138 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
war. The long, thin lines of battle which now ob
tain in the field, and which the Americans taught to
Europe, were not then known to men accustomed to
the cleared land and level fields of the Low Countries,
and of Europe generally. Soon moving forward into
the clearing, and deploying to double width, the reg
ulars fired by platoons of three lines, — the first file
of men kneeling down, and the rear, or third file,
delivering their voUeys over the shoulders of those of
the second line in front. Aiming too high and being
too far off for the effective range of flint-lock smooth
bores, the result of their general miss was to arouse
the spirits of the Americans, even to gayety. After
the first hour their nerves became more steady, and
they aimed with deadly effect, while the irritated and
excited veterans fired too high to do much execution.
When the cannon served by the sailors under Major
Eyre began to tear their ranks with round shot and
canister, the great gaps made among the white coats
cheered the provincials still more. Gallantly dress
ing up, they endeavoured for many minutes to present
an orderly front ; but, finally, Dieskau had to break
from the road, and moving to the right in the face of
a murderous -fire, began the attack on the three regi
ments of Colonels WiUiams, Ruggles, and Whitcomb.
Here for another hour they stood their ground man
fully, in the face of a fire whose rapidity and accuracy
were the astonishment of Dieskau, who bravely led his
troops until struck down.
The commanders on either side in this battle were
wounded, and had to retire in favour of others. John-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 139
son, shortly after the first volley of the French regu
lars, was struck by a ball in the thigh which made a
painful flesh wound. The ball broke no bones, but
was never extracted, and the lacerated nerves troubled
him more or less all his life thereafter. He retired to
his tent, and Gen. Phineas Lyman took command,
cheering his men, and exposing himself with reckless
bravery both behind and outside the barricade. In
fact, this battle of Lake George was Lyman's battle,
and was largely Lyman's victory.
Dieskau had bravely led his men during several
hours, but while giving an order to his Indians to
move farther to the left, he approached so near the
intrenchments that he received, from an American
standing behind a tree, his first wound. Ordering
the Chevalier de Montreuil to take command, and to
order retreat if necessary, then to do his best, and
to send men to remove him, Dieskau crawled near a
tree and sat with his back against it. One Canadian
sent to remove him was picked off by an American,
and feU across the baron's wounded knee. The other
went off for assistance ; but soon after his disappear
ance the retreat was sounded. A renegade French
man, on the American side, then approached within
twelve paces of the German baron, and deliberately
shot him, the bullet traversing his hips. Dieskau had
received, in all, five wounds.
Blodget, a sutler in Johnson's army, stood Uke a war-
correspondent on the hiU near by, watching the fight
ing. He was thus enabled to make a sketch of the
battle, which he published as a cheap print, "with a

I40 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
fuU though short history," some weeks afterward, in
Boston. Even the wagoners, in the intervals between
carrying to Surgeon WiUiams the wounded who lay on
the ground behind the log house, took their part in
fighting ; each probably doing as much execution as
the average farmer's boy. For, despite the hot fire so
long maintained, the number of killed and wounded
on the enemy's side, except among the French regu
lars whose white uniform made them easy targets,
was not very great. It was not easy to hit men en
sconced behind trees or stumps, or occasionally rising
in the smoke above the underbrush, whUe the enemy
could, during most of the time, see only here and
there a head. The Mohawks in the camp were
mostly useless, except to keep up yelUng while their
white brothers fought beyond the breastworks ; and
they enjoyed seeing how the pale faces fought. Nev
ertheless, about forty of their number lost their lives
during the day in ambuscade and battle.
While this attack of the regulars on the right was
progressing, the French Canadians and the Abenaki
Indians boldly attempted to flank the left of the
camp, many of them even going away round toward
the lake, and clustering in a morass where the mus
ketry fire could not weU reach them. Fortunately,
however, Johnson had posted a field-piece advanta
geously on the extreme left of his front, which now
harassed the squatting Indians, while on those in the
marsh the mortars and howitzers were trained. Al
though the howitzers split and became useless, the
mortars did weU; and some shells skUfuUy dropped

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 14 1
drove the lurking enemy away, and completely relieved
this flank of danger.
Brave as were the Americans behind the rade bar
ricade, they did not excel the French regulars, who
fought until they were nearly annihilated. It was weU
into the afternoon when they were deserted by hun
dreds of Frencl? forest-rangers and Canadian Indians,
who, seeing no hope of winning the day, skulked
away to the scene of the morning's ambuscade, — the
one set to plunder, and the other to scalp the slain.
About four o'clock so many of the white-coated regu
lars were prone on the ground and so few in action, all
their officers being disabled, whUe the fire of the
others had slackened, that the Americans began to
get out of their breastworks, and to fight in the
woods. This made the French give way so visibly
that the whole of Lyman's force rashed out on the
enemy with their hatchets and clubbed muskets, push
ing them out of ambush into full retreat. ' This onset
took place between four and five o'clock p. m., and
resulted in completely driving the enemy off the field.
The fighting was not yet over, for the third battle
on this eventfiil day was yet to take place. Hearing
the distant firing. Colonel Blanchard, of Fort Lyman,
sent out a party of two hundred and fifty men under
command of the brave Captain McGinnis, who, with
his Schenectady men, led the van. Warily approach
ing the place of the morning's ambuscade, with
scouts ahead, they succeeded in getting between the
piled-up baggage of the French army and a vidette of
five or six men who were keeping a lookout on a hiU.

142 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Moving farther up the road, they found a party of
three hundred French and Indians, consisting of those
who had plundered the slain, and of other remnants
of the beaten army, who were eating cold rations out
of their packs. They sat along Rocky Brook and the
marshy pond. McGinnis and his men approached
stealthily untU within firing distance, and then, after a
voUey, charged like tigers upon their prey.
In the fight which ensued the Americans contested
against heavy odds ; but although their brave captain
was mortaUy wounded, he directed their movements
tiU the firing ceased, and the third battle of this
eventful day resulted in victory. Not tiU the next
evening did the scattered band of Dieskau's army
meet, exhausted and famished, at the place where
they had left their canoes.
The next day the marshy pool, in places reddened
with the blood of the slain, thrown into it to save bur
ial, was given the name — -which it ever afterward
kept — of "Bloody Pond." When the writer saw it,
in 1877, the sunbeams danced merrily on its dimpled
face, as the snow-white and golden pond-Hlies were
swayed by the morning's breeze, rippling the water's
surface, while yet held at anchor beneath. In this
threefold battle the Americans lost most heavily in
the "bloody morning scout" at the ambuscade, —
their total being two hundred and twenty killed, and
ninety wounded. The well-plied tomahawks, after the
surprise in the woods, and the poisoned bullets of the
French Canadians accounted for the disproportionate
number of the dead over the wounded. Among the

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 143
officers were Colonel WiUiams, Major Ashley, Cap
tains Keys, Porter, Ingersoll, and twelve others.
Captain McGinnis died in the camp two days after
ward. Of the Indians, beside Hendrick, thirty-eight
were slain. On the French side the loss must have
been fully four hundred, or probably one third of
those actually engaged.
In this battle farmers and traders prevaUed over
European troops, trained woodcraftsmen, and fierce
savages. The honours of the command belong equally
to three men. The credit of the defences, and the
excellent disposition of marksmen, artUlery, and re
serves, belongs to Johnson, who, unfortunately, was
wounded in the hips in the first part of the battle, and
had to leave the field for shelter. The command then
devolved upon Gen. Phineas Lyman, who deserves
equal honour with Johnson. The Connecticut gen
eral, cool and alert, displayed the greatest courage,
and was largely influential in securing the final result.
To McGinnis belongs the credit of winning a victory,
— the second of the day, in what may be called the
third battle of this eventful 8th of September. Nev
ertheless, such are the peculiarities of the military
mind, that Johnson never mentioned Lyman's name
in his official despatch. For this reason, and because
they unjustly suspected cowardice in Johnson during
the battle, and ' because they saw comparatively little
of him before and after it, withal being sectional and
clannish in their opinions, Johnson was extremely un
popular with the New England soldiers. Their judg
ments have mightily influenced the accounts of the

144 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
threefold battle of Lake George as found in the
writings of New England annalists and historians.
Johnson was at once rewarded by being made a
baronet, with the gift of five thousand pounds, while
Lyman received the ordinary stipend of his rank, —
another ingredient in Johnson's unpopularity in the
Eastern colonies.
Three days after, the Iroquois aUies waited on John
son and informed him that, according to custom, af
ter losing comrades in battle, they must return home
to cheer their people, and protect their castles against
the Abenaki Indians, from whom they feared an attack.
It was in vain that Johnson tried to show them that
the campaign had hardly begun, and to persuade them
to alter their purpose. They insisted on going away,
promising, however, to come again soon with fresh
zeal. Dissensions and jealousies between the troops of
the various colonies now broke out. Both the gener
als commanding, and the new governor. Hardy, thought
that a strong fort should be buUt, to command the
water-way to Canada, by way of Lake George.
Though as important for the defence of New England
as of New York, the Eastern officers and men could
not see the need of a fort here, and the work dragged.
When finished, it was caUed by the courtier, Johnson,
Fort William Henry, after the king's grandson, and
had a notable history. Meanwhile, owing to remiss
ness of contractors, the petty jealousies of the officers
and militia of five or more colonies, and the overcau-
tiousness of Johnson, nothing aggressive was done.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 1 45
Late in November, the fort being finished, the unpop
ular duty of garrisoning it devolved upon a medley of
six hundred men from the various colonies. The
army was disbanded, and the levies marched home.
Johnson resigned his commission, and returned to
Mount Johnson about the middle of December. About
ten days later he was in New York, enjoying, as weU
as his wound would allow, the parade and illumination
of the city in his honour ; while Dieskau languished in
the Schuyler mansion in Albany, waiting for some of
his many wounds to heal ; and Lyman received mod
est honours at home. The patent of Johnson's baron
etcy was dated Nov. 27, 1755. He invested the four
thousand nine hundred and forty-five pounds eighteen
shUlings and sixpence which came into his hands, in
three per cent bank annuities.
His coat-of-arms consisted of a heart-shaped shield
held and flanked on either side by an Indian equipped
with feathers, medal, quiver, and bow. On the shield
are three fleurs-de-lis ; and on the convex band across
the shield, two sheUs, and between them a smaller
heart, on which lies an open hand supme. Above the
shield a hand grasps a dart. The motto is Deo
Regique Debeo. The full inscription of the blazon
in the language of heraldry is given in the standard
books which treat of the British peerage.

146 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON

CHAPTER IX.
BRITISH FAILURES PREPARING FOR AMERICAN
INDEPENDENCE.
The versatUe Johnson, turning from military to civil
duties, remained in New York during the whole of the
month of January, 1756. The men then in control of
the British government, with their usual obtuseness,
sent another sailor to do the work of a statesman.
Sir Charles Hardy, after appointing October 2 as a
day of public thanksgiving for the victory at Lake
George, celebrated it himself by starting on a visit to
Albany. He proposed to effect such a resumption of
active military operations as would secure the main
object of the great expedition, — the capture of Crown
Point. His presence, however, was fraitless, and he
returned to New York, November 26. Then, on the
2d of December, he met his little Parliament, and told
them aU about the victory of General Johnson or
Baron Dieskau. The stoUd Dutchmen and others
were unable, as the Indian orators would say, " to see
it in that light." They could not do other than anti
cipate the verdict of the critical scholarship of this
generation, for they looked upon the whole affair as
" a failure disguised under an incidental success."
Further, instead of hearing that the English flag

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 147
waved over Crown Point, and that English cannon
guarded the narrows of Lake Champlain, they were
asked to pay for Fort WiUiam Henry and Fort George,
both of which were but an ordinary day's horseback- ride
from Albany. At the same time Sir Charles demanded
in King George's name a permanent revenue, with
which to pay govemors, judges, and the general ex
penses of the government.
To the first proposition, to pay their share of expense
for forts in which all the colonies were interested, the
Assembly at once responded favourably. To the sec
ond they gave a flat refusal, declaring that the idea of
a permanent revenue was in direct opposition to the
public sentiment of the colony.
On the same day on which the Assembly met. Gov
ernor Shirley arrived in New York. Being, by the -
death of Braddock, the king's chief military represen
tative in America, he summoned a congress of colonial
governors to meet in New York December 12. With
his usual extraordinary mental activity, he was full of
schemes, one of which was a midwinter campaign
against Ticonderoga. The congress approved of it ;
t Jt the hard-headed members of the Assembly, the
people generally, and Johnson, did not. With all ad
miration for the fussy politician, who planned superbly
on paper, but somehow faUed in the field, they had a
sincere respect, which was, however, tempered by ex
cellent common-sense.
As for Shirley and Johnson, they seemed always
unable to work harmoniously together, the latter re
senting what he believed to be the needless inter-

148 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
ference of the other. Shirley found Johnson more
than a match for him in the rather acrid correspond
ence conducted in New York during January. Living
but a few rods apart, the liveried coloured servants of
these colonial dignitaries kept their soles warm in
carrying despatches. In jealousy of each other, the
two gentlemen were as incompatible as Siamese twins,
their only common ligament being loyalty to the
Crown. Johnson was determined to get and hold his
commission from the Crown, and not be subject to
colonial governors or assemblies.. He laid the whole
matter before the Lords of Trade, and aided by his
friends at Court, secured a flattering verdict in his
favour. In July, 1756, there came to him from his
Majesty's Secretary, Fox, a commission as Colonel,
Agent, and sole Superintendent of aU the affairs of the
Six Nations, and other Northern Indians, with an an
nual salary of six hundred pounds. By orders from
the same august source, the Northern colonies were
prohibited from transacting business with the Indians,
so that the whole matter was settled in Johnson's
hands. Being now well intrenched in his office and author
ity, Johnson, with his usual versatUity and vigour,
turned from the duties of the desk and councU-room
to the activities of the field. The frontiers of New
Hampshire had been harassed during the winter by
prowling bands of savages, but the French now at
tempted a more ambitious raid. Warned by Indian
ranners, who had made the first part of their journey
on snow-shoes from Fort BuU at the Oneida " carry,"

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 149
he at once sent ammunition to the garrison of thirty
men. On skates from Montreal to Fort Presentation,
and thence on snow-shoes to the Oneida portage, the
party of nearly three hundred Frenchmen, after ten
days of gliding and stepping, appeared before the
wooden fort, March 27. Their demand for surrender
was met by a volley, which in return was answered by
a charge, a crashing in of the gate, and a massacre of
all but five of the garrison. Among the mihtary
stores destroyed were two tons of powder. About the
same time the ship-carpenters at Oswego became the
prey of raiding Indians from Niagara, who returned
with three prisoners and twelve scalps. Forays were
made by Canadian savages, even into Ulster and
Orange Counties, within a day's horse-ride of New
York. The winter was unusually mUd, which caused the
utter abandonment of Shirley's expedition to Crown
Point; while the numerous petty successes of the
French and Indians turned the faces of the vaciUating
members of the Iroquois cantons toward Canada as
the winning side.
Yet strange as it may seem, the New York Assembly
was slow in voting supplies. The ultra-loyalists who
supported Hardy, who was backed by the king and
his council, now vented their maledictions upon the
" foreigners " who made the cosmopolitan population
of the province, and their representatives in the
Assembly. AU this seems strange to the average his
toriographer, especially to the copyist of loyalist or
other writers who rely on such men as Colden, Smith,

