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atppletonsf' 
 historic titles: fyttit* 
 
 SIR WILLIAM 
 JOHNSON 
 
APPLETONS' SCRIES OF 
 
 HISTORIC LIVES. 
 
 Father Marquette. 
 
 By Reuben Gold Thwaites, Editor of "The 
 Jesuit Relations." Third Edition. 
 
 Daniel Boone. 
 
 By Reuben Gold Thwaites. Third Edition. 
 
 Horace Greeley. 
 
 By William A. Linn, for many years Man- 
 aging Editor of the " Nevr York Evening 
 Post." 
 
 Sir William Johnson. 
 
 By Augustus C. Buell, Author of " Paul 
 Jones, Founder of the American Navy." [In 
 preparation.'] 
 
 Champlain. 
 
 By Edwin Asa Dix. [In preparation.] 
 
 Sam Houston. 
 
 By Prof. George P. Garrison, of the Univer- 
 sity of Texas. [In preparation.] 
 
 Sir William Pepperell. 
 
 By Noah Brooks. [In preparation.] 
 
 Each I2mo. Illustrated. $1.00 net. 
 Postage, 10 cents additional. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON, 
 
tr 
 William %ahmmi 
 
 BY 
 AUGUSTUS C. BUELL 
 
 Author of " Paul Jones, Founder of the 
 American Navy" 
 
 i 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 New York 
 
 2D>. SEppletott and €ompanp 
 
 1903 
 

 
 OF 
 
 CONGRESS, 
 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 JUN 18 1 903 
 
 Kopyngf.t E| 
 SS ft, XXc. No 
 COPY B. 
 
 Copyright, 1903 
 By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 ," pifblishcui 'June, 1903 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. — Early life in Ireland and on the Mohawk, 
 
 1715-1748 1 
 
 II. — Domestic life and the Albany Congress, 1745- 
 
 1754 46 
 
 III. — Braddock's defeat and the battle of Lake 
 
 George, 1752-1754 93 
 
 IV.— Services in the last years of the war, 1756- 
 
 1761 163 
 
 V. — PONTIAC'S WAR AND SlR WlLLIAM's ESTATE, 1761- 
 
 1770 219 
 
 VI.— Sir William's character and death, 1769-1774 252 
 Appendix : Works consulted 273 
 
 Index 275 
 
 v 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 Sir William Johnson .... Frontispiece 
 
 Sir Peter Warren 8 
 
 Fort Johnson, near Amsterdam, N. Y. (from a recent 
 
 photograph) 18 
 
 Fort Johnson, near Amsterdam, N. Y. (from an eight- 
 eenth century print) 58 
 
 King Hendrick of the Mohawks 146 
 
 Joseph Brant 158 
 
 From a portrait in oil by Romney 
 
 The battle of Lake George 162 
 
 King Hendrick and Sir William Johnson . . . 200 
 Bronze statue at the State Park, Lake George 
 
 Map showing Fort Stanwix treaty line, negotiated by 
 
 Sir William Johnson in 1768 244 
 
 vii 
 
SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HIS EARLY LIFE IN IRELAND AND ON 
 
 THE MOHAWK 
 
 1715-1748 
 
 The year 1715 was epochal. It witnessed 
 the end of one great chapter in the history of 
 civilization and the beginning of a new one yet 
 greater. The chapter that ended then was 
 the one which embraced the stubborn and 
 bloody dynastic wars that since 1672 had 
 resulted from the collision between the stern, 
 sullen genius of William of Orange and the 
 reckless, unscrupulous ambition of Louis 
 XIV. For forty-two years war had raged 
 everywhere, broken only in its devastation by 
 such brief and hollow truces as Nimwegen 
 and Ryswick. True, William died in 1702, 
 killed by the stumbling of his clumsy charger 
 just at the threshold of a new campaign. But 
 during the thirteen years of his reign as King 
 of England he had built up a party of aggres- 
 isive patriotism, which has since proved the 
 
 1 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 founder of the British Empire as we know it 
 to-day. 
 
 For twelve years after William died, this 
 party under the reign of a really great though 
 rather indolent woman, Queen Anne, carried 
 forward William's projects and executed his 
 policies with no less vigor and, possibly, with 
 even more success, than he himself could have 
 done alive. I have seen the conflicts of Will- 
 iam and Louis described in some histories as 
 " religious wars." They were anything but 
 that. They were dynastic and political wars. 
 William may be called the inventor of the 
 "balance of power." He was the originator 
 of coalitions. The England that he took from 
 the Stuarts in 1689 was an insular province 
 near the coast of Europe. The England that 
 he left to Queen Anne and John Churchill 
 in 1702 was the prime factor in Europe, 
 and the last vision that faded before his 
 dying eyes was the dawn of the British 
 Empire. 
 
 It is a strange fact that, with all her wealth 
 of literature, England has no thorough history 
 of her greatest modern king! A few great 
 soldiers have been born to the purple since the 
 dark ages — Gustav Adolf, Charles XII, Peter 
 of Russia, and Frederic of Prussia. But no 
 man of royal birth has ever combined the sol- 
 
 2 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 dier and the statesman as William did. It 
 may, perhaps, be fortunate for England that 
 the task of carrying William's statecraft into 
 complete execution passed by legacy, as it 
 were, from his hands into those of Marlbor- 
 ough ; for the Great Duke was a greater man 
 than even the Great King. And in all human 
 probability the commander who won Blen- 
 heim and Malplaquet was a safer instrument 
 of destiny than the king who lost Steenkerke 
 and Neerwinden. 
 
 The year 1715 witnessed the end of Louis 
 XIV' s long and turbulent reign and the acces- 
 sion of Louis XV to the Bourbon throne 
 under the regency of the able and dissolute 
 but peaceful Duke of Orleans. It also marked 
 the permanent solution of dynastic chaos in 
 England by the installation of the sturdy, 
 and, in the long run, conservative, House of 
 Hanover. 
 
 But more important than any or all of 
 these events, so far as the destinies of the 
 Western Hemisphere were concerned, was 
 the fact that in 1715 began a period of peace 
 that lasted a generation, during which the 
 Anglo-Saxon colonies along the Atlantic slope 
 found opportunity for that development of 
 resource and unity which, forty-five years 
 later, enabled them to expel Latin power from 
 
 3 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 North America, and, sixty years after, to cre- 
 ate our Republic. 
 
 It seems fittingly coincident that this 
 epochal year of 1715 should have been the 
 birth-date of a boy destined to play a colossal 
 part in the new era then at its dawn. He was 
 the son of Christopher Johnson and his wife, 
 Anne Warren, and he first saw light at War- 
 renpoint, County Down, Ireland. I have seen 
 in a so-called Life of Sir William Johnson, 
 printed in Canada about sixty years ago, the 
 statement that his father was " an obscure 
 Irish schoolmaster, and a cripple ! " It is 
 possible that in his younger days Christopher 
 Johnson may have taught school. But from 
 1692 till 1708 he was an officer in a regiment 
 of heavy cavalry, then known as Cadogan's 
 Horse — a regiment that has maintained con- 
 tinuous organization more than two hundred 
 years, and is now the Fifth Regiment of 
 Dragoon Guards in the British Army. 
 
 In 1715, when his son William was born, 
 Mr. Johnson held the post of local magis- 
 trate for the bailiwick of Carlingford, to 
 which he was appointed in 1709 as a reward 
 for long and faithful service under King Will- 
 iam and Marlborough. He was, indeed, " a 
 cripple" at that time, as the Canadian biog- 
 rapher says. But his physical disability — a 
 
 4 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 bent and withered leg — was honorable, be- 
 cause it was due to a French bullet that hit 
 him in the famous charge of Lord Cadogan's 
 Cavalry Brigade at Oudenarde — a charge 
 that needed only a Tennyson to make it im- 
 mortal. Whether he was "obscure" or not 
 is hardly worth discussion. At any rate, he 
 held a social rank that enabled him to marry 
 Anne Warren, daughter of a commodore and 
 sister of an admiral in the British navy. 
 
 If there is anything congenital in the mar- 
 tial spirit, it may be that the wonderful mili- 
 tary talents subsequently developed by Will- 
 iam Johnson were transmitted to him from the 
 loins of the veteran of the wars in Flanders, 
 who could count his battles from Namur to 
 Oudenarde. So when his young wife — "Mis- 
 tress Nancy" as the society dialect of those 
 days had it — presented a bouncing boy to the 
 veteran of Flanders, the father named him 
 after the old fighting king who had been his 
 commander at Namur. Of William's child- 
 hood and youth there is scanty record. In 
 May, 1726, his uncle, Admiral Warren, makes 
 the following entry in his diary, or, as he 
 called it, his "log ashore": 
 
 . . . Visiting me Mistress Nancy Johnson, with 
 her Young Son, William, aged eleven. William is 
 a Spritely Boy, well grown, of good parts, Keen 
 
 5 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 Wit but Most Onruly and Strep erous ! I see in him 
 the Makings of a Strong Man. Shall keep my 
 Wether Eye on this lad! 
 
 The importance of the old sea-dog's 
 "wether eye" as a factor in his nephew's for- 
 tunes will appear later on. 
 
 When William was fourteen the usual 
 family consultation was held to determine 
 what should be done with him. The consen- 
 sus of domestic opinion was that he should 
 be what they called in those days "the King's 
 Own." That meant either the army or the 
 navy. But, to the amazement of every one, 
 the youngster declared that he had made up 
 his mind to study law and be a barrister. 
 After some vain argument, the family acqui- 
 esced in the boy's choice, and he was sent to 
 the ancient Academy of Newry, where he soon 
 immersed himself in Latin conjugations and 
 the Anabasis. It is not recorded that he was 
 particularly apt. He grew rapidly, but his 
 development of body seems to have outrun 
 that of mind. At any rate, the "onruly and 
 streperous " quality mentioned by his sailor 
 uncle, at an earlier period, appears to have 
 abided with him; because in his seventeenth 
 year, or about the middle of his third year at 
 the Academy, his curriculum ended suddenly 
 in a peremptory expulsion. 
 
 6 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 The immediate cause of this was an at- 
 tempt on the part of the Moderator to chas- 
 tise him, which resulted in failure, disastrous 
 to the pedagogue and dismal to young Will- 
 iam. He was not only expelled from the 
 school, but taken before a magistrate on a 
 charge of aggravated assault and battery, 
 fined seven guineas, and "put on the limits " 
 for twenty-one days ! 
 
 At the end of his period of detention young 
 William returned to the paternal abode at 
 Warrenpoint, only to encounter fresh trouble. 
 Sixteen years' service with "the Army in 
 Flanders" had made a martinet of 'Squire 
 Christopher, and twenty-four years of local 
 magistracy had imbued him with Spartan 
 theories as to the majesty of law. There- 
 fore, though his tall son William was un- 
 questionably by long odds the physical supe- 
 rior of the old and crippled parent, the latter 
 did not hesitate to subject him, upon his 
 return home, to the kind of discipline in 
 which the robust pedagogue had so signally 
 failed. 
 
 This flagellation William endured with 
 filial grace, doubtless on the principle that 
 it did not hurt him much, and did the old 
 gentleman a great deal of good. 
 
 The next three or four years of his life 
 7 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 were uneventful. He served for some time 
 as magistrate's clerk in his father's office. 
 But all the time he diligently read law and 
 history. So apt a law-student was he and so 
 able a preceptor did he find in a local barris- 
 ter of the name of Byrne, his father's cousin, 
 that he was listed for examination at the 
 spring assizes in 1737 for admission as a 
 junior barrister. But a month or two before 
 the assizes met, an opportunity was offered 
 to him which permanently turned the current 
 of his life. 
 
 Some years prior to that time his uncle, 
 Admiral Sir Peter Warren, had purchased, 
 under royal grant, a large tract of land in 
 the colony of New York, "scituate in the 
 Valley of Mohock, west of the trading-post 
 called Schenectady, and south of the river 
 called Mohock." The settlements of the Pal- 
 atine Germans and Holland Dutch were push- 
 ing up the valley of the Mohawk rapidly, 
 under the benign influence of the long peace, 
 so that by 1737 Sir Peter's land had acquired 
 market value and was worth looking after. 
 He therefore offered to his young nephew, 
 then barely twenty-two years old, the chief 
 stewardship of this estate, with the general 
 agency of all his interests in America, and a 
 power of attorney "to buy and sell or lease 
 
 8 
 
SIR PETER WARREN. 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 real estate, to incur debts or pay demands, 
 and in all respects to do all things in the 
 name of Peter Warren, the same and with 
 equal validity and binding force as if the said 
 Peter Warren had done them with his own 
 hand and under his own seal." That Admi- 
 ral Warren had faith in the judgment and 
 integrity of his erstwhile "most onruly and 
 streperous" nephew may be inferred from the 
 fact that this sweeping power of attorney 
 was made to last "during the lifetime of the 
 said William Johnson." 
 
 Joyfully accepting the great opportunity 
 — which may, perhaps, be described as due to 
 the keen vision of that "wether eye" the old 
 sea-warrior had long ago determined to 
 "keep on this lad" — young Johnson sailed 
 late in the summer of 1737 from Dundalk to 
 Bristol, and thence to New York, where he 
 arrived in December of that year. His 
 papers indicate that he spent the winter of 
 1737-38 in New York city, making plans and 
 laying in supplies for active operations in 
 his new field of duty early in the spring. 1 
 
 1 During the winter of 1737-38 that young Johnson spent 
 in New York city he was the guest of his aunt, Sir Peter War- 
 ren's wife. Lady Warren was Susan DeLancey, daughter of 
 Stephen DeLancey, one of the richest merchants in New York, 
 and the family held leadership in the most refined and aris- 
 tocratic society of the colonial metropolis. In this select social 
 2 ' 9 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 As soon as navigation was opened in the 
 North River, in the spring of 1738, Johnson 
 proceeded to Albany with a sloop-load of 
 implements for subduing the forest, includ- 
 ing a "set of mill-irons" and a "run of stone." 
 He also took with him about half a dozen 
 mechanics of various trades. From Albany 
 the material for the new settlement was trans- 
 ported by land to a point on the south side 
 of the Mohawk River, a short distance west 
 of the mouth of Schoharie Creek, where he 
 founded a settlement on his uncle's land. 
 This settlement was then known as "War- 
 rensbush" by the Dutch and "Warrensburg" 
 by the English-speaking settlers, but it has 
 long since disappeared from the map. Here 
 young Johnson remained about five years, 
 diligently improving his uncle's property by 
 building mills, making roads, and clearing 
 land; also by selling land in farm tracts 
 and encouraging and aiding the settlers to 
 clear it. 
 
 The young agent for Admiral Warren's 
 estate in the forest soon found that its exact 
 location was ill-defined and its boundaries 
 
 circle William bore himself with tact, dignity, and grace 
 worthy of wider experience and maturer years, and in it he 
 met many men whose interest and influence were vastly use- 
 ful to him later on. 
 
 10 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 quite conjectural. However, this was usu- 
 ally true of kingly grants in the American 
 wilderness during those days, and the prob- 
 lem was not considered formidable. At any 
 rate, the particular point first occupied was 
 not in dispute, and William Johnson began 
 his task of subduing the forest with the tre- 
 mendous energy and keen judgment that 
 made him the colossal pioneer he proved 
 to be. 
 
 Thus far I have referred to Warren as an 
 admiral and a baronet. As a matter of fact, 
 at the moment when William Johnson began 
 operations in the Mohawk Valley his uncle, 
 who owned the grant, was only senior cap- 
 tain or commodore of the British squadron 
 on the North American station, his flagship 
 being the 28-gun frigate Squirrel. He was, 
 however, promoted to the rank of rear-admi- 
 ral in 1739, vice-admiral in 1745, and was 
 made a baronet. It may be worth while to 
 remark here that Stone, in his generally accu- 
 rate and admirable Life of Sir William John- 
 son, says that Admiral Sir Peter Warren 
 was born in 1704. This may have been a 
 typographical error. At any rate, the navy 
 records of England show that Warren was 
 rated a midshipman in 1706, commissioned a 
 lieutenant in 1712, post-captain in 1724, and 
 
 11 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 was commodore on the North American sta- 
 tion in 1737-38. In those days midshipmen 
 were usually rated in the British navy at 
 from twelve to fourteen years of age. While 
 we have not been able to find the exact date 
 of Admiral Warren's birth, it may be pre- 
 sumed that he was at least twelve years old 
 in 1706 or ten in 1704. Instead of the latter 
 date, Stone should, doubtless, have said 1694. 
 Young Johnson proceeded diligently to 
 improve and develop his uncle's estate. 
 Much of it was sold off in farms of from 150 
 to 300 acres, and settlement was rapid. Sir 
 Peter had hoped to preserve the estate intact 
 aud rent its lands in long leases to tenants. 
 But William soon advised him that the Dutch 
 and Scotch-Irish settlers were averse to rent- 
 als and would take the land only in fee simple 
 upon easy terms of payment. So, rather 
 than let his grant remain an unproductive 
 wilderness, Sir Peter reluctantly consented 
 to sell his land, and in a few years the most 
 of it had passed out of his hands, leaving him 
 the possessor of a snug sum of money and a 
 large fund of mortgages drawing a fair rate 
 of interest. Sir Peter died in 1752, and then 
 William Johnson acquired possession of such 
 of his lands as remained unsold — probably 
 about one-third of the original area. 
 12 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 From this time on, for the sake of conve- 
 nience, I shall refer to Johnson as "Sir Will- 
 iam," although he was not actually made a 
 baronet until some years later. 
 
 Sir William passed five years at Warrens- 
 bush — 1738-43. But he never intended to 
 make it his permanent home, nor was he 
 content with the occupation of agent for a 
 landlord. He had not been at Warrensbush 
 two years before he acquired by purchase a 
 tract of several thousand acres, on part of 
 which a portion of the city of Amsterdam 
 now stands. This tract lay north of the 
 Mohawk River, and Johnson acquired title to 
 it in 1741. He at once began building a sub- 
 stantial stone house, known as "Fort John- 
 son" or "Mount Johnson," which is still 
 standing, about a mile west of the corporate 
 limits of Amsterdam. He also built a saw- 
 mill and grist-mill on a water-power running 
 through his lands. Sir Peter Warren heard 
 of these operations and, being apprehensive 
 that Sir William intended to give up the 
 charge of his estate and set up in business for 
 himself, wrote two or three rather severe let- 
 ters to his nephew. The latter, however, 
 assured his uncle that, whatever he might do 
 on his own account, it would not in the least 
 degree interfere with his care for the inter- 
 13 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ests of the Warren estate, and ultimately 
 pacified the admiral on that point. 
 
 Sir William's five years at Warrensbush 
 were not eventful in any broad sense. But 
 he made it a preparatory school for the great 
 destiny that awaited him. Apart from the 
 care of his uncle's estate and, after 1741, the 
 development of his own on the north side of 
 the river, he found time to learn, to a degree 
 never surpassed and seldom if ever equaled 
 by any white man, the character, ways, man- 
 ners, modes of thinking, and the language of 
 the Iroquois Indians. 
 
 He soon discovered that the management 
 of Indian affairs, then conducted by a Board 
 of Colonial Commissioners, was rotten to the 
 core. There was no system whatever in the 
 regulation of traffic between the whites and 
 Indians. Any adventurer able to pay the 
 small license fee required, or enjoying the 
 favor of a commissioner, could obtain a 
 permit without any inquiry whatever as to 
 his antecedents, character, or responsibility. 
 The result was that the Indian trade had 
 fallen, almost without exception, into the 
 hands of sordid, unprincipled sharpers, who 
 never thought of an honest deal with any red 
 man, but cheated and swindled the Indians at 
 every turn. 
 
 14 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 About this time — 1741 — George Clinton, 
 the father of General Sir Henry Clinton of 
 the British Army, was appointed Colonial 
 Governor of New York, though he did not 
 actually take up the duties of the office until 
 1743. However, Sir William immediately 
 began a correspondence with him, which 
 became voluminous, so that by the time Gov- 
 ernor Clinton assumed control, he had the 
 benefit of Sir "William's keen insight and 
 thorough personal observation to guide him 
 in the administration of Indian affairs, which 
 had then become the most important element 
 of executive responsibility in the colony of 
 New York. 
 
 George Clinton was a veteran naval officer 
 and at the time of his appointment to be Colo- 
 nial Governor of New York held the rank of 
 vice-admiral. His only previous experience 
 in a civil capacity had been that of Governor 
 of Newfoundland for eight or nine years ; but 
 that was a mere sinecure, as there were not 
 more than a thousand white people in New- 
 foundland at that time, while the few hun- 
 dred Micmac Indians living there took care of 
 themselves and needed little or no attention. 
 Hence, he was not in any wise prepared for 
 the turmoil of faction and the subtlety of 
 political intrigue that distracted the councils 
 
 15 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 of New York. Still, lie held his post for 
 ten years — 1743-53 — and whatever may have 
 been his other administrative shortcomings, 
 the management of the Indian Department 
 during his term of office left nothing to be 
 desired-^simply because, as soon as he had 
 authority to do so, he lodged the whole power 
 and responsibility of that office in the hands 
 of Sir William Johnson. Admiral Clinton 
 and Admiral Warren were warm friends and 
 had been shipmates. No doubt a good word 
 or two at the proper moment from Warren 
 had done much to anchor Sir William in Clin- 
 ton's confidence. 
 
 The most important event in Sir Will- 
 iam's five years' residence at Warrensbush 
 had been his marriage with Miss Katharine 
 Weisenburg in 1739. This young woman 
 was the daughter of Jacob Weisenburg, a 
 Lutheran clergyman, who had given her the 
 rudiments of a fair education. But the fam- 
 ily became impoverished, and Katharine was 
 "bound out" as a servant when about four- 
 teen years old to a Mr. Phillips, who lived 
 near Warrensbush. Soon after he settled at 
 the latter place, William Johnson saw this 
 girl, fancied her, and "bought her indentures" 
 from Mr. Phillips. This was in 1739, and as 
 soon as she became "his property" by pur- 
 16 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 chase of her indentures, he married her; the 
 ceremony, according to W. Max Reid, author 
 of The Mohawk Valley, being performed by 
 the Eev. Mr. Barclay, rector of Queen Anne's 
 Chapel at Fort Hunter. She bore to Sir 
 William three children: Anne, born 1740; 
 John (afterward Sir John), born 1742; and 
 Mary, born 1744. 1 
 
 At length, in the early spring of 1743, the 
 new stone mansion at Mount Johnson was 
 completed, and Sir William transferred his 
 family and household to it from the log house 
 which had been his habitation at Warrens- 
 bush. Some idea of the tremendous energy 
 of the man may be formed from the fact that 
 during the two years of his possession of the 
 Mount Johnson tract he had not only built on 
 it a commodious and, for those times, elegant 
 stone mansion, but had built a large dam, 
 forming a valuable water-power, a sawmill 
 capable of turning out 1,000 to 1,500 feet of 
 lumber a day, and had laid the foundations of 
 a flouring-mill, which was completed and in 
 operation the following year (1744). But 
 more than all that, he had, by means of hired 
 
 1 Some idea of the vicissitudes possible on that Old New 
 York Frontier may be formed from the fact that a woman, 
 destined to be the wife of one baronet of England and the 
 mother of another, was a " bound servant" at fourteen, and 
 that her husband had to buy her before he could marry her. 
 
 17 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 labor in a colony where it was difficult to in- 
 duce men to work for wages, cleared and 
 made ready for cultivation nearly 500 acres 
 of the most fertile land to be found anywhere 
 in the great " Mohawk Flats." 
 
 Much of this force of laborers he had 
 brought over himself from the County Down, 
 where his father acted as his employment- 
 agent. During the year 1741 about sixty 
 families came over — sturdy Scotch-Irish like 
 himself. He paid all their expenses and had 
 comfortable log houses prepared for their 
 reception when they arrived. In accordance 
 with the custom of those days, these immi- 
 grants came as "bound servants," but upon 
 arrival they were immediately released from 
 their indentures by Sir William, and lands 
 belonging to his estate were allotted to them 
 by long leases for nominal rental, which they 
 paid in labor, or, as the saying was, " worked 
 out." 
 
 This policy Sir William followed for many 
 years, until he had gathered about him a 
 numerous clan of frontier yeomanry as loyal 
 to him as were ever the retainers of a feudal 
 baron. On one occasion, hearing that a con- 
 siderable number of German refugees had 
 sailed from a port in Holland bound for New 
 York, he arranged with his brother, Warren 
 18 * 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 Johnson, an officer in the British navy, then 
 on shore dnty in New York as keeper of the 
 king's magazines, to meet them upon their 
 arrival and persuade them to come to the 
 Mohawk Valley and settle upon his estate. 
 Captain Johnson succeeded, and the entire 
 little colony, numbering about 160 souls, set- 
 tled upon the extension of Sir William's 
 estate, commonly known as the Johnstown 
 tract. Besides all these vast undertakings — 
 vast, indeed, for their times and conditions — 
 Sir William established, in 1744, a trading- 
 post at Oquawgo or Oghwaga, an Indian vil- 
 lage on the Susquehanna, at the foot of the 
 mountain from which it derived its name. Its 
 location was near the present site of the vil- 
 lage of Windsor, Broome County, N. Y., and 
 about five or six miles below it on the river 
 was the principal village of the remnant of the 
 Tuscaroras, who had been adopted into the 
 Iroquois Confederacy. 
 
 Oquawgo, which lay more than one hun- 
 dred miles south of Sir William's home, was 
 then an Indian village of about one hundred 
 lodges, many of which were quite commodi- 
 ous habitations built of logs or of poles cov- 
 ered and roofed with bark, having fire- 
 places with chimneys, and otherwise far be- 
 yond the average aboriginal abode in the 
 
 19 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 essentials of decency and comfort. The popu- 
 lation of this village was made up of people 
 from every tribe of the Iroquois, and at the 
 time of which I now write (1744) it had ac- 
 quired a status of its own, having existed 
 more than two hundred years, and its deni- 
 zens were currently designated as a sort of 
 tribe or clan by themselves, distinctive enough 
 to cause them to be spoken of in most histo- 
 ries of the time and place as the "Oquawgo " 
 (or "Oghwaga ") Indians. 
 
 The name has been spelled in a great vari- 
 ety of ways. The author has adopted the or- 
 thography of his great-grandfather, Simon 
 Buell, who came from Dutchess County 
 shortly after the Eevolution and settled close 
 to the then nearly deserted Indian village, 
 a part of his farm being land that had been 
 cleared and cultivated by the Indians long 
 before. Joseph Brant, in his correspond- 
 ence and papers, always spelled it " Ogh- 
 waga," and maybe he was a better authority 
 on Iroquois orthography than Simon Buell. 
 However, in any future reference to the place 
 I shall use the form " Oquawgo." 
 
 The trading-post which Sir William 
 
 founded there in 1744 was built on the bank 
 
 of the river opposite the Indian village and 
 
 just abreast of the lower end of an island 
 
 20 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 which, from the profusion of apple-trees 
 growing on it, was known to the older settlers 
 as Indian Orchard. When Sir William pro- 
 posed to establish this post, which was within 
 the jurisdiction of the Oneida tribe, the chief 
 of the southern district of that clan, Antone, 
 gave him about a square mile of land in con- 
 nection with it. The trading-post was a log 
 blockhouse about 36X24 feet on the ground, 
 with a second story projecting 2 feet all 
 round, or 40X28 feet. It was surrounded 
 by a palisade of logs placed upright some 
 10 feet high, with an open space of about 60 
 feet all round between it and the building. 
 The enclosure contained a small but never- 
 failing spring, so that, if besieged, the garri- 
 son of the post would have no trouble on the 
 score of water-supply. After the conquest 
 of Canada the palisade was taken away, and 
 the blockhouse itself was burned by Colonel 
 William Butler's Eangers (Americans) in 
 1778. 
 
 The site for the post was selected and the 
 blockhouse built by Ezra Buell, Sr., 1 a sur- 
 veyor from Dutchess County, who was in Sir 
 
 1 This Ezra Buell had a nephew, also named Ezra, who fig- 
 ured during the Revolution as a lieutenant in Morgan's Rifle- 
 men until 1778, and after that until 1783 as a captain in the 
 Third New York Continentals. 
 
 21 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 William's employ for many years; his last 
 service of any note having been to assist Simon 
 Metcalf in running and marking the Fort 
 Stanwix treaty line in 1769. When the post 
 was established, Sir William requested Ezra 
 Buell to manage it until he could find a com- 
 petent man to be permanent agent. 1 This 
 search seems to have lasted three years, be- 
 cause it was not until 1747 that Buell was 
 relieved by John Butler — afterward notori- 
 ous in the Tory annals of the Mohawk Valley. 
 In the meantime the post had developed a 
 .great and thriving trade, which it continued 
 to enjoy until the outbreak of the Revolution. 
 
 Sir William, when he applied to the Colo- 
 nial Governor for a license, said: "I wish to 
 create this trading-post not any more for the 
 profits it may bring to me than to show by 
 actual example that trade with the Indians 
 can be conducted honestly as well as any 
 other commercial business ! " 
 
 The sequel soon proved that the Indians 
 know as well as anybody when they are fairly 
 dealt with. Sir William's honest trading- 
 post at Oquawgo within five years drove out 
 of business the horde of rascals who, from 
 
 1 During this period Ezra took unto himself a pretty Tus- 
 carora girl, with whom he lived happily for many years. He 
 died near Kingston, on the Hudson, in 1807, aged eighty-nine. 
 
 22 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 the beginning of Indian traffic, had been rob- 
 bing the red men of the Susquehanna Valley; 
 right and left. 
 
 Necessarily considerable capital was re- 
 quired to carry on such a tremendous volume 
 of business. This was supplied mainly by 
 Admiral Warren and the rest by Stephen and 
 James DeLancey, who had taken a warm 
 fancy to the stalwart and indefatigable young 
 Scotch-Irishman. The rates of interest were 
 low, and were paid, in the main, by percentage 
 on profits. But few years elapsed, however, 
 before the growth of Sir William's own for- 
 tune enabled him to discharge the principal 
 of the loans from his Uncle Warren and the 
 DeLanceys, and thereafter he was abundantly 
 able to "go it alone." 
 
 Admiral Warren's ability to " finance" his 
 ambitious nephew may be inferred from a 
 letter written to Sir William by his brother, 
 Captain Warren Johnson, under date of 
 "New York, September 13, 1747." The mate- 
 rial part of it is as follows : 
 
 Last evening I arrived here from Louisburg 
 with my ship, which is in need of repairs, and I am 
 to go to England in the Scarborough frigate, there 
 to get a new command. My rank now entitles me 
 to a first-class frigate, in which I will have much 
 better opportunities than in the 20-gun ship I have 
 
 23 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 commanded these two years past. I have had no 
 chance of independent cruising, having been all the 
 time either with the fleet as despatch- vessel or on 
 convoy. The result is that, excepting what share 
 may fall to me as prize from the taking of Louis- 
 bourg and the St. Domingo fleet, the words ' 'prize- 
 money' ' have an empty sound for me. 
 
 I would much like to go up to Mount Johnson 
 and see you. But the Scarborough sails too soon 
 to permit making the journey and returning in 
 time, and, besides, the first thing Aunt Susan (Mrs. 
 Admiral Warren) told me when I arrived at her 
 house was that you are now out among the Western 
 Iroquois counteracting the intrigues of the French 
 Papists and arranging for a contingent of war- 
 riors for the grand movement * to be carried out 
 next spring. 
 
 So nothing is left for me but to go to England 
 without seeing you. 
 
 I make no doubt you have heard of our Uncle 
 Warren's great successes in his two cruises; the 
 first as second-in-command to Admiral Anson and 
 the second with a squadron of which he was com- 
 mander-in-chief, part of which fell in with the 
 Santo Domingo fleet, home bound with full cargoes, 
 
 1 The "grand movement" referred to was the proposed 
 reduction of Crown Point and invasion of Canada by way of 
 Lake Champlain early the next spring. It will be noted that 
 Captain Warren Johnson spoke of it in the vaguest possi- 
 ble terms. His letter might, he thought, by some mishap 
 fall into the hands of the French. 
 
 24 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 and took sixty-two sail of them. He had taken 
 several rich ships before. He must now be one of 
 the richest men in England, and not one has done 
 his country better service. He must be worth four 
 hundred thousand pounds sterling. He is now 
 Vice- Admiral of the White and member of Parlia- 
 ment for Westminster; and I have no doubt in a 
 very short time he will be a peer of England. 
 
 With his removal from Warrensbush to 
 Mount Johnson in the early spring of 1743 
 the active and effective public career of Sir 
 William Johnson may be said to have begun. 
 Prior to that time his connection with public 
 affairs had been limited to correspondence 
 with Governor Clinton on the Indian ques- 
 tion, and with the Colonial Chief-Justice, 
 James DeLancey, in regard to the confusion 
 of land-titles in the Mohawk Valley, both of 
 which were then prime objects of public 
 attention. 
 
 His first notable appearance in public 
 affairs was his appointment by Chief-Justice 
 DeLancey as master or referee in a land liti- 
 gation between George Klock and Peter Van 
 Braam of Canajoharie, involving a consider- 
 able tract north of the Mohawk Eiver, where, 
 by the vagueness of their terms, two pur- 
 chases of land from the Indians appeared 
 to overlap each other. Upon this issue he 
 3 25 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 brought to bear his knowledge of the Iroquois 
 tongue, and personally examined a number of 
 Indian witnesses without an interpreter. In 
 fact, after about 1740, he never used an inter- 
 preter in his dealings with the Indians, but 
 often acted as such himself at conferences 
 between the Governor and delegations of 
 chiefs at Albany. His report in this case was 
 prepared with such ability and precision as 
 to elicit the outspoken admiration of Judge 
 DeLancey, who approved it. 
 
 Late in the fall of 1743 the venerable 
 Colonel Peter Schuyler resigned from the 
 Board of Indian Commissioners, and Gov- 
 ernor Clinton at once invited Sir William to 
 fill the vacancy. The Board consisted of five 
 members, one of whom must, by the law then 
 prevailing, be a minister of the Gospel. At 
 the time under consideration the clerical 
 member of the Board was a clergyman of the 
 Church of England whose pastorate was in 
 New York city, who knew little or nothing 
 about Indian affairs, and paid little or no 
 attention to the duties of his office. He was 
 willing to resign, and Sir William recom- 
 mended that his resignation be accepted. In 
 his place he advised the Governor to appoint 
 the Rev. Jacob Weisenburg, a Lutheran min- 
 ister of Schenectady, and the father of his 
 26 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 wife. Mr. Weisenburg had lived among the 
 Indians ever since his arrival in this country, 
 early in the eighteenth century, had converted 
 many of them, was familiar with their traits, 
 and was much beloved by them. This was 
 done. Not long afterward another member 
 of the Board resigned, and, to fill his place, 
 Sir William recommended the Rev. Mr. Van 
 Ness, a Dutch Reformed pastor of Albany, 
 whom Governor Clinton at once appointed. 
 He now had a majority of three to two 
 on the Board on any or all of the three prime 
 questions involved in the Indian problem: 
 First, he was sure that the ministers of the 
 Gospel — one representing the Holland Dutch 
 and the other the Palatines — would stand by 
 him in the determined effort he intended ma- 
 king to break up the liquor traffic with the In- 
 dians. Second, he knew that the reverend 
 gentlemen could not possibly have any con- 
 nection with the rascally traders or their in- 
 terests, and would sustain him in his efforts 
 to compel honest dealing with the red men. 
 And, third, he took it for granted that they 
 would joyfully back him up in his scheme to 
 organize Protestant missions and mission 
 schools throughout the Iroquois Confederacy, 
 which he considered the only effective means 
 of counteracting the intrigues and influence 
 
 27 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 of the Canadian French Jesuits, who for 
 many years had been proselyting among the 
 Six Nations — particularly the two western 
 tribes, the Cayugas and the Senecas. 
 
 His anticipations in these directions 
 proved well founded. The laws against sell- 
 ing liquor to the Indians were rigidly, and in 
 some cases drastically, enforced — to such an 
 extent that, according to the manuscript jour- 
 nal of William Sammons, corroborated by 
 the papers of the Rev. John Barclay, a mis- 
 sionary, there were at one time twenty-six 
 culprits in the Albany jail serving various 
 terms of imprisonment for violation of the 
 Indian anti-liquor law. Also during the 
 period between 1743 and 1746 a majority of 
 the trading-licenses previously granted had 
 been revoked and annulled by the Governor 
 on recommendation of the Board, and in three 
 or four of the most flagrant cases of fraud 
 and swindling, prosecutions had been insti- 
 tuted by the Attorney-General or King's 
 Counsel for the Colony. Besides these 
 things, Sir William's pet policy of founding 
 numerous missions and mission schools 
 among the tribes was adopted and an appro- 
 priation was made by the Colonial Assembly 
 to aid them. 
 
 In fact, it may be said that, supported as 
 28 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 he invariably was by bis two clerical hench- 
 men, Sir William soon became to all intents 
 and purposes not only the president of the 
 Board, but the Board itself. His idea of the 
 value of Christianity as an agency of civiliza- 
 tion among the Indians may be inferred from 
 a passage in a letter he wrote to Governor 
 Clinton in 1744, in which he said: 
 
 You can make a pretty good and generally 
 faithful fellow of an Indian by simply treating 
 him fairly in business matters and helping him 
 along now and then when his natural indolence or 
 improvidence or bad luck has brought him to 
 straits. But you can never completely depend on 
 him or overcome the inherent fickleness of his 
 nature until you have made a Christian of him and 
 brought him thereby under that sense of personal 
 responsibility not only to men, but to the Almighty, 
 that religion teaches. Either in war or in peace, 
 one Christian Indian is always worth two heathen 
 ones! 
 
