Such was this warfare. The consequences were far greater destruction to settlements than the Revolution brought to any other part of the Colonies. For the only approach to these losses we must go to the distant South, where, in the late years of the conflict, ruthless destruction was done. But those parts offer a suggestion, not a parallel.

It is natural to say that this destruction in New York should have been averted, and that, with proper precautions, it might have been. Nothing is clearer than that the authorities were inexcusably slow to realize the danger and completely failed to guard against it. Aside from the Sullivan expedition and Colonel Willett's success of October, 1781, no body of men sent to the frontier succeeded in one instance in crushing the enemy. It may well be questioned if the appalling havoc wrought by Colonel William Butler in the Susquehanna Valley and by General Sullivan's army in the Genesee country was not the gravest of all errors committed during these attempts to provide protection for the frontier.

It was not offensive warfare that the frontier needed, but defensive. Oriskany and the two expeditions merely roused the Indians to warfare still more savage. Could the men whom General Sulli

grief occasioned to their relations; a black scalping-knife or hatchet at the bottom, to mark their being killed with those instruments; 17 others, hair very gray; black hoops, plain brown colour; no mark but the short club or cassetete, to show they were knocked down dead, or had their brains beat out. No. 7. 211 girls scalped, big and little; small yellow hoops; white ground; tears, hatchet, club, scalping-knife, &c. No. 8. This package is a mixture of all the varieties above mentioned, to the number of 122; with a box of birch bark, containing 29 little infants' scalps of various sizes; small white hoops; white ground."

This letter was long supposed to be genuine and has often been printed as if it were. Stone, however, discovered that it was written by Franklin "for political purposes."

van led have been stationed permanently, and as early as September, 1777, in forts at Unadilla, Schoharie, and Cherry Valley, thus guarding the upper Susquehanna, Schoharie, and lower Mohawk valleys in the way that Fort Schuyler guarded the upper Mohawk, much that was destroyed might have been saved.*

We must hold the English first responsible for these frontier wars, in that it was they who coaxed the Indians into the fighting at Oriskany, whence proceeded the impelling force in the Indian breast for the invasions that followed. In Oriskany was aroused the strongest passion an Indian can know -the desire for revenge. In Butler's and Sullivan's work that passion was intensified into the bitterest hatred possible to that deep and dark aboriginal nature. Just as the Susquehanna Valley became the victim after Oriskany, so was it the Mohawk, Schoharie, and Delaware valleys that paid the penalty after Butler and Sullivan came.

I am writing here of the Indians. As for the Tories, their work was connected in effect, and mainly in design, with the struggle for the Hudson Valley. That great highway never passed from the control of the American armies. Twice it was nearly lost once through British valor, once through treason-but lost entirely it never was. For the maintenance of possession of it honor belongs to many-to Washington above all; to

Governor Clinton had suggested to Washington in March, 1779, "the Propriety of erecting one or two small Posts on the nearest navigable Waters of the Susquehanah; they would serve as a security to the Settlements, & of Course induce the Militia to engage in the Service with greater alacrity. From the general Idea I have of the Country, I am led to believe that the Unida [Unadilla] & where the Susquehanah empties out of the Lakes, West of Cherry Valley, would be the most elligible places."

Philip Schuyler, to George Clinton, and to Benedict Arnold only in lesser degree (traitor though Arnold afterward became). But the full measure of obligation remains yet to be bestowed upon men, women, and children in the fertile valleys of four rivers, where their homes and crops were converted into conflagrations, and they themselves, as cattle and game might be, were slaughtered.

This chapter should not close without a repetition of something already said that, in so far as concerns property, the losses of the frontiersmen were more than equalled, if we have regard for proportions, by the appalling destruction done to Iroquois villages. Of those losses and of Indian lives that were lost, let it always be remembered that no historian from the forest has ever chronicled the moving story-a story pervaded by the deepest pathos that comes into human lives.

V

The Iroquois

After the War

OT alone had Iroquois civilization been overthrown. A still more pathetic fate

Nov

De

awaited that proud people. One of the most touching results of the war, indeed, was the permanent exile that came to many of them-exile from streams and forests where for at least three hundred years their race had found a home. prived of British support, they saw themselves at the mercy of men whom they had fought as rebels, but who were now the victorious masters of an imperial domain. Nothing for them was exacted by the British in the treaty of peace. Not even their names were mentioned. They were simply abandoned to the mercies of the victors-these misguided children of the forest, who, in Morgan's words, went forth "not to peril their lives for themselves, but to keep the covenant chain' with a transatlantic ally." The misfortunes of the Indians have awakened pity from other writers. Campbell, in closing his narrative of the darkest deeds in the war period, says:

When I look over this land, the domain of the once proud Iroquois, and remember how, in the days of their glory, they defended this infant colony from the ravages of the French, and contrast their former state-numerous, powerful, and respected-with their present condition, I feel almost disposed to blot out the record which I have made of their subsequent cruelties.

It was not strictly true of all the Iroquois that their alliance with the English had been unshaken. At various times the French, as we have seen, made serious inroads upon the English. When Sir William Johnson appeared upon the scene, Joncaire had intrigued with the four western nations to very real purpose. The Mohawks alone remained always loyal. Early in the eighteenth century, the Jesuit missionaries had ceased to be purely religious zealots. They were then as much the agents of the King of France as agents of the Church of Rome. The Canadian Jesuits having originally been "before all things, an apostle," his successor, says Parkman, "was before all things a political agent.' At Onondaga, in 1709, sentiment had become much divided as between the English and the French. Although Abraham Schuyler won back the wavering red men, their sympathies a generation later gave signs of flowing back once more to France. Had not Johnson appeared at this critical period, Parkman thinks the intrigues of the French would have succeeded. In that case the after history of the Province of New York must have been greatly changed. Morgan's opinion is that France must chiefly ascribe to the Iroquois "The final overthrow of her magnificent schemes of colonization in the northern part of America."

From the English the Mohawks, before leaving their native valley in 1776, had received a pledge that when the war was ended their condition would be made as good as it had been before, and this pledge had been renewed in 1779. It was only through the persistent exertions of Brant that the Mohawks at last secured fulfilment of the pledge. Brant asked for lands in Canada on the northern