150 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Jones, Washington Irving, and the like, for their ideas
of Colonial New York and her people. There was
good reason for the stubbornness of the legislators.
The fact is, that the people of the province of New
York were mostly descendants of the sturdy Repub
licans who had fought under William the Silent. They
believed that the encroachments of monarchy — that
is, one-man power — were more dangerous than the
raids of hostUe Indians. The Dutch, Germans,
Scots, Irish, Huguenots, were almost a unit in their
democratic ideas. This province, unlike others of
the original thirteen, was not settled by people of
aristocratic England, in which a republic, once begun,
had gone to pieces inside of twelve years, but by men
long trained in self-government and in a republic.
Even their forms of church Hfe were as nurseries for
the training of men in democratic principles. To the
loyalist historian, Jones, a Presbyterian seems to be a
synonym for rebel, of whatever name or strain of
blood.. CongregationaUsts, fed on the 'rhetoric and
oratory of Forefathers' Day, find it hard to believe that
the democratic idea in Church and State flourished
anywhere outside of New England. The New York
men were determined at all hazards — even the haz
ards of savage desolation — to resist any fiirther
trenching upon their rights by King George, or his
subservient ParUament, or his bullying governor.
England had sent over, after Clinton, another iUit
erate saUor to enforce a fresh demand, — even the
passage of a law for settling a permanent revenue on
a solid foundation ; said law to be indefinite and with-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 151
out limitation of time. The descendants of the Hol
landers who had long ago, even against mighty Spain,
settled the principle of no taxation without consent,
and had maintained it in a war of eighty years, were
resolved to fight again the same battle on American
soil. They now set themselves resolutely to resist
the demands of the Crown, and this whether Indians
were in Orange County or at Niagara. Despite the
protests of such incorrigible Tories as Smith, Colden,
and others in the Executive Council, the people's
representatives persevered.
\'It is needless to say that the Assembly gained their
point, and that the greatest and most lasting victory
of the people in the long story of American liberty
was won. A few months after, at the autumn session,
the joyful news reached New York that the Crown
had virtuaUy repealed the instractions to Sir Danvers
Osborne, which had made the colonists of. New York
set themselves in united array of resistance to " their
most gracious sovereign."
The war had thus far been carried on without profes
sion or declaration. The diplomatists of London and
Versailles had been as polite and full of smooth words
as if profound peace reigned. The English were fol
lowing their old trade of piracy, and had captured
hundreds of French vessels, and imprisoned thousands
of French sailors. The French, on the other hand,
were doing with England as they did with China in
1885, when they bombarded cities, treacherously got
behind forts in the Pearl River, and killed thousands
of Chinese, whUe aU the time professing to be at

152 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
peace. At length the British went through the for
mality of declaring war. May 17. On the French
side, the necessary parchment, red tape, and seals were
prepared, and the official ink flowed two years after
blood had flowed like water.
Now at last, in Pitt, England had a premier who
knew something about the geography of America;
and " geography," as Von Moltke teaches, " is half of
war." William Pitt thought the time had come for
inteUigent and active operations looking to the con
quest of North America by the English. His first se
lection of men, however, was not particularly wise or
evident of genius. Listening to the word of Johnson,
and others in New York, he removed Shirley from the
chief command, and sent out, successively. Colonel
Webb, General Abercrombie, and Lord Loudon, — aU
of them, as it proved, failures.
The three men appointed were alike in their super
cilious contempt for American mUitia and officers, and
were aU destined, through their ignorant pride, to dis
gust Americans with English ways, and steadily to de
termine them toward independence. Abercrombie,
on his arrival, at once began to cast firebrands of dis
content among the colonial troops by nulUfying the
intelligent and well-laid plans of Shirley, and promul
gating the exasperating order that all regular officers
were to be over those in the colonial service of the
same rank. General Winslow fortunately succeeded
in dissuading the Britisher from his madness, before
desertions and threatened resignations became too
numerous ; but with the compromise that the imported

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 153
soldiers should garrison the forts while the Americans
went to the front. In other words, the provincials
were to see and do the severest service. Abercrombie
further showed his obstinacy and ignorance of affairs
by biUeting ten thousand soldiers on the citizens of
Albany, instead of at once advancing to Oswego. He
thus unwittingly helped to create that sentiment against
the outraging of American homes by the forced pres
ence of soldiers which, later, found expression for
aU time in the amendment to the Constitution of the
United States. Abercrombie wasted the whole sum
mer at Schenectady, which now became the headquar
ters of the armies. It was determined to build forts
at all the portages between this town and Oswego, as
well as at South Bay, to protect Fort Edward. While
the boat-yards along the Mohawk River were in fiiU
activity, and stores were being collected, he employed
his men part of the time in teaching the people of
Albany and Schenectady how to build earthworks in
European style, in digging ditches, and in putting up
heavier stockades around the two towns.
One of the good things done by Parliament at this
time was the formation of the Royal American Regi
ment of four battalions, each a thousand strong. Of
the fifty officers commissioned, nearly one third were
Germans and Swiss. Most of the rank and file were
Palatine and Swiss-Germans in America, who enlisted
for three years. None of the officers could rise above
the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and the Earl of Loudon
was appointed first colonel-in-chief. Loudon was suc
ceeded in 1757 by Abercrombie, and in 1758 by Lord

154 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Amherst. Until the Revolutionary War, this cosmo
politan regiment did noble service under Stanwix,
Bouquet, Forbes, Prideaux, Wolfe, and Johnson.
From 1757 to 1760 we find one or more battalions
of the regiment in active service in the various parts
of New York. The famous Rev. Michael Schlatter,
the organizer of the German Reformed Church in
Pennsylvania, was the regimental chaplain. On the
15 th of June, 1756, the forty German officers who
were to raise the recruits arrived, one of the ablest
being Colonel Bouquet. This Swiss officer, with the
Germans, at Bushby Run in Pennsylvania largely re
trieved the disasters caused by Braddock's defeat, and
restored the frontiers of Pennsylvania to comparative
safety and comfort.
WhUe Abercrombie, who was one of those miUtary
men whose reliance is less upon the sword than the
spade, was digging ditches in Albany, Johnson was ar
ranging for a great Indian council at his house on the
Mohawk. He had in view the double purpose of
winning the Delawares and other Pennsylvania tribes
from war against the English colonists, and of induc
ing all the Northern Indians to join in the expedition
against the French posts on Lake Ontario. Brad
dock's defeat had been the signal for the Delawares,
under the direct influence of the French, to break the
-peace of more than seventy years, and to scatter fire
and blood in Pennsylvania, from the Monongahela to
the Delaware. The solemn treaty of Penn — which
Voltaire, with more wit than truth, declared was
" never sworn to and never broken " — was now a thing

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 155
of the past. The wampum was unravelled, and the
men with hats and the men with scalp-locks were in
deadly conflict. WhUe the Friends remained at their
Philadelphia firesides, the German and Scotch settlers
on the frontier bore the brant of savage fury. When
public action was taken, it was in the double and con
tradictory form of peace-belts of wampum sent by the
Friends, and a declaration of war by Governor Morris.
In this mixed state of things it was hard for Johnson
to know what to do. Through his influence the Iro
quois, uncles and masters, had summoned by wam
pum belts their nephews and vassals to the great
conference which was opened at his house in Febru
ary, 1756. To prepare for this, Johnson had made a
journey to the council-fire ofthe Confederacy at Onon
daga, arriving June 15. There he succeeded in neu
tralizing in part the work done by the French, and
obtained an important concession. The Iroquois
voted to allow a road to be opened through the very
heart of their empire to Oswego, and a fort to be
buUt at Oswego FaUs.
These severe exertions cost Johnson a fit of sick
ness ; but on the 7th of July he met the Iroquois, Del
awares, and Shawanese at his house. After the usual
consumption, on both sides, of wampum, verbosity,
and ram, aU the Indians were won over to the Eng
lish cause. The covenant chain of peace was re
newed, the war-belts were accepted by the sachems,
and medals hung around their necks by Johnson
himself The Delawares had " their petticoats taken
off," — or, in other words, they were no longer squaws

156 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
in the eyes of the Iroquois, but allies, friends, and men.
Without detracting from Johnson's reputation, it is
probable that the possession by many of the Dela
wares of the rifles made by the Pennsylvania Swiss and
Germans, which gave them such an advantage over
Dutch and English smooth-bores, had much to do
with winning the respect of the Iroquois.
Through Johnson's influence two councils were held
in Pennsylvania, at Easton, when the Delawares un
der their great chief, Teedyuscung, met delegations of
the Iroquois and Govemor Denny. Teedyuscung had
for his secretary "the Man of Trath," Charles Thomp
son, master of the Friends' Free School in Philadel
phia. The proceedings lasted nine days ; Denny by
his tact being able " to put his hand in Teedyuscung's
bosom and draw out the secret " of his uneasiness.
The council was adjourned to Lancaster in the spring
of 1 75 7j 'when, however, the Delaware chief faUed to
appear. Nevertheless peace was obtained on the
Pennsylvania borders, the credit for which was claimed
by the Senecas.
To tum now to the field of war, we find that Gov
ernor Shirley had organized a corps of armed boat
men, and had sent them under Colonel Bradstreet to
Oswego. Bradstreet was successful in thus provision
ing the forts with a six months' store for five thousand
men. After his brilliant exploit he was attacked on
his way back, three leagues from the fort, by De VU-
liers with eleven hundred men. Despite the sudden
fury of the attack, Bradstreet beat off the enemy with
loss, only a heavy rain preventing his gaining a greater

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 157
victory. Reaching Albany, he urged General Aber
crombie to march at once to the forts. A large expe
dition under Montcalm was already on its way to
remove these, the chief obstacles to their plans of em
pire. Johnson in person seconded Bradstreet's ap
peal, urging that if Oswego fell, the Iroquois would be
sure to join the .French. Abercrombie stupidly re
fused to move untU Lord Loudon's arrival, and the
golden opportunity was lost.
This slow-minded personage. Lord Loudon, the
Scotsman, reached Albany on the 29th of July ; but
correct ideas as to the situation percolated into his
brain with difficulty. Indeed, as with Sydney Smith's
proverbial joke about the Scotchman's skull, it seemed
necessary to perform a surgical operation in order to
show him how needful it was to march at once to
Oswego, notwithstanding that Montcalm with his host
was daily approaching.
While Loudon was fooling away his time in jealousy
of the provincial militia, and sending a force in the
wrong direction at Crown Point, Montcalm with three
thousand troops and plenty of cannon, part of which
had been captured from Braddock, settled himself
before Oswego. Of the three forts garrisoned by
Shirley's and Pepperell's regiments of New England
men, only one was able to stand a protracted siege.
All assembled in this fort, Ontario, and fought
gallantly until Colonel Mercer was cut in half by a
cannon-shot. Then a panic ensued. The one hun
dred women in the fort begged that the place should
be surrendered, and the white flag was shortly after-

158 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
ward hoisted. The forts were burned, and the place
left a desolation, in which the priest, Picquet, set up
a lofty cross, and beside it the arms of France. The
French were now masters of Lake Ontario, and of the
passages by land and water to the Ohio, and free to
attack the Lake George forts. They found themselves
enriched to the extent of sixteen hundred prisoners,
one hundred and twenty cannon, six ships of war,
three hundred boats, three chests of money, besides
a great quantity of provisions and the stores of war.
The destraction instead of the occupation of the forts
was a master stroke of policy in favor of concUiating
the Six Nations.
In this affair Montcalm showed the nobUity of his
nature in protecting, at the hazard of his life, the pris
oners from massacre. When the Indians, fiUed with
ram, had turned into devUs, and were sinking their
hatchets in the brains of the unarmed, Montcalm, as
the eyewitness John Viele of Schenectady on his re
turn testified before Johnson, ordered out his troops
and fired on the brates. Six of the dranken saval^es
were shot dead. The murdering ceased at once, and
there was lio massacre.
Loudon the lazy had finaUy awaked to the situation,
and sent General Webb with twelve hundred men to
reinforce Oswego. At the Oneida portage Webb
heard of the surrender, and hoping to delay the French
who were advancing, as he supposed, on Albany, he
had some trees chopped down to delay their boats.
He then hastily retreated to the fort at German Flats.
Johnson, at Albany, heard the news August 20, and

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 159
under Loudon's orders, with two battalions of the
VaUey mUitia and a corps of three hundred Indians,
hastened to reinforce Webb. Remaining in camp fif
teen days, until hearing of the removal of the French,
he dismissed the mUitia and returned home.
So passed another year of faUure. John Campbell,
Scotsman, otherwise called Earl of Loudon, had been
sent out as the representative of Lord Halifax and of
the Lords of Trade. Having decided to unite aU the
colonies under military rale, and force them to sup
port a standing army, they selected this man, who
was strong in the idea of colonial subordination, but
was vacillating, incapable, vain, wasteful, and lazy.
His first winter campaign consisted chiefly in scolding
Shirley, and making the Massachusetts govemor the
scapegoat for his own shortcomings ; in disgusting the
people of New York by bUleting his officers upon
them ; and in both New York and Boston dUigently
hastening the separation of the colonies from Great
Britain by making a fool of himself generally.
With the regulars in winter quarters, the militia
dismissed to their homes, the whole frontier, except in
the Lake George region, open and exposed, five of
the Six Nations practically alienated from the Eng
lish and already making terms with the French, the
outlook was dark.
However, the Mohawks were faithfiil ; and Johnson
took heart, believing he could yet win and hold the
Iroquois. Sending his captains, the two Butlers, and
Jellis Fonda to the various castles, and to the fireplace
of the Confederacy at Onondaga, he appointed a great

i6o SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON.
councU to meet, June lo, 1757. Meanwhile he
sent the Mohawks out upon the war-path, and had
the satisfaction of hearing of the repulse of the French
and the safe defence of the Fort WiUiam Henry which
he had buUt two years before at Lake George. Major
WiUiam Eyre, the ordnance officer who had served
the guns so efficiently at the battle of Lake George
against Dieskau's regulars, was in command of the
fort, with four hundred men. The commander of the
American rangers, with Eyre, was John Stark. The
long and dreary winter was nearly over, and Saint
Patrick's Day was at hand. The French knew as
weU that the Irish soldiers would be drank on the
1 8th of March, as Washington knew that the Hes
sians would be unfit for clear-headed fighting the day
after Christmas. Fortunately, through the thought-
fulness of the future hero of Bennington, his own
rangers were kept sober by enforced total abstinence,
and the Irish had the ram and drankenness all to
themselves. The French force of fifteen hundred
regulars, wood-rangers, and savages came down the
lakes on the ice, dragging, each man, his sledge con
taining provisions, arms, and various equipments,
among which were three hundred scaling-ladders.
They began a furious attack at sunrise on the i8th,
expecting easy victory; but Eyre used his artiUery
with such deadly effect that despite four separate
attacks within twenty-four hours, the expedition ended
in total failure. Seized with a panic, the besiegers
fled, leaving their sledges and much valuable property
behind, besides their dead.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. l6l
Johnson first heard of this event in a letter from
Colonel Gage, — him who married an American
wife, and afterward occupied Boston with the red
coats, only to be compeUed to leave it at the re
quest of Washington, his old comrade-in-arms on
Braddock's Field. It is a curious coincidence that
Colonel Gage has unwittingly furnished Yankee Boston
with a public holiday in honour of Ireland's patron.
Saint Patrick, — which the Irish majority in the Bos
ton City Council first inaugurated in 1890, under the
disguise of " Evacuation Day." The date which the
Frenchmen chose for their approach to Fort WUliam
Henry was the date also on which Gage, in 1775,
sailed away to the land whence the Canadians had
come in 1757.
Johnson's tremendous energies now shone forth.
He at once suiAmoned the Mohawk VaUey militia,
and sent his trasty interpreter, Arent Stevens, to rouse
the Mohawks. The meeting-place was at his house.
The news came on Sunday the 24th ; and on Mon
day, at dayUght, the column of twelve hundred
mUitia and the Indians were on the march which
in less than four days brought them to Fort William
Henry. Finding the enemy gone, Johnson allowed his men
two days' rest, and was about to start homeward,
when hearing that the French meditated a blow on
the frontier vUlage of German Flats, he kept in the
saddle all night, reaching home at four a. m. Fortu
nately the news was not confirmed ; but he neverthe
less ordered the militia to Burnet's Field, and made

l62 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
his headquarters there. This energetic action had a
good effect upon the Iroquois who had been invited
to the grand councU at Fort Johnson, as his house
was now called, and on the loth of June the proceed
ings were duly opened. The result of the ten days'
conference was that the neutrality of the Senecas,
Cayugas, and Onondagas was secured ; while the three
other tribes — the Oneidas, Tuscaroras, and Mohawks
— were heartily enlisted to fight for the English against
the French.
Summer passed away in Johnson's despatching In
dian parties to Canada ; in Governor Hardy's return
ing to the more congenial quarter-deck, exchanging
civil for naval life ; in Loudon's making a grand
failure at Louisburg, as usual blaming the colonial
officers and troops for his own blunders ; and in the
shameful loss of Fort William Henry through the cow
ardice of General Webb.
Johnson had warned Webb of the coming of Mont
calm with nearly eight thousand men, including a body
of Indians said to be gathered from forty-one tribes.
On the ist of August, while holding a councU with the
Cherokees at his house, he received news from Gen
eral Webb that Montcalm- was moving down upon
Colonel Monro, who with two thousand men occupied
the fort and adjoining camp. Johnson at once ad
journed the council, and summoning the mUitia and
Mohawks, quickly reached Fort Edward, and begged
to be sent to reinforce Monro. The double-minded
Webb at first consented, and then ordered him bacL
Within sound of the cannon, Webb held back his