 From 1743 to 1746 Sir William, whose 
 public duties did not take up more than a 
 moiety of his time, continued to improve his 
 estate and extend his commercial operations 
 with unflagging energy. Notwithstanding 
 that, in addition to his duties in connection 
 with the Indian Commission, he was ap- 
 pointed colonel of the militia regiment for 
 
 29 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 the western district of Albany County in 
 1744, and king's magistrate for the same dis- 
 trict in April, 1745, he still found time to 
 transact his great and rapidly growing pri- 
 vate business. 
 
 About this time he came to the conclusion 
 that the live stock of the Mohawk Valley 
 needed improvement, and to that end im- 
 ported from England a considerable breed- 
 ing stud of horses, together with a number of 
 cattle and sheep. His papers and accounts 
 indicate that he imported about thirty horses, 
 thirty or forty head of cattle, and a hundred 
 or more sheep. He selected the Irish hunter 
 as the most available breed of horses for 
 Colonial use in general, though in the ac- 
 counts of his importations four Suffolk stal- 
 lions appear. These, of course, were in- 
 tended to improve the breed of draft-horses 
 by crossing with the native mares. The 
 cattle he imported came from Devonshire 
 and Hereford. The sheep were English- 
 bred Spanish merinos — a breed producing 
 an exceeding fine wool. These importations 
 were made from time to time in small lots 
 during a period of three or four years. To 
 his tenants he gave the services of his breed- 
 ing animals free, and to his neighbors in gen- 
 eral for a nominal consideration, in view of 
 30 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 the outlay he had incurred in importing them. 
 So rapidly did his agricultural operations 
 grow that by 1746 he began shipping flour 
 to the West Indies in considerable quantity. 
 
 All the time he continued clearing land at 
 the rate of from 250 to 300 acres a year, so 
 that by the end of the year 1746 he had about 
 1,200 acres under his own cultivation, besides 
 the large areas cleared and brought into till- 
 age by his tenants, who now numbered over 
 a hundred. Up to this time Sir William had 
 not held any slaves, but in 1747 an estate in 
 Dutchess County was sold at administrator's 
 sale, in partition. This estate included nine- 
 teen slaves. Sir William bought the lot 
 entire, though only about ten or eleven of 
 them were able-bodied men or women, the 
 rest being aged and infirm, or children. The 
 men he employed chiefly in taking care of his 
 horses and other live stock, while the women 
 were occupied in his household. He pro- 
 vided comfortable cabins for them, and ac- 
 cording to all accounts he was an easy mas- 
 ter. He ultimately became the largest slave- 
 holder in the colony of New York, possessing 
 between sixty and seventy. 
 
 During this period the War of the Aus- 
 trian Succession raged in Europe, but its 
 effect in America did not begin to be felt to 
 31 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 any serious degree until 1745; and even 
 then there were no great operations in the 
 interior of the country. About all that 
 occurred were raids by small parties against 
 outlying settlements or posts. In 1746 an 
 effort was made to combine the provincial 
 forces of New England, New York, and Penn- 
 sylvania with a force of British regulars, for 
 the reduction of Crown Point and an invasion 
 of Canada by way of Lake Champlain. But 
 the colonies could not reach an agreement as 
 to quotas of men and proportions of money 
 to be furnished. The British Government did 
 not seem disposed to employ its regular 
 troops in such an enterprise — in fact, the 
 military operations of the English on the 
 continent of Europe absorbed all the troops 
 they had available, and the colonial garrisons 
 were depleted rather than reenforced. The 
 colonists, accordingly, during this struggle 
 — which, in America, was known as "King 
 George's War " — were left almost wholly to 
 their own resources. 
 
 The only great event in America was the 
 siege and capture of the French fortress of 
 Louisburg on Cape Breton Island by a com- 
 bined military and naval force, the troops 
 being all Provincials except one company of 
 regular sappers and miners and two compa- 
 32 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 nies of infantry. The fleet was commanded 
 by Admiral Sir Peter Warren and the land 
 forces by Colonel Sir William Pepperell of 
 Massachusetts. 1 All the Provincial troops 
 were furnished by the New England colonies, 
 and though a contingent was to have been 
 provided by New York, its organization was 
 not completed in time to sail with the expedi- 
 tion. The taking of Louisburg was an ex- 
 ceedingly brilliant affair and reflected great 
 credit upon the Provincial troops engaged in 
 it. They were, of course, powerfully and 
 decisively aided by Admiral Warren's fleet, 
 which not only cut off and captured the 
 French ships that tried to bring reenforce- 
 ments and supplies to the garrison, but par- 
 ticipated effectively in the bombardments. 
 Finding that the Provincial volunteers were 
 not highly expert in the use of heavy siege- 
 guns, Admiral Warren landed a force of blue- 
 jackets sufficient to work them. This land- 
 ing force was commanded by Captain Warren 
 Johnson of the 20-gun ship Avon, and brother 
 of Sir William. The terms of the peace of 
 Aix-la-Chapelle restored Louisburg to France, 
 
 1 Pepperell was a native and resident of Kittery, in the 
 present State of Maine — and Maine now claims him. But it 
 was part of Massachusetts then, and for that reason I speak 
 of Pepperell as " of Massachusetts." 
 
 33 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 to the bitter disgust of the colonies, particu- 
 larly New England. 
 
 During the fall of 1747 a substantial 
 agreement was reached between New Eng- 
 land, New York, and New Jersey to invade 
 Canada by way of Lake Champlain early in 
 the spring of 1748. The quotas of men and 
 money were agreed upon by commissioners 
 appointed from each colony. Pennsylvania 
 did not undertake to furnish a quota of men, 
 but agreed to bear a share of the financial 
 burdens. No attempt was made to enlist the 
 cooperation of any colony south of Pennsyl- 
 vania. The British Government was to fur- 
 nish a siege-train with regular artillerists and 
 two regiments of regular infantry. Sir Will- 
 iam Johnson's share in this proposed enter- 
 prise was to have been an important one. In 
 September, 1746, the Governor had abolished 
 the Indian Board and appointed Sir "William 
 sole Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the 
 colony of New York. This action of Gov- 
 ernor Clinton had been confirmed by royal 
 warrant, and Sir William was commissioned 
 a colonel on the permanent establishment. 
 The practical effect of this action was to take 
 the control of Indian affairs out of the hands 
 of the Assembly and vest it in an officer of 
 the Crown, responsible directly to the king. 
 34 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 It was a bold step, but a logical one, and 
 based upon the views Sir William had fre- 
 quently expressed both in his correspondence 
 with the Governor and in Council. 
 
 Sir William held that the Indians could 
 not rightfully be held as under the jurisdic- 
 tion of the Colonial Government, that they 
 had thus far been so held by sufferance, or 
 because no one had taken sufficient interest in 
 them to assert their rights for them — which 
 they could not do or did not know how to do 
 themselves. He held that they had a govern- 
 ment of their own, that they were not citizens, 
 and that they were unrepresented in the body 
 that legislated for them. This status, he 
 argued, made them the wards of the king 
 individually, and that their government was 
 under the protection of the king. 
 
 As I have already remarked, the abolish- 
 ment of the Board and the appointment of Sir 
 William as sole superintendent, with military 
 rank as an officer of the Crown, carried this 
 theory into effect in fact, if not in name; and 
 so long as the Colonial condition lasted, after 
 that the relation was never changed, nor was 
 attempt made to change it except in one 
 instance, which will be noted later on. This 
 somewhat detailed description of Sir Will- 
 iam's status at the time under consideration 
 
 35 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 seems requisite to a clear understanding of 
 his relation to the proposed expedition 
 against Canada in the spring of 1748. He 
 was to have command of a division composed 
 of a brigade of Provincial troops nnder his 
 own immediate command, and a thousand 
 Indians to be commanded by Hendrick. And 
 he was also to be second in command of the 
 entire force, Sir William Pepperell having 
 been selected for the command-in-chief. Dur- 
 ing the autumn of 1747 all arrangements were 
 made to mobilize a force at least nine thou- 
 sand strong, with a reserve of five thousand. 
 The Iroquois had agreed to furnish not less 
 than a thousand picked warriors. It was 
 noted that the Senecas now, for the first time 
 since the alliance between the English and the 
 Six Nations was ratified, in 1710, displayed 
 zeal and responded to the call for men with 
 alacrity. 
 
 As an indication of the thoroughness with 
 which this proposed invasion had been 
 planned, it is worth while to observe that the 
 scheme of preparation involved not only the 
 mobilization of fourteen thousand troops in 
 the early spring, but also provision for ta- 
 king control of Lake Champlain. Three stout 
 sloops were to be built during the winter at a 
 convenient point near the south end of the 
 36 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 lake. These sloops were designed to carry; 
 one long 12-pounder each on a pivot amid- 
 ships, and two swivels. In fact, at the time 
 when the communication of the Duke of New- 
 castle reached Albany, considerable timber 
 for the construction of these sloops had 
 already been cut, and some of it shaped for 
 use. As the French had no naval force what- 
 ever on the lake, it was estimated that these 
 sloops could command its waters long enough 
 to ensure the reduction of Crown Point, 
 because, if the French had gunboats in the St. 
 Lawrence of dimensions capable of passing 
 the Sorel River, the ice would not be out 
 before May, and it was confidently expected 
 that Crown Point must fall before the end of 
 April. 
 
 It was now considered that all requisite 
 preparations for the spring campaign had 
 been completed, when a communication was 
 received from the Duke of Newcastle, then 
 Prime Minister. In this communication the 
 duke, in the name of the king, warmly ap- 
 proved the zeal and fidelity of the colonists, 
 commended their preparations, and congratu- 
 lated them upon their apparent unity of 
 design. But he intimated that events were in 
 progress in Europe which would be likely to 
 render the proposed expedition unnecessary. 
 
 37 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 In those circumstances and in the interest 
 of economy, the king had directed that the 
 troops already assembled and ready to go 
 into winter quarters at and about Albany be 
 furloughed until April, retaining only a force 
 of Provincials and Indians sufficient to guard 
 the northern frontier. This action disap- 
 pointed the white troops who had volunteered 
 with so much alacrity, and it almost disheart- 
 ened the Indians. But by liberal distribution 
 of presents, as they started for their home, 
 Sir William managed to allay in great meas- 
 ure their discontent. 
 
 There were about six hundred Indians in 
 their camp near Cohoes and at Schaghticoke, 
 and additional recruits were coming in every 
 day. As all these men had been kept from 
 their usual fall hunt, there was considerable 
 destitution among the tribes during the win- 
 ter, which, however, proved to be short and 
 mild. The Assembly voted considerable 
 sums to relieve them as far as possible. This 
 was practically the end of "King George's 
 War," so far as the colonies were concerned. 
 The frontier, however, was strongly guarded 
 during the winter, and in February, 1748, at 
 the solicitation of the Governor, Sir William 
 took command of the whole line of frontier 
 defense, and held it until the peace of Aix-la- 
 38 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 Chapelle was promulgated. But no military 
 event of moment occurred within the limits 
 of his command during the winter or the 
 ensuing spring. 
 
 By April, 1748, it became generally known 
 that the war was practically over, and though 
 the definitive peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was 
 not promulgated until October of that year, a 
 virtual armistice prevailed during the sum- 
 mer, both in Europe and America. The 
 frontier defenses were considerably strength- 
 ened as spring opened, but there was no move- 
 ment on either side. The French did not 
 come south of Crown Point — which was their 
 most advanced post — while the northern out- 
 post of the Provincials was at the head or 
 south end of Lake George, where Sir Will- 
 iam had his field headquarters. During the 
 spring and summer of 1748 the frontier force 
 of the Provincials was about three thousand, 
 including some four hundred Iroquois. The 
 Provincials were quartered in four or five 
 camps within easy supporting distance ; some 
 at the head of Lake George, some at the head 
 of Lake Champlain, and others at Saratoga, 
 Glens Falls, or where Fort Edward was 
 afterward built, and the remainder at Fort 
 Anne. The Indians remained at Schaghticoke 
 and Cohoes. 
 
 39 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 The French had twelve hundred men — 
 about half of them regulars — at Crown Point, 
 and a large reserve of Canadian militia and 
 Indians at Isle aux Noix. In this manner the 
 two belligerents faced each other quietly dur- 
 ing the summer of 1748. Sir William was, 
 however, by no means idle personally during 
 this interim. The abortive attempts that had 
 been made in 1745, '46 and '47 to mobilize the 
 Provincial forces of New York quickly had 
 shown that the militia of Albany County was 
 in a state of utter disorganization. Albany 
 County at that time embraced the whole of 
 New York Colony north and west of Dutchess 
 and Ulster counties, together with the present 
 State of Vermont. While this vast county 
 was, on the whole, sparsely populated, the 
 fact that it embodied the whole northern and 
 western frontier open to invasion from Can- 
 ada, made its militia organization of para- 
 mount importance. In June, 1748, as soon 
 as he was sure that there would be no more 
 hostilities, Governor Clinton appointed Sir 
 William colonel-in-chief of the Albany County 
 militia, with directions to reorganize it on his 
 own plan carte blanche. "You may consider 
 whatever you recommend as done," said the 
 Governor in a personal letter accompanying 
 the appointment and instructions. Sir Will- 
 40 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 iam thereupon proceeded with his task and 
 effected a new organization, which stood the 
 test of the next war, 1755-62, and lasted until 
 the Revolution. The basis of this reorgani- 
 zation was regimental in the more populous 
 districts, such as the valleys of the Hudson 
 and the lower Mohawk, and independent com- 
 panies in the sparsely settled outlying dis- 
 tricts. Its result was the creation of five 
 regiments of eight companies each, having a 
 normal strength of seventy-five to the com- 
 pany, or six hundred to the regiment, and 
 twelve independent companies of from sixty 
 to seventy-five men each. 
 
 In July advices were received that the pre- 
 liminary articles of peace were signed, and 
 the frontier defense force was disbanded. 
 The French evacuated Crown Point and the 
 Indians on both sides buried the hatchet. 
 During his command of the frontier defenses 
 Sir William made two permanent improve- 
 ments: he built through the forest a road 
 practicable for supply wagons and artillery 
 from the head of Lake George to Glens Falls 
 on the Hudson, and another from the head of 
 Lake Champlain, at Black Mountain, to Fort 
 Anne, which was already connected with 
 Sandy Hill on the Hudson by a practicable 
 
 road. The Governor now appointed him 
 4 41 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 permanent colonel-in-chief of the Albany 
 County militia, and he returned to his home 
 at Mount Johnson, having, as he said, "done 
 a deal of hard work for two years with 
 mighty little to show for it." 
 
 On the whole, "King George's War," so 
 far as the colonies were concerned, was an 
 abortive affair. Except the brilliant exploit 
 of taking Louisburg, there had been no 
 action whatever worth mention in history. A 
 few raids back and forth by the French and 
 Indians on one side and Provincial back- 
 woodsmen and Iroquois on the other; some 
 cabins burned, several murders, and a few 
 scalps, told the whole story for the interior 
 frontier. But it served to teach the colonies 
 lessons which proved of great value in the 
 final and decisive struggle for empire in 
 North America that was then only seven 
 years distant. Those lessons were : first, the 
 absolute need of unity in design and har- 
 mony in execution; second, that their situa- 
 tion required in peace a constant prepared- 
 ness for instant war; and, third, that the 
 balance of power on the northern frontier be- 
 tween the colonies and the French power in 
 Canada was held by the Six Nations, and he 
 who possessed influence to hold them loyal 
 was the most important man in the colony. 
 42 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 And this war, desultory as it may have been, 
 had demonstrated beyond dispute or doubt 
 that that man was Sir William Johnson. 
 
 We have seen one good description of Sir 
 William himself and his household. A little 
 later than this (in 1751) Mrs. Julia Grant, the 
 wife of Captain (afterward Major-General) 
 Grant of the British Army, then in command 
 of the small garrison of regulars at Albany, 
 visited Mount Johnson and painted a por- 
 trait of Sir William. The lady was an art- 
 ist of no mediocre ability, and during her 
 eight years' sojourn on the New York fron- 
 tier painted many clever portraits of dis- 
 tinguished people, including Colonel and 
 Mrs. Schuyler, Solomon Van Rensselaer and 
 others. She also kept a vivacious journal, 
 which was afterward printed in Edinburgh. 
 In this journal Lady Grant pen-pictures Sir 
 William as follows: 
 
 ... A little scant of six feet high — say five 
 feet eleven and one-half inches. Neck massive, 
 shoulders broad, chest deep and full, limbs large 
 and showing every sign of great physical strength. 
 Head large and finely shaped. Countenance open, 
 frank, and always beaming with good-nature and 
 humor — a real Irishman as he is for wit. Eyes 
 large, a sort of black-gray or grayish black in color. 
 Hair dark brown with a tinge of auburn in certain 
 
 43 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 lights. In conversation, he is a most delightful 
 person, relating recollections of his dealings with 
 the Indians or discussing the classic authors or 
 the literature of the day with equal readiness and 
 ease. His mode of living is that of an English gen- 
 tleman at his country seat, and I was astonished to 
 find on this remote frontier, almost in the shade of 
 primeval forest, a table loaded with delicacies and 
 Madeiras, ports and Burgundies of the rarest vint- 
 age. His table is seldom without guests, and his 
 hospitality is a byword the region round. During 
 my stay he had Indian chiefs to dine with him 
 several times. Their attire was the same as white 
 people, and for the most part they conversed in 
 English. This disappointed me, because I wished 
 to sit at table with genuine Indians in blankets and 
 leggings and talking nothing but their gibberish 
 through an interpreter. Among those I met at 
 Colonel Johnson's table were the venerable and 
 noble-looking old chief Hendrick, now over sev- 
 enty years of age ; his brother Abraham, about sixty 
 years of age, chief of a Mohawk clan and father 
 of Caroline, the beautiful young Indian woman 
 who is the mistress of his household ; also Nicklaus 
 Brant, chief of the Upper Castle Mohawks, a man 
 of prodigious silence and the most grave and sol- 
 emn courtesy. . . 
 
 Colonel Johnson is the soul of method. At 
 breakfast I tell him I wish a half -hour's sitting 
 some time in the day. We agree on an exact time 
 by the clock. The Colonel then mounts his horse 
 
 44 
 
His Early Life in Ireland 
 
 and dashes here and there about his estate over- 
 seeing everything. At the appointed moment he 
 dismounts at the door and is ready for the sitting. 
 When the half hour is done he is away again as 
 swiftly as he came. He must have fifty or sixty 
 people in his employ besides the negroes and he 
 oversees everything that they do. Marvellous! 
 And then he attends to a mass of complicated pub- 
 lic business besides ! 
 
 45 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE AND THE ALBANY 
 
 CONGRESS 
 
 1745-1754 
 
 We may now turn briefly from the public 
 to the private side of Sir William Johnson's 
 life. Late in 1745 his white wife, Katharine, 
 died suddenly, leaving him with three little 
 children — Anne, five years old; John, three; 
 and Mary, a baby one year old. 1 At first he 
 
 1 Parkman, in his Montcalm and Wolfe (vol. i, p. 298), 
 briefly surveys the character of Sir William Johnson from the 
 Boston point of view. Its tone is half -cynical, half-patron- 
 izing, and it may be left without comment so far as Sir Will- 
 iam is concerned. But in the course of it he goes clear out of 
 his way to cast a slur upon the memory of Katharine Weisen- 
 burg, who, though an unpretentious Mohawk Dutch girl, was 
 an honorable woman, a faithful wife, and a devoted mother. 
 After a brief description of Mount Johnson he says: "Here 
 presided for many years a Dutch or German wench whom he 
 (Sir William) finally married." 
 
 This is not only a painfully ill-natured but a grossly inac- 
 curate statement. Johnson married Katharine Weisenburg 
 within a week after he had bought her indentures from Mr. 
 Phillips, as previously related ; and she never "presided" at 
 Mount Johnson except as his wife. Whether she was a 
 
 46 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 employed as nurse for them a worthy woman 
 to whom history has given no more intimate 
 recognition than the remark that she was a 
 "Dutch widow." She was undoubtedly a 
 faithful nurse, but Sir William soon detected 
 that his little daughter Anne and his little son 
 John, who were just beginning to talk, rapidly 
 acquired the Mohawk Dutch " brogue " of 
 their nurse. This he did not desire. So he 
 found other employment in his establishment 
 
 " wench " or not may be a question of lexicography as between 
 Boston and the rest of mankind. The fact is that, in this 
 silly slur upon the memory of a good woman, Parkman be- 
 trays the besetting weakness that mars in many places the 
 results of his wonderful research and often besmears the gen- 
 eral purity of his style. That weakness was his inexorable 
 prejudice and incorrigible bias in favor of everything and 
 everybody of Massachusetts and against everything and every- 
 body everywhere else. The reader of Parkman and Park- 
 man alone would imagine that Massachusetts, almost single- 
 handed, sustained the brunt of all the French and Indian 
 wars, and finally, with some trifling assistance from the Brit- 
 ish navy and a few English regulars, drove the French out 
 of North America ! As for the other colonies, they simply 
 looked on. Their men, most of whom were "boors," cut little 
 or no figure in the contest, and their women were mainly 
 "wenches." 
 
 In Sir William's case the grudge was personal. Massa- 
 chusetts, who furnished the largest contingent both of men 
 and supplies for the campaign of 1755, bitterly resented the 
 appointment of a New Yorker to the supreme command. Her 
 people considered Colonel (afterward General) Phineas Ly- 
 man entitled to the leadership. Parkman simply inherited 
 the local spite and jealousy of his province. 
 
 47 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 for the good Dutch woman, and secured the 
 services of a middle-aged Scotch-Irish wom- 
 an, the widow of a non-conformist minister 
 of New York city, whom Lady Warren found 
 available and sent to him. This lady proved 
 an ideal nursery-governess, because she was 
 not only a capable nurse, but a well-educated 
 woman besides, and able to instruct the chil- 
 dren as well as to care for them. The name 
 of this lady was Mrs. Barclay (also spelled 
 "Barkley " in some of the manuscripts), and 
 she passed the rest of her life under the John- 
 son roof. Sir William now remained in single 
 blessedness about two years, beset by match- 
 makers, from his aunt, Lady Warren, in New 
 York, to his aristocratic friends in Albany. 
 But in the fall of 1747 he astonished all his 
 friends. 
 
 One of his biographers — and by far the 
 best of them in a general sense — writing of 
 the events of the year 1748, says (Stone, p. 
 327, vol. i) : 
 
 It was about this period — though I have not been 
 able to learn the exact date — that Colonel Johnson 
 employed as his housekeeper Mary Brant, or "Miss 
 Molly ' ' as she was called, a sister of the celebrated 
 Chief Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant), with whom 
 he lived until his decease, and by whom he had 
 several children. 
 
 48 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 In the Brant manuscripts the statement is 
 made by the chief that he was born in 1742, 
 and that his sister Mary was " nearly seven 
 years his senior." This would have brought 
 the date of Mary's birth in the year 1735, 
 and she would therefore have been in her 
 thirteenth year in 1748 — an age hardly ripe 
 enough for the domestic responsibilities of 
 such an establishment as that of Sir William. 
 However, "about this time " — that is to say, 
 late in 1747 — he did employ a young Indian 
 woman as his housekeeper; but she was not 
 Mary Brant, who, by the way, did not achieve 
 that distinction until about six years later. 
 
 This young woman was a daughter of the 
 Chief Abraham, sachem of the Lower Castle 
 Mohawks, and when she attracted the atten- 
 tion of Sir William was about twenty-two 
 years old. She was reputed to be the hand- 
 somest girl in the Iroquois nation. Indeed, 
 there is, or used to be, among the older resi- 
 dents of the Mohawk Valley a tradition that 
 Abraham's wife was a white woman of Hol- 
 land Dutch antecedents. If so, this girl was 
 a half-breed. And, more important than 
 that, if the legend be true, her elder sister, 
 who married Nicklaus Brant and became the 
 mother of Joseph and Mary, was a half-breed 
 also, which would put a strain of white blood 
 49 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 in the veins of the great captain — unquestion- 
 ably the greatest of American Indians. I do 
 not believe this tradition. Chief Abraham's 
 wife may have been an unusually light-col- 
 ored Indian woman. The Iroquois were uni- 
 versally lighter in complexion than any other 
 American Indians, and the Mohawks and 
 Oneidas were the lightest of all. So marked 
 was this peculiarity, taken together with their 
 superior civilization, that some of the early 
 writers — mainly Jesuit Fathers — considered 
 them a different race from the common 
 aborigines. 
 
 A noted student of Indian life and char- 
 acter, Professor Donaldson, explains it on 
 purely physical grounds, which is doubtless the 
 true view. He says that for generations — 
 even before the white man was known on these 
 shores — the Iroquois had lived in comfort- 
 able habitations, tilled the soil, raised grain 
 and fruits, and, generally speaking, had much 
 better shelter, better cookery, better sanitary 
 arrangements, and altogether more of the 
 good things of life than any other Indians. 
 This mode of living had tended to " bleach 
 out " their complexions and endow them with 
 other physical advantages of which for cen- 
 turies they had availed themselves to gain 
 an ascendency among Indian nations that 
 50 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 finally came to be undisputed. We may, 
 therefore, take it for granted that Chief 
 Abraham's wife was simply unusually white 
 even for a Mohawk woman, but a full-blooded 
 Indian nevertheless. 
 
 The girl who placed herself under Sir 
 William's protection was, like all the Hen- 
 drick family, Christianized. She had been 
 baptized under the name of Caroline, and had 
 received as complete an education as the mis- 
 sion school at Fort Hunter and a private 
 school in Schenectady could impart. The 
 relation she so willingly assumed to Sir Will- 
 iam may seem equivocal in the lights of our 
 time; but whether there was any marriage 
 ceremony or not, it was a case of unconcealed 
 cohabitation, accompanied by child-bearing, 
 which, after all, under the statutes of those 
 days, amounted to a common-law marriage. 
 
 At this point the view adopted by W. Max 
 Reid of Amsterdam, N. Y., author of a most 
 excellent History of the Mohawk Valley, is 
 of interest. It may be premised that Mr. 
 Eeid is more thoroughly conversant with the 
 history, legends, and traditions of the Mo- 
 hawk Valley than any other man now living, 
 and probably more so than any other man 
 ever was, except Horatio Seymour. In one 
 of his entertaining papers recently published 
 
 51 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 Mr. Reid remarks on the history and geneal- 
 ogy of the two most famous families in the 
 Iroquois Nation: 
 
 I have been informed on indubitable authority 
 that after the death of Katharine Weisenburg, the 
 mother of his son, John, and daughters, Mary and 
 Nancy, he (Sir William) had a Dutch widow as 
 housekeeper, but that she did not remain with him 
 long, as her place was taken in 1747 by a niece of 
 Hendrick, being the daughter of his brother, Abra- 
 ham, who is frequently spoken of in the Documen- 
 tary History of New York. As in the case of Molly 
 Brant, Sir William did not wed this Indian girl, 
 who took the English name Caroline. She had 
 three children by Sir William — one son and two 
 daughters. The son was named William and the 
 daughters Charlotte and Caroline. The mother 
 died in giving birth to the third child. William 
 was the first born. This half-breed son is the Will- 
 iam Johnson, alias Tag-che-un-to, who is mentioned 
 in Sir William's will as ''William of Canajoharie." 
 The date of Caroline's death was in 1753, which 
 consequently makes the birth of Caroline, the half- 
 breed, in 1753 ; and the installation of Molly Brant 
 as Sir William's mistress was subsequent to that 
 date. Probably this occurred soon after the death 
 of Caroline as her daughters (Charlotte and Caro- 
 line) are said to have been adopted by Molly and 
 treated by her as her own children, while William, 
 the half-breed boy, was mainly raised by his grand- 
 52 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 father, Abraham, or his uncle, "Little Abe/' at 
 Canajoharie Castle at Danube. 
 
 The history of the two daughters is of interest. 
 Charlotte, the eldest, married a young British 
 officer shortly before the Revolution, but who after- 
 ward joined the Continental army and fell at Mon- 
 mouth Court House. His name was Henry Randall. 
 They had two children, one named Charlotte Ran- 
 dall, who married George King. George and 
 Charlotte King had a daughter Charlotte, who was 
 the grandmother of my informant. 1 
 
 The other daughter of Molly Brant's predeces- 
 sor (Caroline) whose name was also Caroline, mar- 
 ried a man named Michael Byrne, a clerk in Sir 
 William's office of Indian affairs. Byrne was killed 
 at Oriskany in Butler's Rangers. His young 
 widow, Caroline Johnson, went with the Brants to 
 Canada and afterward married an Indian agent 
 named MacKim, whose descendants are still living 
 in Canada. 
 
 Brant, who went to England with Hendrick and 
 others in 1710, was the grandfather of Joseph and 
 Molly Brant. When Joseph was born, in 1742, his 
 grandfather was probably between sixty and sev- 
 enty years old. Brant's father was called Nickus, 
 or Nicklaus, by the Dutch. Stone anglicizes the 
 name and calls him Nicholas Brant. He must have 
 
 1 There was a third child — a boy — named Morgan Randall, 
 after General Daniel Morgan, in whose riflemen Henry Ran- 
 dall served. 
 
 53 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 been at least thirty years old when Joseph was 
 born, and Molly was at least six years older than 
 Joseph. 
 
 The mother of Joseph and Molly was also a 
 daughter of Abraham (the brother of Hendrick) 
 and a sister or half-sister of "Little Abe" of the 
 lower castle at Fort Hunter. This made her a niece 
 of Hendrick also, and a sister of the girl Caroline, 
 who went to live with Sir William in 1747. 
 
 It is also said that Joseph Brant's wife was a 
 daughter of the Oneida chief of Sauquoit, and her 
 mother was a daughter of Hendrick. So it will 
 be seen by the foregoing that the families of Brant 
 and Hendrick were closely interrelated. As Molly 
 Brant's mother was the sister of Caroline, Molly's 
 predecessor was her own aunt, and Sir William 
 might be called her uncle. 
 
 Returning to William Johnson, the half-breed 
 mentioned in his will: He was educated by Sir 
 William at Dr. Wheelock's school at Lebanon, 
 Conn., and was at the battle of Oriskany with 
 Brant. Here he was killed in a hand-to-hand con- 
 flict with the half-breed Thomas Spencer, who 
 played a conspicuous part with Herkimer's troops 
 and at the siege of Fort Schuyler. Incidentally, 
 Thomas Spencer is said to have been a son of the 
 missionary, Rev. Elihu Spencer, by an Oneida girl, 
 and was born at Oghwaga about the year 1755. 
 
 About a year after the death of Caroline 
 Hendrick, Sir William offered his protection 
 54 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 and affection to Mary Brant. She accepted, 
 and outlived him; their life together during 
 a period of twenty years — 1754-74 — having 
 been by universal account of the times happy 
 and affectionate. Mary Brant was not as 
 handsome or as majestic a woman as her aunt 
 and predecessor, Caroline, but she was a very 
 pretty girl nevertheless, and developed into a 
 woman of much tact, sterling virtues, and a 
 model housewife. She was about nineteen 
 years old when she accepted the protection of 
 Sir William, and survived him many years. 
 She bore him nine children — two boys and 
 seven girls — but one of the latter died in 
 infancy. Of these children the eldest was a 
 boy, to whom they gave the name of Peter 
 Warren Johnson, after the admiral; the 
 second was a girl named Elizabeth, the third 
 a girl named Magdalene, the fourth a girl 
 named Margaret, the fifth a boy named 
 George, the sixth a girl named Mary, the 
 seventh a girl named Susanne, and the eighth 
 a girl named Anne. 
 
 In the text of his will he describes these as 
 "my natural children by my housekeeper, 
 Mary Brant." 
 
 Young William Johnson is the only one 
 of Caroline Hendrick's children mentioned or 
 provided for in the will. But this may be ex- 
 
 55 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 plained on the ground that the two girls, 
 Charlotte and Caroline, had been married 
 some time before his death — Charlotte in 1770 
 or '71 and Caroline a year or two later — and 
 Sir William had undoubtedly made what he 
 considered sufficient provision for them in 
 the marriage settlements. 
 
 When the Tories were expelled from the 
 Mohawk Valley in 1776, two years after the 
 death of Sir William, Mary Brant and her 
 children went with them and settled on Grand 
 Kiver, or the Oise, as the French called it. 
 Of the two sons — Peter and George — no trace 
 seems to have been left in history. The six 
 girls all married white men, one of them 
 becoming the wife of Dr. Kerr, a surgeon in 
 the British army. Mrs. Kerr was an accom- 
 plished woman, a clever writer, and wrote two 
 or three interesting little books on the cus- 
 toms and beliefs of the race to which she half 
 belonged. 
 
 There was a legend, which most of Sir 
 William's biographers have adopted, to the 
 effect that his attention was first attracted to 
 Mary Brant at a militia muster in Canajo- 
 harie. It was said that she mounted the 
 horse of an officer and rode furiously around 
 the parade-ground several times, her long 
 black hair and loose red robes streaming in 
 56 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 the wind ; at last, riding up to where the great 
 man stood, lost in admiration, and leaping 
 gracefully from the back of the panting 
 steed into his stalwart arms. 
 
 All this is very pretty ; but the fact is that 
 Sir William had known Mary Brant from the 
 time she was ten years old, his intimate 
 acquaintance with Nicklaus Brant and his 
 family having begun very soon after his first 
 settlement at Warrensbush. When Caroline 
 Hendrick was in her fatal illness her sister, 
 Brant's wife, came to nurse her, and Mary 
 accompanied her mother. Not long after that 
 the arrangement was made by which Mary 
 became the mistress of his household. 
 
 Mary Brant had been educated in the 
 common English branches in the Manor 
 school at Canajoharie, where her father lived 
 before he became chief of the Upper Castle 
 Mohawks. He had a comfortable frame 
 house at Canajoharie and lived and dressed 
 altogether after the fashion of white men. 
 The female members of his family were never 
 made to do the usual drudgery of squaws. 
 He owned a good farm close to the town and 
 cultivated it as well as any of his white neigh- 
 bors. He was, as Mrs. Grant says, "a man 
 of prodigious silence " — noted for his taci- 
 turnity and for his keen faculty of observa- 
 5 57 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 tion as well. Whenever Sir William had an 
 extremely delicate mission to fulfil with the 
 Cayugas or Senecas, who were usually more 
 or less recalcitrant, he always sent Nicklaus 
 Brant. Beyond question, Sir William's inti- 
 mate connection with the Hendrick and Brant 
 families was more potent than any other 
 agency in giving him the control and ascend- 
 ency over the Iroquois which he so success- 
 fully maintained through the twenty-odd try- 
 ing and troublous years that immediately pre- 
 ceded the Revolution. Many times, when Sir 
 William got hold of an obdurate and trouble- 
 some delegation of Senecas or Cayugas, he 
 would turn them over to "Lady Molly," as 
 she was commonly called after he was made a 
 baronet — which was the next year after their 
 alliance — and she "never failed to ' Mollyfy ' 
 them," as he used to say. Of this period in 
 Sir William's life, Dr. Wheelock says : 
 
 I have seen at Mount Johnson and also at John- 
 son Hall sixty to eighty Indians at one time lodg- 
 ing under tents on the lawn and taking their meals 
 from tables made of pine boards spread under the 
 trees. They were delegations from all the Iroquois 
 tribes, come to pow-wow with their great white 
 brother, ' ' Warragh-i-ya-gey ' ' (the Indian name 
 they gave to Sir William when they adopted him 
 into the Iroquois nation and gave him a council- 
 58 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 seat in the ' ' Long House ' ') . These visits must have 
 been very expensive to Sir William, and he told 
 me that never more than half their cost was de- 
 frayed out of the public exchequer. 
 
 ' ' They say, ' ' said the baronet to me once, ' ' that 
 it is not right or fair that I should be superintend- 
 ent over the Indians and an Indian trader at the 
 same time. Why, bless me, doctor, my profits from 
 the Indian trade do not reimburse me for my outlay 
 in entertaining these delegations and giving pres- 
 ents to their members! 
 
 "The Indians are honest," he pursued. "I 
 have often supplied one Indian or a small party 
 living as far away as the Southern Senecas on 
 Cattaraugus Creek or the Conewango — I have often 
 supplied such with a complete hunting and trap- 
 ping outfit — guns, ammunition, traps, etc., with 
 blankets, woolen shirts, and other clothing — all 
 on absolute credit. If they did not die or get 
 killed by the Catawbas or Shawnese — their natural 
 enemies — they would always come back and pay as 
 soon as they got wherewithal to pay with." 
 
 Griffis, in his Life of Sir William John- 
 son, says that "after the death of his wife, 
 Catharine, Sir William lived with various 
 mistresses, etc." But Mr. Reid, a much more 
 studious and careful historian, rejects this 
 tradition. It is true that the baronet lived in 
 a morganatic fashion with two Indian women 
 at different times. But all the circumstantial 
 59 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 evidence points to the conclusion that he was 
 faithful to them, and that he was not in the 
 least degree inclined to promiscuous licen- 
 tiousness. He was always as solicitous for 
 the welfare of his half-breed children as any 
 father could be for any children; and as he 
 was temperate and moderate in all things, it 
 is fair to presume that he was equally so in 
 his relations with women, white or red. In 
 fact, the dignity he had to maintain to hold 
 his influence over the Indians must have been 
 sacrificed instantly had this been otherwise. 
 The truth undoubtedly is that he was true 
 and constant to the two Indian women with 
 whom he lived openly in the sight of every- 
 body — living with one of them about six 
 years and with the other twenty years. 
 
 This survey of Sir William's peculiar 
 domestic life has carried us to a point far 
 ahead of the main thread of our narrative; 
 but necessarily so, because I considered it 
 advisable to treat that branch of the subject 
 in a single sketch, rather than filter its inci- 
 dents here and there in detached parts 
 throughout his history. Many students of 
 Sir William's life and some of his biogra- 
 phers — notably Griffis — have chosen to be- 
 lieve, or affected to believe, that his selection 
 of Indian mistresses for the head of his do- 
 60 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 mestic establishment, when he could have had 
 his pick among refined, well-connected, and 
 thoroughly educated white women, argues the 
 lurking of a debased trait in his otherwise 
 lofty character. 
 