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 163
whole force, and sent Monro a note advising him to
surrender. Only when his ammunition was nearly ex
hausted, his heavy cannon burst, three hundred of his
men kiUed or wounded, many others helpless with
small- pox, and the outlook hopeless, did Monro sur
render. As usual, the Indians, many of them from
tribes utterly unused to any control, got at the ram-
barrels, and were converted into devils, whom Mont
calm in vain endeavoured to control, untU after they had
butchered scores of Monro's unarmed people, includ
ing women and children. The fort and barracks were
burned, and on great heaps of the fuel thus obtained
the bodies of the slain were given cremation.
Webb, almost scared out of his wits, would have
moved southward to West Point, but that Lord Howe,
who had arrived with reinforcements, calmed him.
Almost as a matter of course, the blame was laid by
the British officers and regulars on the provincial
troops. This miUtary bigotry, and the inveterate
prejudice of the regulars against volunteers had a
tremendous effect in making the native- bom militia
suspect that they could some day do -without the su-
perciUous and conceited king's servants. They saw
that most of the hard fighting had been done by mili
tiamen at the front, who, notwithstanding the immense
resources of Great Britain, were not properly sup
ported at the right time. They were tired of being
led to the slaughter by fussy, incompetent, and often
cowardly commanders. They noted, also, that the
regulars were mostly kept in garrison, while the mUitia
were sent to the front, where, usually in battle with the

1 64 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Indians, the Americans stood their ground, fighting
behind trees, while the handsomely uniformed regu
lars were 'flying to the rear. Further yet, the regu
lars stationed in the forts in the Mohawk Valley were
so arrogant and conceited as to look — as the aver
age Englishman is so apt to do — upon the Dutch
men and Germans as a sort of inferior cattle. The
consequence was that they were practically useless as
defenders. Johnson was so heartily disgusted with the state of
affairs that it is probable that his sickness in October
and November was a direct result of exposure in camp,
and distraction of mind. He knew that the French
would now at the first opportunity strike the western
frontier. He therefore wrote to Abercrombie in Sep
tember, to reinforce the Valley forts and send scouts
and rangers to German Flats. AU such warnings, how
ever, were like "an east wind in an ass's ears." Aber
crombie and his men drUled, drank, swore, gambled,
dug ditches, and caricatured the Dutch people in
church, and otherwise amused themselves in Albany.
At German Flats the long strain of duty in watch and
ward resulted in the ine-dtable reaction; and when
the danger was greatest and nearest, the nerves re
laxed, the midnight lantem went out, and the sentinel
and people alike slept. The friendly Oneidas informed
the Germans, fifteen days in advance, of the enemy's
movements. A week later, a chief came in person to
warn them ; but the people took it as a joke, laughed in
his face, and sent no word to Johnson. Tired of hearing
the cry of " wolf," they neglected to provide for their

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 165
sheep. Despite the fort, the block-houses, and the
mUitia company of one hundred men, the blow fell.
Fortunately the minister and some ofhis people heeded
the friendly warning of the Oneidas, and the day be
fore the attack, crossed the river to a place of safety.
Those left were infatuated until the last moment.
It was on the morning of Nov. 13, 1757, that the
Canadian, BeUetre, and his three hundred white and
red savages surrounded, the doomed village, raised the
yell, and began the attack. The people were dazed.
After some fitful musketry-firing, the Indians succeeded
in setting the houses on fire, and in tomahawking, and
scalping the people as they rushed out of the flames.
One of the block-houses was surrendered by the head
man of the vUlage, who asked for quarter. Numbers of
the people were killed as they ran out to the fording-
place of the river to escape to the opposite side, or
were shot while in the water. The settlement was
totally destroyed. Of the three hundred people, a
sixth were kiUed and one half taken prisoners ; the
remainder escaped, or had already fled to Fort Herki
mer. The abundant live-stock was destroyed or driven
off, and the place left in ashes. AU this was done al
most under the eyes of the commander of Fort Her
kimer, but a short distance off, across the Mohawk
River. Having a smaU garrison, he, though fully
warned by Oneida Indians of the coming blow, was
unable to send assistance, and perhaps anticipated an
attack on his own post.
The people of Stone Arabia and Cherry VaUey were
excited, and prepared to leave these places when the

1 66 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
escaped refugees brought the news. Lord Howe,
with his reinforcements, though too late for action,
prevented the depopulation of the settlements.
The sage Lord Loudon heard of this latest disaster
whUe in Albany, and his conduct was characteristic.
Eager to find a victim on whom to vent his rage and
to bear his own and his officers' shortcomings, he
blamed the Iroquois, and even proposed to make war
against them. It was, probably, only by the active
persuasion of Johnson that he was turned from his
madness. Imagination vainly seeks to picture the results had
Loudon, the grand master of Great Britain's resources,
even begun his folly, and broken the peace league
which Van Curler had made, Schuyler extended, and
Johnson perfected. Had he practically betrayed his
country by turning the whole Indian power of the
continent over to the French, the history of this coun
try would have been vastly different from that we
know. Had Johnson done nothing else than pre
vent this, he would deserve a high place among the
Makers of America.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 167

CHAPTER X.
THE HEAVEN-BORN GENERAL.
It is hard for Americans to reahze that the French
and Indian War was more costly to Great Britain than
was the War of the American Revolution. As matter
of fact, the British Government sent a larger total of
soldiers and sailors, and spent more blood and treas
ure in defending the colonies and in wresting North
America from the French, than in endeavouring to
coerce the revolted colonies. Though in the various
attempts at the reduction of Canada, no large armies
like those of Burgoyne or ComwaUis were lost by sur
render, yet the number of men slaughtered in siege
and battle was greater, and the expeditions being in
the wUdemess were much more costly. To throw a
bomb into the Niagara fort was like dropping a globe
of silver; to fire canister, like scattering a Dansean
shower of guineas ; while every effective bullet re
quired an outlay of pounds, as well as of shiUings and
pence. Before the decision of the long controversy between
Latin and Teutonic civiUzation in America, at the fall
of Quebec, another terrible disaster, caused largely by
British arrogance and contempt of American ex
perience, remains to be recorded. This time it was

l68 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
to be linked not with the name of Braddock or
Loudon, but with that of Abercrombie.
Under the quickening touch of the master-hand of
Pitt, who knew the topography of America, and had
appointed the "young madman" Wolfe to super
sede Loudon, Louisburg, Ticonderoga, and Fort Du
Quesne were chosen as points of attack. Of the three
expeditions planned, Abercrombie was chosen to lead
that which was to move to Canada by the great water
way of Eastern New York.
We need not here repeat the oft-told story of the
capture of Louisburg by Amherst and Wolfe ; or that
of the fall of Fort Du Quesne, which Washington
named Pittsburg. Tremendous enthusiasm was kin
dled in the colonies at the news of these successes.
In England, when the stands of French colours, after
being carried through the streets of London and laid
at the feet of King George, were hung up in St.
Paul's Cathedral, the whole nation took fresh courage,
and believed final victory near. The name of the
dashing and spirited Wolfe was on every tongue ;
though the other heroes were not forgotten. In New
England the names of the successful British leaders
were made monumental in geography. Such places
as Wolfboro, Amherst, Boscawen, and many others on
the map, almost as numerous as the grains shaken
from a pepper-box, testify to popular gratitude and
enthusiasm. A different story is that of Abercrombie's expedi
tion. For the reduction of the French fortress on
Lake Corlaer, or Champlain, the largest army ever

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 169
gathered on the continent was encamped on the
shores of Lake George. Ofthe sixteen thousand men
about three fifths were brilliantly uniformed Briti.;h
^regulars. For the first time the pavonine dress of the
bare-legged Highlanders was seen on large bodies of
men on this side of the Atlantic. Among the Ameri
can militia officers were Stark, Putnam, Bradstreet,
and Rogers. The following of Sir William Johnson
was three hundred Indians. In over one thousand
boats, with banners and music, the host moved down
the lake, making a superb pageant. In the first skir
mish in the woods between Lake George and Ticon
deroga, the gallant Lord Howe was kiUed. With
Howe, fell the real head and leading mind of the ex
pedition for the capture of Fort Carillon, or Ticonder
oga. Without waiting for his artiUery, which, being
loaded on rafts, came more slowly, Abercrombie, on
the morning of July 8, ordered an attack on the French
abattis which had been made by Montcalm, two
hundred yards in front of the fort itself.
This movement was against the advice of John
Stark, who saw in the Frenchman's line of defence a
solid breastwork of logs. He knew, also, that the
trees, cut down and laid with their branches outward
over the space of three hundred feet in front of the
breastwork, would throw the attacking platoons and
columns out of order. With Braddock-Uke contempt
for a provincial captain's advice, Abercrombie, for
getting how the rade brashwood defence at Lake
George had enabled the militia to repulse Dieskau's
regulars, ignored the hints given by Stark. Taking

170 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
care to remain safely at the saw-miUs, some distance
in the rear, Abercrombie sent forward his men in four
columns. It was but a few minutes before aU formations were
hopelessly lost in the jungle of brushwood. When
Highlanders, rangers, British, and Yankees were well
entangled, sheets of fire issued from a line of heads
behind the log breastwork, while the French artillery
also played bloody havoc. Abercrombie, hearing of
the initial disaster, left the saw-mills and made off
with himself to the boat-landing ; thence, issuing his
orders for attacks on the left, the right, and the centre.
For five hours, without flinching, the victims of mili
tary incompetence furnished food for French powder,
and then broke into disorderly retreat. The whole
army followed their commander, and, when at the
boats, would have sunk them in their mad rash, but
for the coolness and firmness of Colonel Bradstreet.
It is said that the French found, stuck in the mud, five
hundred pairs of shoes.
The Highlanders — old retainers of the Stuarts, but
organized by Pitt to fight for the Guelphs — ^,lost in this
battle one half of their number. The total loss of the
English was nearly two thousand men. Montcalm,
the skilful soldier, covered himself with glory. The
Indians under Johnson, being on the top of a hUl,
took no part in the fight, though active as spectators.
Abercrombie retreated to the site of Fort WiUiam
Henry at the head of Lake George. The wUdest ra
mours of the advancing victorious French army now
prevailed at Albany and in the VaUey ; but Johnson

AND THE SIX NATIO.VS. 171
did much to aUay fear and restore confidence by
sending out the militia, doubling the guards, and gar
risoning the forts and block-houses. Largely through
his earnest appeals, in person, to Abercrombie, Gen
eral Stanwix was sent with a large force to build a
spacious fort at the one place where direct boat navi
gation between Schenectady and Oswego is interrupted.
This portage of four miles — reduced to one mUe by
ditching and clearing out the streams — was between
the Mohawk River- and Wood Creek, and made a
point of highest strategic importance. The fort —
which was built and named Fort Stanwix — had after
ward a notable military history.
From this point Colonel Bradstreet, having obtained
by a bare majority in a councU of war permission to
attack Fort Frontenac, which for three years he ha,d
longed to do, set out with twenty-seven hundred
militia, eleven hundred of whom were from New York.
Johnson, who had sent Capt. Thomas Butler with
forty-two Indians, received from him, under date of
August 28, 1758, the joyful news of Bradstreet's com
plete victory, which, aU considered, compensated for
the disaster of Abercrombie. It cleared Lake Ontario
of all French shipping, and was in relative influence
and importance fully equal to Perry's victory on Lake
Erie, over half a century later. None rejoiced more
than the sons and grandsons of the victims of the
Schenectady massacre of 1690, which had been insti
gated by Frontenac, after whom the fort had been
named. During this year Johnson was unusually active with

172 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
the Indians, in holding their loyalty to the British
side or in maintaining their neutraUty. Many gath
erings were held at his own house. In the great
councU held at Easton, Penn., in October, 1758, five
hundred Indians were present, including delegates
from all the Six Nations, the Shawanese, Miamis, and
Moheganders. The principal figure was Teedyus
cung, who insisted on his people being treated with
the same dignities accorded to the Iroquois. Indeed,
if the explanation of the Delawares be accepted, they
had, in times long before, and at the earnest request
of the Indians both north and south of them, volun
tarily and by solemn treaty assumed a subordinate
position as warriors and refrained from war, in order
to preserve peace, trade, and the general good of
tbe whole community of red men. They claimed,
however, that it was Iroquois overreaching in di
plomacy and even downright treachery, that made
them seem to "accept the petticoat" and become
" squaws." It is certain that Teedyuscung made it
the aim of his life to secure for his people the respect
of the Iroquois and their equality, with the proudest of
the red men. The Easton councU lasted nineteen
days, and was productive of harmony both between
the Indians and the whites, and among the varied
tribes themselves. The one who contributed most to
this gratifying success was not Johnson, but the honest
German and Moravian, Christian Post, who from his
home in the Wyoming VaUey had made a journey
and mission of peace, alone, among the tribes in the
Ohio VaUey.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 173
When Sir Jeffrey Amherst reached America as com
mander-in-chief of the British /forces, he came at
once, with his four regiments at Albany, to reinforce
Abercrombie. He found at Lake George, by the
end of May, twelve thousand New York and New
England militia. Johnson at once urged upon him
the importance of capturing Niagara, the port between
the two great lakes. Amherst agreed to the proposal,
and warmly seconded it. In place of the stockade
which the French from the time of La SaUe had main
tained, there was now a formidable fort. To Sir WU
liam Prideaux was assigned the work of reducing this
Western stronghold ; and Johnson, in order to assist
him, called a council at Canajoharie to enlist the Mo
hawks, Senecas, and other Indians in the expedition.
After the usual eloquence and expenditure of war-
belts of wampum, Johnson led into the field seven
hundred warriors, whose painted faces showed they
were on the war-path. The Swegatchie braves also
swelled this following, so that on arriving at Niagara
he wrote to WiUiam Pitt, Oct. 24, 1760, that his In
dian force numbered nine hundred and forty-three
men. By the 7th of July Prideaux with thirty-two hundred
men, including Johnson's Indians, began siege opera
tions. On the twelfth day he was killed in the
trenches by the bursting of a shell from a coehom
mortar. This left the command to Johnson, who re
newed operations with greater vigour, and by the 2 2d
breached the wall sufficiently for assault.
While active in the trenches with hot shot, bombs.

1 74 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
and canister, Johnson did not forget to keep out his
scouts and rangers. From them he learned that the
French officer D'Aubrey was advancing to the relief
of the garrison with twelve hundred men whom he
had gathered from aU the four French posts on the
lakes. Leaving a force to continue the bombard
ment, Johnson marched out with infantry and gren
adiers, having the Indians on his flanks, and attacked
the advancing French with vigour. In this battle the
Indians fought like genuine soldiers, and threw the
French into disorder. Seeing this, the charge of the
regulars and mUitia was made with such force and fury
that in less than an hour the fight was over, and a
splendid victory for the Enghsh was the result.
Returning to camp and trench, Johnson sent Major
Harvey to Captain Pouchot, the French commander,
to teU of the defeat of D'Aubrey, and to advise capitu
lation, especially while it was possible to restrain the
Indians. Pouchot yielded ; and the surrender of the
whole force of over six hundred took place the next
morning. Johnson wisely had ready an escort for
the French prisoners, and not one of them lost his
scalp or was radely treated by the Iroquois. WhUe
the women and children were sent to Montreal, the
men were marched by way of Oswego to New York,
to fill English prisons. The manner in which John
son restrained the savages was in marked contrast
to the butcheries allowed, or only with great difficulty
prevented, by the French under similar circumstances.
Johnson's victory at Niagara broke the chain of
French forts along the great valleys and water-ways

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 175
from the mouth of the St. La-wrrence to the delta of
the Mississippi. One after another the French de
serted the other forts, except Detroit; and General
Stanwix at once occupied them or their rains. Leav
ing Colonel Farquar at Niagara with a garrison of
seven hundred men, Johnson came to Oswego, there
meeting General Gage, who had been appointed to
succeed Prideaux. Gage, perhaps irritated that the
provincial fur-trader or " Heaven-bom general " had,
instead of himself, won the most brUliant of victories,
refused to allow Johnson to advance and destroy the
French forts at La Galette and Oswegatchie, or Og
densburg. Finding that Gage, despite his advice and
that of Amherst, meant to do nothing of importance
until the next year, Johnson, after meeting the chief
men of the Ottawa and Mississagey Indian tribes, re
turned home. He was now the most popular man in
the province ; while his name in England was joined
with that ofhis feUow-tradesman, Clive, as a " Heaven-
born general."
At his home Johnson learned that the French had
at last abandoned Ticonderoga and Crown Point, but
by concentrating at the northern end of Lake Cham
plain and fortifying their position, blocked the British
advance to Montreal. Amherst was therefore obliged
to rest for the winter ; having first rebuilt the great
fortresses, constracted Fort George near the site of
old Fort WUliam Henry, and cut a road from the New
York lakes into the heart of New England. Critics
of the over-cautious Amherst say he should have
pushed on and helped Wolfe to conquer Quebec ear-

176 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
lier. However, after so many mistakes and disasters
arising from rashness, such a man as Amherst was,
perhaps, necessary. Wolfe, however, succeeded, and
on the Plains of Abraham won America for Teutonic
civUization, finding the path of glory a short one to
the grave.
Montreal stiU remained to the French ; and when,
the winter over, it was resolved to attack this last
stronghold from three points, Amherst with the main
army assembled at Schenectady was to proceed by
way of Oswego down the " ocean river " of Lake On
tario and the St. Lawrence, General Murray was to
ascend the river from Quebec, whUe Colonel Havi-
land was to advance by way of Lake Champlain.
The colonial miUtia came in slowly ; but by the 1 2 th of
June Amherst left Schenectady with twelve thousand
men; while Johnson, arriving at Oswego July 25,
led the first detachment of six hundred Iroquois
fighting men. His influence was however so great
that before embarking on Lake Ontario he had, from
the tribes formerly neutral, won over seven hundred
more warriors. He also sent runners with wampum
belts to nine tribes of Indians living near Montreal.
These, on his arrival at Fort Levi, at once declared
their neutrality. It was thus from the danger of eight
hundred hostile warriors, familiar with every square
rod of land and water, that Amherst's army was saved.
Passing through the dangerous Lachine Rapids with
the loss of but forty-six men out of his ten thousand,
he reached Montreal. So perfectly was the plan of
campaign carried out, that Amherst and Murray ap-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 177
peared on opposite sides of the city on the same day.
Haldiman soon appeared from the south, and thus the
three English columns became practically one army
within twenty-four hours. The city surrendered on
the 8th of September, 1 760, and the French power in
America fell.
So fully were the Indians kept in hand by Johnson,
that no atrocities were committed by them, nor the
enemy's people or country in any way harmed by their
presence. In this "campaign, in which the talents of
Johnson shone with conspicuous brilliancy, his miUtary
career culminated.
The only French post of importance now remain
ing was Detroit. To carry out the terms of the ca
pitulation, and tb plant the red flag with the double
cross in the remote Western posts. Captain Rogers, the
celebrated ranger, was sent westward on the 12th of
September. At Presque Isle, about a month later,
Johnson's deputy, Croghan, and interpreter, Montour,
with a force of Iroquois to serve as scouts, joined him.
Passing safely through the country under the influence
of Pontiac, having an interview with the great sachem
on the site of Cleveland, they reached Detroit, Novem
ber 29. There, in the presence of hundreds of Indians,
heretofore the allies of France, the garrison marched
out and laid down their arms ; the great chief, Pontiac,
being one ofthe witnesses of the- memorable sight.

178 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON

CHAPTER XI.
DECLINE OF THE INDIAN AS A POLITICAL FACTOR.
With the change of dominion in North America
came a change in the raler of Great Britain. King
George II. died October, 1 760 ; but this made no
alteration in the relations of Sir WUliam Johnson to
the Crown. On the contrary, his sphere of influence
was enlarged by his having charge of Indian affairs in
Canada, and indeed in aU the regions north of the
St. La-wrence, in what is now called British Amer
ica. In October, 1760, a new commission as Super
intendent of Indian Affairs, vahd during the king's
pleasure, was issued and duly received. At the re
quest of General Amherst, Johnson now made a jour
ney to Detroit to regulate matters, and settle various
questions which had arisen in consequence of a change
of masters.
Now that the contest so long, equally or unequally,
waged by the two forces was over, and but one peo
ple were masters of the situation, there was no more
balance of power. The Indian had lost his place at
the fulcrum. As a political factor, he was suddenly
reduced to an ally only, with the strong probability of
soon becoming first a vassal and then a cipher. No
son of the forest saw this more clearly than Pontiac,

AND THE SIX N.ATIONS. 179
who, in the long line of red men wKO-^ve vainly
fought against destiny, from King PhiUp toTsC-umseh
and from Black Hawk to Sitting BuU, stands pre-eriji-
nent in genius and power as well as in the tragedy of
failure. Johnson made the western journey accompanied
by Capt. John Butler, his secretary and prospective
son-in-law Lieut. Guy Johnson, and a body-guard of
Oneida Indians. A long line of boats carried the
provisions and the Indian goods intended for gifts.
Johnson's object was to learn everything possible
about the country recently held under French domin
ion, and about the Indians living in it. At Fort Stan
wix, where the portage required several days to be
spent in unloading and reloading on account of land
transit. Colonel Eyre reached him with a letter from
General Amherst communicating startling news. Ap
parently under the instigation of the Senecas, behind
whom was Pontiac, all the tribes from Nova Scotia
to the lUinois were being plied by wampum-belts
and messages, and a plot to murder the English gar
risons was being hatched. Owing to the warnings
given to the garrisons by Captain CampbeU, the plot
was, for the time at least, postponed. Johnson ac^
cordingly caUed a councU at Onondaga, and directly
charged the Senecas with dissimulation. He gave
them to understand that only by their appearance in
friendly councU at Detroit would his suspicions be
allayed and their own safety secured.
A change in Johnson's dornestic arrangements made
about this time probably stiU fiirther increased the

l8o SIR WJiLiAM JOHNSON
prestige whig^ he had so long enjoyed among the red
men. ^is wife Catharine died in 1759, and for a
wfe'e he Ulustrated in his o-svn life the injury to mor
als which war, especially when successful, usually
causes. He lived with various mistresses, as tradition
avers, but after a year or two of such life dismissed
them for a permanent housekeeper, — Mary Brant,
the sister of Joseph Brant. According to the local
traditions of the VaUey, Johnson first met the pretty
squaw, when about sixteen years old, at a mUitia
muster. In jest, she asked an officer to let her ride
behind him. He assented, returning fun for fun. To
his surprise she leaped like a wUd-cat upon the space
behind the saddle, holding on tightly, with hair fly
ing and garments flapping, whUe the excited horse
dashed over the parade-ground. The crowd enjoyed
the sight ; but the most interested spectator was John
son, who, admiring her spirit, resolved to make her
his paramour.
From this time forth MoUie Brant, the handsome
squaw, was Johnson's companion. Her Indian name
was Deyonwadonti, which means " many opposed to
one." She was a granddaughter of one of the Mo
hawk chiefs who had visited London a generation or two
before, when " Quider," or Peter Scliuyler, had shown
the King of Great Britain some of his American allies.
Mary Brant was undoubtedly a woman of ability, and
with her Johnson lived happily. She presided over
P'ort Johnson, and later at Johnson Hall. She became
the mother of a large brood of Johnson's " natural "
children ; and as " the brown Lady Johnson," white

AND THE SIX NATIONS. l8l
guests and visitors always treated her with respect.
With this new Unk to bind the Iroquois to him, the
colonel's influence was deepened far and wide
throughout the Indian Confederacy. To strengthen
his ascendancy over the minds of the Indians, John
son seemed to hesitate at nothing.
The dangerous journey to Detroit was duly made,
and after being waited on by friendly deputies of the
Ottawa Confederacy, the great council was held on
the 19th of September. Here, before the representa
tives of many Indian nations from the four points of
the compass, he made a great speech, smoked the
pipe of peace in the name of their Great Father the
King, and distributed the presents. The ceremonies
wound up with a grand dinner and ball to the people
of Detroit. The retunj was safely made, and home
was reached October 30.
During the winter of 1761, spent by Johnson in
New York in pursuance of his civil duties. Dr. Cad
wallader Colden, the incorrigible Tory, who was now
lieutenant-governor, distinguished himself in further
encroaching upon the liberties of the people, by try
ing to make the judiciary dependent on the Crown.
Instead of the judges being appointed to hold office
during good behaviour, Colden wanted them to serve
at the pleasure of the king. In other words, he would,
by making the king's will the term of office, reduce
the bench of judges to be the instrament of the royal
prerogative. A lively discussion in the press was car
ried on by William Livingston, John Scott, and WU
liam Smith, as champions of the people, who contended

1 82 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
vigourously for the principle so long regnant in the
Dutch, and now prominent in the American republic,
— the supremacy of the judiciary. Remembering too
well how servile were the English judges who held
office at the pleasure of the Plantagenets, the Stu
arts, and even of CromweU, the people of New York
fought stoutly for their rights and the republican prin
ciple. When Colden desired an increase of salary
for the Boston lawyer who acted as chief-justice, the
Assembly flatly refused to grant it. The salary of the
obnoxious Chief Justice Benjamin Pratt was finally paid
out of the royal quit-rents of the province. Colden
wrote to the Board of Trade prophesying the dire re
sults of the doctrine — embodied in the preamble to
the Constitution of the United States only twenty- six
years later — that all authority is derived from the
people. This is the doctrine on which republics are
founded. Largely due to Johnson's influence was the passing
by the Assembly of an act for the better survey and
aUotment of lands in the province. At the English
conquest of 1664 the exceUent Dutch customs of
land survey, measurement, registry, and allotment
had been changed for the tedious forms of English
common law. In consequence, there was much con
fusion in regard to claims and boundaries. Large
tracts of land had been granted by the British Govern
ment, under letters patent, in which the exact quan
tity of land given away was not stated, nor the correct
boundaries named. Further, the popular methods of
measurement in vogue — such as by counting off the

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 183
steps made by a grown man, or by using horse-reins
or bridles in lieu of a surveyor's chain — were not
calculated to insure accuracy. Not only were con
stant trespassings made, both with honest and dishon
est intent, upon the king's domain, — that is, the lands
of the Indians, — but there were frequent troubles
about the di-vision of the great patents. The lawyers
held that when the boundaries were uncertain, the
title was void. The only way to settle the many dis
putes was to have all the patents and tracts accurately
surveyed by the king's surveyor-general, and done in
so scientific a manner that his lines should be final ;
whUe the names of the patentees, the size of the
patent, and the year when patented, should be matter
of pubhc knowledge. The good fruits of this piece of
legislation were the removal of much of the irritation
felt by the Indians, and the prevention of further
encroachments on the royal lands.
In a word, close approximation was made to the
methods followed in the Republic of Holland for cen
turies, and established in the New Netherlands by the
first settlers from the Fatherland. After the Revolu
tion, under the Surveyor-General of the United States,
Simeon De Witt, a Hollander by descent, and famihar
with the Dutch methods, this system, enlarged and
improved, became that, of the whole nation from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. It is this system, lying at the
basis of the land laws of the United States, which so
won the encomium of Daniel Webster in his great
address at Plymouth, when he said that our laws
relating to land had made the American Republic.