 On this point, it seems to me, that argu- 
 ment would be wasted. Without discussion, 
 I am inclined to believe with Mr. Reid, that 
 the element of statecraft entered largely into 
 the sum-total of reasons for these singular 
 alliances, and that he chose, first, Caroline 
 Hendrick, and, after her, Mary Brant, because 
 he wanted a housewife who could make his 
 Indian guests — of whom his house was sel- 
 dom in lack — feel at home. His fortunes 
 depended on his influence with the Indians. 
 Without that he could never have been any- 
 thing more than a settler in the Mohawk Val- 
 ley; richer, perhaps, than his neighbors, but 
 still only a settler. His command of the Iro- 
 quois just at the time when their adherence 
 to the British cause was vital to the objects 
 of British policy, made him the most impor- 
 tant, if not actually the greatest, man in the 
 colony. No white woman could have made 
 Sir William's red henchmen feel at home in 
 his house as Caroline Hendrick or Mary 
 Brant could. If this was one of his mo- 
 tives, it was creditable at least to his ambi- 
 
 61 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 tion, if not to his sense of propriety. But the 
 point of propriety itself must be measured by 
 the standard of morality prevailing in his 
 days, not ours. And even if Caroline and 
 Mary were only housekeepers or mistresses, 
 and if, as he says in his will, their children 
 were only "natural," yet his fidelity to them 
 and his affection and solicitude for the chil- 
 dren they bore him can not be forgotten or 
 neglected in the scales of charity. 
 
 Returning now to consideration of Sir 
 William's public life, it may be said that after 
 the peace of Aix - la - Chapelle he passed 
 nearly a year in almost undivided attention 
 to the affairs of his estate. The only inter- 
 ruption of any note he experienced was the 
 arrangement and management of a grand 
 council, at Albany, of the governors of the 
 New England colonies, New York, New Jer- 
 sey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia with the 
 chiefs of the Indians friendly to the English 
 and the colonists, or who were willing to be 
 friendly in the future. This grand council 
 was opened on the 20th of July, and lasted 
 about ten days. There were present seven 
 colonial governors, each accompanied by 
 members of his staff ; thirty Indian chiefs of 
 high rank, each attended by several espe- 
 cially distinguished warriors of his tribe ; and 
 62 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 the Indian superintendents of Virginia, Penn- 
 sylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. 
 
 The Iroquois were by no means alone 
 in representation. Chiefs were there from 
 the Delawares of western Pennsylvania; the 
 fierce and hitherto untamable Shawnese of 
 what is now Ohio; Mingoes, Wyandots, Adi- 
 rondack^ — who came from territory claimed 
 and hitherto held by the French — together 
 with the "Kiver Indians " (remnants of the 
 former Pequots, Mohegans, Narragansetts, 
 and other aborigines of New England). Per- 
 haps the most interesting figure in this assem- 
 blage was the great war-chief of the Genesee 
 Senecas, Hi-o-ka-to, who for years had 
 vowed that he would never speak one word 
 with an Englishman. Hi-o-ka-to was the 
 husband of the celebrated Mary Jemison, a 
 white woman, who, captured by the Algon- 
 quins when a little girl, had been retaken by 
 the Senecas, and adopted by them. As soon 
 as she grew to womanhood Hi-o-ka-to, then a 
 redoubted warrior and knight errant of the 
 tribe, nearly forty years of age, asked her 
 to share his wigwam — or rather his house 
 — which was a comfortable log cabin. She 
 consented, and lived with him until his death, 
 many years afterward. She wrote a narra- 
 tive, which is doubtless the most interesting 
 
 63 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 personal description of life among the Indi- 
 ans ever printed. In it she says of her stal- 
 wart brave after his death : 
 
 Ferocious as he may have been on the war- 
 path, and savage as he may have been in battle, I 
 can only say that no husband could have been 
 kinder to wife than he was to me, and no man, 
 white or any other color, could have been gentler 
 than he was when inside the four walls of our 
 cabin. In all our life together, he never spoke one 
 cross word to me, and I have often seen him curb 
 his fierce temper toward others simply because I 
 happened to be present. 
 
 Governor Clinton and Sir William consid- 
 ered it a great point gained when Hi-o-ka-to 
 was induced to attend this conference. Sav- 
 age as he was, the Seneca war-chief did not 
 lack ready wit. Some years later, during 
 another council, Sir William, in a bantering 
 way, asked him in the Iroquois tongue, "Why 
 didn't you bring your white wife with you, 
 Hi-o-ka-to ? I would like to introduce her to 
 my Indian wife." "Because," replied the 
 chief, "I was afraid you white folks would 
 steal her, the same as you do pretty much 
 everything else we poor Indians have that is 
 worth stealing ! " 
 
 A remarkable and somewhat amusing 
 feature of this grand council was the fact that 
 64 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 the venerable senior chief of the Iroquois, 
 Hendrick, was unable to attend, and asked 
 the council to accept his brother Abraham as 
 his representative — giving as the reason the 
 fact that he was at that moment prostrated 
 by an acute attack of inflammatory gout! A 
 rather singular malady for an American In- 
 dian ! Perhaps the old chief had availed him- 
 self too freely of his nephew-in-law's prover- 
 bial liberality with his "crusty old port " and 
 "nut-brown Madeira!" 
 
 Toward the end of the grand council — on 
 its sixth day — Chief Abraham made a speech, 
 addressed particularly to the Senecas and 
 Cayugas. This speech was provoked by some 
 remarks made by Onnasdego, chief of the 
 Onondagas, in which that orator accused the 
 English of neglecting the western Iroquois, 
 and thereby leaving their hearts open to the 
 blandishments of the French emissaries. 
 Abraham spoke in English, so that the assem- 
 bled governors and members of their staffs 
 could readily understand what he was say- 
 ing. But he had provided interpreters to 
 translate his speech as he went along to those 
 Indians present who could not understand 
 the English language. Lack of space forbids 
 reproduction of his remarks. One quotation 
 may serve as a sample : 
 
 65 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 "You complain," he said, "that the English, 
 the Colonists, do not trust you. How can they when 
 you do not trust them ? There can be no confidence 
 between two unless both share it alike. There can 
 never be faith on one side and doubt on the other 
 without distrust on both sides. And wherever 
 there is distrust no real friendship can exist. You 
 Western Iroquois listen to the silver tongues of 
 French priests and emissaries whose only object 
 is to lure you to ruin that their cause may profit 
 by it. They do not love you. They would not 
 give you a gourdful of succotash if you were starv- 
 ing. But when have the English and the Colonists 
 failed to help you in distress? Put away the 
 French! Send them across the Lake! Tell them 
 to practise their bows and scrapes and grimaces 
 upon the stupid Indians of Canada — not upon the 
 noble Iroquois!" 
 
 To Abraham's speech a reply was made by 
 Kayaghshota, chief of the "Old Castle" or 
 Lake Senecas, whose village occupied the pres- 
 ent site of Geneva. No record of the Seneca's 
 speech seems to have been preserved. Mr. 
 Croghan, who kept the minutes of the council, 
 says simply that it was "an eloquent and 
 plausible defense of the vacillating conduct of 
 his tribe." Kayaghshota, it may be interesting 
 to remark, was the uncle of the famous Eed 
 Jacket — probably the most accomplished and 
 powerful orator the Indian race ever produced. 
 66 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 This grand council was one of the most 
 picturesque events in the history of the colo- 
 nies. Many of the chiefs brought their 
 wives with them, and some brought their 
 children. All were provided with new cloth- 
 ing by Governor Clinton as soon as they 
 arrived, together with a liberal supply of the 
 gaudy ornaments so much prized by the Indi- 
 ans; and the streets of Albany were daily 
 thronged by the gaily clad sons and daugh- 
 ters of the forest enjoying an ovation far 
 beyond their wildest dreams. For many 
 years afterward the proudest boast of an 
 Indian would be: "I was at the great Albany 
 Council !" Stone says: 
 
 The old Dutch city had in fact seldom witnessed 
 such a sight. Here were gathered Indians from the 
 far West, many of whom were destined to redden 
 their tomahawks in the blood of so many brave 
 garrisons under the great Pontiac. Here were 
 many of the River Indians — remnants of once pow- 
 erful tribes — whose grandfathers had followed 
 Uncas and Miantonomoh to battle, and had taken 
 their last stand with the ill-fated King Philip. In 
 one spot a painted warrior might have been seen 
 smoking his pipe as he recounted to his wonder- 
 ing companions the sights seen in his morning's 
 stroll; while everywhere groups of picturesquely 
 attired Indians, with nodding plumes and varie- 
 gated blankets, wandered through the streets gaz- 
 
 67 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ing with curious eye upon the novelties of civili- 
 zation. 
 
 The results of this council were more sat- 
 isfactory and on a larger scale than any pre- 
 viously held. The Iroquois renewed all their 
 ancient covenants with the king. The Sen- 
 ecas, who had never before formally acknowl- 
 edged the covenants of 1684 and 1710, now 
 gave in their complete adhesion through Hi-o- 
 ka-to, Captain Jean Montour 1 (himself a 
 
 1 There were three Montours : Jean, born about 1715, 
 Andre, born about 1720, and Henry. They were the sons of 
 Catharine Montour by a young half-breed chief of the Niagara 
 Senecas, who took her name. Catharine Montour was a 
 daughter of the Count de Frontenac by a Huron woman. She 
 was born at Fort Frontenac about 1692, and her name figures 
 in a curious old document called Accusation against Louis de 
 Buade, Comte de Frontenac, in which, among other things, 
 he is charged with "debasing the morals of the colony by 
 propagating more than sixty half-breeds!" Jean and Andre 
 Montour were both chiefs of high rank in the Seneca nation. 
 Catharine Montour received a good education in a convent at 
 Montreal. But in 1710, during Queen Anne's War, while 
 journeying from Montreal to Fort Frontenac, she was cap- 
 tured by a raiding party of Senecas and taken to their village 
 at Black Rock. Here she soon afterward married the young 
 chief, who took her name and she seemed perfectly contented. 
 At any rate, upon the exchange of captives that followed the 
 Peace of Utrecht, she refused to leave her husband and spent 
 her life among the Senecas. After the death of her husband 
 in 1735 she became female chief, or Queen in her own right, 
 and ruled the Niagara and Southern Senecas until her death 
 in 1752. She carefully educated her children, Jean, Andre, 
 
 68 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 French half-breed), and the Tonawanda chief 
 "Black Loon "; all of whom had hitherto been 
 opposed to English influence. They agreed 
 to expel all French emissaries and priests 
 from their territory, and they also promised to 
 arrest the most pestiferous of them, "Jean 
 Coeur," J and deliver him up to the Colonial 
 authorities. They never kept this promise, 
 but they expelled "Jean Coeur " with the rest. 
 They agreed to hold no further communica- 
 tion with the French, to forbid the residence 
 of French interpreters in their midst, and to 
 prohibit all trade or barter with French tra- 
 ders ; together with many other things the 
 English desired. 
 
 Henry, and three girls. One of her grandchildren was the 
 famous " Queen Esther," who practically commanded the In- 
 dians in the massacre of Wyoming. Jean and Andre Mon- 
 tour were conspicuous in the old French War, in Pontiac's 
 Rebellion, and in the Revolution. They were good warriors 
 and hard fighters, but held reputations for humanity equal to 
 that of Joseph Brant. Henry never achieved fame. 
 
 1 In the text we have followed the orthography of the 
 Colonial Documentary Records; but there was no "Jean 
 Coeur." The person meant was Joncaire, a captain in the 
 French service and for many years the principal agent and 
 emissary of the Canadian Government among the Western 
 Indians. We shall have occasion to refer to him frequently 
 later on. At the time under consideration he was what might 
 be called "principal intelligence officer" of the Canadian 
 Department of Indian Affairs, and had his headquarters at 
 Fort Niagara. 
 
 69 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 The Governor then requested them to give 
 a list of articles they needed to make good 
 their losses during the late war. The list 
 was rather formidable. Among other things, 
 they wanted a thousand guns, with hunting- 
 knives, hatchets, flints, and ammunition; two 
 thousand blankets; a large quantity of red 
 flannel cloth; farming utensils, such as hoes, 
 spades, iron plows, sickles, axes, etc. ; cooking 
 utensils ; some large kettles, suitable for ma- 
 king salt from the salt-springs, and maple- 
 sugar from the sap of trees, etc., etc. The 
 total footed up prodigiously. But the Gov- 
 ernor — or the assembled governors — prom- 
 ised that the list should be filled out, and they 
 kept their word. 
 
 Prior to Sir William Johnson's time it had 
 not been the policy to arm the Indians indis- 
 criminately. But he took the view that unless 
 well armed and practised in the use of their 
 weapons, they would be of little value as 
 allies, and from his first official connection 
 with Indian affairs he had done all he could 
 to provide them with serviceable guns and 
 plenty of ammunition. At that time the rifle 
 was little known outside of the trading-zone of 
 Old Lancaster, Pa., where the manufacture of 
 rifled weapons in America was begun by a 
 colony of Swiss gunsmiths in 1729 — hardly 
 70 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 twenty years before the Albany Council — 
 and, at the time under consideration (1749), 
 Lancaster still enjoyed the monopoly of rifle- 
 making in this country. A few specimens 
 had found their way into New York, and Sir 
 William had a very fine one, made by Deck- 
 ert, which he bought while attending the 
 Treaty Council at Lancaster in 1744. But 
 the production of rifles was limited, and there 
 was nothing like a general supply of them. 
 
 The regulation musket — cumbrous, heavy, 
 and carrying an ounce ball — was not suited to 
 the use of the Indians, who wanted a lighter 
 gun of smaller bore. So, among the first 
 things Sir William did when he became Indian 
 Commissioner, was to design a gun specially 
 adapted to the Indian's requirements. It was 
 three feet long in the barrel and about four 
 feet two inches over all, smooth bore, carried 
 a half-ounce spherical bullet, and could be 
 used either with ball or with small shot. This 
 was known for many years as the "Indian- 
 trade smooth bore," and was not completely 
 supplanted by the rifle on the frontier until 
 after the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
 The barrels and locks were made and proved 
 in Birmingham and then shipped to this coun- 
 try, where the stocks were fitted by Colonial 
 gunsmiths. Twelve hundred of these guns 
 71 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 were ordered immediately after the council, 
 and in due time they were in the hands of the 
 Indians. The other articles wanted were 
 more easily procured, and the distribution of 
 them was begun at once. 
 
 Philip Van Courtlandt, who as a young 
 boy attended this council with his father, the 
 Patroon, relates the amusing incident that 
 Hi-o-ka-to took a great fancy to the garb of a 
 Highlander he happened to see in Albany, and 
 asked the Governor to give him a Highland 
 outfit. The Governor succeeded in finding a 
 shirt, kilt, and tartan that would fit his stal- 
 wart proportions, and the great war-chief of 
 the Genesee Senecas strutted around Albany 
 as a Highlander to the infinite delight of the 
 rising generation and the admiration of the 
 women of his own race. And long afterward 
 it was his custom to appear on state occasions 
 in his own tribe clad in the plaid and tartan of 
 the Forty-second Highlanders. The council 
 adjourned the 30th of July, with a grand out- 
 door banquet, at which were present over a 
 hundred Indians and as many white people. 
 Then the Indians went quietly back to their 
 forests and peace reigned supreme. 
 
 The next two years passed without special 
 event. Sir William had recently come into 
 possession of another large tract of land, 
 72 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 which was patented in 1753 as the "Kingsboro 
 Patent " — though he took possession of his 
 part of it and began to improve it more than 
 two years before the date of the patent. This 
 afterward became known as the "Johnstown 
 tract." It lay some distance north of the 
 Mohawk River and several miles west of 
 Mount Johnson. Improving this new tract 
 and managing his great farm and mills on 
 the Chuctenunda near Mount Johnson, to- 
 gether with his official duties as Indian Su- 
 perintendent, colonel-in-chief of the Albany 
 County militia, and king's magistrate, must 
 have kept his hands full. Yet he found a 
 good deal of time for writing and reading, 
 and for such diversions as horse-racing and 
 hunting. 
 
 In 1751 the first — and perhaps the only — 
 really unpleasant episode in his public career 
 occurred. During the late war he had ex- 
 pended large sums of money from his private 
 purse for the public service over and above 
 the amounts currently appropriated by the 
 Assembly. Most of these expenditures were 
 for the maintenance of the Indians he had 
 mobilized for the two abortive attempts to 
 organize expeditions against Crown Point, 
 and for the invasion of Canada. During this 
 period he had also maintained the white gar- 
 6 73 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 rison of Oswego for a considerable time be- 
 yond the expiration of a contract he had for 
 that service. The total amount of his private 
 expenditure in these directions was nine 
 thousand nine hundred and seventy-six 
 pounds sterling and some shillings and pence 
 —nearly $50,000. 
 
 These expenditures were under two heads : 
 first, those which had been submitted to Gov- 
 ernor Clinton and approved by him before 
 disbursement ; and, second, those approved by 
 the Governor after disbursement. The first 
 amounted to £5,700 ; the last to £4,276. Dur- 
 ing the session of 1750-51 Sir William sub- 
 mitted these accounts to the Committee of 
 Supply in the Assembly and asked reimburse- 
 ment. After long consideration, the commit- 
 tee reported and the Assembly passed two 
 resolutions directing payment of the £5,700, 
 which had been approved by the Governor 
 before disbursement. But they also passed 
 a resolution directing further investigation 
 of the £4,276, approved by the Governor after 
 disbursement. In debate on these resolu- 
 tions, during which Sir William was present 
 in the Assembly Hall, severe animadversions 
 were made upon the "close corporation " that 
 was alleged to exist between the Governor, 
 Chief-Justice DeLancey, the Attorney-Gen- 
 74 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 eral, and Sir William. In the course of the 
 debate one member of the Assembly — Mr. 
 Hardenburgh, of Ulster — referred in rather 
 caustic terms to the fact that Sir William had 
 for several years "filled the apparently incon- 
 gruous, if not wholly incompatible, stations 
 of Superintendent of Indian Affairs and 
 Indian Trader on a large scale at the same 
 time!" 
 
 After hearing this, Sir William left the 
 hall of the Assembly, and the same afternoon 
 sent a note to Mr. Hardenburgh asking him 
 if he intended by those remarks to impugn 
 his personal integrity. Sir William was at 
 that time the guest of Mr. DeLancey, in 
 New York, and that gentleman carried the 
 note. Mr. Hardenburgh promptly replied by 
 inquiring whether he (Sir William) intended 
 his note as preliminary to a demand for sat- 
 isfaction. To this Sir William responded at 
 once as follows: 
 
 Dear Sir: Replying to your inquiry in reply 
 to my note by the hands of Mr. DeLancey, permit 
 me to say that the idea of a demand for satisfaction 
 never entered my mind. Nor have I entertained 
 any thought of individual grievance at your hands. 
 Had you answered that the condition of my ac- 
 counts and my relation to the Indians did seem to 
 involve my personal integrity, I should simply 
 
 75 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 have given you the key to the vault where my 
 books of account are kept, and requested you to 
 examine them at your own leisure and in your 
 own way. 
 
 As for " satisfaction, " permit me to say: first, 
 that I am well aware of the parliamentary privilege 
 which averts personal responsibility for language 
 uttered in debate in a legislative body ; and, second, 
 I believe the practise of dueling is always barba- 
 rous and often murderous. I should be sorry if 
 I thought I had a repute for courage that could be 
 sustained only by fighting duels. Believe me, my 
 dear sir, that I shall always keep all my bullets 
 and all my marksmanship for the enemies of my 
 country! I shall never visit them upon any of 
 my own countrymen who may be hostile to me 
 personally. 
 
 I have the honor to be, with profound respect, 
 Your Most Obedient Servant, 
 
 William Johnson. 
 
 It took a pretty courageous man — and an 
 Irishman at that — to thus denounce and flout 
 the practise of dueling in the year 1751. The 
 Assembly adjourned two days after that, 
 leaving the £4,276 for further consideration. 
 Mr. Hardenburgh seems to have been im- 
 pressed by Sir William's attitude, because, at 
 the next session, when Mr. Holland moved 
 "consideration of the unsettled accounts of 
 Colonel William Johnson," Mr. Hardenburgh 
 76 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 seconded the motion, and an appropriation to 
 reimburse him for his outlay of £4,276 of pri- 
 vate funds in the public service was passed 
 under suspension of the rules. 
 
 In the meantime, however, Sir William 
 had resigned the office of Sole Superintendent 
 of Indian Affairs, and, though the Governor 
 and many others besought him to withdraw 
 the resignation, he remained firm. He knew 
 very well that no one in the Assembly bore 
 any malice toward him personally. But he 
 also knew that a considerable majority of the 
 Assembly hated the Governor, and that, in 
 attacking him about his accounts, they were 
 only clubbing the Governor over his shoul- 
 ders. Still, it was a thankless position ; he was 
 tired of the eternal bickerings between the 
 Governor and the Assembly, and he wanted to 
 place himself out of range of their fusillade. 
 Besides, his private business was being neg- 
 lected, and, ambitious as he was for public 
 life and public honors, his first love was 
 always his home, his children, his dusky 
 sweetheart, his horses, his cattle, his wide- 
 spreading lands, and his buzzing mills. 
 
 Every overture was made to him to resume 
 the superintendency. Finally, after the As- 
 sembly had paid his accounts in full, he told 
 the Governor that whenever his services in 
 
 77. 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 dealing with the Indians might seem desir- 
 able, he would accept a temporary appoint- 
 ment to visit them or confer with them as a 
 special envoy, but under no circumstances 
 would he resume the permanent superintend- 
 ency. The result was that the Governor did 
 not fill his place, but used him from time to 
 time on special missions, as occasion required. 
 The Indians, as soon as they heard of Sir 
 William's resignation, took it deeply to heart. 
 Eunners were sent from the Lower Mohawk 
 Castle all through the Iroquois Nation by 
 Hendrick, asking for a council of chiefs post- 
 haste. In a few days quite a delegation gath- 
 ered, including Captain Jean Montour of the 
 Senecas, whom the runners happened to find 
 visiting his wife's people at Onondaga Castle. 
 The chiefs reached Albany, where the Gov- 
 ernor then was temporarily staying, late at 
 night, and they waited on him early the next 
 morning, requesting a private interview. 
 This was, of course, granted, and as soon as 
 the doors were closed, Hendrick said: 
 
 We have come to consult with our Brother Cor- 
 lear (their name for all the governors) in relation 
 to Colonel Johnson. We have just heard that he 
 has resigned. When the war was breaking out, 
 your Excellency recommended him to us, and you 
 then told us that we might consider anything he 
 78 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 said as being spoken by yourself. So as we had 
 had no hand in his appointment we have done noth- 
 ing to induce his resignation. Judge, therefore, 
 the shock we felt when he sent us a belt of love and 
 peace, with a letter saying he had resigned and 
 would be our superintendent no more. We can 
 not express our feelings. He must come back to 
 us. No one can take his place in our hearts. We 
 can never learn to believe the words of any one 
 as we believed him. You, or if you can not, then 
 our Great Father, the King, must make him come 
 back to us. We can not get along without him! 
 
 Captain Montour then spoke for the Sen- 
 ecas: 
 
 "Our nation/ ' he said, "is hard to control. 
 There are many good Senecas, and also many bad 
 ones. But all love Colonel Johnson, all believe 
 what he says, and all, good and bad alike, will listen 
 to his words and have faith in his promises. His 
 tongue is not forked. He always speaks with one 
 tongue. In peace, he was like a fertile field that 
 raised corn and pumpkins and melons. In war, he 
 was like a tree that grew for us to bear fruit, but 
 now seems to be falling down, though it has many 
 roots sunk deep in the soil of our affection, our 
 confidence, and our esteem. His knowledge of our 
 affairs, our laws, and our language made us think 
 he was not like other white men, but an Indian 
 like ourselves. Not only that, but in his house 
 is an Indian woman, and his little children are 
 
 79 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 half-breeds, as I also am, your Excellency knows 
 — only I am a French half-breed and Colonel 
 Johnson's little children are English half-breeds. 
 We understand that he declines to return to his 
 office. This makes us afraid you will have to ap- 
 point some one in his place who does not know us 
 — some person who is a stranger to us and to our 
 affairs. We therefore ask you to compel him to 
 resume his office of superintendent, or if you can not 
 compel him yourself, to send a letter asking our 
 Great Father, the King, to compel him. We know 
 that he will obey the King. Please tell the King, if 
 you write to him, that we want Colonel Johnson 
 over us, and no one else. He has keen ears and 
 hears a great deal, and what he hears he tells to 
 us truthfully. He also has sharp eyes, and sees a 
 long way ahead, and conceals nothing from us." 
 
 After hearing these speeches the Governor 
 adjourned the interview till the next morning 
 at nine o'clock, when he promised the chiefs 
 that he would answer them. The Governor's 
 reason for deferring his reply to the chiefs 
 was that he expected Sir William to reach 
 Albany that evening, and wished to see him 
 before making a definite answer. Johnson 
 arrived about seven o'clock, and the Governor 
 at once called upon him. He was visibly af- 
 fected when the Governor told him what the 
 chiefs had said, but persisted in his declina- 
 tion to resume office. He finally agreed, how- 
 80 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 ever, to deal with the Indians in his personal 
 capacity whenever the Governor might con- 
 sider such services essential to the public wel- 
 fare. But he declared he would hold no offi- 
 cial position calculated to bring him into con- 
 tact with what he termed "that factious and 
 malignant majority in the Assembly." 
 
 The next morning the Governor and Sir 
 William called on the chiefs together, and 
 explained the situation to them. They were 
 partly appeased, and the whole affair was left 
 in statu quo. No successor to Sir William 
 was appointed, but, in his personal or unoffi- 
 cial capacity, he continued to supervise the 
 Indian affairs of the colony almost as closely 
 as he had done while in office. Under such 
 conditions the years 1751 and 1752 passed 
 without incident of special note; the French 
 secretly pushing their preparations, the Brit- 
 ish and Colonial governments resting su- 
 pinely. 
 
 In 1753 the signs of impending war began 
 to multiply. The movements of the French 
 to take actual possession of the Ohio Valley 
 had at last roused the English and Colonial 
 governments to a sense of peril, and they 
 began, rather slowly and clumsily, to take 
 measures for safety. In 1748, at the close of 
 "King George's War," a company had been 
 
 81 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 formed in Virginia, of which Lawrence and 
 Augustine Washington were members, called 
 the "Ohio Land Company." This corpora- 
 tion secured a grant of 600,000 acres on the 
 south side of the Ohio River, between the 
 Monongahela and the Great Kanawha. Both 
 the French and Indians held that the King of 
 England had no right to grant lands in that 
 region. The Indians owned the land and the 
 French claimed sovereignty by right of orig- 
 inal discovery, exploration, settlement in the 
 shape of trading establishments, and free 
 travel to and fro with consent of the Indians. 
 According to the ethics of those days, these 
 acts constituted a prime basis for the claim of 
 sovereignty. 
 
 The English based their counterclaim 
 mainly upon their old treaty with the Iroquois 
 in 1684, at Albany, confirmed in 1710, and re- 
 confirmed at Lancaster, Pa., in 1744. By 
 that treaty the English undertook to defend 
 the domain of the Iroquois, and the latter had 
 claimed jurisdiction over the Ohio Valley and 
 all lands drained by its tributaries, "as far 
 south as the Chilhowee or Great Smoky 
 Mountains." This was purely a claim of 
 rapine! For, while the Iroquois had in ear- 
 lier days frequently invaded the Ohio coun- 
 try and subdued its aboriginal inhabitants, 
 82 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 they had never attempted permanently to 
 occupy the territory. Their invasions were, 
 in fact, simply raids, and they had come and 
 gone, leaving wreck and ruin in their tracks, 
 much like the Tartar hordes when they in- 
 vaded Hindostan, or the Goths, Vandals, and 
 Huns when they overran Europe. 
 
 That the Iroquois were and had been for 
 centuries the most powerful Indian nation 
 east of the Mississippi, and had frequently 
 invaded and ravaged the territory of their 
 weaker neighbors on all sides of them, was 
 undeniable ; but that mere rapine and ravage 
 should constitute a basis of permanent sov- 
 ereignty was a theory that only Indian 
 schools of international law would be likely to 
 teach. However, England was willing to ac- 
 cept such a basis for her own claim of sov- 
 ereignty in the Ohio Valley, and, as the 
 sequel proved, she was willing to fight for it to 
 the death. The fact is, the English states- 
 men were never serious about this shadowy 
 claim. They laughed at it themselves over 
 their dinner-tables and their Madeira. The 
 real truth was that they had finally made up 
 their minds to oust the French from North 
 America altogether, and one pretext was as 
 good as another. 
 
 In the spring of 1752 the Ohio Company 
 83 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 sent a daring backwoodsman, named Chris- 
 topher Gist, to explore their grant of land. 
 Gist went as far west as the month of the 
 Great Kanawha, and on his return in the 
 autumn made an interesting report. This 
 was the first effort — even pretense — the Eng- 
 lish had ever made to explore the country they 
 claimed. Event now followed event in quick 
 succession. The Governor of Virginia, Din- 
 widdie, sent a company of frontiersmen, 
 under Captain Trent, to the head of the Ohio, 
 where they built a small log fort. Captain 
 Trent had forty-one men. In April, 1754, a 
 French and Indian force about 700 strong 
 came down the Allegheny River and invested 
 the little fort. As the French had four pieces 
 of artillery, Captain Trent saw that resist- 
 ance would be hopeless, and he at once ac- 
 cepted the terms offered by the French com- 
 mander, Captain Contrecoeur. 
 
 The little garrison marched out with the 
 honors of war and Contrecoeur at once pro- 
 ceeded to enlarge the fort, mounted his can- 
 non on its ramparts, and took formal posses- 
 sion of the Ohio Valley in the name of the 
 King of France. Then followed Washington's 
 advance to Great Meadows, and his skirmish 
 with a scouting party of French and Indians 
 under de Jumonville, who was killed with ten 
 84 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 of his men, and the rest, twenty-two in num- 
 ber, wounded or taken prisoners. Then came 
 the building of "Fort Necessity " and its 
 capitulation a few days afterward to a force 
 of about seven hundred French and Indians 
 under Captain de Villiers. This ended the 
 operations of 1754, and left the French in full 
 control west of the mountains. The "Old 
 French War " was now fairly on. The French 
 had gained the first success ; the English were 
 slowly getting ready to fight. 
 
 During the period whose events in the 
 Ohio Valley we have thus briefly sketched, 
 affairs in the northern colonies remained in 
 a quiet .state until late in the fall of 1753, 
 when alarming rumors reached Sir William 
 Johnson of the presence of numerous French 
 emissaries among the Senecas, and of great 
 discontent on the part of the Western Iro- 
 quois generally. Lieutenant-Governor DeLan- 
 cey was then acting Governor, and he at once 
 requested Sir William to visit the Senecas 
 and do what he could to quiet them. Though 
 it was late in December, and considerable 
 snow was on the ground, Sir William did not 
 shrink from a winter journey on horseback 
 between Mount Johnson and Kanandagea, the 
 principal town of the Senecas. The distance 
 was about 160 miles. There was a fair road 
 
 85 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 to Fort Stanwix, and a good bridle-path from 
 there to Onondaga Castle ; the rest of the way 
 there was nothing but Indian trails. How- 
 ever, there were comfortable Indian villages 
 along the route, where he was sure to find 
 hearty welcome and the best that the simple 
 hospitality of the Iroquois afforded, which, 
 to a great extent, mitigated the rigors of the 
 journey. On this occasion Sir William took 
 with him only his half-breed orderly, John 
 Abiel, and Nicklaus Brant, who had then just 
 become chief of the Upper Castle Mohawks. 
 The journey was made in seven days ; but Sir 
 William stopped one day to visit Hi-o-ka-to 
 in his village at Genesee Falls. He found 
 no French emissaries at Hi-o-ka-to's town, 
 though the chief told him some had appeared 
 there a fortnight before, and he had peremp- 
 torily sent them away. "But you will find 
 plenty of them farther west," he said. Hi-o- 
 ka-to then saddled his horse and accompanied 
 Sir William on his journey. 
 
 Arriving at the Seneca capital, Sir Will- 
 iam was heartily welcomed. The council- 
 house, a commodious log building, having a 
 puncheon floor (split and hewn logs) and a 
 large fireplace, was allotted for his accom- 
 modation, with several attendants. A feast 
 was made in his honor, and all the warriors 
 86 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 present in the town were introduced to him 
 by Hi-o-ka-to. No French emissaries were 
 found, but he was informed that several 
 French traders from Niagara had been there 
 recently. The only Frenchman at Kananda- 
 gea, to the great surprise of Sir William, 
 proved to be the redoubtable Captain Jon- 
 caire himself, who had arrived two or three 
 days before him. The captain, when he 
 learned that Sir William was in town, made 
 no effort to avoid him, but, in fact, paid him 
 a visit the day after his arrival. He assured 
 Sir William that his presence at the Seneca 
 capital had no political significance, but was 
 merely a visit to old friends. He reminded 
 Sir William that ten years of his boyhood and 
 youth had been passed at this town as a cap- 
 tive, adopted into the tribe, and jocularly 
 remarked that, though he returned to Canada 
 when about twenty years old, he was still a 
 Seneca by adoption, and, as such, was under 
 the jurisdiction of the English Superintendent 
 of Indian Affairs for the Iroquois nation! 
 He told Sir William about the visit of Major 
 George Washington to his trading-post at 
 Venango, a month or so previous to this time. 
 Major Washington was at Venango on his 
 way to Fort LeBoeuf, on a tour of observa- 
 tion for Governor Dinwiddie, during Novem- 
 
 87 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ber of that year, and he also stopped there a 
 couple of days on his return journey. In his 
 journal of that mission, Washington says that 
 Captain Joncaire was very polite and enter- 
 tained him handsomely. This was the first 
 news Sir William had received of Washing- 
 ton's tour of observation along the Allegheny 
 line of French posts. It was highly impor- 
 tant news to him, because it indicated that Vir- 
 ginia had begun to move in earnest with regard 
 to the Ohio question. . As Joncaire bore a re- 
 lation to Indian affairs on the French side in 
 many respects analogous to that borne by Sir 
 William on the English side, their accidental 
 meeting at the Seneca capital in midwinter 
 was an interesting occurrence. 
 
 A singular incident of this casual meeting 
 of Sir William Johnson and Captain Joncaire 
 in the Seneca capital was the fact that neither 
 one of them could speak or understand the 
 other's mother tongue. Joncaire had no 
 knowledge of English and Sir William knew 
 nothing of French. Both, however, could 
 speak the Iroquois tongue as fluently as an 
 Indian orator, and it was in that language 
 that they held all their conversations. It is 
 doubtful whether a similar instance ever 
 occurred in the careers of two men as promi- 
 nent in their respective countries as these two. 
 88 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 Sir William remained at Kanandagea 
 about a week, and then returned home by easy 
 stages, stopping a day or two at each impor- 
 tant village on his route, and, as he expressed 
 it, " thoroughly feeling the pulse of the Sene- 
 cas, Cayugas, and Onondagas." His con- 
 clusion was that the stories about French 
 emissaries had been exaggerated, and that 
 their operations had been confined mainly to 
 the Western Senecas living near Niagara, and 
 on the Tonawanda, or to the southern branch 
 of the tribe in the valleys of Cattaraugus 
 Creek and the Conewango. 
 
 The rest of the winter and the spring of 
 1754 passed without particular incident in the 
 colony of New York. But at the end of June, 
 that year, an event occurred of primary im- 
 portance. It was the convention at Albany 
 of delegates from the colonies of New Hamp- 
 shire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
 New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland to 
 form a plan of concerted action in the war 
 which all now saw to be inevitable. There 
 had been meetings of Colonial governors 
 before, but this was the first instance of a con- 
 vention or congress of delegates chosen for 
 the specific purpose of forming a Colonial 
 Union. Virginia and the Carolinas were not 
 represented except by letters from their gov- 
 7 89 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ernors approving the scheme, and saying that 
 they would cooperate in any program the con- 
 vention might adopt. "In fact, gentlemen," 
 wrote Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, "the 
 war is at my back door already, and I have 
 my hands full. I will try to keep my own 
 frontier intact, and that is all I can do. You 
 must take care of the northern frontier." 
 The governors of the Carolinas wrote in a 
 similar vein. 
 
 With this Congress met also delegations 
 from the Six Nations, from the Delawares of 
 western Pennsylvania, and the River Indi- 
 ans. The deliberations lasted several days, 
 and the results were a resolution to act to- 
 gether, to recommend that the king appoint 
 Governor Shirley of Massachusetts com- 
 mander-in-chief of the confederated Colonial 
 forces, and an agreement as to the quotas of 
 men, money, and supplies to be furnished by 
 each colony in their united operations. It 
 was agreed that the eight colonies represented 
 could raise and maintain an effective force of 
 25,000 men for general operations ; that Vir- 
 ginia and the Carolinas should be considered 
 as doing their share if they effectively de- 
 fended their own frontiers, and furnished 
 contingents for any movement that might be 
 made against the French posts on the Ohio. 
 90 
 
Domestic Life and Congress 
 
 Three commissioners were appointed to go to 
 England and lay the whole situation before 
 the king and his ministers. They were in- 
 structed to ask that at least twelve thousand 
 British regulars be sent over at once, and that 
 the fleet on the North American station be 
 increased to a force sufficient to blockade the 
 St. Lawrence and cut off communication be- 
 tween France and Canada. 
 
 On the part of the Indians, it was agreed 
 that they should furnish, upon call, a force 
 of at least one thousand picked warriors 
 for general service, provided their command- 
 er-in-chief should be Sir William Johnson. 
 And in addition to these, the Indians under- 
 took to raise a force of at least six hundred 
 more to help repel any attempt the French 
 might make against Oswego, or any other sali- 
 ent point within the territory of the Six Na- 
 tions. The Indians also stipulated that their 
 warriors, when in the field, should receive the 
 same pay, rations, and clothing-allowance as 
 the provincial troops. And that if, upon 
 inspection, the gun of any warrior should be 
 found disabled or unserviceable, he should 
 receive a new one free of cost ; also that each 
 warrior, when mustered for actual service, 
 should receive a new blanket, a red flannel 
 shirt, a blue hunting- jacket with red trim- 
 
 91 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ming, and a pair of stout leather or buckskin 
 leggings ! 
 
 Having settled all these things, the Con- 
 gress of 1754 at Albany adjourned, subject to 
 recall at any time by Governor Shirley of 
 Massachusetts. That Congress was the em- 
 bryo of another Congress that met twenty 
 years later at Philadelphia— whose history 
 has been heard round the world ! 
 
 92 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 braddock's defeat and the battle 
 of lake george 
 
 1752-1754 
 
 In order that a clear and accurate concep- 
 tion may be formed of the relative conditions 
 prevailing in their respective North American 
 colonies at the time when England and France 
 began their final and decisive struggle for 
 empire on the continent, it is necessary to sur- 
 vey, first, the numerical strength of each Colo- 
 nial establishment in white people; second, 
 the numerical strength and general fighting 
 power of the Indian tribes under the control 
 of or in alliance with each; third, the meth- 
 ods of each respectively in dealing with the 
 Indians; and, fourth, the effect of their di- 
 verse methods in winning and holding the 
 fealty of the Indian tribes. 
 
 With regard to the relative numbers of 
 white people resident in the North American 
 colonies of the two countries, it may be said 
 that at the beginning, or just before the be- 
 
 93 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ginning, of the French war, the Marquis Du- 
 quesne, then (1752) just appointed Governor- 
 General of Canada, reported that there were 
 in all the French Canadian possessions then 
 known as New France a white male popula- 
 tion of 22,000, inclusive of the royal or regular 
 troops then garrisoning the various military 
 strongholds in Canada. As these troops at 
 that time numbered about 3,000 to 3,500, it 
 follows that the civilian white adult male 
 population of all French Canada in 1752 did 
 not exceed 19,000. The English colonies, 
 stretching along the Atlantic coast from 
 Maine to Georgia, had at the same time nearly 
 if not quite 1,600,000 people, of whom at least 
 200,000 were adult males. At first glance any 
 one would say that a contest between 22,000 
 men on one side and 200,000 or thereabouts on 
 the other, would necessarily be a farce, but as 
 a matter of fact, it took the 200,000, backed by 
 all the power of England, seven years to con- 
 quer the 22,000.! 
 
 1 It is unquestionable that the marquis, in his estimate of 
 22,000, etc., meant to include only males capable of bearing 
 arms or of military age. This would have embraced all males 
 between sixteen and sixty years old under the militia regula- 
 tions then prevailing in "New France." He must have had 
 in mind only the able-bodied male population, because Vol- 
 taire, writing of the same period, says: "... And while the 
 population of British America was over 1,200,000, that of all 
 
 94 
 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 During the progress of the seven years' 
 struggle, the white French population of 
 Canada was increased by some 3,000 or 4,000 
 civilian adventurers, and the French Govern- 
 
 Canada, Cape Breton, and Louisiana could not have exceeded 
 80,000 souls." If Voltaire's estimate of the total white popu- 
 lation — 80,000 — and Duquesne's estimate of the number of 
 males capable of bearing arms — 18,000 to 19,000 besides the 
 regular troops — were both correct, it would argue an extraor- 
 dinarily large proportion of adult males — about one in every 
 four of the total population — but that was always true of 
 Canada under French rule. The adult males outnumbered 
 the grown women in a proportion never less than two to one. 
 This was because as a rule Frenchmen came to Canada single 
 and formed alliances with Indian women. The immigration 
 of married men with their families was exceptional. 
 
 Dr. Woodrow Wilson, in his History of the American Peo- 
 ple, says (p. 4, vol. ii) that "probably there were not more 
 than 12,000 Frenchmen, all told, in America when William 
 became king (1689)." This, of course, was sixty-three years 
 prior to the Marquis Duquesne's estimate of the number of 
 males capable of bearing arms, and about the same length of 
 time previous to Voltaire's estimate of 80,000 of all sexes and 
 ages. However, on p. 98 of the same volume, Dr. Wilson, 
 writing of the period of 1750-52, adopts Voltaire's estimate of 
 80,000 as the total white population of Canada at the outbreak 
 of the old French War. But Voltaire's estimate of the total 
 white population of the English colonies in 1753, which in 
 his own original phrase is "plus que douze-cent mille" [more 
 than 1,200,000], is too low. No census was taken in those 
 days. The tide of immigration was not at flood. We had by 
 Franklin's estimate about 2,500,000 white people in the Amer- 
 ican colonies in 1776. Taking the two extremes and calcu- 
 lating on the basis that an actuary would adopt, we have 
 figured out that the total population of the Anglo-American 
 colonies in 1753 was not less than one million six hundred 
 
 95 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ment succeeded in reenforcing its garrisons 
 or its field force there with seven regiments of 
 regular infantry, besides some small units of 
 other arms of the service, which will be noted 
 later on. 
 
 As against this reenforcement, it may be 
 said that from the beginning to the end of the 
 struggle England landed in the colonies, from 
 time to time, a total force of 18,000 British 
 regular troops, and besides, supported the 
 campaigns on land by an exertion of her sea 
 power, which, during the last four years of the 
 struggle, practically obliterated all means of 
 communication between France and her Ca- 
 nadian colonies. 
 
 Therefore, we have calculated that during 
 the whole seven years' struggle, the French 
 had in North America, exclusive of Louisiana, 
 about 22,000 white civilians (males), and be- 
 
 thousand (1,600,000) souls, which included about 200,000 
 negro slaves. At any rate, the first reliable census — 1800 
 — showed that natural increase for forty-seven years could 
 not have produced the difference between Voltaire's estimate 
 of 1753 and the actual count of 1800, for between those two 
 dates the volume of immigration was not enough to make up 
 the difference. As for the State of New York, with which 
 this work mainly deals, an enumeration in 1790 — seven years 
 after the close of the Revolution — showed a population of 
 341,000; and New York at that time was fourth of the States 
 in number of people, being exceeded by Massachusetts, Penn- 
 sylvania, and Virginia. 
 
 96 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 tween 10,000 and 11,000 regular troops. As 
 before remarked, this disparity of numbers — 
 not less than ten to one, so far as white males 
 of military age were concerned — might seem 
 appalling, but when due account is taken of 
 the radical and fundamental difference be- 
 tween the systems of the two nations in their 
 respective colonies, the numerical inequality, 
 to a great extent, loses its significance. Col- 
 onization from the English point of view, as 
 practised in the colonies of the Atlantic sea- 
 board, meant permanent improvement, home- 
 making, the building of commercial cities and 
 towns, the clearing of forests, creation of 
 farms, cultivation of the soil, manufactures 
 of various kinds, and a general commerce by 
 sea and by land. The meaning of this, so far as 
 concerned the Indian, was a constant policy of 
 driving him back, of obtaining his lands from 
 time to time by hook or by crook, by nomi- 
 nal purchase or by conquest. It meant also a 
 traffic with him that was insufficiently regu- 
 lated, if regulated at all, and, as a rule, in this 
 traffic the Indian was cheated out of his prod- 
 ucts with as little hesitation or compunction 
 as he had previously been cheated out of his 
 lands. The result of all this was that wher- 
 ever the English colonists encountered the 
 Indian, they made an enemy of him. This 
 
 97 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 was true along the whole coast and back to the 
 Allegheny range of mountains, with the single 
 exception of the Iroquois Confederacy, or the 
 Six Nations, living in central and western 
 New York. 
 
 On the other hand, the French system of 
 colonization was simply a military occupa- 
 tion. The French never colonized Canada — 
 they simply garrisoned it. They did not 
 covet the lands of the Indian. All their pol- 
 icy was shaped to discourage permanent set- 
 tlement of French colonists on any consider- 
 able scale. The most that the French did in 
 the way of permanent settlement was the 
 building of three good-sized towns — Quebec, 
 Montreal, and Louisburg — together with a 
 number of smaller towns and villages; but 
 these cities, towns, and villages were little 
 more than rendezvous or places of arms, 
 either for defense pure and simple against 
 foreign aggression, such as Louisburg, or as 
 depots or entrepots for their Indian trade, 
 which was, from beginning to end, the life- 
 blood of the French colonial system in Can- 
 ada. There was never a time in the history 
 of French Canada, from the advent of Samuel 
 Champlain, at the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century, until the final evacuation of 
 the country, after the fall of Montreal in 1760, 
 98 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 when the agriculture of New France or Can- 
 ada produced anything like a sufficient sup- 
 ply of foodstuffs for the needs of its white 
 inhabitants, comparatively few as they were. 1 
 
 1 "In 1753," says Voltaire, "the exports of Canada 
 amounted to but £68,000, while its imports were £208,000. 
 During the same year the exports of the English provinces 
 were £1,486,000, their imports £983,000. In 1755 Canadian 
 imports were 5,203,272 livres, its exports only 1,515,730 livres. 
 ' Le Canada coutait beaucoup et rapportait tres peu ' [Canada 
 costs a great deal and returns very little] " pursues Voltaire ; 
 and he proceeds to argue that the policy of expending so 
 much blood and treasure in maintaining and defending such 
 an unprofitable dependency is unstatesmanlike and wrong. 
 Voltaire then goes on to say: " Si la dixieme partie de l'argent 
 englouti dans cette colonie avait ete employe a defricher nos 
 terres incultes en France, on aurait fait un gain considerable. 
 . . . Mais il faut que le roi s'amuse ; et cette colonie ruineuse, 
 c'est un de ses joujous!" [If the tenth part of the money 
 squandered on this colony had been used to improve our 
 waste lands in France there would have been a considerable 
 profit. . . . But the king must amuse himself, and this ruin- 
 ous colony is one of his playthings!] He concludes by de- 
 scribing Canada as "un puisard de l'argent et une grande 
 eponge du sang de la France ! " [A sinkhole for the money 
 and a vast sponge for the blood of France !] This may have 
 been nothing more than Voltaire's habitual cynicism, but 
 there is no disputing his facts. In the long run France spent 
 on Canada ten times the money she received in return, shed 
 the blood of her sons in torrents by land and sea to defend it, 
 and then lost all ignominiously in the end. The deduction is 
 plain : her system was false. It was opposed to the genius of 
 modern civilization and hence had to fall, but we can not 
 help admiring the desperate courage and the unflinching for- 
 titude with which she defended it to the last gasp. 
 
 ;L.ofC. 99 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 The Indians soon found out that the 
 French did not want their lands, did not wish 
 to cut down and clear away their forests, did 
 not propose a policy which would disturb 
 them or compel them to move from the habita- 
 tions of their forefathers to new forests and 
 new hunting-grounds. Therefore, the jeal- 
 ousy and hatred with which the Indians far- 
 ther south regarded the English colonies was 
 never felt or cherished toward the French. In 
 the social sense, the Frenchman was much 
 better adapted to deal with the Indian charac- 
 ter than the Englishman. The Englishman 
 as a rule disliked to associate with Indians. 
 He considered them an inferior race — dirty, 
 slovenly, and on all accounts to be avoided 
 whenever possible. On the other hand, the 
 Frenchman made himself at home in the In- 
 dian villages; married, or in a less formal 
 way allied himself with their women; raised 
 large families of half-breeds; learned their 
 language, or taught them his own, or both; 
 traded with them, in the main honestly ; and, 
 above all, was never afraid of them. The 
 result of all this was that when the two pow- 
 ers arrived at the threshold of their final 
 struggle for control in North America, the 
 French could count on the support of the en- 
 tire fighting strength of every tribe of Indians 
 100 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio, 
 excepting alone the Iroquois. 
 
 Now, to this happy method of ingratiating 
 themselves socially and politically with the 
 Indians, the French had the additional advan- 
 tage of the labors of their priests, the Jesuit 
 Fathers. These devoted men, beginning 
 away back early in the seventeenth century, 
 traversed the entire continent, visited almost 
 every tribe of Indians, not merely east of the 
 Mississippi River, but passed beyond it to the 
 Missouri, and even to the foot-hills of the 
 Rocky Mountains, introducing their peculiar 
 rites into every tribe, and impressing the 
 sacredness of their personality upon the 
 abundant superstition of the Indians. It is 
 really an open question whether the tact, 
 benevolence, and good nature displayed by the 
 French traders and soldiers had been as 
 potent an influence in bringing the great mass 
 of western Indians under French control as 
 the ministrations of their black-robed priests. 
 Be that as it may, they had brought them at 
 the time now under consideration — say 1753- 
 54 — completely under French sway, and not 
 only that, but they also at that time seriously 
 disputed with the English the control of the 
 western tribe of the Iroquois nation itself — 
 the Senecas — who were by far the largest and 
 101 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 most powerful clan of the Six Nations. How- 
 ever, as this particular subject belongs to a 
 later phase, we will not further discuss it 
 here. 
 
 Proceeding now to consider the numerical 
 strength of the Indians under the control of 
 either power, it may be said that in 1753-54 
 the population of the Six Nations was vari- 
 ously estimated. In 1752, immediately after 
 the Marquis Duquesne assumed the Governor- 
 Generalship of Canada, Captain Joncaire, 
 who had for many years been the principal 
 " Indian Intelligence Officer " for the Govern- 
 ment of Canada, reported to the Governor- 
 General that, according to the best of his in- 
 formation, the total number of the Iroquois 
 was very nearly 25,000 — or 22,000 at least. 
 Of these, he calculated that the Senecas num- 
 bered two-fifths, or about 9,000 to 10,000; the 
 Cayugas and Onondagas together, about 
 6,000 to 6,500; the Oneidas about 3,500; and 
 the Mohawks — including a clan allied to them 
 known as the "River Indians " — about 4,500; 
 and the Tuscaroras — a remnant of the once 
 powerful tribe of that name, formerly living 
 in the western Carolinas, who had been re- 
 ceived and adopted into the Six Nations — at 
 from 500 to 600 souls. This estimate was 
 probably excessive, because in Sir William 
 102 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 Johnson's papers, under date of the year 1753, 
 appears an estimate of the numbers of these 
 Indians, in which he places the total at about 
 19,000, maintaining generally almost exactly 
 the same proportions, tribe for tribe, as those 
 stated by Captain Joncaire. It may be a 
 question as to which of the two had the better 
 means of information. Sir William Johnson 
 derived his estimate from detailed statements 
 made to him by chiefs of all the tribes, and of 
 the different clans in each tribe. It was not 
 an exact census, as that term is understood in 
 modern practise, but it came as near to a cen- 
 sus as was possible in the circumstances. At 
 the same time, Joncaire had unusual facilities 
 for ascertaining the numbers, or any other 
 facts that he desired to obtain concerning the 
 Iroquois. 
 
 Joncaire was a characteristic product of 
 the times in which he lived and the circum- 
 stances under which he had his being. 
 
 Parkman, historian par excellence of the 
 French regime in North America, frequently 
 refers to Joncaire's activity among the Indi- 
 ans. But he seems to merge two individuals 
 in one. For example, he makes a Joncaire 
 busy among the Senecas around Niagara as 
 early as 1704, at the beginning of Queen 
 Anne's War; and then prolongs his career 
 103 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 until the downfall of French power in 1759- 
 60. Besides, he speaks of him as "Chabert 
 Joncaire," and says "he was the half-breed 
 son of a French officer, by a Seneca squaw." 
 The facts are as follows : The first of the name 
 to figure prominently in the New World was 
 Jean Francois Joncaire. He was the son of 
 a subaltern officer of French colonial troops 
 and a full-blood white man. Born about 1682 
 in France, he was brought by his parents to 
 Canada when about nine years of age — say 
 1691. His father was a "pioneer officer " or 
 military engineer, and was employed at fort- 
 building and road-making. In a raid against 
 the settlements on the Richelieu early in King 
 William's War a party of Senecas captured 
 young Joncaire and took him to one of their 
 villages in western New York (the present 
 Canandaigua). They adopted him and he 
 lived with them until the interchange of cap- 
 tives a year or so after the Peace of Ryswick. 
 He was then about eighteen years old. He 
 attracted the attention of Cadillac, then com- 
 manding the French forces in the Lake region. 
 Through Cadillac's influence he was sent to 
 the Jesuit Academy or Seminary at Quebec 
 for a time, but completed his education in a 
 school of Recollet Friars at Montreal. For 
 some reason he always opposed the Jesuits. 
 104 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 Early in Queen Anne's War Joncaire, then 
 about twenty-two, was employed as agent or 
 emissary among the western Iroquois — 
 mainly the Senecas and Cayugas. He spoke 
 their language to perfection, and he also knew 
 half a dozen other Indian tongues or dialects. 
 From 1703 or 1704 until the capture of Fort 
 Niagara in 1759, his activity among the west- 
 ern Indians was incessant, and his field of 
 operations ranged from the banks of the 
 Genesee to those of the Ohio, the Mississippi, 
 the Sault Ste. Marie, and the faraway shores 
 of Lake Superior and the Red River of the 
 North. It was a wonderful career; a career 
 that ended only in his seventy-eighth year, 
 and with the fate of French rule in Canada. 
 
 About 1714 he took to wife the half-breed 
 daughter of a French trader named Chaubert 
 — or "Chabert," as Parkman spells it — by a 
 Seneca squaw. She bore to him a son, whom 
 he named Chaubert Joncaire. This was the 
 one who — nearly forty years later — com- 
 manded the fort at Little Niagara in 1759. 
 This first wife died not long after giving birth 
 to Chaubert Joncaire. The old captain 
 placed the boy in the hands of the Recollet 
 Friars and gave him the best education 
 French Canada could afford. In 1736, when 
 fifty-four years old or thereabouts, Captain 
 8 105 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 Joncaire married Mile. Clauzun, half-breed 
 daughter of the Chevalier de Clauzun by a 
 Huron woman, said to have been the aunt of 
 the famous half-breed Chief Anasthase, who 
 commanded the Indians at the defeat of Brad- 
 dock. 
 
 Mile. Clauzun bore to him a son, whom 
 he named for her — Jean Frangois Clauzun- 
 Joncaire. 
 
 We have given so much space to the his- 
 tory of Captain Joncaire because he was the 
 only Frenchman whose influence among the 
 Iroquois Sir William dreaded, and because his 
 importance as a factor of French power in 
 Canada for nearly sixty of its most thrilling 
 years has been neglected by historians. 
 
 He was a man of medium stature, iron con- 
 stitution, vehement temperament, and the 
 most dauntless courage. His dislike of the 
 Jesuits got him into trouble more than once, 
 and they succeeded on one occasion in indu- 
 cing the Governor-General to try him by 
 court-martial. But he was triumphantly ac- 
 quitted and lived to witness the confusion of 
 his enemies. 1 
 
 1 Stone (vol. i, pp. 29-32) speaks of Joncaire as " a Jesuit 
 Brother." This is an error into which Stone was probably- 
 led by his knowledge of the fact that Joncaire was educated 
 at the Jesuit Academy of Quebec. He was undoubtedly a 
 zealous Roman Catholic, but never a member of the Order 
 
 106 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 But whether his estimate or that of Sir 
 William Johnson be correct, the difference is 
 not material to the subject under discussion. 
 
 Turning now to the Indians under French 
 influence or control, we find that they included 
 all the tribes east of the Mississippi, north of 
 the Ohio and north of the Great Lakes, and 
 the New York frontier to the Atlantic sea- 
 board. The principal of these tribes were 
 the St. Regis, Adirondacks, St. Francis, and 
 Abenakis in Lower Canada and the extreme 
 northern part of the present State of New 
 York ; the powerful tribes of the Ottawas and 
 the Hurons, who inhabited the rich country 
 bounded by Lake Erie on the south, Lake 
 Huron on the west, and the Ottawa River on 
 the northeast; the Mississago or Michigan 
 Indians; the Mackinaws, or Mackinacs — a 
 small tribe — and the Saginaws, who inhabited 
 the northern part of what is now Indiana 
 and the southern peninsula of Michigan; the 
 Winnebagos and Menominees of "Wisconsin, 
 together with a branch of the powerful Chip- 
 pewa tribe, who inhabited the northern penin- 
 sula of Michigan and Wisconsin in the neigh- 
 
 of Jesuits. The academies of that sect educated many lay- 
 men or secular pupils. In fact, when Joncaire was a student 
 there were no other institutions in Canada where the higher 
 branches were taught. 
 
 107 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 borhood of Fort Mackinaw or Mackinac ; the 
 Pottawottomis, Kickapoos, Sauks, and a 
 mixed tribe then known as the Wabash Indi- 
 ans, inhabiting what is now eastern Illinois 
 and southern Indiana. 
 
 The total number of these Indians in direct 
 communication or in close alliance with the 
 French was estimated as high as 90,000 in 
 1752. This, which was Joncaire's estimate, is 
 perhaps an exaggeration, but for present pur- 
 poses it is not necessary to discuss that point. 
 This estimate of 90,000 French Indians ap- 
 pears in St. Martin's History of New 
 France, 1 an old work compiled during the 
 French possession of the country, and pub- 
 lished in Paris a few years afterward, and it 
 is given on the authority of Joncaire. Be- 
 sides the Indians above enumerated, there 
 were at that time in Ohio the powerful tribes 
 of the Shawnees, Miamis, and the Wyandots, 
 besides a considerable clan of the Delawares, 
 who had emigrated from Pennsylvania and 
 settled at and about the forks of the Muskin- 
 
 1 Father St. Martin may be termed the last of the great 
 Jesuits of Canada. Born in Quebec, 1699, and educated as a 
 Jesuit priest, he began mission work among the Hurons and 
 Ottawas in 1721 or 1722. When Sir William Johnson visited 
 Detroit in 1761, Father St. Martin was at the Huron mission 
 near by, and the baronet paid him a visit, which will be further 
 noticed in this work. 
 
 108 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 gum River and in the valleys of the Tuscara- 
 was and Walhonding Rivers. 
 
 For some reason the French had never 
 taken the pains to put themselves en rapport 
 with the Ohio Indians that they did with those 
 farther west and north. We have never seen 
 any explanation of this omission. There was 
 apparently no reason for it, because at any 
 time prior to the conquest of Canada the 
 French were the only white people who had 
 access to the Ohio Indians on any friendly 
 terms whatsoever, and most of the trade of 
 the Shawnees, Wyandots, and Miamis was 
 carried on with the French, from whom they 
 obtained guns, ammunition, cutlery, cooking 
 utensils, blankets, etc., almost exclusively, at 
 the French trading-posts of Fresque Isle, 
 Cuyahoga, Maumee, and Detroit. Prior to 
 1748 no English or Colonial trader had 
 crossed the Allegheny Mountains. In fact, 
 prior to that time no Englishman or colonist 
 had crossed the range except a few daring 
 hunters like Gist, Grady, and Post — and these 
 had to carry their lives in their hands. 
 
 But, apart from numerical considerations, 
 apart from the genius of the French in ingra- 
 tiating themselves into the good graces of the 
 Indians, apart from the tremendous leverage 
 of the clerical power exercised by the Jesuit 
 109 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 Fathers, and apart from the ineptness of the 
 English colonists in dealing with the Indians, 
 there was still another factor of organic dif- 
 ference between the English and French sys- 
 tems on this continent, which was, perhaps, 
 more important than all the others — at least 
 it was a factor which gave a quick mobility 
 and a constant vitality to the French power 
 that were totally wanting in the English Colo- 
 nial system. The thirteen English colonies, 
 at the beginning of the old French war, were 
 all autonomous, semi-independent, self-gov- 
 erning commonwealths. Each had its gov- 
 ernor, its council or assembly elected by the 
 people, and everything that it did or that was 
 done in its name must be the subject of dis- 
 cussion and legislation. Then, among the 
 several colonies also was a good deal of bick- 
 ering, of jealousy, and in some cases vexa- 
 tious disputes about boundaries and jurisdic- 
 tions leading up to the very threshold of inter- 
 necine war. For these reasons the English 
 colonies were indolent and procrastinating in 
 the conception of any operations that required 
 united action, and even when the difficulties 
 of conception and design had been overcome, 
 they were, if possible, slower in execution. 
 
 On the other hand, the French regime in 
 Canada was a solid, compact body. There 
 110 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 was no representative government nor the 
 semblance of one. The Governor-General at 
 Quebec was within his domain a monarch as 
 absolute as the Bourbon king at Versailles. 
 His word was law and his orders gospel. 
 Every able-bodied Frenchman in Canada was 
 at all times a soldier in esse or in posse. He 
 was constantly enrolled in what was termed 
 the Canadian militia, 1 and his term of liability 
 
 1 Garneau, in his Histoire du Canada, quotes Montcalm 
 as saying: "The Canadian militia are better soldiers than 
 the American provincials, man for man. But they are too 
 few ; and when they are once in the field there is no reserve 
 from which to recruit their ranks." This remark is worth 
 consideration. The French Canadian is always brave. He is 
 hardy and can live on a diet that would starve an American. 
 He is inured to all possible rigors of climate. The military 
 system that prevailed under French rule in Canada made him 
 at least a half-regular soldier all the time. In war every com- 
 pany commander of Canadian militia was a French regular 
 officer. The "habitans" could hold only subaltern rank. 
 Every company had a French regular drill-sergeant. Their 
 discipline and regulations in every respect were those of the 
 regular troops. They never mutinied or deserted and seldom 
 complained; if they did their shrift was short. They were 
 the soldiers of a despotic government and they knew it. 
 
 On the other hand the American Provincial troops were 
 volunteers, freemen ; and they carried a good deal of their 
 democracy into the field with them. While they marched and 
 fought well and endured marvelous fatigues and privations 
 at times, they were always prompt to find fault if any was to 
 be found. It was impossible to bring them up — or down — to 
 the regular standard of discipline. More than one British 
 officer who ordered a provincial soldier to be flogged fell with 
 
 111 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 to service was from the age of sixteen years 
 anywhere to decrepitude. Moreover, the 
 male sex largely predominated in the white 
 population of Canada, the proportion being, 
 in the average for the 160 years between the 
 advent of Samuel Champlain and the down- 
 fall of French power in 1760, as two to one. 
 
 In a word, French Canada may be said to 
 have been under perpetual martial law. All 
 the conceptions and designs were secretly 
 planned in the palace of the Governor-Gen- 
 eral at Quebec. All the orders were issued 
 without publicity, and such was the prevailing 
 discipline in all grades of society and through- 
 out the local military force, that the execution 
 of these plans and designs was always as 
 swift as their consideration had been secret. 
 It does not seem that any contrast of systems 
 could be more perfectly antipodal than this, 
 or that any comparison of methods could 
 exhibit wider extremes. 
 
 Thus far we have dealt only with the white 
 people and the Indians proper, but in Canada 
 there was another element which did not exist 
 
 a bullet in his back at the next battle or skirmish. From the 
 purely disciplinary point of view there is every reason to agree 
 with the sentiment that Garneau quotes from Montcalm. But 
 judging by results, wherever the Canadian militia and the 
 American provincials came together, neither one supported 
 by regulars, history does not verify Montcalm's theory. 
 
 112 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 to any extent in the English colonies. That 
 was the element of the half-breeds. At the 
 time when the Marqnis Duquesne became 
 Governor-General, the half-breed or mixed- 
 race population of French Canada was nearly 
 as numerous as the white race itself. These 
 half-breeds, the offspring of French traders 
 and soldiers by Indian women, were scattered 
 through every tribe. They were to be found 
 in every Indian village. They were the lead- 
 ing race in hunting and trapping. They were 
 the common carriers of supplies and of arti- 
 cles of trade and barter all over the French 
 Northwest. They were a brave, active, inde- 
 fatigable, and intelligent race. In peace, they 
 carried the name and the influence of France 
 to the remotest Indian tribes; in war, they 
 were, under the peculiar conditions that pre- 
 vailed, more formidable in combat than the 
 French regulars themselves, and more effec- 
 tive than the full-blood Indians, combining, as 
 they did, the disciplinary aptitude of the one 
 with the subtle woodcraft of the other. As 
 a rule, in the campaigns they were not 
 grouped in military bodies of their own or by 
 themselves, but were distributed among the 
 Indians, whom they instructed by their supe- 
 rior knowledge and encouraged by their un- 
 failing example. It is hardly too much to say 
 113 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 that at the period under discussion the race 
 of French Canadian half-breeds formed the 
 most important factor of the military strength 
 of France in North America. Under such 
 conditions, France and England, with their 
 respective American colonies, began about the 
 end of 1754 their final struggle for absolute 
 supremacy on this continent. 
 
 The hope of the American colonists that 
 the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle would inaugu- 
 rate another long peace, like that which inter- 
 vened between the end of Queen Anne's War 
 in 1714 and the beginning of King George's 
 in 1743, had proved illusory. The ink was 
 hardly dry on the treaty of 1748 when the 
 French began measures for carrying out a 
 plan long cherished. This plan contemplated 
 nothing less than the seizure of all the country 
 west of the Alleghenies, the "hinterland," as 
 modern diplomatists say, of the English colo- 
 nies. The English had always nominally 
 claimed this back country south of the Great 
 Lakes and parallel with the Atlantic front of 
 their colonies, to the banks of the Mississippi. 
 But they had never made the slightest effort 
 to settle it, to open trade within its borders, or 
 even to explore it. 
 
 The French, on the contrary, had explored 
 it nearly a hundred years before the period of 
 114 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 which we now write (1754). They had estab- 
 lished numerous trading-posts and a few 
 small villages, such as Old Vincennes within 
 the present State of Indiana, Kaskaskia in 
 Illinois, and St. Charles and St. Genevieve in 
 Missouri. They had established several 
 routes through this region between Canada 
 and their settlements at the mouth of the Mis- 
 sissippi, now Louisiana. One of these routes 
 was from the head of Lake Michigan to the 
 Illinois Kiver, and thence down that stream 
 and the Mississippi to New Orleans. An- 
 other was up the Maumee to its head waters, 
 thence by portage to the head waters of the 
 Wabash, and so on down. Another was from 
 their trading-post at Cuyahoga to the head 
 waters of the Miami, thence down that stream 
 to the Ohio. In short, their traders, priests, 
 and voyageurs had, for more than half a cen- 
 tury, permeated the region, forming alliances 
 with the Indian tribes, converting many of 
 them to the Catholic faith, marrying their 
 women, supplying them with firearms and 
 ammunition, and practising, in short, all the 
 arts of French colonization — or rather, of 
 French occupation. 
 
 In any struggle that might occur between 
 France and England for the actual possession 
 and control of this vast territory, it is there- 
 115 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 fore apparent that the French must have a 
 very great initial advantage. And this ad- 
 vantage was enhanced by the fact that the 
 French, from their places of arms in Canada, 
 could communicate with all parts of the region 
 by water, or through a level and easily trav- 
 ersed country. The English, on the other 
 hand, could reach it only by long marches 
 over difficult mountains, where they would 
 have to cut their roads as they advanced, and 
 where their columns and their supply-trains 
 would be beset at every step by the lurking 
 savage allies of the French. In the first part 
 of his reign Louis XV neglected the French 
 colonies in America. His great-grandfather, 
 Louis XIV, throughout his long reign, made 
 them the objects of his especial solicitude. 
 But the neglect and, to some extent, the op- 
 pressive regulations of trade and immigra- 
 tion in the first thirty years of the reign of 
 Louis XV had seriously weakened the French 
 power in Canada. Moreover, Louis XV had 
 made Canada a sort of penal colony ; not, in- 
 deed, for common criminals, but a place of 
 exile for officers who fought duels or failed to 
 pay their debts, for broken-down noblemen; 
 in short, for all classes of genteel offenders 
 not quite bad enough for the Bastile. 
 
 Among other things, this had caused an 
 116 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 actual decrease of the white population. 
 When Louis XIV died, in 1715, there were at 
 least 30,000 white men in Canada; whereas, 
 when the Marquis Duquesne assumed the 
 Governor-Generalship, he reported only 22,- 
 000. Prior to Duquesne all the Governors- 
 General during the reign of Louis XV had 
 been mere creatures of the court, possessing 
 neither aptitude nor ambition for the per- 
 formance of their duties, or the extension of 
 French power and influence. The appoint- 
 ment of Duquesne itself was a change of pol- 
 icy, from the halting, the indecisive, and the 
 weak to the aggressive, the determined, and 
 the strong. This change of policy was due 
 mainly, if not wholly, to the influence of Ma- 
 dame de Pompadour, who, since her alliance 
 with Louis, in 1745, had never ceased her 
 efforts to arouse his interest in the vast pos- 
 sessions of France in the New World, and at 
 last her eloquence and tact had brought the 
 luxurious and careless monarch to something 
 like a sense of his obligations. 
 
 Simultaneously with the selection of the 
 Marquis Duquesne to succeed M. de la Galis- 
 soniere as Governor-General, Louis XV 
 began quietly to prepare for another war. 
 All ships of war on the stocks at Toulon, 
 Brest, V Orient, Rochefort, and La Rochelle 
 117 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 were ordered to be pushed to completion at 
 the earliest date. Vessels in need of repair 
 were ordered to be thoroughly overhauled, 
 and all defects made good. Twelve thousand 
 additional seamen and marines were ordered 
 to be recruited for the fleet. All the military 
 and naval arsenals of the country were filled 
 with munitions. The regular regiments were 
 ordered to be recruited up to the maximum 
 establishment. Most significant of all, ten 
 regiments of regulars, comprising some of the 
 oldest and most famous corps d 9 elite in the 
 French army, were ordered to be in readiness 
 for service beyond the seas. Of these, seven 
 were intended for Canada and three for the 
 East Indies. 
 
 Those destined for Canada were the regi- 
 ments of Artois, of Beam, of Languedoc, of 
 Guienne, of Burgundy, of Picardy, and the 
 famous Regiment de la Heine. Under the 
 system of organization prevailing in the 
 French army at that time, the full war 
 strength of an infantry regiment of the 
 line was twelve companies of 103 of all 
 ranks each, with eight field and staff offi- 
 cers, or a total of 1,244 to the regiment. But 
 when sent on foreign service two companies 
 were left at home to form a depot for re- 
 cruiting and training purposes, so that the 
 118 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 actual strength in the field would be a maxi- 
 mum of 1,038. In addition to these infantry 
 regiments, Louis ordered four companies 
 (batteries) of light artillery and a siege- 
 train to be in readiness for Canadian service. 
 The batteries were of six guns each (light 
 8-pounders or howitzers) and 140 men. 
 
 The siege-train had twelve heavy guns (12- 
 and 18-pounders) and 280 heavy artillerists. 
 At first Walsh's regiment of the Irish Brigade 
 — the selfsame men who, seven years before, 
 had stemmed the English tide and turned the 
 fortunes of the day at Fontenoy — was in- 
 cluded in the Canadian contingent. But for 
 some reason, they were sent to reenforce La 
 Bourdonnais and Lally at Pondicherry in the 
 East Indies. However, the total strength of 
 the Canadian reenforcement was about 7,500, 
 and it was made up of the best troops in the 
 French regular army. 
 
 The sending of French regular regiments 
 of territorial titles to Canada or anywhere 
 beyond seas was itself a remarkable innova- 
 tion. Hitherto the French regulars employed 
 in Canada had been regiments specially re- 
 cruited for colonial service. They were, in 
 fact, organized in a manner quite similar to 
 the "Foreign Legion " of our times. They 
 were, of course, regular troops in every sense ; 
 119 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 borne on the army list nnder the head of 
 "Corps de la Marine et des Colonies," and 
 their officers held equivalent and interchange- 
 able rank with the line regiments of territo- 
 rial title. 
 
 These preparations began in 1752. Du- 
 quesne was appointed to succeed la Gallisson- 
 iere in 1751, and went immediately to Can- 
 ada. 1 But on arriving there, he requested the 
 latter to hold the office a few months in order 
 that he (Duquesne) might have opportunity 
 to make a personal survey of the frontiers and 
 of the general situation incognito. Early in 
 1752 Duquesne, accompanied only by Captain 
 Joncaire, Captain Beaujeu (who subsequently 
 commanded the French and Indians at the de- 
 feat of Braddock), together with half a dozen 
 half-breed trailers and hunters, journeyed 
 from Presque Isle (now Erie, Pa.) to the 
 junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela 
 
 1 Madame d'Hausset says that Duquesne's instructions 
 were in Madame de Pompadour's handwriting, and all that 
 the king had to do with them was to sign his name. She also 
 says that when Duquesne was leaving Versailles, de Pompa- 
 dour sent for him and gave him a magnificent seal ring, the 
 seal of which was cut in an immense ruby. "Now," she said, 
 "Monsieur le Marquis, I want you to put that seal on arti- 
 cles of capitulation for Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. 
 France must be supreme in the New World and you must 
 make her so." It would appear that the gracious madame 
 gave the gallant marquis a large contract. 
 
 120 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 Rivers, and indicated the spot where the fort 
 afterward named for him should be built. 
 
 There is nothing in history to show that 
 the English Government or any of the colonial- 
 governments had adequate knowledge of these 
 tremendous preparations; and their first in- 
 timation of the French scheme was in the 
 fall of 1753, when Captain Joncaire estab- 
 lished a fort at Venango, the confluence of 
 French Creek with the Allegheny River. This 
 was the third in a chain of posts hugging the 
 western slope of the Allegheny Mountains, 
 and designed by Duquesne to cut the English 
 off from the Ohio Valley. The first of the 
 posts was Presque Isle, the second Fort Le 
 Boeuf, thirteen miles south of the former, and 
 at the head of canoe navigation on French 
 Creek ; Venango, the third ; and they were cal- 
 culated to serve as intermediate stations be- 
 tween Lake Erie and the grand fortress to be 
 built at the head of the Ohio. 
 