1 84 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Some time afterward, the Mohawks, who had for
gotten the covenants of the past, thereby showing the
worthlessness of mere tradition or unsupported asser
tions freshly fabricated, claimed that "the great flat,"
or large tract of fertUe land near Schenectady, had
not been purchased of them, but had been lent to
the Dutch settlers simply as pasture-land. On their
making complaint to Johnson, the documents were
called for, and duly produced by the magistrates of
Schenectady. The deed of sale to Van Curler and
his fellow-settlers, made in Fort Orange, July 27, 1661
("Actum in de fort== Orangie den 2 7° July A. 1661 "),
was first produced. On it were the signatures or
marks of the sachems Cantuquo, Aiadne, and Sona-
reetsie, with the totem-signs of the Bear, Tortoise, and
Wolf. Other papers of later date were shown, which
set more definite boundaries to the patent of eighty
thousand acres. Johnson declared the Schenectady
men in the right. The Indians, with perfect confi
dence in Johnson as arbitrator, went to their bark
houses satisfied.
From this time forth untU the end of his life, a large
part of Johnson's time was occupied in the settlement
of land disputes between whites and Indians. Ceasing
to be any longer a poUtical factor in the future develop
ment of the continent, the Indian's course was steadily
downward. Having exhausted the benefit of his service,
the British and colonial governments were both only
too ready to ignore the red man's real or supposed
rights. . SteadUy the frontiers of civUization were
pushed forward upon the broad and ancient hunting-

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 185
grounds of the West. In the old and thickly settled
domain of the Iroquois, it was now scarcely possible
for an Indian to chase deer without ranning into a
fence or coming unexpectedly upon a clearing where
the white man stood, gun in hand, to warn off intra-
ders. The saw-miUs of the pale-face spoiled the pri
meval forests, choked the trout-streams with sawdust,
and killed the fish, even as his traps and ploughed land
drove off the game. Henceforth, though Johnson's
business with the Indians was greater than ever be
fore, it was largely matter of laborious detaU and set
tled routine. Important as was his work to the per
fecting of the results attained by the annulling of
French pretensions, it would be monotonous to tell
the whole story. His toil was necessary to the uni
formity desirable in aU the king's dominions, yet it
lacked the picturesque element dominant in his early
life, and need not here be set forth. We may take
notice only of the most important of his labours as
examiner of claims, as advocate for the right, and as
judge and decider.
After inviting the sachems of the Six Nations to
assemble at his house to hear his report of the Detroit
Council, he examined into the famous Kayaderosseras
or Queensborough patent of several hundred thousand
acres granted in 1 708. This patent was one of sev
eral which the Mohawks claimed were fraudulently
obtained.- Johnson heard both sides fully, and de
cided that the Indian claim was the correct one, and
that the white man was in the wrong. The result was
that the alleged owner gave fuU release. In the mat-

l86 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
ter of the lands on the Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania,
but claimed by Connecticut, the Iroquois were so ex
cited that they sent a delegation of five chiefs to Hart
ford. These were led by Guy Johnson, and bore a
letter from Sir WUliam._ The Connecticut people held
tenaciously to their claim, and were about to settle, to
the number of three hundred famUies, in the Wyoming
VaUey. In the speech of the Onondaga orator at
Hartford, after rehearsing the story of the covenant
with Corlaer, and denouncing men like Lydius and
Kloch, who fraudulently obtained the Indians' land,
he declared the Six Nations would resist^ even unto
blood, the loss of their Susquehanna lands. Governor
Fitch heartily agreed with the Iroquois, and so ac
tively seconded the royal order that the proposed set
tlement was, at least, postponed.
Johnson predicted in a letter to Amherst, March
30, 1 763, " the dangerous consequences which must
inevitably attend the settlement of these people in the
Wyoming VaUey." The Susquehanna Company per
severed, however, and at the council held at Fort
Stanwix succeeded in getting from sOme of the chiefs —
after Johnson had been warily approached with bribes
to take the vice-presidency of the company — a title-
deed to the lands. Into this beautiful valley, twenty-
one mUes long, and now one of the richest and most
lovely in all Pennsylvania, forty families from Connec
ticut settled in 1769. The unsleeping vengeance of
the Senecas did not find its opportunity untU 1778.
Then, led by Butler and his Tories, the awful massacre
was perpetrated which has furnished the poet Camp-'
bell with his mournful theme.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 187
During the great conspiracy and war of Pontiac,
Johnson was ceaselessly active in measures tending to
holding the loyalty of the Indians. The Senecas, al
ways the most wayward, because most easily influenced
by the French, and more susceptible to Indian argu
ments, at first espoused the cause of Pontiac./ The
baronet had no sooner heard of this than he called a '
council of aU the Six Nations at German Flats, and
secured a tremendous advantage to the cause of civ
ilization, by winning them over to neutrality. He sent
Captain Claus with the same end in view to Caughna
waga, or the Sault St. Louis. At this place, formerly
called La Prairie, whence had so often issued in the
old days, from 1690 and onward, scalping-parties on
the English and Dutch settlements, Claus met the
Caughnawaga, St. Francis, and other tribes of In
dians, thus cutting off another possible contingent for
Pontiac. So successful was Claus, that these Canadian
tribes not only sent deputies to dissuade the Western
braves, but also warned them that in case of hostUities
they would fight for the king with their English
brethren. Not knowing what roving bands of Western savages
might make sudden raids, Johnson ordered out the
Valley miUtia, despatched Indian scouts to Crown
Point, built a stockade of palisades around Johnson
Hall, and armed his own tenants and the people of
Johnstown. The two stone towers or block- houses
flanking the Hall were mounted with cannon, — the
weapons most objectionable to savages, one of them
being a piece captured at Louisburg, and presented

1 88 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
by Admiral Warren. Seeing that the Mohawk VaUey
was thus so guarded, the Western braves, though har
rying the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, kept
out of New York. Indeed it seems not too much to
assert that the influence of Johnson over the Indians
east of Detroit was the chief cause of the failure of
Pontiac's great plot. Angry with this one man be
cause of his power to thwart their designs, the foUow
ers of Pontiac intended to penetrate to Johnstown and
take his life. Hearing of their purpose, the Mohawks,
coming in a great delegation to their Great Brother,
offered to serve as his body-guard.
Pontiac's attempt to recover this continent to bar
barism failed, but the scattered war continued for
years. Half of the warriors of the Seneca castles were
out on the war-path with the Delawares and Shawa
nese ; and against these Johnson sent out many a war-
party from Johnson Hall, selecting his men from
among the most loyal of the Iroquois. These three
tribes were already in possession of a large number of
rifles which Swiss hunters of the chamois and German
skiUed artisans made at Lancaster and other places in
Pennsylvania. Being thus more effectively armed and
able to move with less ammunition, they were also less
dependent on the white man, — a condition of things
which Johnson viewed with alarm. We find him
writing to the Lords of Trade, requesting that traffic in
such deadly weapons should be prohibited. Colonel
Bouquet, the gallant Swiss officer, avenged Braddock's
defeat by his briUiant victory at Bushy Run ; and the
Moravian Indians in Pennsylvania were ruthlessly

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 189
slaughtered by wild beasts in white skins who wore
the clothes of civUization. All this was part of
" Pontiac's War."
" War is hell," as Gen. WiUiam Tecumseh Sher
man insisted in our own days ; and the barbarities in
Johnson's times seemed to have made devils of both
white and red men. We find Johnson again making
himself a trader in scalps by offering out of his own
private pocket fifty dollars apiece for the heads of the
Delaware chieftains. In a word, he continued a pol
icy becoming obsolete in other colonies. He thus
encouraged the retention by the British Government,
long after the Revolution had broken out, of a custom
worthy of Joshua and his Hebrews in Canaan, or of
the pagan Anglo-Saxons in Celtic Britain, but not of
Christian England or of modern America. Was he
encouraged to do this by his squaw wife, MoUie
Brant? Teedyuscung was no more; but his son, Captain
Bull, was an active warrior. The famous Delaware
chief had perished in the flames of a house in which
he was lying in a dranken stupor. An incendiary and
hostile savage had been bribed by enemies to do the
vile deed. Captain Bull, whUe on his way to surprise
a white settlement, was himself surprised, July 26,
1764, by the interpreter, Montour, now become a
captain, who led a band of two hundred Oneidas and
Tuscaroras. The Delawares were all captured and
taken by way of Fort Stanwix to Johnson HaU. Those
who were not adopted into the Confederacy found
their way into the jaUs of New York. Joseph Brant,

190 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
leading another party of Iroquois into the country of
the head-waters of the Susquehanna, surprised other
Delaware braves, kiUed their chief, and burned seven
villages. The result of these successes was to cow and terrify
the Senecas, who came to Johnson Hall and made
peace. General Gage vigourously pressed operations
against the hostUe tribes, and sent Bradstreet west
ward. As a reinforcement, Johnson persuaded over
five hundred of the Confederate Iroquois to join Brad
street. He then went himself to Niagara, arriving July
8, 1764, to hold a grand council with all the Indians
favourable to the English cause, from Dakota to Hud
son Bay, and from Maine to Kentucky. Besides a
treaty of peace with the Hurons, the earth-hunger of
the pale-faces was temporarily satisfied by a cession of
land along the lakes, accompanied with the promise
of protection to navigation. The Senecas also ceded,
not for private use, but to the Crown, a strip of land
eight miles wide between Lakes Erie and Ontario, bi
sected by the Niagara River. They made a promise
of the islands in the river to Johnson himself, who
immediately transferred them to the British Govem-
ment. A considerable number of white prisoners
were delivered up. In this policy of possibly mis
taken kindness, in which the change of life to those
who had forgotten their old home and friends and
had become habituated to Indian life, was like a res
urrection, there were many incidents Uke those upon
which Cooper has founded his romance of "The Wept
of the Wish-ton-wish." Johnson's advertisement to

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 191
friends of the captives is one of the pathetic curiosi
ties in the American journalism of the eighteenth
century. After interviews between Johnson's agent, Croghan,
and Pontiac, arrangements were made for the amica
ble dwelling together of the two races. Johnson had
proposed to the Lords of Trade in London that the
territory west of the Ohio River should be forever
reserved to the Six Nations as a hunting-ground.
Another great council was held at his house April
27, at which over nine hundred Indians, including
one hundred and twenty Senecas, the Delaware chiefs
Squash-Cutter and Long-Coat, were present. The
various conferences lasted nearly a month, resulting in
a fresh treaty of peace with the Western Indians.
They covenanted to allow the boundary to be made,
protect traders, allow the passage of troops, deliver up
murderers to the nearest garrison, and endeavour to
win over the Illinois tribes. Later, Croghan, the
agent of Johnson, -visited Detroit, on the way collect
ing the white captives delivered up, and meeting the
penitent Pontiac, who of his own accord made over
tures of peace and accompanied Croghan. On the
1 7th of August, at Detroit, he met the Ottawas, Pot-
tawatamies, and Chippewas, and in one of several con
ferences presented Johnson's road-belt to " open the
path of the English from the rising to the setting sun."
Ten days later, on the 27th, with Pontiac and the
tribes of the great Ottawa Confederacy, the war-
hatchet was buried, the tree of peace planted, and the
calumet of peace smoked. Pontiac even gave a prom-

192 SIR /WILLIAM JOHNSON
ise to visit Johnson at Oswego to ratify the peace thus
made. The road being cleared for the passage of the
troops. Captain Sterling, with one hundred Highland
ers from Fort Pitt, received possession, October lo, of
Fort Chartres, and the French flag was hauled down.
. True to his promise, Pontiac met Johnson at Os
wego July 23. Amid every possible accessory of
impressive display and ceremony, the sacramental
wampum, the sacred promises of peace and tokens of
friendship were exchanged. Then Pontiac and his
braves moved out in their canoes over Lake Ontario
to the west and to obscurity. Henceforth the way of
Teutonic civilization was cleared, and the march to
the Pacific began. As we write in 1891, the centre
of population is near Chicago.
In October, 1768, the great councU called for the
purpose of making a scientific frontier met at Fort
Stanwix^ This great concourse, not only of Indians,
but of the govemors and other distinguished men of
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, makes one of the his
torical pictures in the story of America well worth
the artist's interpretation on canvas. Johnson, being
at this time heartUy interested in the welfare of St.
George's Episcopal Church, built next to the British
barracks in Schenectady, in which he was a frequent
worshipper, profited by the presence and happy mood
of so many prominent men. He took up a coUec-
tion, and secured sixty-one pounds and ten shiUings
for the little stone church on whose spire in Ferry
Street stUl veers the gUded cock of St. Nicholas, the
symbol of vigilance and ofthe resurrection.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 1 93
Of the Six Nations and other tribes, thirty-two
hundred individuals were present to witness the bar
tering away of their birthright for such pottage as the
pale-faces had to tempt these Esaus of the wilderness.
For ten thousand dollars, unlimited rum, and after
due exchange of eloquence and wampum, they sold
to the king the ground now occupied by Kentucky,
Western Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania. Fort
Stanwix was dismantled. The Indians moved out of
Central New York, and the next year Daniel Boone
led that great emigration of white men from the
Southern Atlantic coast -which resulted in the win
ning of the West. Boone's was a movement for the
annihUation of savagery, the extinction of Latin, and
the supremacy of Teutonic civilization in North Amer
ica, parallel to that roUing westward from New Eng
land, New York, and Pennsylvania.
This was the last of the most important meetings
and negotiations of Johnson with the men who claimed
by hereditary right to occupy the continent. Though
afterward fuU of toilsome detaU, and busy in con
ference, in hearing complaints, and securing the per
formance of stipulations, Johnson's constractive career
as Superintendent of Indian Affairs virtually closed
at Fort Stanwix.

13

194 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON

CHAPTER XII.
LIFE AT JOHNSON HALL.
The last ten years of Johnson's life were among
the busiest of his career. War matters occupied but
a portion of his time. His greater works were those
of .peace, his chief idea being the development in
civUization of the region watered by the Mohawk and
its tributaries. The story of his life now concerns
itself with the location of settlers; the education of
the Indians; the building of schools, churches, and
colleges; the improvement of land and live-stock;
the promotion of agriculture, and of the arts and
comforts of hfe. In a word, none more than he
carried out the command to replenish the earth and
possess it.
Fortune seemed to have no frowns for this one
of the chief Makers of America. Popular with his
neighbours, and appreciated on the other side of the
ocean, his rewards were many. Besides the gift of
five thousand pounds accompanying the title of baro
net, the king, in June, 1769, made over to him the
famous " royal grant " of sixty-six thousand acres on
the north side of the river between the East and
West Canada creeks, the present town of Little Falls
being in the southern centre. This large piece of

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 195
territory had been given him by the Mohawks in
1760, as a token of their gratitude and appreciation,
Johnson making return for the gift in a sum amount
ing to over twelve thousand dollars. As no private
person could, under the proclamation of 1 763, obtain
in any way so large a tract of land, the possession
was made sure by being given under the 'royal seal
and approbation as a token of his services.
It was, however, as early as 1763 that Johnson
chose the site on which to found the village of Johns
town, and to erect Johnson Hall, — as a letter dated
May 8, 1763, to Mr. Samuel Fuller, of Schenectady,
the architect and builder, shows. Like his former
house on the Mohawk, this edifice, so famed in ro
mance and history, still stands, though outwardly
somewhat altered in appearance by the addition of
modern roofs, bay-windows, portico, and verandas.
Only one of the two square towers or houses which
flanked the main edifice still remains.
The writer visited the HaU in July, 1890, being
pleasantly received by the present owner and occu
pant, Mrs. John E. Wells, and allowed to see the spa
cious rooms which, upstairs and down, flanked the
superb, wide hall-ways which extend from front to rear
doors. The missing block-house was burned by ac
cident in May, 1866. Between the ceUar of the man
sion and those of the block-houses an underground
passage formerly existed, in which my informant often
played, until within a few years ago. A circle of
Lombardy poplars planted round the Hall, once
formed a striking feature of the landscape, — for

196 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
these prim sentinels made a strange cordon to the
Indians and those accustomed only to the American
forest trees. Only four survivors on the east front of
the house remain, — the small arc of a grand circle.
Of an old walnut-tree planted by Johnson himself,
and lovingly preserved as an historical relic, only the
vine-covered and flower-adorned trank was left, in
which a squirrel was nimbly enjoying itself. The
HaU faces the east, the ground sloping to the left.
The mansion has been in the possession and occu
pancy of the Wells family for over a century.
Passing to the village, a half-mile to the east, I
visited the church buUt by Johnson. Its walls are of
the famous graywacke stone which underlies the Mo
hawk VaUey, and which is so widely utUized in edi
fices. A fire in 1836 that emptied the building of
nearly everything, and left only the walls, was the
occasion for rebuUding. When this was done, in
1838, the site was so changed that the grave of John
son under the altar was left outside the new building,
and the exact site of it lost to memory. For several
years it may be said that the very spot where lay the
dust of this Maker of America was forgotten. In
1862 the rector. Rev. Charles H. Kellogg, took
measurements, sunk a shaft, and discovered the brick
vault. Only a few fragments of the mahogany coffin
remained, — the leaden coffin enclosing it having been
cut up during the Revolutionary War for making bul
lets. The skull and a few bones left, together filled
but a quarter of a bushel. It is not stated whether
the bullet which remained in the wound in Johnson's