 In our time it is difficult to believe that 
 such secrecy with regard to such portentous 
 movements could be maintained. Nowadays 
 every nation knows all about every other 
 nation's army, its navy, and its movements 
 with either or both. But in those days, under 
 the Bourbon rule in France, absolute secrecy 
 was possible. No outsider could get within 
 9 121 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 gunshot of a French dockyard or arsenal. 
 Men employed in them were under oath not to 
 divulge anything. If they did divulge, it was 
 rated high treason, and punishable by death. 
 Thus it happened that the French were able 
 to penetrate far into territory claimed by the 
 British, establish lines of communication, and 
 build substantial forts without the English 
 knowing anything about it, and all this in a 
 time of profound peace. 
 
 At last the British Government awoke to 
 the fact that things were going wrong in the 
 American colonies. Tidings of the disasters 
 on the Virgina frontier — of Trent's surrender 
 of the fort at the head of the Ohio, and of 
 Washington's capitulation at Fort Necessity 
 — reached England in August, 1754. These 
 tidings were so bad that they infused a spasm 
 of energy into even the ridiculous ministry of 
 the absurd Duke of Newcastle. But, after all, 
 it was not the Duke of Newcastle who really 
 acted. At that time the Captain-General and 
 commander-in-chief of the British army was 
 William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. He 
 had the additional advantage of being the 
 king's favorite son. And he was unquestion- 
 ably the best soldier — if not the only one — 
 that the House of Hanover has produced. 
 Cumberland did not wait upon the moods and 
 122 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 tenses of the fat-witted Prime Minister. As 
 Captain-General, he had control of military 
 affairs in the colonies as well as in England in 
 time of war — and this was certainly such a 
 time. 
 
 Therefore, without consulting the ministry 
 or any one else — unless, perhaps, his father, 
 the king — Cumberland ordered the Forty- 
 fourth Regiment of Foot, Colonel Sir Peter 
 Halket, and the Forty-eighth Regiment, Col- 
 onel Thomas Dunbar, to be put in instant 
 readiness for service in the American colonies. 
 He also sent letters of service in the king's 
 name to General Sir William Pepperell and 
 Colonel William Shirley — then Governor of 
 Massachusetts — authorizing and directing 
 them to raise two regiments of infantry in the 
 colonies, to be known as Royal Provincial or 
 Royal American regiments, to be enrolled in 
 the British regular army list, and to be paid 
 and provided for by the king the same as any 
 other British regulars. These orders bore 
 date of September 19, 1754 — less than four 
 weeks after the news of the disastrous result 
 of Washington's campaign reached London. 
 
 Other provisions were made by the Duke 
 of Cumberland for the employment of Pro- 
 vincial troops, and of such Indians as might 
 adhere to the English cause. On the whole, 
 123 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 Cumberland calculated that his scheme would 
 serve to put in the field in the American colo- 
 nies a force of at least 14,000 men by the open- 
 ing of spring in 1755, and of this force he in- 
 tended — including the small garrisons already 
 in the colonies — that about 4,000 should be 
 British regulars. It should be remarked at 
 this point that the numerical strength of the 
 British regular army in 1754 was at its lowest 
 ebb. After the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle — 
 which the French always called a truce — the 
 silly Duke of Newcastle imagined that the 
 millennium had come, and, if he could have 
 had his way, would probably have disbanded 
 the British army altogether. 
 
 Be this as it may, a man of different mold 
 was directing this particular affair. With- 
 out going into details, the Duke of Cum- 
 berland selected Major-General Sir Edward 
 Braddock to command the British troops des- 
 tined for the American colonies, and at the 
 same time made him commander-in-chief of 
 all the British forces in North America — regu- 
 lar, Provincial, and Indian. After arranging 
 for transportation of his troops, ordnance, 
 and supplies, Braddock himself, with his staff, 
 sailed from the Downs in the famous old Cen- 
 turion — which had been Anson's flagship in 
 that wonderful cruise round the world a dec- 
 124 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 ade before — on the 21st of December, 1754, 
 and reached Hampton Roads after a most 
 tempestuous passage, the 20th of February, 
 1755. The convoy of transports, with the 
 troops, ordnance stores, and general supplies, 
 sailed from Cork the 14th of January, 1755, 
 were dispersed at sea, and, as they arrived 
 from day to day in the Chesapeake, were 
 worked up the Potomac to Alexandria, where 
 the last of them, the Severn, with four com- 
 panies of the Forty-eighth — Dunbar's regi- 
 ment — on board, arrived the 15th of March. 
 
 Detailed description of Braddock's cam- 
 paign would be foreign to the scope of this lit- 
 tle book. But on his arrival in this country 
 he did some things in his capacity as com- 
 mander-in-chief which do more credit to his 
 memory than does the battle in which he fell. 
 Chief among these things was the appoint- 
 ment of Sir William Johnson, in the name and 
 by authority of the king, to be General Super- 
 intendent of Indian Affairs for the whole of 
 British North America. This appointment 
 was made in March, 1755, less than a month 
 after General Braddock's arrival in Hampton 
 Roads. 
 
 The story of Braddock's fatal expedition 
 is known to most well-read American school- 
 boys. They know it, not because it was Brad- 
 125 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 dock's expedition or Braddock's defeat, but 
 because the name and fame of George Wash- 
 ington are intimately associated with it. No 
 attempt to describe it will be made here. 
 Suffice to say that on the 10th of June, 1755, 
 Braddock's army left Fort Cumberland 2,150 
 strong, as stated in the journal of Captain 
 Orme, of the general's staff. This force con- 
 sisted of 1,400 British regulars, about 500 
 Virginia Provincials, and a miscellaneous 
 force of 250 more, composed of three inde- 
 pendent companies, in the king's pay, each 
 about 60 strong; a small troop of Provincial 
 Light Horse from Virginia — about 30 men — 
 10 guides, and 30 sailors from the Centurion, 
 sent along to help handle the artillery of the 
 expedition. It was a tedious march, during 
 which not more than ten miles a day was 
 traversed, by reason of the delay in making a 
 road practicable for the wagon-train and the 
 heavier arms. 
 
 Braddock, fretted by these delays, finally, 
 by the advice of Sir Peter Halket, Captain 
 Orme, and his special. Provincial aide-de- 
 camp, Major George Washington, deter- 
 mined to leave the heavy baggage and guns 
 behind with a guard of 700 men under 
 Colonel Dunbar, and to push forward, by 
 forced marches, with a column in light march- 
 126 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 ing order, composed of 1,000 British regulars 
 and 400 Virginia Provincials. This column 
 started the 19th of June, taking with it eight 
 of the lightest guns with their tumhrils; the 
 provisions — twenty days' rations — heing car- 
 ried on packhorses. The rest, so far as this 
 little volume has space to deal with the sub- 
 ject, is soon told. On the 9th of July, Brad- 
 dock, with his column of 1,400, crossed the 
 Monongahela a few miles above its conflu- 
 ence with the Allegheny forming the Ohio 
 River. 
 
 Here the British column fell into an am- 
 buscade of French and Indians under Captain 
 Beaujeu of the French regular army, and in 
 less than an hour was hopelessly defeated, 
 utterly routed, and almost annihilated. Eng- 
 lish historians have described it as the most 
 complete disaster that ever befell a British 
 force. General Braddock and all the field- 
 officers present were either killed or wounded. 
 The total loss out of 1,460 officers and men 
 was 456 killed outright or mortally wounded, 
 and 521 wounded, many of whom were so 
 disabled that they fell that night or the next 
 day under the tomahawks of the pursuing 
 savages. Of the total force of 1,460, only 
 483 escaped fit for duty — and many of these 
 received slight wounds. The Virginia Pro- 
 127 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 vincials did their best to cover the retreat, but 
 they, too, were overwhelmed. 
 
 When the wreck of Braddock's army 
 reached the reserve under Colonel Dunbar, 
 the latter partook of their panic, and a dis- 
 graceful flight back to Fort Cumberland en- 
 sued, baggage, supplies, cannon, and every- 
 thing else that could impede flight being 
 abandoned. It was the greatest defeat ever 
 suffered by the whites in frontier warfare — 
 greater even than St. Clair's — and the most 
 wonderful victory ever won by the Indians. 
 We have noted that Braddock's force was 
 1,460 of all ranks. The force of French and 
 Indians that destroyed it has been variously 
 estimated. Doubtless the most accurate 
 statement is that of Captain Joncaire, who 
 organized the Indian part of the force, and 
 who would have commanded in the battle but 
 for an accident that happened to him early in 
 the morning of the day on which it occurred. 
 
 Just after daylight he mounted his pony 
 and was riding at top speed through a new 
 clearing full of logs and stumps, when the 
 pony stumbled, throwing the captain over his 
 head. The result was a dislocated left shoul- 
 der and severe contusions in the head. He 
 was carried to the fort unconscious, and re- 
 mained in that condition several hours — being, 
 128 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 in fact, roused from his stupor by the trium- 
 phant yells of his Indians returning from 
 their field of victory. He says in his journal 
 that the force actually in contact with Brad- 
 dock's army was composed of 600 Indians, 20 
 cadets (half-breed boys under training for 
 military service), and 16 white Frenchmen, 
 of whom 7 were regular officers — a total of 
 636. 
 
 The 600 Indians, he says, represented as 
 many as ten tribes, it having been his policy 
 in organizing the force to take a small num- 
 ber of picked warriors from each tribe, partly 
 with a view to stimulate rivalry, and partly to 
 identify as many different tribes as possible 
 with the French cause. He gives a list em- 
 bodying an exact statement of the number 
 present from each tribe, and this list includes 
 80 Senecas and 18 Cayugas ; so that one-sixth 
 of the Indians who defeated Braddock be- 
 longed to the traditional "friends of the Eng- 
 lish," the Iroquois! The principal chief and 
 commander of all the Indians was the cele- 
 brated Huron half-breed Anasthose, who was 
 said to be a grandson of Count de Fronte- 
 nac. The second-in-command was Pontiac, 
 then a young war-chief of the Ottawas. The 
 total loss of the French and Indians in 
 Braddock's defeat was 3 white men (includ- 
 129 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ing Captain Beaujeu) killed and 2 wounded; 
 2 cadets wounded; 7 Indians killed and 17 
 wounded — a total of 10 killed and 21 wounded. 
 
 Winthrop Sargent, in his History of Brad- 
 dock's Expedition, says that the force under 
 Captain Beaujeu consisted of "600 Indians, 
 146 Canadian militia, 72 French regulars, and 
 20 cadets — total, 838." But Joncaire says 
 that all but 16 of the French regulars and 
 all the Canadian militia were retained at the 
 fort by Captain Contrecoeur — "who," he 
 says, rather sardonically, "did not imagine 
 that success was possible, and was among the 
 last to realize the magnitude and glory of the 
 victory. He had made all arrangements for 
 a capitulation with the honors of war ! " 
 
 Perhaps Joncaire was prejudiced against 
 Contrecoeur. The latter was only a captain 
 of infantry of the line, and the 72 French 
 regulars at Fort Duquesne were simply his 
 own company of the regiment of Languedoc. 
 Joncaire had long held the commission, pay, 
 and allowances of a "First Captain of Marine 
 Infantry " in the regular army of France, and 
 was borne on the "extra " or "special-service 
 list " of his regiment — that of Toulon. A 
 "First Captain of Marine Infantry " was, by 
 title, only a captain, but the real rank was 
 equivalent to that of major in the British 
 130 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 service. He therefore ranked both Contre- 
 coeur and St. Pierre, who were only captains 
 of infantry of the line. But, as he had never 
 actually served with his regiment, and as his 
 rank was honorary rather than substantive, 
 they were always disputing his precedence 
 over them. However, at the time of Brad- 
 dock's defeat, Joncaire was recognized at 
 "Government House " in Quebec as the com- 
 mander of the French and Indian forces in 
 the Ohio Valley. He was over seventy years 
 old at the time of the accident above related, 
 and he never again had much use of his left 
 arm. He never attempted field service after 
 the Braddock campaign. 1 
 
 1 During the rest of the war Captain Joncaire made his 
 headquarters most of the time at Fort Niagara, where he was 
 captured in 1759 when that stronghold surrendered to Sir 
 William Johnson's army. In his "list of prisoners" Sir Will- 
 iam describes him as "captain of marines," and in the same 
 list appears the name of his half-breed son, "Chabeare" 
 (Chaubert) Joncaire, who commanded a company of half-breed 
 rangers. He was sent to England with the other captured 
 officers, and upon his release in 1762 returned to Canada. He 
 settled on his farm near St. Catharines, where he died in 
 1775, over ninety years old. 
 
 Sir William went to Niagara in 1766 to hold a council with 
 delegates of the Northwestern Indians who had recently been 
 engaged in Pontiac's war and now wanted to make peace. It 
 jnay be mentioned as a curious fact that these Indians, who 
 all belonged either to the Algonquin or the Ojibway (Chip- 
 pewa) grand divisions of the Indian race, could not be per- 
 
 131 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 Unquestionably the general trend of pub- 
 lic opinion in this country has, for nearly a 
 century and a half, been unfavorable to Gen- 
 eral Braddock, and prejudiced toward his 
 memory. We have neither time nor space 
 here to debate the question whether public 
 opinion in this instance is right or wrong, 
 but whatever his faults may have been, Brad- 
 dock lacked neither breadth of perception, 
 boldness of design, nor bravery in execution. 
 It is worth while to say here that George 
 Washington, who was his aide-de-camp, and 
 stood by him when he breathed his last, never, 
 in all his writings or his conversations, had 
 
 suaded to come to Johnson Hall because that would compel 
 them to pass through the Iroquois tribes, their hereditary 
 foes. Therefore Sir William had to meet them at Niagara. 
 His journal during this conference contains the following 
 entry : 
 
 "... Had the pleasure of a visit from the venerable 
 Captain Joncaire, now past seventy (eighty), but hale and 
 hearty and a most loyal subject of our king. We had a long 
 talk in Iroquois, as I knew no French and he no English. 
 He asked me to give his two sons, 'Chabeare' (Chaubert) 
 and Jean Francois (Clauzun), something to do in our Indian 
 service. I found them to be quarter-breeds, their mother 
 having been a half-breed. Discovering that they were very 
 capable fellows and loyal, I appointed one of them, Jean 
 Francois, interpreter and assistant agent at St. Mary's [Sault 
 Ste. Marie], and ' Chabeare ' in the same capacity at our new 
 post of Green Bay among the Menominees. They were all 
 very grateful and declared their content with British rule." 
 
 132 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 anything but the kindest words to say of Ed- 
 ward Braddock. He was undoubtedly a mar- 
 tinet, rough in manner, and, perhaps, severe 
 if not cruel in his methods of discipline, but 
 he was nevertheless a thoroughbred soldier 
 and a skilful tactician, within the teachings of 
 the school in which he had been trained, and 
 a general strategist of far more than ordi- 
 nary ability. 
 
 After his arrival in this country he lost 
 no time. Upon reaching Hampton Roads, 
 almost his first act was to summon a council 
 of Colonial governors to meet him at Alex- 
 andria, Virginia. The governors who ac- 
 cepted the invitation and attended this coun- 
 cil were those of Massachusetts, New York, 
 New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. 
 The other colonies, except South Carolina and 
 Georgia, which took no part in the conference, 
 were represented by their lieutenant-govern- 
 ors. Sir William Johnson was present at this 
 conference by special invitation. He and 
 Benjamin Franklin were the only members of 
 it who were not governors or lieutenant-gov- 
 ernors of colonies. At this conference Gen- 
 eral Braddock outlined the strategy which he 
 had planned for his campaign at large. He 
 proposed four expeditions. One of these was 
 to be carried out in Nova Scotia under the 
 133 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 governor of that province — Lawrence — with 
 the object of finally expelling the French from 
 that peninsula, but it had no direct connection 
 with the other three projects, and need not be 
 considered here. 
 
 The main projects were: first, an expedi- 
 tion to be commanded by Braddock himself 
 for the reduction of Fort Duquesne and ex- 
 pulsion of the French from the Ohio Valley; 
 second, an expedition to be commanded by 
 Governor Shirley of Massachusetts for the 
 reduction of Fort Niagara, with the ultimate 
 object of cutting French communication be- 
 tween Lake Ontario and the upper lakes ; the 
 third was an expedition for the reduction of 
 Crown Point, then the southernmost fortress 
 of the French on the New York frontier. As 
 commander of this last-mentioned expedition 
 he named Sir William Johnson, at the same 
 time appointing him, as has already been re- 
 marked, General Superintendent of Indian 
 Affairs for the whole of British North Amer- 
 ica in the name of the king. The scope of this 
 work, as already intimated, does not admit 
 discussion of the expeditions assigned to 
 Braddock himself, Shirley, or Governor Law- 
 rence of Nova Scotia, but we may find space 
 for some detail of Sir William Johnson's ex- 
 pedition against Crown Point. 
 134 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 As soon as the conference at Alexandria 
 was over, Johnson returned as rapidly as he 
 could to the Mohawk Valley, and immediately 
 summoned a conference of Iroquois chiefs to 
 meet him at Mount Johnson. With this mes- 
 senger he sent a belt of wampum to each 
 chief, informing him of the appointment he 
 had received as the direct royal superintend- 
 ent of all the North American Indians, which 
 was a very considerable promotion over the 
 commission he had recently held as superin- 
 tendent of the Iroquois only. Upon receipt 
 of this information the Indians did not need 
 urging. The news, says Stone, that their 
 brother Warragh-i-ya-gey had again been 
 raised up to power among them, spread like 
 wildfire. Within ten days from the date of 
 his call for this conference, over 1,000 Indians 
 assembled at Mount Johnson. So unprece- 
 dented and unexpected was the number pres- 
 sent — by far the largest assemblage of Indi- 
 ans ever before convened — that Sir William 
 Johnson was altogether taken by surprise, 
 and his food-supply completely overwhelmed. 
 He had to call in the assistance of a large num- 
 ber of his most prosperous neighbors for 
 fifteen or twenty miles up and down the 
 Mohawk Valley to help him out in this re- 
 spect. On the 21st of June he opened the 
 135 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 council by a speech, in which he informed the 
 Indians that he had been delegated to com- 
 mand a certain expedition against a certain 
 important fortress of the enemy, that the 
 forces to be placed at his disposal were to be 
 Provincial troops from Massachusetts, New 
 Hampshire, Connecticut, and New York, and 
 that it was expected that about one thousand 
 picked warriors from the Six Nations should 
 form part of his force, to be commanded by 
 the venerable chief sachem of the Mohawks 
 and senior chief of all the Iroquois — Hen- 
 drick. The usual interchange of oratory then 
 took place, after which the Indians departed 
 for their respective castles and villages, full 
 of enthusiasm and promising to place a thou- 
 sand warriors at his disposal within six weeks 
 or two months. So well satisfied with the 
 results of this council was Sir William that 
 he wrote to the Duke of Cumberland shortly 
 after that " there are very few if any among 
 the whole Iroquois Confederacy who, in the 
 present dispute between the French and our 
 Crown, do not sincerely wish us success, and 
 are disposed to assist our arms." 
 
 Sir William now proceeded energetically 
 to organize his expedition. According to the 
 original plan, the force employed was to con- 
 sist of 2,500 Provincial troops from Massa- 
 136 
 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 clmsetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut; 
 1,000 from New York, and 1,000 Indians— 
 4,500 altogether. Before the end of July all 
 the forces destined for the reduction of 
 Crown Point had assembled under Sir Will- 
 iam's command at Albany. The contingents 
 of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York 
 were a little in excess of the required number. 
 New Hampshire sent 500 men organized in 
 seven companies under command of Colonel 
 Joshua A. Blanchard. The Massachusetts 
 and Connecticut troops were commanded by 
 Colonel Phineas Lyman. The only disap- 
 pointment he experienced was that a little 
 less than 600 Indians responded to the call, 
 instead of the thousand expected. This, 
 however, was because the quota of Senecas, 
 which according to the population of the re- 
 spective tribes had been fixed at 400, was 
 dilatory, and, in fact, was not mobilized in 
 time to take any active part in the campaign. 
 This was due partly to the lingering seeds of 
 disaffection which had been sown by the 
 French emissaries among the Senecas during 
 the past three years, but mainly to the fact 
 that just at the time when Hi-o-ka-to and Cap- 
 tain Montour were assembling their warriors 
 at the Falls of the Genesee — say about the 
 middle of July — they received the stunning 
 1° 137 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 and utterly demoralizing news of Braddock's 
 defeat, which had occurred the 9th of that 
 month. 
 
 These tidings threw the whole of the Sen- 
 eca Nation into a ferment of doubt and hesi- 
 tancy, which all the eloquence of Montour and 
 all the stalwart bullying of Hi-o-ka-to were 
 powerless to overcome. All they could do 
 was to send runners to Sir William, inform- 
 ing him of the state of affairs. Montour 
 persuaded perhaps twenty-five or thirty Sen- 
 eca warriors to accompany him, and joined 
 Johnson's forces at Saratoga, and they were 
 the only Senecas engaged in the expedition. 
 Hi-o-ka-to stayed behind, declaring his de- 
 termination to bring the allotted contingent of 
 Senecas along if, as he expressed it, he "had 
 to drag every mother's son of them by the 
 scalp-lock ! " On the 6th of August Sir Will- 
 iam decided not to wait any longer for the 
 Seneca contingent, and sent Colonel Lyman 
 forward with the New York and Massachu- 
 setts troops to erect a fort on the bank of 
 the Hudson River at the south end of the 
 great portage between that river and Lake 
 George, to which he gave the name of Fort 
 Edward. At this time an unfortunate con- 
 troversy arose between Sir William and Gov- 
 ernor Shirley, growing out of the Govern- 
 138 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 or's pique at what lie considered some lack 
 of suitable personal attention toward him 
 on Johnson's part. This controversy re- 
 sulted in considerable correspondence of a 
 more or less acrimonious character, which 
 our present limits of space preclude us 
 from reproducing. Suffice to say in general 
 terms that the whole affair grew out of the 
 personal vanity of Governor Shirley brought, 
 as it was, in contact with Sir William's mat- 
 ter-of-fact, businesslike way of transacting 
 affairs. 
 
 On the 8th of August Sir William himself 
 set out from Albany with the stores, baggage- 
 train, and artillery and the rest of the troops, 
 including four companies of the New York 
 regiment, which, coming from Dutchess and 
 Ulster counties down the river, were a little 
 behind those raised in Albany County. This 
 force was accompanied by the Chief Hendrick 
 with a hundred and fifty Mohawk warriors, 
 among whom was Joseph Brant, then a mere 
 boy of thirteen years, but, notwithstanding 
 his extreme youth, able to carry a light gun 
 (a small fowling-piece presented to him by 
 Sir William) that he had, and serving in the 
 ranks. 
 
 Sir William arrived at Fort Edward on 
 the 14th of August, where he was joined by 
 139 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 250 more Indians, making the total number 
 about 400; and afterward 120 more came in 
 by small squads. The New England and New 
 York troops were full of ardor and impatient 
 of delay. The news of Braddock's defeat had 
 not only not disheartened them, but had made 
 them all the more anxious to be led against 
 Crown Point. They considered this expedi- 
 tion a measure for the defense of their fire- 
 sides. One of the Provincial officers, belong- 
 ing to the Massachusetts contingent, Major 
 Thomas Williams, wrote a letter to his wife, 
 in which he said, among other things: "I en- 
 deavor to keep myself calm and quiet under 
 our slow progress, and await God's time, but 
 the advance seems very slow." Colonel 
 Lyman was equally restive under the delay. 
 Indeed, a day or two before Sir William's 
 arrival at Fort Edward, he had set 300 of his 
 men to work to cut a road across the hills to 
 Fort Ann, supposing that the army would 
 proceed against Crown Point by way of Wood 
 Creek and the head of Lake Champlain. 
 
 Sir William, on his arrival, called a coun- 
 cil of war to decide upon the best route, and 
 the result of this council was that Colonel 
 Lyman's movement was countermanded. A 
 scouting party of forty soldiers, under Cap- 
 tain John Stark, with thirty Indians, was then 
 140 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 sent out to reconnoiter the whole country in 
 the vicinity of Lake George. When these 
 scouts returned another council of war was 
 held on the 22d of August, in which the offi- 
 cers, upon hearing their report, unanimously 
 decided that the Lake George route appeared 
 to them the most eligible, and that it ought 
 to be immediately adopted as the plan of cam- 
 paign. In a previous chapter we have men- 
 tioned that about the close of King George's 
 War, seven years before, Sir William had 
 made a road from the head of Lake George to 
 Fort Edward or Glens Falls, but this road 
 had been neglected. Many trees had fallen 
 across it, and it had to be cleared out. So 
 2,000 men were sent forward to restore this 
 road, with orders also to erect at the head of 
 the lake a fort, with suitable buildings in 
 which to store arms and other munitions of 
 war when they should arrive. 
 
 Then, leaving Colonel Lyman to await 
 the rest of the troops, and the New Hamp- 
 shire Provincials to complete and garrison 
 the fort, Sir William set out on the 26th of 
 August with 3,400 men for the lake — a dis- 
 tance of about fifteen miles — and reached it 
 at dusk on the 28th. After some reconnoiter- 
 ing he selected on the 29th a position for his 
 camp which was on a bluff shore of the lake, 
 141 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 flanked at both ends by thickly wooded 
 swamps where small creeks emptied in. The 
 French had always called this lake "St. Sac- 
 rament," and Sir William now solemnly 
 changed it to Lake George, "not only," as he 
 said, "in honor of His Majesty the King, but 
 to assure his undoubted dominion here." 
 Although Lake George had been used for 
 many years as a means of communication, 
 both for warlike and commercial purposes, 
 between Canada and Albany, yet its shores 
 were still a primeval forest, where no house 
 had ever been built or a spot of land cleared. 
 The troops immediately set about clearing a 
 place for a camp capable of sheltering 5,000 
 men, and providing housing for their military 
 stores. 
 
 Meanwhile, Colonel Lyman, as soon as all 
 the dilatory troops arrived, left at Fort 
 Edward a garrison of 250 Connecticut Pro- 
 vincials and five companies of the New York 
 regiment, 1 and with the rest of his force joined 
 the camp at Lake George on September 3d, 
 bringing with him all the heavy artillery. 
 
 1 We have used the term "regiment" in speaking of the 
 New York contingent. But besides Schuyler's regiment of 
 ten companies there were four independent companies, com- 
 manded by Captains Davis, Ten Eyck, Munro (Rangers), and 
 Vrooman. 
 
 142 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 Johnson had expected to be joined at the lake 
 by many more warriors of the Six Nations. 
 He expected at least 600, although he had re- 
 ceived tidings from Hi-o-ka-to and informa- 
 tion from Captain Montour, who had then 
 arrived with his small detachment at his 
 camp, that there was little hope of the full 
 Seneca contingent of 400 being available. In 
 the meantime, de Vaudreuil, who had just 
 succeeded Duquesne as Governor-General of 
 Canada, learned by papers, taken at the wreck 
 of Braddock's army, of Shirley's proposed ex- 
 pedition against Niagara, and as a counter- 
 movement he had arranged an attack upon 
 Oswego, but learning subsequently that Sir 
 William Johnson's expedition was advancing 
 by way of Lake George against Crown Point, 
 he changed his purpose. He called back the 
 French force already on its way to Oswego, 
 and sent them under Baron Dieskau to meet 
 Sir William's forces. 
 
 The baron left a large force — about 1,200 
 men — at Crown Point, and taking with him 
 280 French regulars of the Regiment de la 
 Reine, 800 Canadian militia, and between 600 
 and 700 Indians, proceeded up Lake Cham- 
 plain and landed at the head of that lake, with 
 the intention of marching across the country 
 and attacking Fort Edward in Johnson's rear, 
 143 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 with a view of cutting off his retreat and in 
 the hope of thereby annihilating his army. 
 If he should be able to accomplish this, the 
 route to Albany and the lower settlements on 
 the Hudson would be open and undefended. 
 On the fourth day, however, after leaving the 
 head of Lake Champlain, the French army 
 found itself on the road to Lake George, in- 
 stead of to Fort Edward, and Dieskau dis- 
 covered through his scouts that he was only 
 four miles from the fortified camp which Sir 
 William Johnson had made on the bank of 
 the lake. Here Dieskau halted and sent for- 
 ward a party of Indians, under the direction 
 of Captain de St. Pierre, to reconnoiter. In 
 the course of their reconnaissance they en- 
 countered and killed a courier whom General 
 Johnson had sent to warn the garrison ats 
 Fort Edward of their danger. Dieskau, dis- 
 covering from this fact that Sir William was 
 on the alert, gave the Indians under his 
 command the choice of either attacking the 
 fort or marching against Sir William's camp 
 at the lake. The Indians, who never had any 
 stomach for artillery, and having been told by 
 a prisoner that the camp at the lake had no 
 cannon, positively refused to attack the fort, 
 but expressed their desire to be led against 
 the fortified camp. Dieskau thereupon 
 144 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 marched through the forests toward Lake 
 George, and encamped that night on the banks 
 of a small pond a little to the eastward of the 
 Lake George road, and at the southern foot 
 of French Mountain. 
 
 About nightfall on the 7th of September, 
 Johnson learned through his scouts that a 
 large body of men were marching toward his 
 camp. Early the next morning he sent out 
 about 800 Provincials under Colonel Ephraim 
 Williams, and the whole force of Hendrick's 
 Iroquois warriors, led by the venerable chief 
 himself, to find the enemy. What we have 
 called "a fortified camp " was simply an aba- 
 tis or rough log breastwork, made by felling 
 trees across the foot of the camp and lopping 
 down their branches. There was no earth- 
 work or other pretense of regular fortifica- 
 tion, excepting that places were cleared 
 through the log-slashing to form a kind of 
 embrasure for the four cannon that he had 
 with him at the lake. Dieskau, advised by his 
 Indian scouts of the movement of Colonel 
 Williams and Hendrick, arranged an ambus- 
 cade, and the detachment, when about two 
 and a half miles from the camp, walked right 
 into it, the column being led by Hendrick and 
 his warriors. Dieskau had ordered that his 
 men should reserve their fire until the Provin- 
 145 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 cials and Iroquois were entirely within the 
 half circle of his ambush, but before the de- 
 tachment had gone that far, one of the ene- 
 my's muskets went off accidentally, where- 
 upon the attack began. Volley after volley 
 was poured with murderous effect upon the 
 Indians in front and upon the left of Will- 
 iams' column of Provincials. Hendrick, who 
 was riding at the head of his column — a large, 
 corpulent man, and wearing a brilliant uni- 
 form — formed a conspicuous mark for the 
 enemy's bullets, and was killed at the first 
 fire. 
 
 The venerable warrior was in his eightieth 
 year when he fell in battle. Colonel Will- 
 iams was also killed a few minutes after Hen- 
 drick, being shot through the head as he was 
 in the act of mounting a rock in order better 
 to direct the movements of his men, his horse 
 having been shot under him a few minutes be- 
 fore. The Provincials and Indians now broke, 
 and retreated in some confusion, the enemy 
 following close at their heels, yelling and fir- 
 ing. Reaching a small pond near the road to 
 the lake, Lieutenant-Colonel Cole of the Mas- 
 sachusetts Provincials succeeded in rallying 
 two hundred or more of them in a favorable 
 position, and stationing his men behind trees 
 at a point where the road ran close to the 
 146 
 
KING HENDRICK OF THE MOHAWKS. 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 pond, forming a sort of defile, checked the 
 pursuit. Sir William, as soon as he heard 
 the firing, had sent Cole with 300 men to 
 cover the retreat, subsequently reenforcing 
 them with 200 more under Major Whiting. 
 The check given the advancing enemy at this 
 little pond — which has ever since been known 
 in the local phrase as "Bloody Pond " — en- 
 abled the survivors of the force of Williams 
 and Hendrick to reach the fortified camp, into 
 which they clambered pell-mell over the fallen 
 trees and brush, weary, dejected, and dispir- 
 ited. Had Dieskau been able, as he had in- 
 tended, to take advantage of the confusion 
 produced in Sir William's camp by the arrival 
 of these panic-stricken fugitives, and while 
 his own men were completely flushed with 
 success, he might possibly have made a grand 
 rush and carried the improvised barrier or 
 abatis by storm; although, notwithstanding 
 the demoralization at the first onset, the sub- 
 sequent proceedings indicate that even this 
 would have been doubtful. It was not be- 
 lieved by the Indians and Canadians that Sir 
 William had any artillery in his camp at the 
 lake, but when they arrived in sight of the 
 breastwork they saw that he had four guns 
 mounted, whereupon they halted and took 
 shelter in the woods. This left only the 
 147 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 French regulars for attack, and before Dies- 
 kau could rally and reinspire his Indians and 
 Canadians, the Provincials had found time in 
 which to improve their defenses and recover 
 from their previous demoralization. 
 
 As soon as Dieskau had rallied and 
 brought his Canadians and Indians to the 
 front again, the 280 French regulars attacked 
 Sir William's flimsy defenses in the center, 
 advancing rapidly and firing by platoons. 
 The Provincials, however, stood firm, and the 
 regulars, after losing about 70 men in attack- 
 ing the center, were withdrawn. Dieskau 
 then made an attack with his Canadians on 
 the left flank of Johnson's camp, but with no 
 better effect. Finally, discovering that there 
 was a gap of about 20 or 25 yards between 
 the right of the slashing which covered John- 
 son's camp and the bank of the thickly wooded 
 and impassable swamp that defended his 
 right flank, Dieskau determined upon a des- 
 perate charge of his regulars in column of 
 platoons to get through this gap. Had this 
 succeeded, it would have turned Johnson's 
 right. The regulars, of whom about 210 were 
 now left, charged at this gap as they might 
 have charged at Fontenoy, Dieskau leading 
 them in person. He had expected an easy 
 victory, but now the stubbornness of the resist- 
 148 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 ance and the comparative feebleness of the 
 attacks which his Canadian militia had made 
 filled him with forebodings. He could not 
 bear the idea that he, the favorite pupil and 
 at one time chief aide-de-camp to the great 
 Marshal Saxe, should be beaten in the for- 
 ests of America by an army of backwoods- 
 men, commanded by a farmer ! 
 
 It may, perhaps, be fortunate for the des- 
 tinies of the Anglo-Saxon race in this coun- 
 try that this, the only practicable open 
 breach in Sir William's line of defense, was 
 held by four companies of the New Hamp- 
 shire Provincials, and they were commanded 
 by their senior captain, who, though senior to 
 the other captains in rank, was junior to them 
 all in years. The four companies of New 
 Hampshire Provincials numbered about 260 
 to 280 men. The fighting in the breach was, 
 for the most part, hand-to-hand. Perhaps 
 half of the New Hampshire men had bayo- 
 nets; those who had none used the butts of 
 their muskets, as there was no time to reload. 
 This desperate combat lasted perhaps seven 
 or eight minutes. At its end the French 
 commander-in-chief, Dieskau, was mortally 
 wounded and a prisoner. Of his 210 magnifi- 
 cent French regulars belonging to "de la 
 Reine " — the most famous regiment in the 
 149 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 French army — only 41 escaped unhurt. The 
 loss of the New Hampshire Provincials 
 was between 90 arid 100 out of — say 260 
 to 280. 
 
 It may not be uninteresting to know that 
 the unflinching young senior captain of the 
 New Hampshire Provincials, who held his 
 "embattled farmers " to their deadly work in 
 that breach against the flower of the French 
 regulars, was John Stark, then only twenty- 
 seven years old. Further comment does not 
 seem necessary. 
 
 The battle was over. Dieskau's army, 
 abandoning all its baggage, and many of his 
 men throwing away their guns, fled toward 
 Crown Point. The Provincials were ex- 
 tremely desirous of pursuing them, but Sir 
 William Johnson, knowing that a large re- 
 serve had been left behind at Crown Point, 
 and also realizing the exhausted condition of 
 his troops, who had suffered very consider- 
 able losses, did not deem pursuit prudent, 
 and though urged by Colonel Lyman to per- 
 mit a strong advance, peremptorily forbade 
 it, and ordered his troops to rest on their 
 arms. In fact, Sir William himself had 
 received a severe wound in his efforts to 
 rally the Indians when they retreated to the 
 breastwork after the death of Hendrick. He 
 150 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 was outside the breastwork on horseback, 11 
 shouting to the Indians in their own tongue, 
 and to a considerable extent restoring confi- 
 dence and order among them. Wishing to 
 look behind him for a moment, he put one 
 hand upon the pommel and the other upon 
 the cantle of his saddle, and rising up in his 
 stirrups, he turned half round. Just as he 
 did so a bullet from the French line in the 
 woods struck him in the left hip back of the 
 joint, grazing the bone, passing through the 
 fleshy part of the hip, to the right and upward 
 at an angle of about 45 degrees, and lodging 
 in the large muscle just below the small of 
 the back, making a very severe and painful, 
 though not dangerous, flesh wound. Painful 
 as this wound was, Sir William kept his sad- 
 dle until the crisis was over. When he did dis- 
 mount his left leg was quite paralyzed, and his 
 left boot full of blood. He did not even let his 
 
 1 A curious incident occurred in this battle. Sir William 
 had taken with him in the campaign a magnificent imported 
 thoroughbred stallion which he used as a charger in parades, 
 re views,, etc. He had two other horses of more common and 
 less valuable kind that he used in battle. At the beginning 
 of this action he had one of his orderlies take the stallion to a 
 place near the shore of the lake where he would be, as was 
 supposed, out of range ; but a stray bullet struck the blooded 
 stallion in the head and killed him, while the plebeian nag 
 Sir William rode in the thick of the melee came out unhurt ! 
 The stallion was worth £1,000, the nag perhaps £20. 
 
 151 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 men know that he had been hit. Fortunately, 
 it was an Indian bullet — only about half the 
 size of the ounce-ball of the regulation musket. 
 Curiously enough, he and the French com- 
 mander, Baron Dieskau, were taken to the 
 surgeons at the same time, and Sir William 
 directed them to dress the wounds of his 
 fallen antagonist before they attended to his 
 own. The bullet that wounded Sir William — 
 a half -ounce ball from an Indian's gun — 
 lodged just beneath the skin at the lower end 
 of the great muscle on the left side of the 
 small of the back, and was easily extracted by 
 cutting through the skin. 
 
 There was at the time considerable criti- 
 cism in military circles of Sir William's fail- 
 ure to follow up this victory more closely, and 
 he himself used to say in reply to these criti- 
 cisms, that if he had not been disabled, the 
 probability is that he would have yielded to 
 the importunities of Colonel Lyman and other 
 officers to pursue the retreating enemy. His 
 force was considerably superior numerically 
 to the French and Indians. The highest esti- 
 mate we have ever seen of Dieskau's force 
 was that it amounted to 1,800 men, of whom 
 about 1,100 were whites or half-breeds — 280 
 or 300 French regulars — and 800 Canadian 
 militia, together with about 700 Indians. Sir 
 152 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 William had under his command at the begin- 
 ning of the action not less than 3,000 to 3,200 
 men, of whom about 500 were Indians ; but he 
 knew that a reserve of at least 1,200 good 
 troops — regulars and Canadian militia — had 
 been left at Crown Point ; and as the distance 
 between that place and this battle-field was 
 less than a day's forced march, there was dan- 
 ger of a counter attack which, falling as it 
 must have done upon raw troops thoroughly 
 tired out and considerably shaken by their 
 losses, might have proved disastrous. 
 
 Stone says that when Colonel Lyman 
 begged that he might take the Massachusetts 
 and the New York troops, with such of the 
 Indians as might be rallied to follow him, and 
 pursue the enemy, Sir William replied: 
 "Much as I admire your spirit and honor your 
 purpose, colonel, I have reason to expect that 
 the reserve left at the Point will join the force 
 we have been contending with, during the 
 night, and then the attack on this position is 
 likely to be renewed to-morrow. Therefore, 
 I consider it dangerous to weaken my force 
 by dividing it." The question whether this 
 view of the situation was sufficient to justify 
 his refusal of Lyman's request is, of course, 
 purely a matter of speculation. It was one 
 of those cases where there can be no rule of 
 n 153 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 action except the judgment of the command- 
 ing officer on the spot. One thing is to be 
 said of Sir William Johnson, however, and 
 that is, in whatever capacity of life or in what- 
 ever emergency, private or public, civil or 
 military, he was always cool and cautious, 
 and if in any military operation he committed 
 an error, it was always sure to be on the side 
 of prudence. "The proof of the pudding, 
 etc.," is exemplified in his case. He com- 
 manded two very important expeditions dur- 
 ing the old French war — the one under con- 
 sideration and the one which resulted in the 
 capture of Fort Niagara — and it must be said 
 of him that if he never won any great, bril- 
 liant, or startling victory, he never got 
 whipped ! 
 
 No farther advance was made by the 
 forces under Sir William Johnson toward 
 Crown Point. It was getting late in the sea- 
 son. After deducting the losses in the battle 
 of Lake George, and taking account of the fact 
 that most of the Indians returned to their 
 homes soon afterward, thus reducing John- 
 son's force to less than 2,400 all told, it ap- 
 pears reasonable that he should pause at the 
 idea of attempting to storm or even besiege 
 a regular fortification like Crown Point with 
 that number of men, none of whom were regu- 
 154 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 lar troops, when the work itself was sure to 
 be defended by a force very nearly equal, and 
 likely to be largely reenforced from Canada. 
 The cooperating colonies of New York, Mas- 
 sachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire 
 showed no disposition to reenforce Johnson. 
 So that on the whole we think it may justly 
 be said that, in pursuing the course he did — 
 that is to say, of fortifying the positions he 
 had gained, and of making sure of his lines of 
 communication in his rear — Sir William dis- 
 played in a marked degree that virtue which 
 is generally described by the aphorism that 
 "discretion is the better part of valor." At 
 any rate, the king and the Duke of Cumber- 
 land appeared to be perfectly satisfied with 
 what he had achieved, because, as soon as the 
 news of the battle of Lake George reached 
 England, he was made a baronet of the hered- 
 itary class, and promoted to the rank of 
 major-general in the British regular army, 
 on the Colonial establishment. 
 
 One of the best expressions I have seen 
 with regard to the real value of Sir William 
 Johnson's victory at Lake George was made 
 by Cortlandt Van Rensselaer. He said the 
 principal value of this victory was its influ- 
 ence in rallying the spirits and restoring the 
 confidence of the American colonies. Much 
 155 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 had been expected from the three expeditions 
 planned at Alexandria and sent against the 
 French. Disappointment and sorrow had 
 already followed Braddock's terrible defeat. 
 A different though not less bitter feeling had 
 been experienced at the failure of Shirley's 
 expedition against Fort Niagara. While 
 General Johnson had not achieved the ulti- 
 mate object of his expedition — which was to 
 take Crown Point — he had inflicted a terrible 
 and destructive defeat upon a powerful 
 French force, led by the best general the 
 French had on this side of the ocean, in which 
 that general was himself placed hors de 
 combat forever. Not only were the colonies 
 filled with rejoicing, but the influence of the 
 triumph went over to England, and the deeds 
 of the Provincials at Lake George became 
 familiar to the ears of royalty and were ap- 
 plauded by the eloquence of orators on the 
 floor of Parliament. The moral effects of a 
 battle, in which the forces arrayed against 
 each other were comparatively small, have 
 rarely been greater or more decisive in the 
 whole range of military annals. Viewed 
 simply in its military aspect, the battle of 
 Lake George was the only successful achieve- 
 ment in all the thirteen colonies during the 
 campaign of 1755. 
 
 156 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 Although General Johnson's expedition, 
 as already remarked, failed in its ultimate 
 object in reducing Crown Point, it still had a 
 glamour in the brilliant success of a hard- 
 fought and well-won pitched battle. In war 
 success in one direction may and does often 
 overbalance reverse or shortcoming in an- 
 other. At the very least, or at the minimum 
 of its importance, it was, after all, the one 
 great event of the campaign of 1755. Above 
 all, it was purely an achievement of the yeo- 
 manry of New York and New England. Not 
 a single British regular was there, either offi- 
 cer or enlisted man, and certainly not the 
 least, if not, indeed, the greatest of its values, 
 was the lesson it taught to the military 
 world that American Provincials could suc- 
 cessfully face and overcome French regulars. 
 
 Sir William Johnson's wound practically 
 disabled him for about three months, and for 
 the rest of his life he always walked with a 
 slight halt or limp in the left leg. However, 
 he did not leave the camp, but continued in 
 command, giving his personal attention to his 
 duties. As soon as his wound was suffi- 
 ciently healed to enable him to leave his 
 bed, it was his habit to be carried about 
 on a litter, inspecting the fortifications of 
 the base of operations he had gained, di- 
 157 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 recting the movements of scouting parties 
 and forays into the enemy's country — ■ 
 in short, commanding his forces quite as 
 actively and as efficiently as he might have 
 done had he come out of the battle unscathed. 
 He did not return to his home at Mount John- 
 son until after winter set in. Then Colonel 
 Lyman — now promoted to the regular rank 
 of brigadier-general on the colonial establish- 
 ment — was left in command of the northern 
 line of defenses, and no further operations 
 were attempted until the following spring. 
 After the death of Hendrick he was succeeded 
 as principal sachem of the Mohawks by the 
 elder Brant, whom we have previously called 
 Nicklaus. In the battle at Lake George, 
 Brant succeeded Hendrick in command of the 
 Indians. Sir William's influence may have 
 had something to do with this selection, be- 
 cause there was another prominent candidate 
 for the succession. At this time the elder 
 Brant may have been considered Sir Will- 
 iam's " father-in-law," because, a little more 
 than a year previously, he had made Brant's 
 daughter Mary the object of his affections 
 and mistress of his household. As to the 
 other and more exalted distinction which Hen- 
 drick had so long held — that of senior chief 
 of the Iroquois Confederacy, which was an 
 158 
 
JOSEPH BRANT. 
 From a portrait in oil by Roumey. 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 elective position, not hereditary — was left 
 vacant for twenty years, until in 1775 Joseph 
 Brant was chosen to fill it. 
 
 Joseph Brant was present in this battle, 
 though only thirteen years old. In his de- 
 scription he says: "When the firing began I 
 was so overcome that I had to seize hold of a 
 sapling to steady myself. But I instantly 
 thought that such feelings were not those of 
 a warrior, and went on loading and firing the 
 small gun I had, the same as the others. 
 . . . My father, seeing me standing in an 
 open space, somewhat roughly ordered me to 
 get behind a tree — which I hastily obeyed, 
 though I had not before thought of taking 
 cover." 
 
 In January, 1756, Sir William, having 
 fully recovered from his wounds, went to New 
 York city to lay his annual report before the 
 Governor and confer with the Committee of 
 Supply, whose custom it was to have him 
 explain in detail his recommendations for 
 Indian appropriations. We have already 
 noted that during the campaign of 1755 some 
 friction occurred between Sir William and 
 Governor Shirley. After the death of Brad- 
 dock, Shirley resumed the position in which 
 the former had superseded him — that of com- 
 mander-in-chief in British North America. 
 159 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 He set up the singular contention that, as Sir 
 William had been appointed and commis- 
 sioned by Braddock to be General Superin- 
 tendent of Indian Affairs at Large, his 
 authority ended with Braddock's life, and 
 must be renewed or approved by his suc- 
 cessor! 
 
 Acting upon this theory, Shirley had, at 
 the beginning of the year, served upon Sir 
 .William a new commission, accompanied 
 with a mass of " instructions, " all of which 
 were unnecessary and most of which were 
 absurd. Sir William determined now to set- 
 tle the matter once for all. He replied po- 
 litely to Shirley, and as he always did every- 
 thing openly and aboveboard, he informed 
 him of his intention to lay the whole affair 
 before the king and ministry. He did this 
 in two letters — one to Secretary Fox of the 
 Board of Trade and the Colonies, the other 
 to the king himself. In due time Secretary 
 Fox addressed to him a letter containing a 
 royal commission as " Agent, Sole Superin- 
 tendent of the Six Nations and all other Indi- 
 ans inhabiting British territory, north of the 
 Carolinas and the Ohio Kiver," with a fixed 
 salary of £600 per annum, and a like amount 
 for official expenses. At the same time the 
 ministry addressed circular letters to all the 
 160 
 
Braddock's Defeat 
 
 Colonial governors, enclosing copies of Sir 
 William's new commission, informing them 
 that "it was the act of the king himself 
 through an order in council," and "forbidding 
 any Colonial governor to transact any busi- 
 ness with the Indians or hold any communi- 
 cation with them except through Sir William 
 Johnson." 
 
 This action settled his status for all time, 
 and he henceforth had a free hand. Shirley, 
 ignominiously snubbed, had to content him- 
 self with a personal hatred toward the baro- 
 net, which he ever afterward ardently cher- 
 ished. 1 Shirley was an active, energetic man, 
 of considerable ability in many directions. 
 But he was full of vanity, subject to small jeal- 
 ousies and petty piques. These traits weak- 
 ened and seriously compromised the efficiency 
 of an otherwise strong character and fertile 
 mind. He could never forgive Sir William 
 
 1 Shirley's subsequent splenetic and impotent hatred was 
 amusing rather than inconvenient to Sir William. In one of 
 his letters to Gen. Jeffrey Amherst in 1759, between whom 
 and the baronet the warmest friendship existed, he says : 
 
 "Shirley hates me. I am sorry for him; I almost pity 
 him. He has many good traits that are good and useful, but 
 he has also a few small traits that are bad and harmful — more 
 to himself than to any one else. His trouble lies in his tend- 
 ency to subordinate the great traits to the small ones. I do 
 not know of another instance where the makings of a great 
 character have been so spoiled by foibles." 
 
 161 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 for winning the battle of Lake George 
 against Dieskau, the French commander-in- 
 chief, while he (Shirley) was retreating in 
 disorder from Oswego, pursued by a French 
 colonel ! 
 
 162 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SERVICES IN THE LAST PART OF THE WAR 
 1756-1761 
 
 We may pass rapidly over the events of 
 1756 and 1757. There never were two drear- 
 ier years in the history of the British Empire. 
 Corruption and imbecility, incarnate in the 
 ministry of Newcastle, seemed to have 
 reached the uttermost dregs of defeat, dis- 
 grace, and disaster. And nowhere were the 
 effects so humiliating or so disheartening as 
 in the American colonies. The worst of these 
 effects took the shape of three generals sent 
 over during that period. They were Lord 
 Loudoun, General Abercrombie, and General 
 Webb. 
 
 Loudoun was a titled prig, with no knowl- 
 edge whatever of the conditions of warfare 
 in America, and very little anywhere else. 
 He was equally ignorant of the spirit of the 
 colonists or the genius and working of 
 their institutions. The only things he ever 
 did, or apparently knew how to do, were to 
 163 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 display pomp, procrastinate, and find fault. 
 He despised the Provincial soldiers, held 
 the Colonial governments in contempt, and 
 seemed to think that his orders ought to re- 
 peal laws. It is difficult to imagine such 
 utter perversity of conception or such fla- 
 grant degeneracy of mental process in a man 
 raised under British institutions as were in- 
 carnate in this empty, vapid, puffball of Eng- 
 lish aristocracy. Fortunately he did not last 
 long. But while he did last, he contrived to 
 bring the war to its most desperate stage, to 
 make French success almost universal from 
 Lake Champlain to the Ohio, and to enshroud 
 the hopeless colonies in a gloom that trenched 
 closely upon the borders of despair. Eng- 
 land has raised a big brood of worthless 
 "noblemen" (so-called). But she had never 
 before, nor has she ever since, quite dupli- 
 cated the pattern of Lord Loudoun. 
 
 Abercrombie was a bluff but dull soldier, 
 whose sole idea of warfare was the paste- 
 board system then in vogue on the continent 
 of Europe. He was brave, even to rashness, 
 but his courage was that of stupidity rather 
 than of reason. He always wanted to do 
 everything with the bayonet, and was appar- 
 ently too obtuse to see any difference in the 
 chances of that weapon between the open 
 164 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 plains of Europe and the tangled woods of 
 America. 
 
 His one effort was the assault of Fort Ti- 
 conderoga with 14,000 men, about half of 
 whom were British regulars. Montcalm de- 
 fended the works with 3,600, of whom less 
 than 2,000 were French regulars. Abercrom- 
 bie lost 2,000 men in half an hour, inflicting 
 on his adversaries a loss of less than 50. 
 Though he had over twelve thousand men left 
 and a heavy train of siege-artillery that had 
 not been used at all, he made no attempt at 
 regular siege, but retreated precipitately to 
 his base of operations. Sir William John- 
 son was present with Abercrombie's army at 
 the head of 450 to 500 Indians, but they were 
 not permitted to do anything, and shared the 
 disheartenment of their white comrades. 
 Abercrombie, like Loudoun, was of short du- 
 ration. His strut upon the American stage 
 was very brief. But while he strutted he 
 managed to paralyze the largest and best- 
 appointed army that had ever been assembled 
 on American soil. 
 
 And now we come to Webb. The sole ex- 
 ploit of this "general " was to hold his army 
 in firm leash at Fort Edward, while Montcalm 
 at his leisure besieged and took Fort Wil- 
 liam Henry, only a few miles away, his Indi- 
 165 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ans massacring many of the garrison after 
 the surrender. The only help he could vouch- 
 safe to Colonel Munro, commanding the fort, 
 was in the shape of a letter advising him to 
 surrender. But we may let Sir William de- 
 scribe Webb. He said to Colonel Peter 
 Schuyler at Albany, in a talk about the mas- 
 sacre of Fort William Henry shortly after 
 Schuyler's return from Canada on parole : 
 
 Webb 's malady is constitutional. If he had let 
 me go, I believe I could have compelled the French 
 to raise the siege. If he had supported me with his 
 whole force, I believe we could have beaten Mont- 
 calm. We had nearly seven thousand effective 
 troops, and Munro had about sixteen hundred more 
 in his garrison and fortified camp. Montcalm had 
 no more than six thousand effective. But Webb, 
 instead of marching to the relief of Munro, sent 
 him a letter advising him to surrender on the best 
 terms he could get. You know the rest. I hate 
 to say it, but the truth must be told. Webb en- 
 joys a solitary and unique distinction. He is the 
 only British general — in fact, I may say the only 
 British officer of any rank — I ever knew or heard 
 of who was personally a coward. 
 
 That Webb was and is such, no one who served 
 with him or under him could fail to perceive. He 
 was nearly beside himself with physical fear after 
 the fall of Fort William Henry. His army was 
 in good spirits, anxious to fight. The general alone 
 166 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 was panic-stricken! The fate of Braddock, who 
 was an old comrade of his in the Guards, almost 
 upset his mind. At his headquarters in Fort Ed- 
 ward, when I was present, the subject of Brad- 
 dock's expedition came up, and Webb spoke with 
 almost puerile fear of the horrors of falling into 
 the hands of the Indians. He declared he was 
 sure they would burn him at the stake if they ever 
 caught him, because they knew he was the most 
 dangerous enemy they ever had! (sic.) 
 
 It was different on the French side. 
 While the English colonies were sweltering in 
 the agony of imbecile command and sweating 
 bloody sweats under the pompous inanity of 
 Loudoun, the brutal stupidity of Abercrombie 
 and the indescribable buffoonery and pol- 
 troonery of Webb, the French had their Mont- 
 calm! This man was a wonder. We must 
 judge what he did by our knowledge of what 
 he had to do it with. When, in 1756, he took 
 the supreme command of the French forces 
 in Canada, in succession to the Baron Dies- 
 kau, defeated, wounded, and captured by Sir 
 William Johnson at Lake George, Montcalm 
 found himself almost wholly dependent on the 
 resources of the colony itself. The impo- 
 tency of the Newcastle ministry had, indeed, 
 sufficed to paralyze the military arm of Eng- 
 land in America on the land. But not even 
 167 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 the Newcastle blight could wholly wreck or 
 even seriously cripple the sea-power of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 So it happened that while, under Loudoun 
 and Abercrombie and Webb, disaster trod on 
 the heels of disaster by land, the navy of old 
 England proved irrepressible, and with its 
 Hawkes, its Boscawens, and its Howes, made 
 the ocean path between old France and New 
 France all the time well-nigh impassable, and 
 most of the time wholly so. Indeed, the 
 French sixty-gun ship that Montcalm himself 
 came over in was twice in the midst of Howe's 
 squadron between Cape Race and Bay Cha- 
 leur, and escaped only by reason of dense 
 fogs. But, if they did not happen to catch 
 Montcalm, they proved abundantly able to 
 intercept most of his supplies and to capture 
 or chase back to France all, or nearly all, of 
 the transports bringing reenforcements. 
 
 The result was that when Montcalm as- 
 sumed command he instantly saw that he 
 must fight it out with such resources in men 
 and supplies as the colony already held, and 
 that he could place no reasonable dependence 
 upon further reenforcement or succor of any 
 kind from the parent state. Here, in this 
 situation, the sea-power of England doubtless 
 wrote the brightest chapter in its history — 
 168 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 brighter, even, in the splendor of its contri- 
 bution to the sum-total of success and vic- 
 tory, than the page on which are inscribed 
 the words "Nelson" and "Trafalgar." 
 
 For, in the final act of the drama, which 
 was a play for the sovereignty of a continent, 
 while such generals as Amherst, Wolfe, 
 Forbes, and Sir William Johnson were strik- 
 ing their fatal blows at French dominion on 
 land, the omnipresent and inevitable fleets of 
 Hawke, Boscawen, and Howe were choking 
 French dominion to death on the sea. 
 
 As soon as Montcalm had gotten fairly in 
 the stirrups in 1756, he planned and executed 
 an attack on the important English post of 
 Oswego. This was the key of the western 
 Iroquois country, the principal entrepot of 
 the English fur-trade in that region, and a 
 base from which Lake Ontario might be com- 
 manded by a naval force. It had, in 1756, a 
 garrison of 1,500 or 1,600 men, and a small 
 population of civilian traders, with a few 
 women and children. Montcalm crossed the 
 lake from Oswegatchie, and in August, 1756, 
 invested Oswego with about 2,000 French 
 regulars, 2,000 Canadian militia, and 1,000 
 Indians — the latter commanded by the after- 
 ward famous Pontiac. After a brief resist- 
 ance the small garrison surrendered at 
 12 169 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 discretion. The Indians at once desired to 
 indulge in a general massacre, and ap- 
 proached the place where the prisoners were 
 under guard. 
 
 Montcalm, determined that the glory of 
 his arms should not be tarnished by cruelty 
 to prisoners, ordered his French regulars to 
 protect the captives at the point of the bay- 
 onet. They obeyed to the letter, but it was 
 not until after they had killed six of the Indi- 
 ans and badly wounded eighteen or twenty 
 more that the savages desisted. The able- 
 bodied men of the garrison were taken to Can- 
 ada as prisoners and the women and children 
 sent to Onondaga Castle under a guard of 
 French regulars. The approach of this escort 
 spread consternation through the Mohawk 
 Valley. The people thought it was the van- 
 guard of an invasion in force. Montcalm, 
 however, destroyed the forts and other build- 
 ings, sent belts of peace-wampum to the west- 
 ern Iroquois, and invited them to a conference 
 with the Governor-General at Montreal. He 
 then returned with his whole force to Canada. 
 
 The French archives contain evidence that 
 Montcalm's first intention really was to in- 
 vade New York by way of the Mohawk Val- 
 ley. But upon a closer reconnaissance, he 
 concluded that the transportation of supplies 
 170 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 by that route would present insuperable dif- 
 ficulties. After the fall of Oswego he had 
 conferences with certain Seneca, Cayuga, and 
 Onondaga chiefs, from whom he gained the 
 impression that in consequence of the recent 
 demonstrations of strength on the part of the 
 French, and weakness of the English, they 
 would remain neutral in the future. 
 
 Montcalm, upon his return to Canada, dis- 
 posed his forces for an invasion of the north- 
 ern colonies by way of Lake Champlain early 
 the next spring, and made no other movement 
 of importance during the season of 1756. The 
 Canadian Government, however, actively pro- 
 moted and instigated Indian forays upon the 
 New York, Pennsylvania, and New England 
 border settlements, whereby the whole winter 
 of 1756-57 was kept hideous with ravage and 
 massacre from the Kennebec to the Susque- 
 hanna. 
 
 Early in 1757 Montcalm moved up Lake 
 Champlain, and on the 18th of March made a 
 demonstration against Fort William Henry, 
 using the ice on Lake George as a roadway 
 of approach. Finding the place too strong 
 to be taken by coup de main, he retired to 
 Crown Point, and awaited the opening of 
 navigation. Meantime he began the building 
 of the formidable works known as Fort Ti- 
 171 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 conderoga, as an advanced post some miles 
 south of the Point. 
 
 As soon as the lakes were clear of ice he 
 transported a force of about 6,000 * men — 
 3,000 regulars, 2,000 Canadian militia, and 
 1,000 Indians — in 250 bateaux, to the head of 
 Lake George, and on the 4th of August in- 
 vested Fort William Henry and the fortified 
 camp under its guns, held by Colonel Munro 
 with something over 1,600 men. General 
 Webb was at Fort Edward, less than a good 
 day's march distant — only 14 miles — with 
 4,500 men, about half of whom were regulars. 
 Munro asked for assistance, but Webb be- 
 lieved that Montcalm had at least 14,000 men, 
 and cowered behind the parapets of Fort Ed- 
 ward. Two days after the formal investment 
 of Fort William Henry, Sir William Johnson 
 joined Webb from Albany with nearly 2,000 
 Provincials and 500 to 600 Indians. He 
 asked Webb to give him another thousand 
 men and let him march at once to the relief of 
 Munro. Webb at first assented, but when 
 Johnson's head of column had got about four 
 
 1 A detachment 1,200 or 1,400 strong under M. de Levi 
 marched down the western shore of the lake. This was a 
 ruse of Montcalm to impress the garrison when they should 
 see de Levi's detachment approaching by land that it was a 
 reenforcement. 
 
 172 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 miles from Fort Edward, peremptorily re- 
 called him, saying Montcalm was too strong, 
 and expressing fear that Johnson wonld 
 share the fate of Braddock. 
 
 In vain Sir William assured him that his 
 scouts, both Indians and Stark's Rangers, had 
 informed him that the French force did not 
 exceed 6,000. In vain he entreated and ex- 
 postulated. Webb was firm. Irresolute in 
 everything else, he could be firm only in his 
 poltroonery and consistent only in his cow- 
 ardice. 
 
 Montcalm contented himself with destroy- 
 ing Fort William Henry. That fort had been 
 made the depot of ordnance intended for the 
 movement contemplated against Crown Point. 
 Montcalm found there a siege-train of twelve 
 heavy guns, several mortars, and a large sup- 
 ply of ammunition and stores. These he took 
 away and retired to Ticonderoga, making no 
 attempt on Fort Edward, though his Indians 
 killed and scalped several of Webb's soldiers 
 within sight of its ramparts. Montcalm has 
 been criticized for his failure to follow up 
 this success. But his force was too small. 
 He had only a little over seven thousand 
 men, including the garrison of Crown Point. 
 Webb had nearly as many. 
 
 Montcalm naturally shrank from attack- 
 173 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ing a strong fortification like Fort Edward 
 with a force little if any larger than that of its 
 defenders. Had he been better acquainted 
 with Webb this consideration might not have 
 had so much weight in his mind. Owing to 
 the failure of Governor-General de Vaudreuil 
 to send a promised convoy of wagons and 
 pack animals to him, he was deficient in 
 means of land transport. And besides all 
 this, he knew that the militia of New York, 
 Connecticut, and Massachusetts would be 
 mobilized at once to support Webb. This, in 
 fact, occurred; more than 12,000 militia as- 
 sembling within striking distance of Fort 
 Edward, a few weeks after the fall of Fort 
 William Henry. Montcalm did all that his 
 resources permitted. 
 
 Only one other "great operation " oc- 
 curred during the season of 1757. Late in 
 the summer Lord Loudoun sailed from Hali- 
 fax with eleven thousand troops and a fleet of 
 sixteen sail of the line under Admiral Hol- 
 born, to attack Louisburg. But just as the 
 fleet was fairly under way, a vessel sent out 
 to reconnoiter arrived with information that 
 the garrison of Louisburg had just received 
 reenforcements, and that the French fleet 
 there was superior to Admiral Holborn's by 
 one ship of the line. His lordship thereupon 
 174 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 countermanded the orders for Louisburg and 
 sailed with his troops for New York ! 
 
 Arriving in New York, his lordship spent 
 the rest of his valuable time while in the col- 
 ony trying to bully the Governor and Assem- 
 bly, and oppressing the inhabitants by billet- 
 ing his troops upon them. There was no 
 earthly pretext for this outrage, because he 
 had plenty of stores and camp equipage, and 
 was amply prepared to make comfortable 
 winter quarters for his army in camp. His 
 conduct can be attributed to nothing but his 
 arrogance, his ignorance, and his malignity. 
 As a bully and a despot, Loudoun was a great 
 success. In every other capacity he was a 
 failure that beggars language to describe. 
 
 But while there was a dearth of large 
 operations in 1757, the tomahawk and scalp- 
 ing-knife were busy along the whole frontier, 
 the most conspicuous foray being that against 
 German Flats on the Mohawk, in November 
 of that year. The thriving village was 
 utterly destroyed and its inhabitants, with a 
 few exceptions, butchered or carried into cap- 
 tivity. It was the most atrocious massacre 
 known since Count de Frontenac's ravage of 
 Schenectady in February, 1690. 
 
 When the attack on German Flats was 
 made, Sir William, recently returned from the 
 175 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 northern frontier, was prostrated by the 
 breaking out of his old wound received at 
 Lake George. But he instantly arose, mus- 
 tered about 300 militia and 250 Indians under 
 Nicklaus Brant, and started to meet the 
 French and Indians, supposing that they 
 would continue their advance down the val- 
 ley. But they, in their turn, hearing of Sir 
 William's preparation to meet them, hastily 
 retreated to Canada without further effort at 
 destruction, except two or three isolated mur- 
 ders. The forays continued all the winter by 
 small parties, but on the whole not as destruc- 
 tively or through so wide a range as during 
 the previous winter. 
 
 The most disastrous effect of all these re- 
 verses, so far as Sir William's duties were 
 concerned, was the disaffection they inspired 
 among the western Iroquois. The Senecas 
 and Cayugas openly revolted against Eng- 
 lish influence. We have noted that Mont- 
 calm, when he took Oswego, invited those 
 tribes and the Onondagas to send delegates 
 for a conference with the Governor-General 
 at Montreal. In August, 1757, soon after 
 they learned the fate of Fort William Henry, 
 the Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas sent 
 delegates to meet de Vaudreuil. The Onei- 
 das did not send regular delegates, but sev- 
 176 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 eral members of the tribe, including the half- 
 breed chief Antone, went on their own re- 
 sponsibility — as they afterward explained 
 to Sir William, " not to speak with two 
 tongues, but that our brother Warragh-i-ga- 
 hey might have eyes and ears there to see 
 and hear." 
 
 This was probably true, because the Onei- 
 das, though admitted to the sessions of the 
 conference, were regarded by the western 
 Iroquois delegates with suspicion, and were 
 closely watched. The Mohawks and Tusca- 
 roras alone remained firm in their fealty to 
 the English. Sir William was perplexed by 
 these events, but he did not despair. In 
 October, 1757, he wrote a letter to the 
 Duke of Cumberland, which he requested 
 the duke to show to his royal father. In 
 this letter he said: 
 
 . . . But besides all other ill-effects of our 
 reverses during these two years past, is the very 
 important consideration that they have weakened 
 our alliance with the Six Nations almost to the 
 breaking point. The Indian respects nothing so 
 much as power and success, and nothing so little as 
 apparent weakness and reverses. As they say at 
 the race-course, the Indian is always shrewd in 
 ' ' picking out the winner. ' ' Judged by their prot- 
 estations to me after the Battle of Lake George, 
 177 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 one would have thought that no vicissitudes of 
 fortune could cause these Indians to waver. But 
 the victories of Montcalm and the apparent in- 
 ability of our generals to make the best use of the 
 resources they have, are causing the Indians — 
 that is, the Western Iroquois — to believe that the 
 French are going to win in this contest. 
 
 The result is that my influence over them, per- 
 sonal as well as official, is almost gone, and I have 
 no power of my own to restore it. But it could be 
 at once restored by a great victory here for our 
 arms. I do not wish to criticize individuals who 
 are my superiors in rank, but in a general way I 
 must say that the commanders we have in the Colo- 
 nies now are not adapted to the peculiar responsi- 
 bilities cast upon them, and while they may be 
 exceedingly competent under the conditions of war- 
 fare in Europe, they do not and apparently can 
 not grasp the special military problems presented 
 by our modes of war in the woods. Your Royal 
 Highness is well aware that ours is a kind of war- 
 fare that in the main may be termed irregular ; and 
 while regular troops, properly commanded and 
 handled, are of great value in its operations, only 
 disaster can result from attempts to apply the teach- 
 ings of Marlborough and Frederic of Prussia to 
 the problems presented by our war in the wilder- 
 ness. I am sure there are generals in His Majesty's 
 army who could quickly and effectively adapt 
 themselves to our peculiar conditions, but none of 
 them has as yet been sent here. 
 
 178 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 Thus closed the second of the two dreary 
 years 1756 and 1757. The handful of French- 
 men in Canada appeared about to vanquish 
 the multitude of Britons in the American col- 
 onies, and the " balance of power " that the 
 Indians held seemed gradually but surely 
 slipping over into the French side of the 
 scale. Henderson, in his Historical Mem- 
 oirs of the Duke of Cumberland, says that 
 much of the great change which soon occurred 
 in the management of affairs in America was 
 indirectly due to him. 
 
 At last, the puny and pusillanimous min- 
 istry of the Duke of Newcastle came to an end. 
 He resigned, with great reluctance, in Novem- 
 ber, 1756, after being decisively beaten on three 
 or four important votes in the House of 
 Commons. William Pitt succeeded him, and 
 at once began comprehensive measures for 
 the restoration of England's failing prestige. 
 Pitt held the premiership only five months — 
 till April, 1757 — but during this brief period 
 he sowed the seeds of success broadcast. 
 However, after Pitt resigned the king found 
 himself unable to form a ministry, and when 
 England had been nearly three months with- 
 out a government, Newcastle and Pitt formed 
 in the early part of July, 1757, a coalition 
 Cabinet, of which the duke was figurehead, 
 179 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 without a portfolio, and Pitt, in the joint 
 capacity of Secretary for Foreign Affairs 
 and for War, was the actual premier. 
 
 Of course, it required some time for this 
 great change to produce results. There were 
 no cables under the ocean then, nor could the 
 sailing ships of those days make definite time- 
 schedules like the steam transports of our 
 era. Therefore, some delay was inevitable 
 before Pitt's genius could express itself across 
 three thousand miles of sea, with only the 
 wings of sailing vessels to carry its inspira- 
 tions. But toward the end of 1758 the ex- 
 pression of Pitt's genius began to be felt, not 
 only in America, but in India — in other 
 words, all the way from the Ganges to the 
 Ohio. Pitt brought forth a Jeffrey Amherst 
 where Newcastle had a Lord Loudoun; a 
 Wolfe where Newcastle had an Abercrom- 
 bie, and a Forbes where Newcastle had a 
 Webb! 
 
 Before the end of 1758, Amherst had taken 
 Louisburg at one end of the line and Forbes 
 had occupied Fort Duquesne at the other end. 
 The only disaster that year was the bloody 
 repulse of Abercrombie's assault on Ticon- 
 deroga, on which sufficient comment has al- 
 ready been made in our brief sketch of that 
 general. Late in 1758 General Sir Jeffrey 
 180 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 Amherst became commander-in-chief of all 
 the British forces in North America, and from 
 that moment the tenor and spirit of the con- 
 duct of the war on the part of the English 
 changed. 
 
 General Amherst was peculiarly adapted 
 to the situation — more so, doubtless, than any- 
 other officer of his rank then in the British 
 army. He was a man of plain, unaffected 
 manners. In all his transactions he was 
 straightforward, frank, and sincere. He had 
 passed several years of his early military life 
 — 1735 to 1743 — in Colonial garrisons, was 
 widely acquainted in Colonial society, intelli- 
 gently comprehended the political institutions 
 of the colonies, respected their rights, and ad- 
 mired the pluck which they had so long dis- 
 played under incompetent leadership and con- 
 sequent disaster. He liked the Provincial 
 officers and men, and they liked and confided 
 in him. Prior to his time the rule had been 
 that no Provincial officer should command 
 regular troops. 
 
 One of Amherst's first acts was an order 
 to the effect that when regulars and Provin- 
 cials were serving together, the ranking offi- 
 cer in actual grade should command, whether 
 regular or Provincial, with the reservation 
 only that when a regular and a Provincial 
 181 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 officer of the same grade were operating 
 together, the regular should have the prece- 
 dence, irrespective of date of commission. 
 
 General Amherst was methodical — some- 
 times almost to the point of slowness, but he 
 was sure, and as the sequel proved, his sturdy 
 prudence served the cause better than bril- 
 liant audacity might have done. He has 
 been severely criticized for failing to push 
 on to Canada and reenforce Wolfe after his 
 capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point in 
 July, 1759, had opened the road. But Isle 
 aux Noix was still formidable, and besides, 
 the French had four quite respectable brigs- 
 of-war on Lake Champlain, while the English 
 had no naval force there whatever. As it 
 turned out, Wolfe did not need his help. Am- 
 herst said this himself, and remarked that 
 "Wolfe's behavior at Louisburg, as his sec- 
 ond in command, had satisfied him of that 
 general's ability to shift for himself." More- 
 over, to reach Quebec from the foot of Lake 
 Champlain, a considerable land march had to 
 be made, and Amherst was very deficient in 
 land transport. 
 
 The effects of this turn of fortune were 
 
 soon apparent among the western Iroquois. 
 
 In the fall of 1758 Sir William Johnson was 
 
 invited by a number of chiefs of the Senecas, 
 
 182 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 Cayugas, and Onondagas to meet them in 
 grand council at Onondaga Castle, the loca- 
 tion of the "Long House," or what might be 
 called the "Federal Capital " of the Six Na- 
 tions. On this he asked the advice of Am- 
 herst, who was then at Albany. The general 
 advised Sir William not to go to Onondaga 
 Castle, but send a counter-invitation to the 
 chiefs to meet him at his own headquarters, 
 Mount Johnson. 
 
 "It is clear that they are beginning to see 
 the turn of the tide, my dear Sir William," 
 wrote Amherst, "and while we must forgive 
 their conduct these two years past, we must 
 not let them forget that it is they, and not we, 
 who are on the stool of repentance. They 
 will come to your house. And when they do, 
 they will respect you more and have a deeper 
 sense of your dignity than if you went to 
 theirs." 
 
 The baronet took the general's advice, and 
 the conference, attended by over a hundred 
 Indians, among whom were the principal 
 chiefs of the western Iroquois, was held at 
 Mount Johnson, with the happiest results. 
 
 During the winter of 1758-59 General 
 Amherst matured his plans for a comprehen- 
 sive invasion of Canada. The taking of Lou- 
 isburg and Fort Duquesne at each extrem- 
 183 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ity of the long military frontier had clipped 
 the wings of French power. 
 