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 197
body when he died was found ; but the dated gold
ring was, and is carefully kept. The rehcs of once
animated earth were enclosed in a hollowed granite
block, and re-deposited with solemn ceremonies by
Bishop Horatio Potter, a few feet east of the church,
in a space of the churchyard which has no other
tombs in it. The unmarked mound, eight feet square
and six inches high, barely discoverable by a passer
by, had no other decoration than the thin grass which
manages to Uve between the shade of two buUdings.
The action of St. Patrick's Lodge of Free and Accepted
Masons which Johnson founded — his son being the
last Provincial Grand Master of the upper district of
the Province of New York — is stiU awaited. Either
the Masons, or others who honour Johnson's memory,
should set up a worthy memorial of the great man who
has stamped his name so ineffaceably on the history
of America.
In the neat village itself are many things to remind
one of its founder. The chief hotel is named after
the baronet. A number of autograph letters and rel
ics are in possession of private persons. Documents
in the handwriting of Johnson are in the Masonic
Lodge which he founded in the parlour of Johnson
HaU in 1772. The gold ring found in 1836 with his
dust, and inscribed with the date of an important
event, and possibly with the age of his bride, is here.
Nor far away, the cradle of black walnut in which
MoUie Brant rocked her children is preserved as a
relic. In an old innkeeper's book the first entry is
that of the great man's name, who ordered the first

198 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
glass of grog. Besides the evidences of ordinary
human life and infirmity, one cannot go very far in
the Mohawk Valley, or in those of the lowlands which
hold the tributaries to the river flowing through it, or
in the coUateral ones on higher levels, but the fruits
of a rich and busy life abound.
Johnson, though belonging to the ChVirch of Eng
land, was willing to help men who were of the
Churches of Holland or of Germany. He assisted
all Christians to have houses of worship, — at Fort
Hunter, Canajoharie, Burnet's Field, especially; but
in other towns and viUages tokens of his presence
are to be seen. He helped financially the Lutheran
and Reformed Germans, and the Dutch congregations,
and provided the Indians with missionaries and
churches. With Domine Samuel Kirkland, who la
boured among the Iroquois for over forty years, and
was the founder of the to-wn of Kirkland and of Ham
ilton College, Johnson was on friendly and sympathetic
terms. He greatly honoured the young man's charac
ter, and appreciated his labours ; and the two frequently
corresponded. During one winter while secluded in
Cherry VaUey, Kirkland was saved from starvation by
the Indians, who gathered ginseng, for which they
bought provisions in Albany. The root having been
just discovered on this continent by a French Jesuit
in Vermont, early in the century, already formed one
of the staples of American commerce with China.
While it is absurd to say that Johnson first " discov
ered " the fertility of the Mohawk Valley, it is unques
tionably true that he greatly stimulated advance in

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 199
agriculture. Under his encouragement many of the
Mohawk Indians became happy and prosperous farm
ers. When the officers and men under the leadership
of Sullivan, the New Hampshire general of Irish de
scent, invaded the country of the Six Nations in 1 778,
they were amazed at the evidences of Indian thrift,
and at the wide areas of richly cultivated land.
These being the piping times of peace, Johnson
built a handsome summer-house at Broadalbin, in
Fulton County, where he entertained lavishly. Having
a healthy interest equal to that of the Englishman in
out-door sports, he also erected on the south bank of
the Sacandaga Creek a lodge, which has given the
place the name it still holds, — the Fish House. The
building, which was of wood painted white, with the
doors and mouldings painted green, was comfortably
furnished. It was frequently occupied in summer,
often with gay company from New York or Albany.
An orchard, vegetable-garden, weU of spring water,
sheds for horses and cattle, with poultry and stock,
enabled the lord of Johnson Hall, with the assistance
of his favourite negro slaves from the Manor, to dis
pense lavish hospitality to his friends from Albany,
Schenectady, the Valley settlements, . or even from
Manhattan Island. Coming himself on such occa
sions, in his later years, in a coach and six, it was no
infrequent sight to see the Hke equipages numerous in
the grounds of the Fish House. For days together,
gayety and bustle filled the grounds, while pleasure-
parties of both sexes in the boats tempted to their
hooks the finny spoil. Excellent gunning was also pro-

200 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
vided in autumn for the gentlemen in the sunken lands
and low-lying coves along the Sacandaga, .wild ducks
and geese being the chief game. Oftener, however,
instead of visiting Europeans or fashionable society
nearer home, the baronet would be accompanied by
his cultured Irish friend and family physician. Dr.
Patrick Daly, and by his favourite musician, Billy. Nor .
is it likely that tradition wrongs him in frequently
furnishing him with other room-mates, since chastity
was not the shining virtue of Sir William Johnson.
Simms, the g'ossipy annalist of Schoharie, who
seemed incapable of writing history or holding him
self to a narrative without meandering off into theology,
politics, or preaching, has much to say about Sir Wil
liam Johnson. Though gathering a valuable harvest,
his sheaves need to be well threshed out before using.
He has set down in sober print much tittle-tattle
which New England historians, as usual when writing
about New York, have only too freely copied.
We see that the household at the Hall and in the
quarters was almost as cosmopolitan as New York
itself. Simms tells us that Johnson's bouw-master, or
head farmer, was an Irishman named Flood. He
looked after the ten or fifteen negro slaves who lived
with their famUies in cabins on the other side of the
Cayudutta Creek, opposite the HaU. They dressed
much like Indians, but wore coats. His private sec
retary, after Wraxall, Croghan, and others, was a Mr.
Lafferty, — a good lawyer withal, who attended also^to
Johnson's legal business. The family physician, named
Daly, was a companionable and cultivated gentleman.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 201
BUly, a dwarf about thirty years of age, was a master of
the violin, and the presiding genius of the numerous
balls given in the Hall when "persons of quality"
were guests, or at the village when the tenantry or
other citizens had their merry-makings. The gar
dener kept the grounds " as neat as a pin, ' and from
May to November smiling with flowers. The butler,
Frank, was an active young German ; and the chief
body-guard was Pontiac, a sprightly, well-disposed
lad of part Indian blood. He was named after the
great conspirator, and was often with Johnson when
away from home. Two of the waiters, — probably
brothers, — named Bartholomew, were short, thick-set
white men. Across the road from the Hall were the
blacksmith and the tailor, who did little -work outside
of the " royal " or " patroon's " household. The nu
merous progeny and employees of Johnson furnished
them with almost constant occupation. One of the
most important characters was the schoolmaster. Wall,
an Irishman with a rich brogue. His specialty waS"
the teaching of manners and rudiments of English
to the children of the tenantry and Johnson's half-
breed bastards. It may be well imagined that the
training given by Wall was rather to fit his pupUs for
proper subordination than to be self-reliant patriots.
In front of the schoolhouse stood the whipping-post
and the stocks, for which truant boys, drunken louts,
wife-beaters, and other transgressors, actual and poten
tial, were supposed to have due respect.
HoUdays and out-door merry-makings were fre
quent. The many-sided lord of the manor seemed

202 SIR WILLIAM jbHNSON
most in his natural element when providing or partici
pating in the athletic sports, Irish games and frohcs
with which he amused Indians and whites, old and
young. Himself ever jovial and fond of fun, he en
tered into the performances with an enthusiasm that
was magnetic. The greasy pole with a coin or other
prize on the top was set up for the nude Indian chil
dren to attempt to climb. The pig with its taU like
wise anointed was set free to be caught by him or
her who could. Tradition tells how, in one case, an
old Indian squaw beat every one in the race, and
finally, having caught up a handful of sand, had liter
ally the grit to hold on and win the race. Sack, hurdle,
and three-legged races were also favourite amusements.
Besides aU this out-door activity and healthy occu
pation, there was plenty of amusement indoors. The
numerous guests who came from all quarters and at
all times made Johnson Hall more like a grand hotel
than the private house of a gentleman. From April,
after the ice in the Mohawk had burst, as it often did,
with a sound like cannon, and floated out to the Hud
son and to the sea, and the spring floods were over,
until the autumnal splendours of crimson and gold
fiUed the Valley, the house rarely lacked guests. In
dian chiefs and warriors came at all times ; but in
summer the paint and feathers of forest fashions were
replaced by those from beyond sea. The rouge,
powder, patches, wigs, perakes, silken gowns and
stockings, silver-buckled shoes, and ruffled cuffs and
shirt-fronts from London, or patterned after Pic
cadilly prints, filled the Hall with brilliant colour.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 203
With musical instraments, a well-filled library, and the
last new novel on the drawing-room table, the guests
could easily amuse themselves on a rainy day ; whUe in
fair weather saunterings over the grounds of their host,
or drives or rides in the beautiful country around, made
the daylight hours fly pleasantly. Then, in full dress
for the evening dinner, the night soon passed in feast
ing, drinking, and exchanging news, with chat, gossip,
and smoke ; and more than one of the hours of morn
ing arrived before the concourse broke up.
Such a course of life was kept up for years, until the
hospitality of Johnson Hall became a proverb, and its
revelry, we must add, passed into a byword. Despite
his constant out-door life and otherwise good habits,
it is more than probable that such luxurious living
long persisted in explains why the baronet never saw
his sixtieth year.
In practical farming and in horticulture Johnson took
great delight, and in his intervals of leisure did much,
both by personal example and by neighbourly confer
ence with the farmers, to improve crops and hve-stock.
He was a regular correspondent of the Society for the
Promotion of Arts in England, and of the American
PhUosophical Society in Philadelphia. Agriculture
was one of the themes most often discussed in his
letters. He sent frequently to London for choice
varieties of seeds, and deUghted to see how they fared
in our climate and soil. Of horses and other fine
stock he was very fond, and to him is due the credit
of the introduction of sheep and blooded staUions.
He also credits himself with first raising hay, and thus

204 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
stimulating the development of improved breeds of
cattle. While thus on his table lay the last reviews
and best periodical literature of London ; while in his
library the European scholars, professors from Harvard
and Yale, and English ladies from London drawing-
rooms, would all find books to their taste, the pursuit
of science indoors and out was carried on with ardour
by the lord of the manor himself.
In attendance upon the county fair at Fonda dur
ing the summer of 1890, the writer was strack with
the variety and exceUence of the live-stock, as well as
with the richness of the agricultural products of Mont
gomery County. This county, with Saratoga and others
adjoining, has had marked influence upon the develop
ment of the region westward. Not a few of the fine
specimens of horses and cattle are descendants of the
denizens ofthe Johnson farm of pre-Revolutionary days.
Certainly Johnson was one of the benefactors of the
race, who made many blades of grass grow where none
grew before. Not the least of his good offices was in
prevaUing upon the British Government to relax the
iUiberal laws which prevented the agricultural develop
ment of the Mohawk Valley. Much of England's
troubles with her colonies arose from her determina
tion to keep the American part of her domain as a
close market for exclusively British products, and thus
to compel the Americans to buy only those goods
which were manufactured in England or came from
British ports. In thus attempting to nip in the bud
all flowering of the native genius of the people, she
succeeded in hampering, but not wholly repressing,

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 205
American manufactures. Johnson, as we have seen,
was able to get removed the restriction against raising
wool. Peter Hasenclever, a Palatine German, who
owned land next to Johnson's royal patent, started an
iron foundry, and though himself failing after long and
earnest efforts, unable to surmount the numberless
difficulties, gave a great stimulus to the development
of the iron industry in Northern and Eastern New
York. Philip Schuyler set up a flourishing flax-mUl.
Johnson lived to see the fearful results of the deter
mination of the lucre-loving British lords to force their
products upon Americans at all hazards. He regretted
these violations not only of human rights in general,
but of Englishmen's rights in particular ; though not
so outspoken as he might have been. The Americans,
while willing to be customers to the greatest nation of
shopkeepers, were resolved not to be considered as
buyers, and victims of monopoly only. Johnson for
tunately died before the covetousness, avarice, and
arbitrary thick-headedness of Great Britain, which had
forced the slave-trade, hampered commerce, and
paralyzed foreign commerce and home manufactures,
compeUed the colonists to rebuke her pretensions by
an appeal to arms.

206 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON

CHAPTER XIII.
JOHNSON'S family; LAST DAYS; EUTHANASIA.
While the brown Lady Johnson, MoUie Brant, pre
sided over the mansion, and her dusky brood attended
the manor school, the daughters of Johnson and of
Catharine Wisenberg were trained under the care of a
governess who made them familiar with the social
graces of London and the polite accompHshments and
standard literature of England. Mary Brant, though
not only an Indian, but a Mohawk Indian in spirit,
was to her dying day, in the old English and Hebre-w-
sense of the word, a virtuous woman. She had the
virile qualities of worth, excellence, and abUities, and
not only managed her household to the satisfaction of
her lord, but kept herself well informed and interested
in the two worlds in which lived the people of the
Long House and those of Christendom. More than
one English lady visiting at the Hall was surprised to
find this Iroquois woman so cultivated, refined, and
alert, not only with womanly intuition, but equipped
with information as to the life and thoughts in which
they and their husbands moved.
Johnson was happy in the careers of his chUdren
born in wedlock, so far as he Uved to witness them.
His first-born child, John, was the especial pride of

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 207
his father, though he never won the regard of his
neighbours. He had the misfortune to be the son of
a great man, and to be constantly compared with his
father. He was educated under Domine Vrooman
and other clergymen of the Dutch Reformed and An
glican Churches. He often accompanied his father
on his journeys, notably the adventurous one to De
troit in 1 761. Later he was placed in command of
three hundred Iroquois ; but these unfortunately de
serted their commander, who had not the power, like
his father, to sweeten the rigours of discipline by mag
netic personality and system. He had considerable
experience in the field with the militia, but never won
much personal popularity. Visiting England to com
plete his education, he was presented at court, and
knighted at St. James's, Nov. 22, 1765. He latdr
became a member of the Assembly, being pitted
against Colonel Schuyler, who rightly or wrongly —
more probably the latter — imagined the father to be
prodding the son or using him for a cat's-paw.
On the 29th of June, 1773, Sir John was married
to Miss Mary Watts, of New York City, the wedding
being at the bride's house. The bridal tour was a
trip up the Hudson River when Nature was dressed in
her glorious summer robes. A stay at Albany marked
by brilliant social attentions, and the ride up the
loveliest of vaUeys, completed the journey. Johnson
Hall was then embosomed in a wealth of foliage and
flowers, and bright with the pageantry which manor
life could on special occasions display. Sir John, on
the death of his father, succeeded to an estate which.

208 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
with the exception of that of the founder of Pennsyl
vania, was probably the largest ever held by a private
individual in America. At the request of the Indians
to Johnson, and of the latter to the king. Col. Guy
Johnson was made Superintendent of Indian Affairs,
assisted by Colonel Claus ; but Sir John succeeded to
the office of major-general of the miHtia. To tell the
story of his Tory career in the Revolution is no part
of our plan. " The Life and Misfortunes and Military
Career of Brig.-Gen. Sir John Johnson, Baronet," has
been ably written by Gen. J. Watts De Peyster. In
this book a list of Sir WiUiam Johnson's descendants
are given.
Johnson usually called Anne, his first daughter,
Nancy, and often wrote to her whUe away from home.
A son of one of the Palatine Germans, Daniel Claus,
a noted Indian fighter, captain of mUitia, and a man
of considerable culture in German, English, and the
Iroquois languages, and withal a favourite of Sir Wil
liam, fell in love with Miss Nancy, and married her in
July, 1762. The nuptials were celebrated at John
son HaU with great rejoicing. Claus assisted his
father-in-law and Joseph Brant in translating and pre
paring the Book of Common Prayer in the Mohawk
language. In thus foUowing up and completing the
work of Domine Barnhardus Freeman, of Schenectady,
a manual of devotion was prepared for the Mohawks
which was in use until near the second half of the
present century. As colonel of mUitia, Claus saw long
and varied service in New York, Canada, and the
West.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 209
Mary Johnson, the baronet's second daughter, mar
ried in March, 1763, her cousin Guy, a nephew of
Sir WUliam add his private secretary. Guy Johnson
was later an active member of the Assembly from
Tryon County, and was always a helpful assistaiit of
his uncle. Their daughter Mary became wife of Sir
Colin Campbell, and mother of Gen. Sir Guy Camp
bell. Guy Johnson's career in devastating the val
leys of New York during the Revolution is too weU
known to need repetition here.
The absorption of Johnson's mind in his multifa
rious labours and in the interests of the community in
which he lived, scarcely gave him time to study care
fully the great political movements leading to the
Revolution. The time had now come when the con
tinued folly of the king and Parliament acting as irri
tant and stimulant upon people in whom a love of
freedom was inborn, was to result in independence.
The long training in the border wars had educated a
generation of soldiers who did not fear to meet either
the mercenaries or the regulars of Great Britain,
while also well able to profit by the mistakes of the
king's agents, and to organize government for them
selves. On the civil side, the people of New Eng
land, led and trained by Congregational clergymen
rather than by lawyers, were educated into the idea
of resistance to the king and ParUament on grounds
of abstract right. In the Middle and Southern States
regularly educated publicists and lawyers trained in
England were much more numerous. The continued
invasion by the king of their rights as Englishmen
14

2 TO SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
was their theme ; and resistance was made, and final
victory expected, not by revolution, but through the
right application of the law and tradition which had
been so often violated. In many of the colonies a
weU-grounded fear lest a politically organized church
should be forced upon them, as well as hatred of Eng
land's avaricious pohcy of holding the colonies as a
close market, had also their influence in bringing about
separation. Johnson, too busily occupied to follow every step
of the movements, yet sympathized with the people,
even while sincerely loyal to the Crown. As member
of the Council in New York City, he witnessed not
only the frequent turbulent expressions of the popu
lace, but also saw from the firm temper of the As
sembly signs of the coming danger. While John
Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, and Samuel Adams, of
Massachusetts, were discussing the political situation
and the principles at stake, the people of New York
showed by their acts their constant determination to
resist all invasion of their rights by either the king or
his agent. The governor. Sir Henry Moore, who dis
solved the Assembly in 1 769, found out quickly that
the members were re-elected by overwhelming major
ities. His sudden death called to the office of acting
govemor, for the third time. Dr. Cadwallader Colden.
In the foUowing March the political sky, already
full of the portents of a coming storm, gathered a
deeper blackness when the fact became known that
the House of Commons in London had refused to re
ceive the representative of the New York Assembly.

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 211
In spite of prophetic warnings and wise cautions in
Parliament, the determination to make merchandise
of the colonies stupefied and debauched the con
science of the average lord and commoner of com
mercial England, as the opium question in China
stupefies and debauches it yet. The government was
as much determined on a war with the American col
onies, and for much the same purpose, as so many of
Great Britain's later wars have been waged, — for the
sake of maintaining trade. Of the twenty-five or
thirty wars, even during Victoria's reign, the majority
have been for the purpose of forcing trade and mak
ing money. In a word, the war of King George and
his Parliament in 1775 against the colonies was a
shopkeeper's war for a market. " British interests "
then, as now, meant trade and profits. Johnson felt
the injustice of the British Government's acts when he
wrote in 1 769 : " Whatever reason or justice there
may be in the late steps, there is a probabiUty of their
being carried farther than a good man can -wish."
Nevertheless, Sir WiUiam was -wisely non-committal
on the buming question.
The Sons of Liberty in New York became active
and turbulent, and made the lives of ultra-loyaUsts,
like Colden, a burden. The royal troops had been
by his orders summoned to New York City, after he
had been driven to take refuge in the fort on the out
break of violence when the stamps arrived from Eng
land. These soldiers were now the targets of scorn,
especially after the Assembly had refused indemnity
to Colden, who kept on recommending them to sup-

212 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
plicate the paternal tenderness of their gracious sov
ereign George. After concurring in the spirited
resolutions of the Legislatures of Virginia and South
Carolina, the Assembly had also defeated a cunning
scheme to win from them a vote of money to support
the king's military forces.
The hatred between the soldiers and the Sons of
Liberty burst into flame at the battle of Golden
. Hill, Jan. i8, 1770, in New York City, when the first
blood of the American Revolution was spiUed. The
Sons of Liberty had erected an emblem of their free
dom and hereditary rights. The liberty-pole, and
their meetings with speeches under it, were survivals
of the old custom of their Teutonic ancestors, who
met in the folk moot under the chosen oak-trees in the
forests of Germany before Christendom began. The
liberty-pole with its spars was obnoxious to the red
coats, who with saw and gunpowder tried to destroy it.
The citizens resisted, but the unarmed and unorgan
ized mob broke before the charge of armed men with
bayonets. Having finally succeeded in sawing the
pole into kindling-wood, the military piled the frag
ments before the doors of the tavern where the Sons
of Liberty met.
The citizens were now thoroughly roused, and on
the I Sth a riot broke out, in which clubs and cutlasses
were used, and in which the soldiers were worsted ;
though several citizens were wounded, and one of
them, a saUor, died. When at Golden Hill, or John
Street, between Cliff Street and Burling Slip, the riot
was stopped by the arrival of British officers, who

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 213
ordered their men back to camp. Conspicuous in
the affrays of next day were the saUors, who in re
venge for the death of their comrade clubbed the
soldiers and drove them out of the streets into their
barracks. On the 5 th of February a new liberty-pole
was erected on ground purchased for the purpose,
and it remained until 1776.
The Sons of Liberty succeeded in carrying out the
non-importation act so vigourously that the market
became empty of goods used as presents to the In
dians. Johnson was in danger of becoming seriously
embarrassed. The Cherokees, who in January, 1 7 70,
intended to go to war with the tribes in the West and
Southwest, wanted the Six Nations to join them.
These at once resolved first to ask the advice of
Johnson, who appointed a council at German Flats,
hoping to win the Cherokees away from their pur
pose. Johnson was obliged to write to the chairman
of the Sons of Liberty to get permission to receive or
purchase a package invoiced to him which they held
in bond, promising to use the goods only for the
Indians. The request was cheerfully granted, and the
goods delivered.
In company with Dr. Shuckburgh, who com
posed or introduced the tune of " Yankee Doodle,"
Johnson met the Indians, half famished as they were
on account of the failure of crops through caterpillars.
The result of the councU was that the Cherokees gave
up their proposed war, and the treaty of Fort Stanwix
was ratified in detail.
Perhaps it was from this incident that the New

214 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
Yorkers prepared to dress themselves as Mohawk In
dians, and tumble the tea into the waters of the East
River, when it should come. On the 9th of July, hear
ing that all taxes, except upon tea, had been removed,
the Committee of One Hundred agreed to receive aU
imports except tea. Johnson's storehouses were now
well stocked with imported Indian goods. Indian
trade, which had come almost to a standstill, was re
sumed, much to the joy of aU the Six Nations. The
red men could not comprehend the white man's poli
tics, or realize that the love of money was the root of
the evU of war also. They could not understand that
titles of nobility, commissions in the army, stars, gar
ters, decorations, and things most noble were peddled
by government and purchased by money.
So rebellious a spirit as that manifested in New
York must be rebuked, and so the king and his coun
sellors chos^ as the proper man to curb it, the infa
mous WUUam Tryon. This Irishman had been an army
officer, but through his wife's influence obtained the
post of lieutenant-governor of North Carolina in
1764; becoming governor in 1765. He was the fit
tool of the kind of a king and parliament that ruled
England at this time. Living while at Newbern,
N. C, in amazing luxury, at the cost of the oppres
sively taxed colonists, he delighted in scorning their
remonstrances and in crashing out their liberties.
Goaded to desperation, the Sons of Liberty, after five
years of vain petition for redress, met to the number
of nearly two thousand on the banks of the Alamance
River. Tryon marched out from his " palace " with

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 215
an army of one thousand regular British troops, in
fantry, cavalry, and artiUery, to suppress them. On
the 15th of May, 1 771, the Regulators, or Sons of
Liberty, sent Tryon a message offering to lay down
their arms if he would redress their grievances. Tryon
advanced with the idea of scattering the patriots be
fore the reinforcements coming from aU parts of the
province should encourage the Regulators. When
within a hundred yards of the patriot ranks, his officers
read the riot act. It was met by shouts of defiance.
Tryon then ordered his men to fire. They hesitated.
Rising in his stirrups, Tryon in a rage cried out,
" Fire — on them, or on me," at the same time dis
charging his pistol and felling a victim. In the two
hours' musketry battle which ensued, the ammunition
of the poorly armed patriots being soon exhausted, the
decisive victory of Tryon was obtained when the artil
lery was ordered up, and the unequal contest decided
by rounds of grape and canister. Twenty of the
Sons of Liberty were left dead on the field, the
wounded being carried off. Of Tryon's men, sixty
were kiUed or wounded.
Although practically unknown to popular American
history, this was the first battle of the American Revo
lution. For a few weeks Tryon held high revel of
execution and devastation in North Carohna, and was
then, in the height of his glory, transferred to New
York; the Earl of Dunmore, who from Oct. 18,
1770, had served for a few months on Manhattan
Island, being ordered to Virginia.
Tryon, who reached New York July 8, 1772, soon

2l6 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON

^

became known among the New York Sons of Liberty
as " Bloody Billy." Before the Assembly he made a
concUiatory speech attributing his butchery in North
Carolina to the special favour of a kind Providence.
With consummate address and flattery, and the adroit
distribution of ministerial patronage, he managed to
hoodwink the Assembly. Backed by the order of the
British Government that his salary should be paid out
of the revenue, and becoming thus independent of the
colony, he was weU fitted to be the king's tool. To
the amazement of the patriots hke Schuyler, and of
other colonies, the Legislature of New York seemed
to have reversed its former record, and to have
become hopelessly subservient.
Local affairs were meanwhUe well attended to.
Early in January, 1772, Sir William Johnson, who had
long believed with Phihp Schuyler that a division of
Albany County should be made, fonvarded a petition
from the people in all parts of the county. After
considerable discussion a bill was passed by which the
old county of Albany was divided into three counti&s,
— Albany, Tryon, and Charlotte. All the civil officers,
except one who had been nominated by Johnson, were
appointed, and the county-seat of Tryon County was
fixed by the Government at Johnstown. At Johnson's
suggestion, Tryon County was divided into the town
ships of Mohawk, Stone Arabia, Canajoharie, Kings-
land, and German Flats.
Johnstown now became the centre of bustle and
activity. New roads were laid out, and a jail and
county court-house buUt ; whUe new settlers came in

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 217
by scores to select lots and buUd houses. In the midst
of his pressing local occupations, Johnson, who had
been elected a trustee, — his name standing first on
the list of Queen's, now Rutgers College, chartered
Nov. 10, 1766, — received an invitation to visit New
Brunswick, N. J. He was obliged to decline to at
tend. The college went into operation in 1 7 7 1 ; but
its sessions were soon interrupted, both professors
and students entering the patriot army when the war
broke out.
Remaining at home, he entertained at the Hall, in
July, Governor Tryon and his wife. Tryon, as avari
cious as he was murderous, had come into the VaUey
under pretence of holding a councU with the Indians
to redress their grievances against Klock and others.
In reality his purpose was speculation in land ; and the
use of his office, like that of so many royal governors
of New York, was to sweU his private purse, while
taking advantage of his high position. Although the
Indians rehearsed their troubles, and Tryon listened,
they obtained from the governor, who was .too busy
with his money-making schemes, no satisfaction.
After reviewing the mUitia at Johnsto-wn, Burnet's
Field, and German Flats, fourteen hundred men in
aU, and purchasing a large tract of land north of the
Mohawk, Tryon returned to New York. His name
was not suffered to remain on the map of New York ;
for Tryon County before many years became one of
the first of the nineteen counties in the United States
named after General Montgomery. Shortly after
ward Tryon appointed Johnson major-general of the
Northern Department. ,.

2l8 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
At a councU with the chief sachems of the Confed
eracy of the Six Nations held at his house, at the
order of Lord Dartmouth, Johnson obtained from
them their assent to the purchase of twenty-three
thousand acres north of the Ohio, by the Ohio Com
pany. After teUing the chiefs that as a mark of the
king's friendship to them Fort Pitt was to be demol
ished, the sachems agreed to the settlement of what
grew to be the State of Ohio.
Just at the time when Sir WUliam Johnson was in
the midst of the most varied activities, and was the
most popular and influential man in the whole prov
ince of New York, his physical strength failed. For
several years the inroads upon his constitution had
warned him to seek the rest from labours and from
social indulgence which seemed impossible to him.
For the last ten years before his death he had suffered
at intervals from dysentery, which often kept him an in
valid in bed for weeks. During these periods of weak
ness the unextracted bullet received at Lake George
in T755 irritated his nerves, and made his wound very
painful. Even when recovered from the attacks of
the disease which threatened to be chronic, active ex
ercise was frequently impossible for a long time after
ward. This suffering, though so grievous to himself,
was providentially turned to the advantage of millions.
It was the occasion of the revelation to the world of
the health-giving waters of Saratoga Springs. With a
touching solicitude for his personal goodj the Mo
hawks had caUed his attention to the remedial. value
of the High Rock Spring, to which they always turned

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 219
aside in their wanderings or hunts eastward. On the
2 2d of August, 1767, Sir WUUam left the Hall, and
was borne to these springs by his devoted Mohawks.
He traveUed in a boat to Schenectady, and on their
shoulders in a Utter to Saratoga. A halt over night
was made at Ballston Lake in the cabin of an Irishman
named Michael McDonald. Reaching the springs by
way of the Indian trail next day, his faithful bearers
buUt a bark hut, and tenderly cared for him during
the five days he was able to spend there, — for press
ing letters soon called him home. The Adirondack
air charged with ozone, and the cleansing and healing
waters greatly benefited him. After his return, when
this fact was known, others followed his example.
Known for ages to the aborigines, its line of fame
went out through all the earth ; and gradually the
evolution of the most famous watering-place in Amer
ica followed. It is noteworthy that a camp of the
red men is stUl found at Saratoga Springs.
Stone, in his biography of Johnson, caUs attention
to the coincidence that while Johnson was recovering
at Saratoga, Dieskau was dying at Surenne near Paris.
Both had been leaders of the opposing forces, and
both had been wounded at Lake George twelve years
before. Arriving on the 4th of September, he was iri
time to hail his knighted son, John, just home from
Europe. Had the vital nerve of an electric cable
thriUed under the ocean, Johnson would have heard,
four days later, of the decease of his illustrious
antagonist. Other trips for the sake of health were made to the