 The French, however, still held the im- 
 portant frontier posts of Ticonderoga, Crown 
 Point, and Fort Niagara. Early in Decem- 
 ber, 1758, Amherst sent an outline of his plans 
 to Pitt. These plans involved expeditions by 
 land for the reduction of Ticonderoga and 
 Crown Point on Lake Champlain, and of Fort 
 Niagara on the Niagara River. So long as 
 the French held Ticonderoga and Crown 
 Point they could command the approaches to 
 Canada by Lake Champlain, and Fort Niag- 
 ara was the key to communication by the 
 Great Lakes. Amherst's plans also contem- 
 plated a direct attack upon Quebec itself by 
 sea. He gave Pitt his judgment in detail as to 
 the number of troops that would be required 
 for these expeditions, and he also suggested 
 commanders for them. 
 
 For the command of the expedition 
 against Quebec he named General James 
 Wolfe, who had been his second in command at 
 the reduction of Louisburg the previous sum- 
 mer. For command of the expedition to Ni- 
 agara he recommended Sir William Johnson, 
 and he himself undertook to command the 
 operations against Ticonderoga and Crown 
 Point. His recommendation of Wolfe was at 
 184 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 once adopted by Pitt and confirmed by the 
 king. 
 
 At that time the genius of British military 
 education and thought ran largely to gravity 
 and slowness. Wolfe was everything but 
 grave and slow, and for that reason, although 
 his career had been thus far brilliant wher- 
 ever he had an opportunity, he was looked 
 upon in the sage and solemn councils of the 
 Horse Guards as a dare-devil, if not a hair- 
 brained sort of fellow — capable of great 
 things under command of some one else, but 
 hardly fit to be trusted with grave responsi- 
 bilities of his own. Indeed, when his appoint- 
 ment to command the Quebec expedition be- 
 came generally known, several prominent men 
 remonstrated with the king himself, and one 
 of them, whose name has not been given to 
 history, declared that Wolfe was a madman. 
 The supposition is that the author of this re- 
 mark was the Duke of Newcastle himself, 
 though Lord Hervey in his Historical Mem- 
 oirs of George II does not say so. But, who- 
 ever it may have been, the old king, who had 
 become thoroughly disgusted with the conduct 
 of affairs in the American colonies, angrily 
 responded in the decided Dutch brogue he 
 had: "Veil, den, if Yolfe is mat, I hope he yill 
 pite some of my udder chenerals ! " 
 !3 185 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 All of Amherst's recommendations were 
 adopted, except that Pitt thought it would be 
 best to place a British regular officer of high 
 rank in command of the Niagara expedition, 
 and make Sir William Johnson second in com- 
 mand. The man selected for the command 
 of the Niagara expedition was General. John 
 Prideaux, a soldier who had served for many 
 years in the Grenadier Guards and had 
 achieved a high reputation in the war of the 
 Austrian Succession, and also in the opera- 
 tions on the continent of Europe during the 
 war under consideration. The selection of 
 Prideaux proved happy, like all the rest of 
 Pitt's acts. As soon as he arrived in this 
 country and took command of his expedition, 
 which had already been organized by Sir 
 William Johnson, he frankly told the baronet 
 that he should rely upon his experience and 
 judgment implicitly — that he himself "knew 
 nothing of the conditions of warfare in the 
 woods of America, and he was not going to 
 pretend that he did." He told Sir William 
 that he should hold him responsible for 
 proper suggestion and advice every day, and 
 that whenever he (Sir William) advised or 
 suggested anything, he might consider it as 
 done. 
 
 Under these circumstances, a force assem- 
 186 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 bled at Oswego under command of Prideaux 
 at the end of June, consisting of 1,200 Brit- 
 ish regulars, 1,800 Provincials — mostly New 
 Yorkers — and 700 Indians under Sir William 
 Johnson. Before the expedition left Oswego 
 Sir William was joined by 280 more Indians, 
 mostly Senecas and Cayugas. The whole 
 force, therefore, assembled at Oswego was 
 3,000 white troops and 980 Indians. On the 
 1st of July General Prideaux, leaving Colo- 
 nel Haldimand with about 200 regulars and 
 550 Provincials to hold Oswego, sailed with 
 2,250 white troops and 980 Indians for Fort 
 Niagara, landed on the 6th of July below the 
 fort, with but trifling resistance, and on the 
 7th formally invested it. The siege went on 
 without incident of special note until the 19th 
 of July, when General Prideaux was instantly 
 killed by the premature bursting of a shell 
 upon the discharge of a Cohorn mortar, 
 whereupon the command devolved upon Sir 
 William Johnson. Here it is worth while to 
 call attention to the absolute fairness and 
 sense of justice which animated Sir William. 
 In his report of the campaign to General Am- 
 herst he said: "Much, in fact most, of the 
 credit of this achievement belongs to the late 
 General Prideaux, because I had carefully 
 studied his plans, which he imparted to me 
 187 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 with perfect freedom, and I executed them 
 with all the precision and skill of which I am 
 capable, departing from them only when com- 
 pelled to do so by circumstances which he 
 could not have foreseen." 
 
 In the meantime Colonel d' Aubrey, com- 
 manding the western district of Canada, gath- 
 ered from the posts at Detroit, Venango, Fort 
 Leboeuf, and Presque Isle, all their garri- 
 sons, abandoning them entirely. By this 
 means he assembled a force of about 1,200 
 men, of whom perhaps 200 were French regu- 
 lars and 1,000 Canadian militia. With these 
 and some 500 Indians, he hastened from 
 Presque Isle across Lake Erie, and ap- 
 proached Niagara, with the intention of rais- 
 ing the siege. Sir William, however, was 
 well informed of d' Aubrey's movements by 
 his Indian scouts, and on the 20th of July, 
 knowing that the French commander had 
 reached a point about eight miles from the 
 fort, left a sufficient force in the trenches to 
 prevent the garrison from making a success- 
 ful sortie, and then marched out with the rest 
 of his army to meet the enemy. The force 
 which he took to meet d' Aubrey consisted of 
 800 British regulars, about 700 Provincials, 
 and all of the Indians, the total strength be- 
 ing a little over 2,300. He disposed his forces 
 188 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 with the British regulars in the front and 
 center, closely supported by the Provincials ; 
 on the right he placed the whole contingent of 
 Senecas and Cayugas, some 400 strong, under 
 Hi-o-ka-to and Jean Montour ; and on the left 
 flank the rest of his Indians, about 500 strong, 
 commanded by the Onondaga chief Onasdego, 
 and the Mohawk chief Nicklaus Brant. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that in this battle 
 young Joseph Brant, son of the chief, though 
 only seventeen years old, served as lieutenant 
 in the Canajoharie company of Mohawks. 
 
 It happened that Sir William's Indians 
 forming his two flanks came in sight of the 
 enemy's Indians, similarly formed, a few min- 
 utes before the white troops got sight of each 
 other. The field of battle was mostly a grove 
 of large trees, without much underbrush, and 
 there was little impediment to the maneu- 
 vring of infantry. The two forces of Indi- 
 ans charged each other furiously, making the 
 scene hideous with their yells. At the same 
 time the British regulars, advancing rapidly 
 through the most open part of the timber, 
 suddenly struck the Canadian militia, who 
 were somewhat demoralized by the fact that 
 their Indian allies began to give way on either 
 flank. The regulars, led by Sir William in 
 person, fired one volley, and then charged 
 189 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 through the open timber with the bayonet. 
 In less than half an hour d' Aubrey's troops, 
 French regulars, Canadians and Indians 
 alike, were totally routed, and fled in the most 
 bewildering confusion, furiously pursued by 
 Sir William's Indians, who, for more than 
 three miles, strewed the ground with their 
 bodies. In this action 146 of the French were 
 killed and 96 soldiers and 17 officers taken 
 prisoners, among whom was the commandant 
 d' Aubrey himself. The number of wounded 
 was not stated in Sir William's report, but it 
 undoubtedly exceeded 300. The force which 
 d' Aubrey had brought to raise the siege was 
 completely dispersed, and was never reor- 
 ganized. 
 
 Sir William then returned to his lines at 
 the fort, and at sundown of the same day sent 
 Major Harvey of his staff to the commander 
 of the fort, informing him of the result of the 
 battle, and advising him to capitulate. Sir 
 William concluded his letter as follows: "I 
 desire not only to avoid further useless ef- 
 fusion of blood, but I must also warn you that 
 if you force me to extremities and compel me 
 to storm your works, I might not have it in 
 my power to restrain my Indians, who would, 
 by an obstinate and fruitless resistance on 
 your part, become too much enraged to be 
 190 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 withheld." The French commander, Pouchet, 
 yielded to this advice, and at seven o'clock the 
 next morning (July 25th) the garrison, con- 
 sisting of 618 of all ranks, surrendered at dis- 
 cretion. The fort was occupied by Sir Will- 
 iam's troops, and the male prisoners were 
 escorted by a detachment of the Forty-fourth 
 Regiment of British regulars to Oswego ; from 
 there they were sent to New York, and from 
 New York to England. The women and chil- 
 dren, or at least such of them as desired to 
 do so, were allowed to go to Montreal. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that, although in 
 this operation Sir William had under his com- 
 mand nearly a thousand Indians, almost half 
 of whom were Senecas and Cayugas — at that 
 time among the savagest of Indian tribes, so 
 far as methods of warfare were concerned — 
 and who were, besides, extremely wrought up 
 by the loss of several of their braves, includ- 
 ing two popular chiefs — yet not the least in- 
 jury or insult was offered by them to the cap- 
 tured garrison, nor did they take any of the 
 private property of the French troops, or of 
 the families that were in the fort. They took 
 only such plunder as Sir William Johnson 
 allotted to them in the way of legitimate 
 spoils. By this exploit Sir William Johnson 
 — then already decorated by the victory at 
 191 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 Lake George — became among the most fa- 
 mous men in all the colonies and in England. 
 General Amherst wrote him a most compli- 
 mentary letter, praising the skill of his com- 
 binations and the efficiency of his execution 
 of them. The Duke of Cumberland also 
 wrote a letter to him saying, in allusion to 
 Sir William's total lack of regular military 
 education or training, that "if all of His 
 Majesty's gentlemen subjects were like your- 
 self, there would be no need of military 
 schools." 
 
 The principal strategical consequence of 
 the reduction of Fort Niagara was to sever 
 the last link of communication between the 
 eastern and western possessions of France in 
 North America, and its importance to the gen- 
 eral plan of operations was but little if any 
 less than the taking of Fort Ticonderoga and 
 Crown Point about the same time by the main 
 army under General Amherst. 
 
 Sir William was extremely attached to 
 General Prideaux. When that officer first 
 arrived in the colony in the spring, while the 
 expedition was forming, he was Sir William's 
 guest at Mount Johnson for several days. In 
 a letter of condolence to the general's rela- 
 tives in England, Sir William said, among 
 other things : 
 
 192 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 Brief as our association and acquaintance were, 
 I had no friend whose friendship I valued more 
 than that of General Prideaux. He was the soul 
 of honor and courtesy, both in official and personal 
 intercourse. He had no vanities or jealousies or 
 small traits whatsoever. It was his constant custom 
 to spend most of his time in the trenches among 
 the soldiers — a habit indeed to which his untimely 
 death was due. He was as popular among the com- 
 mon soldiers and as much beloved by them as by 
 the officers who had the honor and pleasure of 
 most intimate association with him. By his death 
 the King has lost one of the brightest ornaments 
 of his service. 
 
 After the surrender of Fort Niagara, Sir 
 William remained there about two weeks, re- 
 pairing fortifications and arranging for the 
 comfort of the sick and wounded, both of his 
 own force and of the prisoners, who were un- 
 able to be taken away. Then he left Colonel 
 Farquhar in command of the fort, with a gar- 
 rison of 700 men, and returned by the lake 
 to Oswego, where he arrived on the 7th of 
 August. In a short time Brigadier-General 
 Gage of the regular army came to Oswego, 
 and as he ranked Sir William, assumed the 
 command. 
 
 Sir William used to say that no incident 
 of this campaign was more gratifying than 
 193 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 the opportunity it gave him to lead a consid- 
 erable force of British regulars in a decisive 
 action — a privilege that no Provincial officer 
 up to that time had enjoyed. This was due 
 to General Amherst's order previously noted. 
 Under the conditions that formerly prevailed, 
 Colonel Haviland of the Forty-fourth regu- 
 lars would have succeeded General Prideaux, 
 notwithstanding that Sir William Johnson 
 was a major-general on the Colonial estab- 
 lishment. 
 
 Various schemes were at once set on foot 
 for the reduction of posts on the north side 
 of Lake Ontario, and at the head of the St. 
 Lawrence, including the forts of la Galette, 
 Oswegatchie, and Frontenac. For some rea- 
 son, General Gage did not approve these 
 plans. Some time later, when General Am- 
 herst was apprised of them, and informed 
 that Sir William had vigorously advocated 
 the movement, he coincided with him, and 
 criticized the inaction of Gage, saying, among 
 other things, that a movement of that kind, 
 whether successful or not, must have ab- 
 sorbed the attention of a considerable part of 
 the forces which, in the absence of such at- 
 tack from the head of the St. Lawrence, were 
 left free to strengthen the hands of Montcalm 
 at Quebec. However, nothing further was 
 194 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 accomplished on the lake frontier during the 
 rest of the summer, and in October Sir Will- 
 iam disbanded his Indians and returned to 
 his home at Mount Johnson. 
 
 It is not within the scope of this work to 
 describe Wolfe's campaign against Quebec, 
 except in the most general terms. In fact, it 
 hardly needs a new description, because few 
 actions in modern warfare have been more 
 widely chronicled, more thoroughly analyzed, 
 or more permanently committed to fame than 
 that. Hardly ever was there so dramatic a 
 battle ; hardly ever have such momentous con- 
 sequences hung upon the issue of one. Every- 
 thing about it was dramatic. The stealthy 
 scaling of the steep declivities up to the 
 plateau of Abraham by Wolfe and his sol- 
 diers, under cover of night and fog ; the sur- 
 prise and almost dismay of Montcalm when 
 the rising sun disclosed that his adversary 
 had outwitted him ; then the desperate effort 
 of the French to retrieve their fortunes ; the 
 steady, indomitable tenacity with which the 
 English held their advantage; the final rout 
 of the French; the mortal wounding of both 
 commanders, and the last words of each; 
 Wolfe saying, when his aide-de-camp told him 
 that the French were fleeing: "I am now con- 
 tent to die " ; Montcalm, when told by his sur- 
 195 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 geon that he had but a few hours to live, and 
 hearing the tramp of his beaten and retreat- 
 ing troops through the streets of Quebec: "I 
 am glad of it, for I shall not live to witness 
 the surrender of Quebec." All these episodes 
 have made the battle of Quebec not merely 
 a theme for history, but an inspiration of 
 poetry as well. 
 
 The forces that Wolfe deployed on the 
 plateau of Abraham were about 5,600 strong 
 — all regulars; one regiment, however, the 
 "Royal American Regiment of Foot," of which 
 the first battalion formed part of Wolfe's 
 army, though in all respects borne on the 
 Regular Establishment, was wholly recruited 
 and mostly officered from the colonies — the 
 only natives of Great Britain serving in it 
 being the lieutenant-colonel in command, a 
 major, two captains, and the surgeon. So far 
 as is known, every enlisted man in it was of 
 colonial birth or citizenship. 
 
 Montcalm's force consisted of about 3,500 
 French regulars and 2,000 to 2,500 Canadian 
 militia. The loss of the British army has 
 been estimated variously at from 800 to 1,000 
 men killed and wounded. The French loss 
 was never reported. Montcalm's army was, 
 however, practically dispersed. The surviv- 
 ing regulars made their way to Montreal, and 
 196 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 the militia, for the most part, disbanded and 
 went to their homes. 
 
 With the fall of Quebec on the one hand, 
 and Fort Niagara on the other, together with 
 the ^expulsion of the French garrisons from 
 Ticonderoga and Crown Point, the power and 
 dominion of France in Canada was now nar- 
 rowed down to the remnants of different 
 forces which assembled at Montreal under 
 command of the Governor-General, the Mar- 
 quis de Vaudreuil. The season, however, 
 was too far advanced for any further opera- 
 tions in the latitude and climate of Canada. 
 General Amherst therefore put all his regular 
 forces in winter quarters, and furloughed his 
 Provincials, that they might spend the winter 
 at their homes. In the meantime he laid his 
 plans for an attack upon Montreal as soon as 
 spring should open in 1760, with the entire 
 disposable British force in the northern col- 
 onies. 
 
 Nothing of particular note occurred dur- 
 ing the winter. In his plan of campaign, 
 General Amherst projected a simultaneous 
 attack on Montreal from three points. Gen- 
 eral Murray was to come up the St. Lawrence 
 from Quebec. Colonel Haviland, in command 
 of the force which garrisoned Ticonderoga 
 and Crown Point during the winter, was to 
 197 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 move down Lake Champlain and the Riche- 
 lieu River — reducing Isle aux Noix on his way 
 — and then march across the country to Mon- 
 treal; while General Amherst was to assem- 
 ble the main army at Oswego and move across 
 Lake Ontario to the head of the St. Lawrence, 
 reducing the forts at la Galette and Oswe- 
 gatchie, and thence to descend the St. Law- 
 rence to Montreal. The troops under com- 
 mand of General Stanwix, forming the De- 
 partment of the Ohio, were recalled, and the 
 garrisons of the smaller forts in the colony 
 of New York were all brought together and 
 made part of General Amherst's grand army 
 at Oswego. He was detained somewhat 
 longer than he had contemplated, mainly by 
 the slowness with which the Provincial troops 
 reassembled. "The colonial troops," he wrote 
 Sir William Johnson, "come in slow. ... I 
 hope you will do everything in your power 
 to hasten their arrival." 
 
 Sir William explained in reply that the 
 delay was greatly due to the drought which 
 prevailed that spring, by which the waters of 
 the Mohawk and Oneida rivers became so low 
 that navigation upon them, which was neces- 
 sary for the transportation of stores, was 
 greatly retarded and almost suspended. 
 However, all arrangements for the campaign 
 198 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 were completed by the 12th of June, and Gen- 
 eral Amherst proceeded to Oswego, where an 
 army of 6,000 Provincials and 4,000 British 
 regulars was assembled. On July 25th Sir 
 William Johnson joined him with 650 war- 
 riors, and the day before the expedition sailed 
 it was further increased by 700 Senecas and 
 Cayugas, with whom was a considerable 
 number — perhaps 200 — of Oswegatchie and 
 Caughnawaga Iroquois, who had previously 
 been under the influence of the French. This 
 made the whole number of Indians under the 
 command of Sir William Johnson, 1,350 — the 
 largest force of that race ever assembled on 
 this continent up to that time. 1 General Am- 
 
 1 In this campaign Sir William had his Indians organized 
 in what might be called a "brigade" of two "regiments." 
 One "regiment" was composed of the eastern Iroquois — 
 Onondagas, Mohawks, Oneidas, Tuscaroras, and "River Indi- 
 ans " ; the other of the Senecas and Cayugas, or western Iro- 
 quois. The "eastern regiment" was something over 600 
 strong and commanded by the elder Brant (Mcklaus). The 
 " western regiment " was 700 strong and commanded by the 
 redoubtable Hi-o-ka-to, with Captain Montour and Young 
 Cornplanter in command of its two wings. Sir William said 
 that Hi-o-ka-to's command of western Iroquois was the finest 
 body of men in the physical sense that he ever saw assembled. 
 "What a pity it is," he wrote to General Amherst, "that 
 these magnificent Indians could not have seen the right war- 
 path for their interests earlier in the struggle ! " 
 
 An interesting episode of this campaign was that John 
 Johnson, then eighteen years old, accompanied his father's 
 
 199 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 herst sent Colonel Haldimand with a command 
 of a thousand men to clear the head of the St. 
 Lawrence of any obstructions that might im- 
 pede safe navigation, and on the 10th of 
 August embarked from Oswego with his 
 whole army. La Galette and Oswegatchie 
 were reduced without serious resistance, 
 although la Galette, which was defended by 
 Fort Levi, a regular fortification, held out 
 until the 25th of August, when the comman- 
 dant, Pouchet, surrendered at discretion. He 
 was the same officer whom Sir William John- 
 son had captured the year before at Fort 
 Niagara, and who had been exchanged. 
 When Fort Levi surrendered the Indians 
 found in the deserted huts of the enemy a few 
 
 division as a lieutenant of Provincials, while Joseph Brant, 
 also eighteen years old, served under his father Nicklaus as 
 captain of the Mohawk Indian company of Canajoharie Castle. 
 General Amherst's main army as it sailed from Oswego 
 was in three divisions, each about 4,000 strong. The first, 
 composed mainly of regulars, was commanded by General 
 Gage; the second, composed of a battalion of regulars and 
 the New England Provincials, was commanded by Colonel 
 Haldimand; and the third, composed of all the New York 
 Provincials and all the Indians, was under the command of 
 Sir William Johnson. Captain John Stark's Rangers, in two 
 companies, were attached to Sir William's headquarters and 
 reported directly to the commander of the division. Though 
 the Indians had been organized in companies in the Niagara 
 campaign the year previous, this was the first time they had 
 ever been "brigaded" or subjected to regular discipline. 
 
 200 
 
KING HENDEICK AND SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON. 
 
 Bronze statue at the State Park, Lake George. 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 Mohawk scalps, and raising the war-whoop 
 or scalp-yell, desired at once to commence a 
 general massacre. 
 
 Sir William immediately suppressed this 
 outbreak in a most peremptory fashion, 
 threatening that if the Indians persisted in 
 their purpose, he would instantly ask General 
 Amherst to back him up with a strong force 
 of British regulars and Provincials, and the 
 fierce intentions of his warriors were thor- 
 oughly quelled before they had done any 
 damage. This was the first and last time he 
 ever had occasion to resort to drastic disci- 
 pline in handling his Indians. 
 
 On the 31st of August General Amherst 
 again embarked his army, and proceeded care- 
 fully down the St. Lawrence River reconnoi- 
 tering at every step of his progress, and af- 
 fording the enemy no opportunity for a sur- 
 prise. The boats passed the rapids of the St. 
 Lawrence above Montreal, though not with- 
 out* some casualties. Several boats were 
 crushed against the rocks and 46 men were 
 drowned. On the 6th of September Am- 
 herst's army arrived within sight of the 
 church spires of Montreal, and so well had his 
 plans been concerted and matured, that, sin- 
 gular as it may seem, General Murray, on 
 the same day, approached it in the other 
 14 201 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 direction from Quebec. The next day Colonel 
 Haviland also joined the main army with his 
 division from Ticonderoga and Crown Point. 
 General Amherst now completely surrounded 
 the city and sent a message to the Marquis 
 de Vaudreuil, informing him of the exact 
 strength of his army, which, after the junc- 
 tion of the three forces, his own, Murray's, 
 and Haviland's, was over 18,000 strong, ex- 
 clusive of Sir William Johnson's Indians. He 
 assured the French Governor-General that his 
 most ardent desire was to prevent useless 
 shedding of blood, that he knew exactly the 
 force under the Governor-General's command 
 and the elements of which it was composed, 
 and stated them in his letter with an exact- 
 ness that startled the marquis. 
 
 So far as his own force was concerned, as 
 a proof of his good faith, he invited the mar- 
 quis, if he so desired, to come to his camp and 
 review it himself. Coming from some men, 
 this sort of thing might have been classed as 
 bravado, but in the case of Sir Jeffrey Am- 
 herst it was nothing more than the prompt- 
 ings of his absolute integrity and his perfect 
 sense of honor. General Amherst sent his first 
 communication to the Governor-General late 
 in the afternoon of September 6th. Early in 
 the morning of the 7th de Vaudreuil replied, 
 202 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 assenting in the main to the propositions the 
 General had advanced, but requesting two 
 days for deliberation and consultation with 
 his subordinate officers. This General Am- 
 herst cheerfully granted, but the Governor- 
 General did not consume the whole of the time 
 given him. At noon, the 8th of September, 
 he sent a letter to the British commander 
 incorporating the terms of a capitulation that 
 he was willing to sign. This capitulation 
 provided that the French troops then under 
 arms in Montreal should be permitted to 
 march out with the honors of war, retaining 
 their colors and personal effects; that their 
 arms should be stacked in their quarters and 
 not laid down; that they should not be held 
 as prisoners of war, but should be paroled 
 until such time as they could be transported 
 to France; that within a reasonable time all 
 other French prisoners of war held by the 
 British should be released and allowed to 
 return to France; that all British prisoners 
 of war held by the French should be immedi- 
 ately given up; that all captives held by the 
 Indians hitherto in alliance with either party 
 should, as far as practicable, be returned 
 to their homes on both sides ; that private 
 property of every kind should be respected, 
 and that the British commander should take 
 203 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 the responsibility of maintaining order in the 
 city and its environs. 
 
 To these terms General Amherst added 
 the stipulation that Canada, with all her 
 dependencies, should be surrendered to the 
 Crown of Great Britain, and all claims of 
 France to dominion over any part of Canada 
 or her dependencies should cease. Upon the 
 exchange of these terms, an interview was im- 
 mediately arranged between General Amherst 
 and the Marquis de Vaudreuil. In this inter- 
 view General Amherst was supported by Gen- 
 eral Murray, Sir William Johnson, General 
 Gage, and Colonel Haviland. The Governor- 
 General by only a single aide-de-camp. There 
 was litt'le discussion in this interview. Sir 
 Jeffrey Amherst and the Governor-General 
 passed the usual formalities of politeness, 
 and then General Amherst handed to the mar- 
 quis his response to the letter embodying the 
 proposed terms of capitulation. He agreed 
 to all of them, but said that it would be neces- 
 sary to get up some method of distinguishing 
 public from private property, concerning 
 which the Governor-General had made no sug- 
 gestion. To this the marquis agreed, and a 
 commission was appointed, consisting of Sir 
 "William Johnson and General Gage on the 
 British side, and Colonel Levi and another 
 204 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 officer on the French side. Little difficulty, 
 however, was experienced in arriving at the 
 desired distinction. Arrangements also had 
 to be made for provisioning ' the troops 
 forming the French garrison. When all 
 these preliminaries were settled, de Vau- 
 dreuil sadly led his dejected and dilapidated 
 forces out of Montreal, and the town was 
 occupied by a British garrison under Gen- 
 eral Gage. General Murray was sent back 
 the day after the completion of the capitu- 
 lation to Quebec with 4,000 'men as a gar- 
 rison. 
 
 When the town was about to be occupied 
 by the British forces, General Amherst wrote 
 a note to Sir William Johnson requesting him 
 to take the greatest pains to restrain his Indi- 
 ans from any excesses that they might be dis- 
 posed to commit. Sir William's characteris- 
 tic response, much appreciated by Amherst, 
 and which he was afterward fond of relating 
 as a good joke, was as follows : 
 
 Camp before Montreal, September 9th, 1760. 
 My dear General: Replying to your note of 
 this date, I take pleasure in saying that I shall not 
 only cheerfully hold myself personally responsible 
 for the behavior of every one of my Indians, but if 
 you desire it, I will detail a suitable detachment of 
 my Senecas to act as provost guard in the town ! 
 205 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 When we consider that the Senecas were 
 notoriously thqf worst Indians Sir William 
 had, the humor of this proposition will be 
 apparent. History does not record that Gen- 
 eral Amherst accepted the generous proposi- 
 tion. 
 
 On the 12th of September General Am- 
 herst left Montreal for New York, and the 
 next day Sir William embarked with his 1,300 
 Indians in bateaux, in which they returned 
 by easy stages to Oswego, where they were 
 disbanded. 
 
 During this campaign, the same as during 
 the Fort Niagara expedition, the Indians in 
 service received the same pay and allowances 
 as the Provincial troops. When disbanded 
 at Oswego they were paid off, loaded with 
 presents, each Indian receiving, among other 
 things, a new blanket taken from the French 
 public stores captured at Montreal. This 
 event practically terminated the old French 
 War, and brought the entire continent of 
 North America east of the Mississippi River 
 and, generally speaking, north of the vast ter- 
 ritory subsequently included in what is known 
 as the Louisiana Purchase, under British 
 rule. 
 
 The French still occupied Detroit, Mack- 
 inaw, St. Mary's (Sault Ste. Marie), and one 
 206 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 or two other small forts in the country of the 
 upper lakes. 
 
 Major Rogers, commander of the Inde- 
 pendent Battalion of Scouts, which bears his 
 name, together with his second in command, 
 Captain John Stark, were sent with a suitable 
 escort to notify the garrisons of these posts 
 of the situation. They took with them certi- 
 fied copies of the capitulation signed by the 
 Governor-General, also the orders of the Brit- 
 ish commander for the temporary regulation 
 of affairs at those posts until a permanent 
 government should be established. This duty 
 was accomplished without difficulty worthy of 
 note. 1 
 
 General Amherst went to New York, 
 where he was received with all possible pub- 
 lic demonstrations of joy, and all the honors 
 due to his achievement were bestowed upon 
 him. He was afterward raised to the peer- 
 age in England under title of his own name as 
 Baron Amherst. 
 
 1 When near Detroit Rogers and Stark were met by Pon- 
 tiac, who demanded to know why they entered his country 
 with an armed force. He had already been apprised by Indian 
 runners of the capitulation at Montreal, but said that de Vau- 
 dreuil had no right to surrender him! After some parley, 
 however, Pontiac was appeased and Rogers and Stark went 
 on to Detroit, which was at once surrendered by its comman- 
 dant, d' Aubrey. 
 
 207 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 Sir "William Johnson, after disbanding 
 and paying off his Indians at Oswego, re- 
 turned to his home at Mount Johnson, his 
 military career now being at an end. 
 
 General Amherst, however, did not con- 
 sider the work complete, and as soon as the 
 demonstrations in his honor at New York 
 were over, he immediately planned a cam- 
 paign to begin at once against the French 
 settlements in Louisiana. To this end, 
 knowing that the climate in that region would 
 be unfavorable for the operations of British 
 or Northern Provincials before the month of 
 January, he proposed to sail from New York 
 about the 1st of December with a fleet of 20 
 sail of the line and a force of about 6,000 
 British regulars. At the same time he pro- 
 posed that an expedition, composed of Pro- 
 vincial troops from New York, Pennsylvania, 
 and Virginia, should rendezvous at Fort Pitt, 
 at the head of the Ohio, and before the close 
 of navigation proceed down the Ohio and 
 Mississippi rivers. This force, he thought, 
 ought to be at least 4,000 strong, and he pro- 
 posed that it should be placed under the com- 
 mand of Sir William Johnson. 
 
 This project, however, was not carried out. 
 Although General Amherst was commander- 
 in-chief of all the forces, and practically in 
 208 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 that capacity viceroy of all the North Ameri- 
 can colonies, yet his advisers in New York 
 counseled him that it would not be wise to un- 
 dertake such an expedition without the express 
 consent of the ministry, in view of the fact 
 that during the whole war the British had 
 made no attempt whatever upon the Louisiana 
 colony, and that colony had, so far as any 
 one knew, done nothing to oppose the British 
 arms. General Amherst argued that it would 
 take at least three months before the project 
 could be laid before the ministry, considered 
 by them, and an answer returned. By that 
 time, he said, it would be too near spring 
 for British and northern Colonial troops to 
 operate safely in that latitude and climate. 
 Thereupon, for some reason that never has 
 been explained in history, the whole project 
 was dropped. France was allowed to retain 
 her sovereignty over Louisiana until a day or 
 two before the signing of the definitive treaty, 
 when she ceded all of her possessions known 
 as the colony of Louisiana to the Spanish 
 Crown. 
 
 While the subjugation of Canada and the 
 expulsion of French rule gave rest to the offi- 
 cers and troops who had been so arduously 
 and so long engaged accomplishing the result, 
 it only served to vastly enlarge the sphere of 
 209 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 Sir William Johnson's duties and augment 
 his responsibilities as general superintendent 
 of all the North American Indians. Hereto- 
 fore he had practically only the Iroquois to 
 deal with ; now he was called upon to pacify 
 and bring into compliance with the terms 
 of the new situation the great number of In- 
 dians in the numerous tribes who inhabited 
 the great west and northwest, and who had 
 previously been wholly under French influ- 
 ence. He foresaw at once that in this task he 
 must encounter at the outset a very great and 
 embarrassing difficulty. He foresaw that Eng- 
 lish traders would undoubtedly make great 
 efforts to get control of the Indian trade in 
 those regions, and that, in consequence, trou- 
 bles were likely to arise between them and 
 the French traders, who had so long controlled 
 that commerce, and doubtless difficulties with 
 the Indians themselves would ensue. 
 
 The ink was hardly dry on the articles of 
 capitulation of Montreal when Sir William 
 went to New York to consult with General Am- 
 herst on this subject. By this time he and 
 the general had become the closest of friends, 
 each confiding absolutely in the other's judg- 
 ment, and each taking counsel of the other in 
 every great emergency. Sir William ex- 
 plained to the general that in his judgment 
 210 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 the best policy for the British to pursue was 
 to let the French residents of Canada as much 
 alone as possible, and not to interfere with 
 their trade or their personal relations with 
 the Indians. He said he was satisfied that 
 they would all become loyal and faithful sub- 
 jects of the king, and that their good-will 
 should be sedulously cultivated, and the as- 
 sistance of their influence with the Indians 
 freely invoked. He also held that it would 
 be unwise to make any attempt at changing 
 the religious influences that had so long been 
 exerted over the Canadian Indians. He ar- 
 gued that any effort to interfere with the 
 influence of the Catholic priests would create 
 distrust among the Indians, whether con- 
 verted or not. On the whole, he told General 
 Amherst that he believed the best policy for 
 the British to pursue would be — now that they 
 possessed the governing power in Canada — 
 to leave all other conditions as nearly in 
 statu quo as possible. To every one of these 
 propositions General Amherst gave hearty 
 assent; and as, in view of the practical veto 
 upon his proposed invasion of Louisiana, he 
 intended soon to sail for England, he prom- 
 ised Sir William that he would exhaust his 
 influence with the ministry and the king to 
 have Sir William's ideas carried into effect. 
 211 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that the policy 
 pursued by the British Government toward 
 the French and Indians in Canada, from that 
 day to this, has been based practically upon 
 the system advocated by Sir William John- 
 son in January, 1761. 
 
 Filled as he always was with a profound 
 sense of the responsibilities of his position, 
 and realizing that not only the interests of his 
 government, but that the comfort and well- 
 being of the Indians depended almost wholly 
 upon the management of their affairs, Sir 
 William lost no time in making himself ac- 
 quainted with the nature and volume of the 
 new duties which the change of rule in Canada 
 had brought upon him. Early in the spring 
 of 1761, in fact, immediately after his return 
 from New York and his interview with Gen- 
 eral Amherst, previously mentioned, Sir Will- 
 iam sent a considerable number of his most 
 trustworthy Indian runners, mostly Mohawks 
 and Oneidas, with some Senecas, to travel all 
 through the country of the Canadian Indians, 
 and those farther west, with messages and 
 belts of peace-wampum, inviting them to send 
 their chiefs and delegates to meet him at a 
 grand council, which he proposed to hold at 
 Detroit some time in August of that year. He 
 set out from Fort Johnson for Detroit on the 
 212 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 5th of July, 1761, accompanied by his sou, 
 John Johnson — afterward Sir John — then a 
 youth of nineteen, and his nephew, Lieutenant 
 Guy Johnson. During this journey Sir Will- 
 iam kept a journal, in it almost daily record- 
 ing every incident worthy of historical note 
 that occurred. Among the pleasant duties he 
 had to perform at the outset of this journey 
 was to assemble at the principal castle of each 
 tribe all the Indians who had accompanied 
 General Amherst's expedition to Montreal, 
 for the purpose of distributing to them 
 medals which he and the general had per- 
 suaded the Assembly of New York to have 
 struck off for them. Having performed this 
 pleasant duty, which consumed several days, 
 and having attended at the Seneca capital a 
 grand ceremonial in memory of the Indians 
 of that tribe who were killed in the battle of 
 Niagara in 1759, he went on to Niagara, and 
 from there to Detroit. The necessary limits 
 of this volume do not admit of any extended 
 extracts from his extremely interesting jour- 
 nal. By way, however, of exhibiting the fact 
 that in the midst of the most important pub- 
 lic duties Sir William never forgot his home 
 or domestic responsibilities, we quote one 
 entry dated Wednesday, October 21, 1761. 
 The following is the exact text : 
 213 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 Wednesday, 21st. — A fine morning, a warm day. 
 Embarked at eight o'clock. At the Three River 
 Rift met Sir Robert Davis and Captain Ethering- 
 ton, who gave me a packet of letters from General 
 Amherst, and a copy of a treaty made at East on in 
 August by Mr. Hamilton, of Philadelphia, with 
 some scattering Indians who remained about that 
 part of the country — all of little or no consequence. 
 Encamped in the evening about three miles above 
 the Three Rivers. Captain Etherington told me 
 Molly was delivered of a girl — that all were well at 
 my house, where they stayed two days. 
 
 In this mission to Detroit Sir William was 
 exceedingly successful; in fact, as he states 
 in the journal from which we have just 
 quoted, he was suprised at the alacrity with 
 which the western and northwestern Indians 
 accepted the new state of affairs. Arriving 
 at Detroit, he held a council, or rather a series 
 of councils, lasting eighteen days. He did nof 
 have, nor was it his purpose to have, all the 
 Indians together at one time. He preferred 
 to deal with them tribe by tribe, if possible, 
 or at any rate in numbers not sufficient to 
 form an unwieldy assemblage. While at De- 
 troit he was visited by, and had conferences 
 with, representatives of all the tribes of any 
 importance east of the Mississippi and north 
 of the Ohio. He had no trouble with any of 
 214 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 them, and they all seemed willing to meet the 
 British at least half-way. Some of them, 
 notably the Ottawas and Hurons, who were 
 well aware of the British propensity to gain 
 possession of the lands of the Indians, and 
 whose location in Canada — that is to say, in 
 that rich country embraced in the triangle 
 formed by Lakes Erie and Ontario on the 
 south, the Ottawa River on the northeast, and 
 Lake Huron, Lake St. Clair, the Detroit and 
 St. Clair rivers on the west — appeared anx- 
 ious on that subject, and pressed Sir William 
 for assurances that their new Great Father, 
 the British king, who had so recently become 
 their guardian, would cause his people to 
 maintain the same land policy toward them 
 that had been for nearly two hundred years 
 maintained by their former Great Father, the 
 king of France. Undoubtedly these were 
 embarrassing propositions for Sir William, 
 because he knew what the British land-hunger 
 meant for the Indians as well as the Indians 
 themselves did. He admits in his journal 
 that he was nonplussed at having this, which 
 had always been the most crucial question 
 in the Indian policy of the British, thrust 
 at him by the Ottawas and the Hurons on 
 the occasion of his first visit to them, but 
 he does not enlighten us as to how he an- 
 215 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 swered their proposition, or, perhaps, how he 
 evaded it. 
 