2 20 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
sea-shore at New London, Conn. ; but owing to the
fact of his being so often overworked, he was fre
quently prostrated in summer by his old enemy. .
When Cresap's war broke out in 1774, he was almost
discouraged. Chief Logan's relatives — the Delaware
chief Bald Eagle, and the Shawanese sachem Silver
Heels — had been murdered by white men, who were
too eager to improve red men off the face of the
earth. The treaty of Fort Stanwix had not only been
trampled under foot by the whites, but the murderers
of Silver Heels had, perhaps unwittingly, but certainly
in accordance with Indian interpretation, committed
a symbolical act which was not private, but national
and declarative. It meant war. After the white
murderer had shot Bald Eagle, who was alone on the
river, he scalped the chief, and propping his body
upright in his canoe, sent him adrift down the
stream. No note of a congress or decree of a royal
court could be to the red man more distinctly a dec
laration of war than was the bloody freight which this
boat bore to the Indians.
To the Six Nations the murder of Logan, their kins
man, was a direct insult and irritating chaUenge ; yet
instead of rashing to massacre, they came to their
friend Johnson to ask his counsel. For weeks be
fore the congress which he called to meet at his
house, July 7, 1774, he was in constant correspond
ence with his agents in the Ohio and Illinois coun
try. As fast as the chiefs arrived, he persuaded them
privately to refrain from war, and to trust in him to
obtain justice. Six hundred Indians, many of them

AND THE SIX NATIONS. 221
from great distances, were impatiently waiting at
Johnson Hall while the war raged on the borders of
Virginia. Though Johnson was sick with dysentery,
he took no thought of self. From a sick-bed he rose
to attend the councU. After preliminaries, the meet
ing on the 9th of July, 1774, was addressed by an
eloquent Seneca chieftain. Fortunately, God's day
of rest intervened ; but on Monday — the last of John
son's days on earth — his answer was given. For
two hours, on a hot day and in the glare of a July
sun, with aU his old-time fire of eloquence, this friend
of the red man spoke in grave discourse. His dic
tion was fiery, rhetorical, impassioned at times ; but
he spoke judiciaUy on the problem in hand, plead
ing that they should not rush into war, but await
the course of law. Six hundred dark faces, unrip-
pled with emotion, were fixed intently with burning
but immovable eyes, and with the gravity of statues,
, on the speaker during the long discourse. Then after
the peroration, pipes and tobacco were passed around,
and the conference broke up, that the auditors might
prepare, through their orator, a reply.
Johnson never heard the Indians' rejoinder. A
few minutes after the conclusion he was taken with
relapse. Supported to his library, he soon became
unconscious, and before sunset was dead.
It was euthanasia. Past all call to decide between
Indian tribe and tribe, between white murderers and
red, between serving conscience and king, between
foUowing the colonies for freedom under law or sup
porting arbitrary despotism under the fiction of power

2 22 SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON.
by the grace of God, Johnson rested from his labours.
He was one of the Makers of America, building
grander than he knew. His place in history is sure.
Had he lived a decade later ! — but here we enter
the region of conjecture, the ground forbidden to
history.

INDEX.

Abercrombie, General, 68, 152-
155, 168-171.
Akin, N. Y., 24, 32.
Alamance, N. C., 214-216.
Albany, 13, 28-30, 68, 70, 79, 114,
127-131.
Albany County, 216.
Algonkin Indians, ^S.
Amherst, Lord, 173-176, 178, 186.
AuriesviUe, N. Y., 23.

Barclay, Rev. Thomas, 21, 79.
Barn-well, Col. John, 52.
Beavers, 26.
Beukendal, battle at, 97-108.
Bible, 9, 10.
Bloody Pond, 81, 136.
Book of Common Prayer, 55, 208,
Boone, Daniel, 193.
Boston, 30, 161.
Bouquet, Colonel, 154, 188.
Braddock, General, 68, 132, 135,
154.
Bradstreet, Colonel, 156, 169, 171,
190.
Brant, Joseph, 120, 189, 208.
Brant, Mary, 180, 206.
Broadalbin, N. Y., 199.
Butler, John, 18, 159.
Butler, Thomas, 171.
Butler, Walter, 18, 159.

Calendars, 97.
Canajoharie, 17, 79, 173.
Captives, 51, 189-191.
Catawba Indians, 114, 123, 124. "
Caughnavraga, 17, 24, 56. See
Fonda.
Cayuga Indians, 37.
Champlain, 38, 40, 41.
Cherokee Indians, 213.
Cherry -Valley, 17, 116, 198, 209.
Clinton, Gov. George, 65, 72, 83-
92, 105, 109-117, 122, 124.
Clinton, Sir Henry, 124, 125.
Chucktununda creek, 24, 32.
Church edifices, 8-10, 15, 70, Ji,
192, 196.
Claus, Captain, 187, 20S.
Colden, Dr. Cadwallader, 37, 72,
75, 79, 80, 86, 105, 107, 182, 210,
211.
Confederacies, 51, 53,54, 127, 191.
Congress, 127-131.
Connecticut, 80, 98, 100, 104.
Cooper, J. F., 59, 60, 190.
Corlaer, 3, 4, 45, 94. See also Van
Curler, Arendt.
CourceUes, 44.
Cresap's war, 220. '
Crown Point, 69, 70, 85, 95, 118,
146, 147, 187:
Crullers, 14.
Cuoq, Rev. I. A., 43.

224

INDEX.

Dartmouth College, 120, 121.
De Lancey, E. F., 21.
De Lancey, Gov. James, 72, 83,
126, 129, 132.
De Lancey, Stephen, 12
De Lancey, Susan, 12.
Delaware Indians, 155, 156, 172,
188-191, 220.
De Peyster, Gen. J. -W., 11, 208.
Detroit, 177-179, 181, 191.
De Witt, Simeon, 183.
Dieskau, Baron, 133, 137-141, 145,
219.
Domines in the Dutch Church, 15,
55. 71-
Dorp. See Schenectady.
Drummers, 19, 29.
Dutch Republic. See Holland.

Eastman, Dr. C. A., 121.
Easton, Penn., 156, 172.
Edwards, Jonathan, 119.
Eliot, John, 55.
Eyre, Major William, 134, 160, 179.

Fish House, 199.
Fonda, Major Jellis, 17, 159.
Fonda, N. '^., 17, 44, 58, 204. See
Caughnawaga.
Fort Bull, 148, 149.
Fort Frontenac, 171.
Fort George, 147, 175.
Fort Hunter, 17, 21.
Fort Massachusetts, 8r, 132.
Fort Plain, 17.
,Fort Stanwix, 171, 179, 186.
Fort William Henry, 144, 160, 161,
175-
France, 61, 62.
Franklin Benjamin, 131.
Freeman, Domine, 208.

Freeman, E. A,, 53.
French ideas, 61-64, ^6, 69, 112,
113, 151.
Fur trade, 19, 24, 28-30.

Gage, General, 161, 190.
German Flats, 6, 17, 161, 164-166.
Germans, 5-10, 20, 72, 153-155.
Ginseng, 23, 198.
Golden Hill, Battle of, 212.
Governors, 65 : Andros, 30 ; Bur-
net,'i8, 19; Cosby, 7, 18, 89;
Craven, 51, 52; Denny, 156;
Dinwiddle, 128 ; Dongan, 57,
58 ; Dunmore, Lord, 215 ; Fitch,
186; Glen, 114; Hardy, 144,
146, 147, 162; Hunter, 6; Moore,
210; Morris, 155; Nicholson, 5 ;
Osborne, 124-126 ; Shirley, 74,
-83, 96, 128, 133, 147-149. 152.
156; Tryon, 214-217.

Hamilton, Janies Alexander, 7.
Hartford, 186.
Hasenclever, Peter, 205.
Hawley, Rev. Gideon, 120.
Heidelberg Catechism, 8, 10.
Hendrick, King, 129, 133, 136.
Herkimer, 17.
Holland, 1, 11, 53, 61-63, ^7' 91,
93, 110, 123, 125, 127, 182, 183.
Horicon, 133.
Horsmanden, Judge, 83, 93.
Howe, Lord, 163, 169,

Indians, antiquities, 59; councils,
115; dislike of artillery, 137,
187 ; effect on British imaeina-
tion, 59, 60 ; etiquette, 45 ; fire
arms, 51 ; government, 36 ; half-

INDEX.

225

breeds, 5 1 ; heraldry, 48, 49 ;
industry, 40, 41 ; in executive
council, no, 116 ; in politics, 64,
178, 179, 184; inventions, 35,
50 ; money, 48 ; oratory, 47 ; reli
gion, 46, 49, 50, 55-60 ; strata
gems, 100 ; sports and games,
99; totems, 49, 184; warfare,
38-40, 70, 71, 100-104, 135-137.
140, 144.
Interpreters, 47, 161, 189.
Iroquois, 38-41, 44, 51, 35-60, 68,
69, 72, 107, 112, 127, 135, 149,
186, 193, 220.

Johnson, Guy, 179, 186, 208.
Johnson Hall, 194-205. / ;J 7
Johnson, Mary, 209.
Johnson, Nancy, 208.
Johnson, Sir John, 22, 32, 206-208,
219.
Johnson, Sir William, adoption
as chief, 77 ; agriculture, 203,
204 ; ancestry, 1 1 ; arrival in
America, 12 ; baronet, 145 ; birth,
Tl ; captures Niagara, 173-175 ;
character, 13, 23 ; children, 33,
180, 206-208 ; coat-of-arms, 145;
colonel, 83, 148 ; councils, 65, 80-
82 ; disagrees with Shirley, 147,
148; education, 12, 119; educa
tion of the Indians, 119-121 ;
fortifies his house, 187 j freema
son, 198 J his housekeeper, 22;
his wife, 20-23 J ^^ houses, 22,
24, 32, 194-196; in executive
councU, no, 115, 117, 209, in
troduces fine cattle, 6, 203, 204 ;
in Indian costume, 33 ; journey to
Mohawk Valley, 13-16 ; journey
to Detroit, 179, 181 ; Lake George
campaign, 18, 81, 133-145 ; lit

erary tastes, 119, 203, 204; ma
jor-general, 133, 217; manu
scripts, 45, 97, 98 ; marriage,
21 ; money, 48; Mount Johnson,
22, 24, 33, 67, 94 ; offers reward
for scalps, 189; oratory, 46,47,
221 ; patience, 46 ; pleasures,
199, 201-204; protects French
men, 174, 177; public life, 66,
67 ; shoots an elk, 25 ; resigna
tion of office, 112; royal grant,
19.4. 195 j superintendent, 76-
79. 112. "5. »33. 148; tomb,
196 ; trade, 31-34; wampum, 48 ,
work, 64 ; wounded, 139, 218.
Jogues, Isaac, 44, 55, 56, 133.
Johnstown, N. Y., 196, 197, 216,
217. '
Joncaire, 93, 114.
Jones, Thomas, 26.
Judges, 182.
Kalm, 107, 108.
Kings : Charles II., 93 ; George II.,
105, 178; George III., 211.
Kirkland, Domine, 19S.
Kryn. 57. 58-
Lake Champlain, 38, 40, 44.
Lake George, 67, 81, 133.
Land Patents, 123, 182-184.
La Prairie, 57, 58, 1S7.
La Presentation, 114, 118.
Leisler, 5, 6, 71.
Livingston, PhUip, no.
Livingston, William, 182.
Loudon, Lord, 68, 152, 153, 157,
159, 166.
Lyman, Col. Phineas, 139, 143.

Maize, 20, 25.
Manor system, i, 2.

IS

226

INDEX.

McGinnis, Capt. WiUiam; 141-143.
Megapolensis, 38, 55, 56.
Middle States, 63, 209.
Mohawk Indians, 17, 37, 44, 77-79,
123, 140, 159, 184, 188, 214.
Mohawk Valley, 1-9, 16, 25, 30,
34,36, 66, 70, 73, 92, 118, 119,
125, 164, 187, 202, 204.
Montcalm, General, 157, 158, .16S,
163, 169, 170.
Montgomery County, 217.
Montmagny, 43.

New England, i, 54, 62, 75, 150,
209.
New England militia, 15, 137-145.
New York Assembly, 83-91, no,
III, 146, 149-151, 210.
New York Colony and State, 36,
63. 66, 74, 75, 90, 91, 150, 216.
Niagara, 118, 149, 173-I75. 'go-
Norman's KiU, 37, 41.
North Carolina, 51, 52, 214-216.
Nott, Dr. Eliphalet, 121.

Ogdensburg, 175.
Ohio Company, 112, 218.
Ohio Valley, 112, 113, 122, 127,
Oneida Indians, 37, 58.
Onondaga Indians, 37, 58, 59, 93,
94,96, 118,119, 124, 155.
Onontio, 43.
Osborne, Sir Danvers, 124-126.
Oswego, 19, 20, 32, 84, 92, 116,
122, 149, 155-158, 175, 192.
Ottawa Indians, 51, 181, 191.

Palatines. See Germans.
Parker, the printer, 89-91.
Parkman, 42, 43, 97.

Pennsylvania, 9, 154, 156, 172.
Picquet, Francis, 113, 158.
Pitt, WilUam, 168.
Pompey Stone, 118.
Pontiac, 177, 187, 188, 191, 192,
201,

Quebec, 69, 175, 176.
Rifles, 156, 188.
Royal American Regiment, 153,
154.
Rutgers College, 217.

Sacandaga, 96-103.
Saratoga, 17, 73.
Saratoga Springs, 67, 218, 2ig.
Schenectady, 2-4, 14-16, 30, 36,
37, 39. 48, 58. 70, 92-'o8, "5.
171, 176, 184, 192.
Schoharie, 8, 9, 16, 17.
Schuyler, Peter (Quider); 45, 180.
Schuyler (2d), 74, 76, 84.
Schuyler, Philip, 205, 207, 216.
Seneca Indians, 18, 37, 114, 188,
190.
Sergeant, John, 119, 120.
Shea, J. G., 59.
Simms, J. R., 21, 200.
Sioux Indians, 81.
Six Nations See Iroquois.
South Carolina, 52.
Spraker's Basin, 56.
Stevens, Arent, 161.
Stuyvesant, Peter, 93.

Taxation, 117, 118, 209-216.
Teedyuscung, 155, 156, 172, 181
Ticonderoga, 147.
Toll farm, 97-108.

INDEX.

227

Trade, 28-32.
Tuscarora Indians, 37, 51-53.
Union College, 121.
Van Curler, Arendt, 2 ; educa
tion, 2 ; first visits Mohawk Val
ley, 56 ; f oimds Schenectady, 2, 3,
184 ; name given by Indians, 42,
43 ; ransoms Jogues, 56 ; work,
38, 166.
Van Slyck, Albert, 97-108.
Victoria, Queen, 43.
Vrooman, Domine, 207.
Wampum, 15, 22, 26, 47-49, 112.
Warren, Admiral Peter, 12, 13, 43,
66, 67, 119, 122, 188.

Warrensburg, N. Y , 16
Washington, George, 114, 126, 136
160, 168.
Webb, General, 152, 158, 159, 162,
163.
Webster, Daniel, 183.
Wheelock, Dr. Eleazar, 120
Whiting, Gen. Nathan, 136.
WUUams, Col. William, 81, 134-
136, 138.
Winslow, General, 152.
Wisenburg, Catharine, wife of Sir
WilUam Johnson, 20-22, 180.
Wolfe, General, 168.
Wyoming Valley, 186.

Zenger, John Peter, 7, 8, 89, 90.

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