 While at Detroit, Sir William employed as 
 interpreters in dealing with the Hurons, Otta- 
 was, Chippewas, and other Canadian tribes, 
 the Jesuit Fathers St. Martin and Pottier. 
 Father St. Martin was the leading Jesuit of his 
 time. He was the author of the History of 
 New France, referred to in a previous chap- 
 ter, though it had not been printed at that 
 time. However, Sir William knew all about 
 his rank as an ecclesiastic and his influence 
 over the Indians — particularly the Ottawas, 
 Hurons, and Chippewas. Therefore, the 
 baronet was quite attentive to Father St. Mar- 
 tin. The priest was at that time over sixty 
 years of age, and had passed forty years of 
 his life among the Indians. In 1761 he lived 
 at the Old Huron Mission, a few miles from 
 Detroit on the shore of Lake St. Clair. On 
 the 17th of September Sir William visited 
 him at the mission, recording the event in his 
 journal : 
 
 Thursday, 17th. — . . . Arrived at the Huron 
 castle soon after 4 o'clock, where the Indians 
 were drawn up and saluted me. Encamped here. 
 Visited the Mission Priest, Pierre Pottier. Supped 
 with Saint Martin, the famous Jesuit, M. La Bute, 
 and others. Then went to the council room of the 
 216 
 
Services in Last Part of the War 
 
 Hurons, where they had everything in good order 
 and three fires burning. . . . 
 
 It would appear that Sir William ex- 
 hausted his powers of diplomacy upon the 
 good old French priest. Father St. Martin 
 had made up his mind to return to France and 
 pass the rest of his life there. Sir William 
 besought him to stay in Canada, where all his 
 life-work had been done, and to use his vast 
 influence with the Indians in the interests of 
 peace under the new regime. The priest ex- 
 pressed fear of interference by the English 
 conquerors with the Catholic institutions, so 
 long established among the Indians. Sir Will- 
 iam persuaded him not only that there would 
 be no such interference, but that it would be 
 the policy of the English to sustain the priests 
 in their efforts to Christianize and civilize the 
 Indians. Finally, Father St. Martin agreed 
 to remain in Canada, and he was afterward 
 extremely useful under the British rule. 
 A year or two later he went to France to ar- 
 range for the printing of his book, but 
 returned to Canada and remained there until 
 his death, some twenty years later. He was 
 the last of the school of Father Marquette, La 
 Salle, Joliet, and Hennepin. 
 
 After this visit to the Huron mission, Sir 
 is 217 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 William set out on his return journey the 20th 
 of September, and arrived at Mount Johnson 
 the 30th of October, having made several 
 stops on the way to visit various forts and 
 Indian villages. Among other things during 
 this trip, the baronet regulated the number of 
 troops to be maintained in the several garri- 
 sons required in western Canada, the total 
 being about 1,200 regular troops. He also 
 provided for a force of Indian or half-breed 
 runners and scouts, to be employed in the pay 
 of the king at the several forts and trading- 
 posts. 
 
 218 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 PONTIAC'S WAR AND SIR WILLIAM^ ESTATE 
 1761-1770 
 
 After the treaty — or treaties — of Detroit 
 in 1761 the Indians, both in the older English 
 colonies and the newly acquired domain of 
 Canada, remained quiescent for two years. 
 In view of the vastly increased scope of his 
 duties, both as to the number of Indians and 
 as to the extent of territory to be dealt with, 
 Sir William found it necessary to operate in 
 all ordinary or routine affairs through depu- 
 ties. He already had one deputy superin- 
 tendent, who had held the position for several 
 years, with headquarters, after 1758, at Fort 
 Pitt, and having charge of the Indians in the 
 Ohio Valley. He now appointed two more 
 deputy superintendents. One was his son-in- 
 law, Colonel Daniel Claus, husband of his 
 daughter Nancy; and the other his nephew, 
 Colonel Guy Johnson, who was soon to be 
 married to his daughter Mary — both by his 
 white wife. Croghan remained in charge of 
 219 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 the Ohio Indians, with headquarters as be- 
 fore, at Fort Pitt. Colonel Claus was placed 
 in charge of the Canadian Indians west of the 
 Ottawa River, with headquarters at Detroit. 
 Colonel Guy Johnson took charge of the Iro- 
 quois and the Canadian Indians east of the 
 Ottawa, with headquarters at Oswego. This 
 arrangement relieved the baronet of all minor 
 details of Indian administration, leaving him 
 free to devote his time to questions of general 
 policy and to the adjustment of differences 
 among the Indians themselves. It was not 
 easy to make such hereditary enemies as the 
 Iroquois and Algonquins comprehend the idea 
 of living in peace under control of the same 
 superintendent. Affairs, however, progressed 
 without much jarring until 1763. 
 
 We have remarked that Sir William ac- 
 quired in 1751 or 1752 a large tract of land, 
 patented to himself "and others " in 1753 as 
 the "Kingsboro Patent," and located a little 
 distance north from the Mohawk River, in 
 the region round about the present city of 
 Johnstown, N. Y. Among the "others " men- 
 tioned as parties in this tract was Arent 
 Stevens, a widely celebrated Indian trader 
 and interpreter. Sir William gradually 
 bought out his associates, one by one, until 
 the entire tract came into his possession. It 
 220 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 embraced about 26,000 acres. 1 From time to 
 time he made substantial improvements on 
 this tract, clearing considerable areas, build- 
 ing sawmills and a grist-mill, and settling 
 upon it a considerable colony of tenants, 
 mostly Scotch-Irish and Highland emigrants. 
 
 About 1760 or 1761 it had become more 
 valuable and important than his smaller 
 estate at Mount Johnson, and he decided to 
 remove to it. During the years 1761-62 he 
 built a manor-house on this estate, to which 
 he gave the name of "Johnson Hall." It is 
 still standing, near the present city of Johns- 
 town — which he, at the same time, founded. 
 
 In the early spring of 1763 the new manor- 
 house was completed, and Sir William moved 
 into it, leaving Mount Johnson and the estate 
 connected with it in possession of his eldest 
 son and heir — afterward Sir John Johnson — 
 then just arrived at the age of twenty-one. 
 Johnson Hall was — and is — a large, commo- 
 dious mansion, and at that time the most im- 
 posing edifice west of the Hudson River. It 
 consisted of a main building of wood, weather- 
 
 1 The total area was much more than 26,000 acres. But 
 many settlers were already within its boundaries, having built 
 houses and cleared farms. They had no valid titles, but Sir 
 William gave them deeds for nominal consideration and did 
 not disturb any of them. 
 
 221 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 boarded in a fashion to resemble blocks of 
 hewn stone — much like Washington's resi- 
 dence at Mount Vernon. It had two wing- 
 buildings in the same style of architecture, 
 though smaller and built of stone. 
 
 Sir William had by this time accumulated 
 a large family. It consisted of his two 
 daughters by Katharine Weisenburg — Nancy 
 and Mary — then about twenty-two and twenty 
 years old, respectively, the former recently 
 wedded to Colonel Daniel Claus, and the 
 latter soon to be married to his nephew, 
 Colonel Guy Johnson. Besides these — his 
 children born in wedlock — there were Char- 
 lotte and Caroline Johnson, his half-breed 
 daughters by Caroline Hendrick, these about 
 fourteen and eleven years of age, respectively, 
 and the five little half-breeds that Molly Brant 
 had borne to him in the nine years of their 
 life together. The sixth of Molly Brant's 
 children, a girl named Mary, was born at 
 Johnson Hall, not long after its occupation 
 by the family. Sir William's half-breed son 
 by Caroline Hendrick, young William John- 
 son, did not make his home at the mansion, 
 but lived at Canajoharie, part of the time with 
 his grandfather, the sachem Abraham, and 
 part of the time with his uncle, "Little Abe." 
 However, at this particular time, young Will- 
 222 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 iam Johnson was attending Dr. Wheelock's 
 Academy at Lebanon, Conn., along with his 
 cousin, Joseph Brant, who graduated in the 
 spring of that year. 1 
 
 It was at his new residence of Johnson 
 Hall that Sir William received the first inti- 
 mations of Pontiac's conspiracy in the sum- 
 mer of 1763. He was not apprised of it until 
 just before the storm burst. This was the 
 first time in his twenty years' experience in 
 dealing with the Indians that the baronet had 
 been taken off his guard. The secrecy with 
 which Pontiac's plot had been hatched, con- 
 sidering its vast extent and thorough organi- 
 zation, was marvelous. For more than a year 
 its arrangements had been in progress, car- 
 
 1 Joseph Brant used to relate with much relish an anecdote 
 of his high-spirited young half-breed cousin, who was seven 
 or eight years his junior. Young Ralph Wheelock, the rev- 
 erend doctor's son, had a saddle pony, and one day, thinking 
 to make young William Johnson "fag" for him, ordered the 
 half-breed boy to go and saddle up the pony and bring it 
 around to the door. "I won't do it," said young Johnson. 
 "A gentleman's son, as I am, does not perform menial serv- 
 ice for the sons of common people ! " 
 
 " What is a gentleman ? " inquired young Wheelock rather 
 superciliously. 
 
 "A gentleman," quickly responded the young half-breed, 
 " is a man who lives in a big mansion, has a great lot of land, 
 keeps race horses, and drinks Madeira wine at his dinner — 
 and your father doesn't do a single one of those things ! " 
 
 Young Wheelock saddled the pony himself. 
 
 223 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 ried out among many tribes, and covering a 
 vast territory; yet, with all Sir William's 
 elaborate system of information through his 
 scouts, traders, and runners, the first out- 
 break took him completely by surprise. This 
 outbreak was the attack on Detroit, the best 
 fortified post west of Niagara. 
 
 It was garrisoned by two companies of 
 British regulars, having 128 men and 8 
 officers, of Gage's light infantry. The first 
 effort of Pontiac was to take it by stratagem, 
 which was frustrated by the vigilance of 
 Major Gladwyn, the commandant. The major 
 had a pretty Chippewa half-breed girl as 
 housekeeper and companion, and she, over- 
 hearing the conversations of the Indians in 
 their own tongue, discovered their intentions 
 and informed her protector just in the nick 
 of time. Gladwyn at once took precautions, 
 refused to admit the Indians inside the stock- 
 ade, and on the 7th of May, when they tried to 
 force their way in, killed two of their chiefs 
 with his own pistols right in front of the main 
 gate. 
 
 Pontiac, observing that his plot was de- 
 tected, then settled down to a close siege, 
 which was maintained, with many vicissi- 
 tudes, until November 15, when the Indians, 
 worn out, dejected, and discouraged, not only 
 224 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 abandoned the siege, but sued for peace. 
 Pontiac, deserted by his warriors, sullenly 
 returned almost alone to his village, declaring 
 his intention to try it again. 
 
 Almost simultaneously with the attack on 
 Detroit a large force of Ohio Indians — Shaw- 
 nees, Wyandots, Miamis, Delawares, and Min- 
 goes — invested Fort Pitt. The garrison at 
 this post was four companies of the Royal 
 Americans, and the real commandant was 
 Major George Croghan, Deputy Superintend- 
 ent of Indian Affairs. As soon as tidings of 
 the attack reached the settlements of Pennsyl- 
 vania, east of the mountains, General Am- 
 herst sent Colonel Bouquet, with 500 regulars, 
 mostly Highlanders, to raise the siege. Dur- 
 ing his march Bouquet was joined by 280 or 
 300 Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiersmen. 
 Among these was a company of about fifty, 
 from the upper Potomac and Shenandoah val- 
 leys, who came up the Cumberland Valley and 
 joined the expedition at Carlisle — or where 
 that town is now. There was nothing par- 
 ticularly remarkable about these fifty Vir- 
 ginia backwoodsmen, except that their cap- 
 tain was a man of the name of Daniel Mor- 
 gan! 
 
 They were nearly all hunters and trap- 
 pers ; men from whom the Indians themselves 
 225 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 could learn lessons in woodcraft and the art 
 of bush-fighting. 
 
 The 5th of August, 1763, when Bouquet's 
 force was within a few miles of the fort, the 
 savages laid an ambuscade for him at a place 
 called Bushy Run, on a plan much similar to 
 the ambush into which Braddock had marched 
 eight years before. But Bouquet was not 
 Braddock. Apprised of this ambuscade by 
 some of his Pennsylvania backwoodsmen, 
 whom he kept in advance as scouts, he was not 
 taken by surprise. The scout who first dis- 
 covered and reported the presence of the In- 
 dians in force was Lewis Wetzel, then a youth 
 hardly twenty years old, but who subse- 
 quently became one of the most bloodthirsty 
 and successful "Indian-killers " known to 
 American history. A most desperate battle 
 ensued, resulting in the total rout of the sav- 
 ages, who lost over 300 out of about 700. The 
 loss of Bouquet's force was 8 officers and 115 
 enlisted men killed or wounded, nearly one- 
 third of the latter mortally. Bouquet then 
 marched without further opposition to the 
 fort, the besieging Indians fleeing down the 
 river in their canoes. 
 
 Several attempts against Fort Niagara 
 were made by a force mainly composed of 
 renegade Senecas, with some Ottawas and 
 226 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 Ohio Indians. They surprised and massa- 
 cred two or three small parties in the neigh- 
 borhood of the fort, but did not attempt to 
 besiege it. While these events were in prog- 
 ress the Indians attacked, with more success, 
 the smaller and slenderly garrisoned posts of 
 Leboeuf, Venango, Presque Isle, St. Joseph, 
 Maumee, Mackinaw, Sandusky, and St. 
 Mary's, butchering their unfortunate garri- 
 sons almost to a man. 
 
 However, before the end of 1763 the main 
 force of Pontiac's rebellion was crushed, and 
 though spasmodic outbreaks occurred for a 
 year afterward, it never again assumed for- 
 midable proportions. General Amherst was 
 disposed to deal in a conciliatory spirit with 
 the Canadian Indians. But he was bitter- 
 ly incensed at the conduct of the Senecas, 
 and informed Sir William, in the winter 
 of 1763-64, that it was his intention in the 
 early spring to take a force of regulars 
 and Provincials — which he proposed to com- 
 mand in person — and, as he expressed it, 
 "wipe forever from the face of the earth 
 that faithless, cruel tribe, who have already 
 too long debauched the good name of the 
 Iroquois Confederacy by pretending to be- 
 long to it ! " 
 
 In a memoir of Lord Amherst, published 
 227 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 anonymously in London in 1798, about a year 
 after his death, appears the following : 
 
 . . . General Amherst objected to any fur- 
 ther negotiation with the Senecas. They were, he 
 said, destitute of honor, faithless, treacherous, and 
 a race of natural-born criminals and murderers. 
 They cumbered the ground. He could make no use 
 of them but exterminate them as a warning example 
 to all other Indians. He at once formulated a gen- 
 eral order for concentration of all the British forces 
 in North America against the Seneca nation. He 
 called for 10,000 militia to be furnished by Massa- 
 chusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, 
 Pennsylvania, and Virginia in appropriate quotas. 
 Of the 11,000 British regulars then in the colonial 
 garrisons he ordered 6,500 to take the field. He 
 also directed that the services of friendly Indians, 
 if proffered, should be declined, as this was to be 
 purely a white man's war! He proposed to move 
 against the Senecas in four columns. General Bou- 
 quet with the Pennsylvania and Virginia militia 
 and the 700 regulars in the Ohio District — alto- 
 gether about 3,500 strong — was to move from Fort 
 Pitt up the Allegheny River and French Creek to 
 attack from the southwest. General Haldimand 
 was to assemble at Fort Niagara a force of 3,000 
 regulars drawn from the Canadian garrisons and 
 assail the Western Senecas. Sir William Johnson, 
 with the New York and Connecticut militia and 500 
 regulars — altogether about 3,500 strong — was to 
 228 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 move down the Susquehanna and up the Chemung 
 against the southeastern towns. While General 
 Amherst in person, with the Massachusetts and New 
 Hampshire militia and 2,500 regulars, forming a 
 force of about 6,000, was to invade the Seneca coun- 
 try from the east by way of the Mohawk Valley and 
 Onondaga. " No male Seneca capable of bearing 
 arms will be spared," he said. " The women and 
 children will be taken prisoners and afterward dis- 
 tributed among the other tribes. The Seneca nation 
 as an organized tribe must disappear ! Every habi- 
 tation in the Seneca country will be razed to the 
 ground. Their crops will be destroyed and their 
 live stock killed or driven off. It is my intention to 
 destroy the tribe and completely desolate their 
 country. After that is done their lands will escheat 
 to the Crown and will at once be opened to white 
 settlement. ' ' 
 
 That General Amherst was able to accomplish 
 his purpose is beyond question. The force he pro- 
 posed to mobilize was about 16,000. The total pop- 
 ulation of the Seneca nation was not more than 
 10,000 or 11,000, and they could not, even by levy 
 en masse, muster over 1,500 fighting men. In fact, 
 any two of his proposed four columns of invasion 
 could have crushed the tribe. That the Senecas 
 merited condign punishment for their perfidy and 
 cruelty is quite clear. But that they deserved the 
 dire fate General Amherst threatened to visit upon 
 them is not so apparent. 
 
 There is, however, circumstantial evidence that 
 
 229 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 the commander-in-chief did not intend to be as 
 savage as his word. No militia was actually em- 
 bodied except the Mohawk regiment under Colonel 
 Claus and three independent companies of Scho- 
 harie and the Susquehanna. The only movement of 
 regulars was a transfer of the second battalion, Six- 
 tieth Royal American Foot, about 800 strong, from 
 the garrison of Quebec to Oswego. Moreover, the 
 tenor of General Amherst's orders was, by some 
 mysterious agency, made known in the Seneca vil- 
 lages almost as soon as at the colonial capitals. . . . 
 If, as seems plausible, it was a threat on a grand 
 scale, the effect was all that could have been desired, 
 because the Senecas abjectly sued for mercy and 
 peace and never again made any trouble. 
 
 Sir William vigorously opposed this pol- 
 icy. He declared that what the Senecas had 
 done was not their act as a tribe, but the inde- 
 pendent, unauthorized, and much-regretted 
 action of their bad or misguided young men. 
 The Senecas, on their part, hearing of Gen- 
 eral Amherst's project, sued in the most 
 abject manner for peace, and promised to 
 deliver up the prime instigators of the de- 
 fection among them. Upon this, Amherst 
 relented. They gave up to him nineteen of 
 the "instigators," and after hanging two of 
 the worst of them at Onondaga Castle, by 
 way of an "object-lesson," the general aban- 
 230 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 doned his declared intention of "extermina- 
 ting the tribe " ! 
 
 "In all my long and happy acquaintance 
 with him," says Sir William in his journal, 
 "this was the first time I ever saw General 
 Amherst display real anger. But on this oc- 
 casion he was thoroughly roused, and all his 
 usual placidity of temper seemed to have van- 
 ished. In truth, it was with difficulty at first 
 I could induce him to listen to my expostula- 
 tions." 
 
 The hanging of the two sub-chiefs of the 
 Senecas by General Amherst at Onondaga 
 Castle was the first exhibition the Indians had 
 seen of the Anglo-Saxon mode of punishing 
 murderers. In order to make the spectacle 
 more impressive, the general ordered the 
 bodies of the culprits to be sunk in Onondaga 
 Lake with stones tied about their necks, as 
 food for the fishes. And he forbade any 
 mourning or other funereal rites for them in 
 the tribe, threatening to hang any one who 
 should attempt to offer any rites to their 
 memory. The fact is that, but for Sir Will- 
 iam's intercession, Amherst would have 
 hanged the whole nineteen renegades who 
 were delivered up to him. As it was, he took 
 the other seventeen to New York and kept 
 them in jail there until every vestige of Pon- 
 231 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 tiac's conspiracy had disappeared. They 
 were not released until Pontiac himself form- 
 ally surrendered in 1766. During their two 
 years of imprisonment eight out of the seven- 
 teen died. The fates of these renegades 
 cowed the Senecas for all time. 
 
 It was, perhaps, fortunate for the restora- 
 tion of tranquillity between the white people 
 and the Senecas, that General Amherst was 
 appointed Governor of Virgina at the end of 
 1763, and left the New York frontier in the 
 spring of 1764 to take up his new duties 
 shortly after the events just noted. His de- 
 parture left Sir William Johnson in complete 
 control of the situation, and he soon succeeded 
 in bringing the Senecas to a status of perfect 
 obedience and amity. However, the un- 
 wonted spectacle of publicly hanging two of 
 their chiefs on the same gallows was a lesson 
 that sank deep into their memories. To them 
 it was an infinitely severer punishment than 
 even burning at the stake. " That way of kill- 
 ing a warrior with a rope," they said, "chokes 
 him so he can not sing his death-song. He can 
 sing his death-song at the stake, but not when 
 he is being choked to death by a rope ! " 
 
 As we have remarked, Pontiac himself did 
 not surrender until 1766, nearly three years 
 after the outbreak of his plot, and two years 
 232 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 after its complete suppression. Finally, 
 after much negotiation and correspondence, 
 Pontiac agreed to meet Sir William at Oswego 
 to smoke the great calumet of peace and 
 pledge his fealty to the King of England. On 
 the 23d of July, 1766, the great chief and Sir 
 William met face to face at Oswego. Stone 
 gives a striking description of their meeting : 
 
 As it was now the warmest of summer weather, 
 the council was held in the open air, protected 
 from the rays of the sun by an awning of ever- 
 greens. ... At one end of the leafy canopy the 
 manly form of the Superintendent, wrapped in his 
 scarlet blanket bordered with gold lace, and sur- 
 rounded by the glittering uniforms of British offi- 
 cers, was seen with hand extended in welcome to 
 the great Ottawa, who, standing erect in conscious 
 power, his rich plumes waving over the circle of his 
 warriors, accepted the proffered hand with an air 
 in which defiance and respect were singularly 
 blended. Around, stretched at length upon the 
 grass, lay the proud chiefs of the Six Nations, 
 gazing with curious eyes upon the man who had 
 come hundreds of miles to smoke the calumet with 
 their beloved Superintendent. 
 
 From Oswego Sir William went to Niag- 
 ara, where he held a grand council with dele- 
 gates from all the western and Ohio tribes 
 that had been implicated in Pontiac's con- 
 is ' 233 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 spiracy. He was detained at Niagara for 
 some time by delay in arrival of delegates 
 from the tribes farthest west, and he says that 
 he "took advantage of this waiting-spell to in- 
 dulge in his favorite sport of gunning for wild 
 fowl which, at this time of the year, swarm 
 upon the waters of the river, bay, and lake." 
 
 Finally, in September, Sir William re- 
 turned to his home at Johnson Hall. 
 
 The events just related practically ended 
 his direct personal attention to Indian affairs. 
 The treaties he made at Oswego and Niagara 
 included every Indian tribe hitherto under 
 French dominion or influence, together with 
 the Ohio tribes — Shawnees, Wyandots, Mia- 
 mis, Mingoes, Delawares, and the remnant of 
 the Piquas or Piankeshaws. Most of the 
 southern Indians were also represented at the 
 Niagara council; Cherokees from western 
 North Carolina and northern Georgia ; Chick- 
 asaws from what is now middle and northern 
 Alabama; Yemassees from the uplands of 
 South Carolina ; Catawbas from northwestern 
 North Carolina and the southern part of what 
 is now West Virginia. No delegates were 
 present from the Creeks of southern and mid- 
 dle Alabama and Georgia, or from the Choc- 
 taws and the Natches of what is now Missis- 
 sippi. Some of these latter tribes, notably 
 234 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 the Creeks and Choetaws, were still under the 
 Spanish and French influence, yet dominant 
 in Florida and Louisiana. But, on the whole, 
 the era beginning with the surrender of Pon- 
 tiac was one of peace between the two races 
 that lasted until the outbreak of the Revolu- 
 tion. 
 
 The deputy-superintendent system worked 
 well. To the three deputies already in office 
 — Croghan, Claus and Guy Johnson — Sir 
 William now added a fourth in the person of 
 Colonel Thomas Polk, of Mecklenburg, N. C, 
 who assumed charge of the southern tribes, 
 with headquarters where the city of Augusta, 
 Ga., now stands. 
 
 From this time on the baronet retained 
 under personal supervision only his faithful 
 Mohawks, Oneidas, Oghwagas, and Tusca- 
 roras. But these had almost ceased to be 
 Indians. Most of them could speak English, 
 and many of them could read and write. The 
 Mohawks, now thoroughly intermingled with 
 the white population of the valley that bears 
 their name, had farms which they cultivated 
 as thriftily as their white neighbors. In some- 
 what less degree the same was true of the Onei- 
 das. The Oghwagas and Tuscaroras in the 
 Susquehanna Valley, from the Unadilla to 
 Chenango Point, and in the Great Bend, had 
 235 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 many fertile clearings, orchards, and com- 
 fortable log-cabins. In these tribes the sys- 
 tem of landholding was similar to that of the 
 white people. Each Indian farmer owned 
 and cultivated his separate farm. The west- 
 ern Iroquois — Onondagas, Cayugas, and Sen- 
 ecas — had a good deal of land cleared and 
 under cultivation, with numerous orchards, 
 and for the most part lived in cabins made of 
 logs, or wattles plastered with clay and roofed 
 with bark. But these tribes still adhered to 
 the ancient usage and cultivated their lands 
 in common. All were tranquil and appar- 
 ently contented. Sir William had little to do 
 in the official way but keep in touch with his 
 deputies and watch the fruition of the work 
 to which he had so long given his energies, 
 and which he had conducted with such marvel- 
 ous skill, patience, and courage. He now had 
 under his control, or within the scope of his 
 official authority, nearly two hundred thou- 
 sand Indians. 
 
 The state of civilized comfort which the 
 Iroquois had reached in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, though often described, is hardly real- 
 ized by modern readers. In 1765, after the 
 suppression of Pontiac, the British Govern- 
 ment determined to make a road practicable 
 for artillery and all kinds of wagon or sleigh 
 236 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 traffic from the upper Mohawk to Fort Niag- 
 ara. Sir William Johnson, being directed to 
 make this road, organized a surveying party 
 to lay out its route. The party consisted 
 of Simon Metcalf, Philip Burlingame, Ezra 
 Buell, James Ogden, and Sir William's half- 
 breed son, William Johnson, who, having 
 "graduated" at Dr. Wheelock's Lebanon 
 Academy, had decided to learn the art of sur- 
 veying. In his Narrative, Ezra Buell de- 
 scribes several of the towns through which 
 they passed. We select his description of the 
 "Old Castle Town," at the foot of Seneca 
 Lake, near the present site of Geneva, N. Y. ; 
 Here, he says, is a clearing about two miles 
 long and more than a mile wide, bounded on the 
 southeast by the lake shore. In the midst of it, 
 about 60 rods from the lake, is the Old Castle, a 
 strong log building, with a parapet around the roof 
 well loopholed for musketry and the whole sur- 
 rounded by a substantial log stockade. There is a 
 spring inside the stockade and the whole structure 
 will shelter a garrison of at least 300 to 350 men. 
 From the Old Castle in both directions, east and 
 west, is a broad street, I would say a hundred and 
 fifty feet wide. On both sides of this thoroughfare 
 are built, at distances of one or two hundred feet 
 from each other, one-story log houses, having fire- 
 places with chimneys made mostly of wattles filled 
 in with clay, though some are of stonework. In 
 237 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 many of the fireplaces I noticed swinging cranes to 
 hang kettles on, the same as in white people 's houses. 
 They have plenty of cooking utensils — kettles, spi- 
 ders, skillets, Dutch ovens, and roasting-spits. In 
 some houses the floors are of hard-beaten clay; in 
 others of puncheons (split logs), neatly fitted and 
 smoothed off, and deer and elk skins, tanned with 
 the hair on, are made to serve as carpets. The 
 houses are built one room wide and in lengths ac- 
 cording to the needs of the family. Some of them 
 are four rooms in length, the rooms being generally 
 from 12 to 14 feet square. The fireplace is usually 
 in the middle room. 
 
 The cleared land is tilled in common, each fam- 
 ily getting its share of the whole product. The 
 crops are corn, pumpkins, melons, apples, pears, 
 peaches, beans, and lately they raise some pota- 
 toes and turnips. They have a good many horses 
 and a few cattle. But cattle need too much 
 care and feeding in winter to suit the Indians. 
 Besides, they have plenty of wild meat, and as they 
 do not wish for milk, they have little need of cattle. 
 In the village are 72 inhabited houses besides six 
 log huts, roofed over, used as storehouses for corn 
 and other provisions for winter. The total number 
 of inhabitants is 427, of whom about 50 are half- 
 breeds. 
 
 An important article of food with them is fish, 
 with which the lake and Seneca River actually 
 swarm — trout of several varieties, whitefish, pike, 
 pickerel, and many other species. The Indians 
 
 238 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 catch them mostly by spearing in the night, with a 
 light at the bow of their canoes, which attracts the 
 fish to the surface. They use a three-pronged spear 
 and are very expert with it. These fish they salt 
 down or smoke — such as they do not eat fresh. 
 They get salt from the springs at Onondaga, where 
 they go two or three times a year to make it by 
 boiling the water in kettles or leaving it to evaporate 
 under the hot sun in shallow troughs. Much of the 
 timber about here is hard maple, from which they 
 make quantities of molasses and some sugar of an 
 inferior kind. They make cider by mashing apples 
 in a large mortar and then letting the pulp or pum- 
 ice ferment in large troughs hollowed out of logs. 
 When the pulp gets soft they squeeze out the juice. 
 It seems to agree with them, but our party suffered 
 diarrhea from drinking it. . . . Altogether, the 
 Senecas at Old Castle live as well as most of the 
 white settlers in a new country. But I could see 
 that they have no ambition for improvement beyond 
 a certain point, as white settlers have. As soon as 
 certain creature wants are satisfied they are done. 
 Here, at Old Castle Town, they appear to have 
 reached the end of their ambition and are content. 
 The great war-chief, Cornplanter, lives here. He 
 is the half-breed son of an old Indian trader by 
 name of Abiel and a Seneca woman. Cornplanter 's 
 wife is a white woman, young and neat. He does 
 not allow her to work, but keeps two or three squaws 
 to be servants for her. He is a fine, stalwart fel- 
 low, very sensible, keeps open house for his friends, 
 
 239 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 and is true to the King as steel. Here also resides 
 the famous Council Chief, Kay-ag-sho-ta. He is 
 reputed the best orator and wisest counselor in the 
 Seneca nation. He always represents them in 
 councils and conferences with the Government peo- 
 ple. He made some mistakes at the beginning of 
 Pontiac's war, but his glib tongue has got him 
 safely out of them ! 
 
 Three families of white people live here. They 
 are the agent for the Eastern Senecas, Captain Mc- 
 Master, his wife and two children; the licensed 
 trader, Mr. Forman, his wife and three children; 
 and the gunsmith, a Switzer, by name Drepard. 
 The gunsmith is the most important personage here. 
 The Indians often bring their broken guns a hun- 
 dred miles to have him repair them. They have 
 plenty of firearms. Every Indian able to carry a 
 gun has one and some have two or three, taken from 
 the enemy in the last war. A few of them have 
 creased rifles, which they obtain in trading expedi- 
 tions down the Susquehanna, whither they often go 
 as far as Lancaster in Pennsylvania. This gun- 
 smith was put here by Sir William Johnson through 
 agreement with the Indians in 1759. His wife is a 
 handsome young half-breed woman and they have 
 one small child. . . . 
 
 Most of the Indians here dress after the fashion 
 of white people. The men wear blue or green 
 hunting-shirts, braided and fringed, and cloth or 
 deer-skin leggings and moccasins. They are fond 
 of the uniform coats of British or Provincial sol- 
 
 240 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 diers. They do not wear the blanket as a garment, 
 as wild Indians do, except in very cold weather. 
 
 The women wear gaudy-colored jackets, pro- 
 fusely braided and beaded, and flannel petticoats 
 reaching a little below the knee, with leggings of 
 fawn-skin and moccasins. . . . 
 
 The Post is half a mile east of the village on 
 the lake shore. It has four good-sized log houses 
 of two stories — the agent's house, the trader's 
 house, the trader's store, which also contains the 
 gunsmith's shop, and the gunsmith's house — all 
 surrounded by a strong palisade of logs set deep 
 in the ground. It is a busy place, many Indians 
 from distant towns being always here to trade, or 
 to see the agent, or get their guns mended. 
 
 It is worthy of note that the trader 's two clerks 
 are both young Indians educated at Canajoharie, 
 one a half-breed, the other a full-blood. 
 
 About the time under consideration Sir 
 William made a report to the Colonial Office 
 in London, giving an enumeration of all the 
 Indian tribes within his sphere of control or 
 influence. This was in detail of the several 
 tribes, and stated only the number of able- 
 bodied men in each. But he explained that 
 the grand total of all ages and sexes could be 
 ascertained by considering the number of able- 
 bodied men or warriors as one to every ten. 1 
 
 1 Not all of the able-bodied men in any Indian tribe were 
 rated as warriors. A considerable number were always pro- 
 
 241 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 The Six Nations and eastern Canadian In- 
 dians he estimated at 3,960 warriors, indica- 
 ting a population of about 40,000. The Ot- 
 tawa Confederacy at 3,800 warriors, or 38,000 
 total. The various branches of the Chippewa 
 Nation at 4,000 warriors, or 40,000 in all. 
 The southern Indians — Cherokees, Creeks, 
 Choctaws, Chickasaws, etc., at 6,000 warriors, 
 or 60,000 all told. All other remnants of 
 tribes, about 1,000 able-bodied men, or 10,000 
 total population. No Indians living west of 
 the Mississippi were included. In a note ap- 
 pended to this estimate Sir William said : 
 
 West of the Mississippi and north of the Mis- 
 souri rivers are many large tribes subject to His 
 Majesty's government by the territorial terms of 
 the Treaty of Paris properly construed. But I 
 must say it is quite evident to me that the framers 
 of that treaty were in sore need of a scholar in 
 geography. As for the numbers of these far-west- 
 ern tribes, I can get no accurate information. They 
 have been visited only by the Jesuit Brothers and 
 the French and half-breed voyageurs and coureurs 
 des bois, none of whom pays much attention to sta- 
 tistical matters. All I can get from them is that 
 many tribes inhabit that country, and some of them 
 
 fessional hunters, and these never took the war-path in dis- 
 tant expeditions ; in fact, were not expected to fight unless 
 in defense of their villages. On an average the professional 
 hunters were about one-fifth of the able-bodied males. 
 
 242 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 are very numerous. The Jesuit Father, St. Martin, 
 and his attendant, Jacques la Bute, whom I met 
 at Detroit in 1761 and who interpreted for me 
 there with the Hurons, jib ways, and other north- 
 western nations, had been as far to the northward 
 and westward as the Mandan country a few years 
 before. They believed there were more Indians 
 west of the Mississippi than east of it; but said 
 they were exceedingly primitive, had no fire-arms, 
 and were not settled in more or less permanent vil- 
 lages like the Indians who live in the forest coun- 
 try to the eastward, but roamed in a nomadic fash- 
 ion over all the great treeless plains in that region. 
 They declared their belief that these far-western 
 Indians must be 250,000 in number. 
 
 These estimates are probably the source of 
 Professor Donaldson's calculation, that in the 
 third quarter of the eighteenth century there 
 were half a million Indians in North America, 
 north of the Bio Grande and Gila rivers. 
 
 After 1766, Sir William's life was, in the 
 main, reposeful. His four deputies trans- 
 acted the business of their respective districts 
 with signal ability and success. In 1768 Colo- 
 nel Polk accomplished the hitherto impossi- 
 ble task of making a treaty with the Creeks ; 
 a transaction with which Sir William had 
 nothing to do, except approve the action of his 
 subordinate and secure the royal signature. 
 243 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 The last great public work of the baronet's 
 lifetime was completed also during the year 
 1768. That was the ratification of a definite 
 boundary between the territory of the Six 
 Nations and the colony of New York, with an 
 actual survey and delimitation — known to 
 histoiy as the "Fort Stanwix Treaty Line." 
 This line began at Wood Creek, near Fort 
 Stanwix, ran thence southeast to the Forks of 
 the Unadilla River; then followed that river 
 to its confluence with the Susquehanna; then 
 ran due south to the present site of Deposit, 
 N. Y. ; thence southeast to the Pennsylvania 
 line — which was the Delaware River; thence 
 west-northwest to the Susquehanna at Owego ; 
 thence down the latter river to the mouth of 
 Towanda Creek; and from that point it was 
 projected in an air line on the point of com- 
 pass required to strike the confluence of the 
 Allegheny and Monongahela at Fort Pitt or 
 Pittsburg. This is the line traced on the map 
 compiled with great care and accuracy by the 
 author of The Old New York Frontier, Francis 
 Whiting Halsey. It corresponds with the 
 field-notes of Ezra Buell, who was assistant to 
 the chief surveyor, Simon Metcalf . But Ezra 
 says in his narrative that "the easterly jog in 
 the line was never observed by the whites or 
 insisted on by the Indians." As to purchase 
 244 
 

Pontiac's War 
 
 of lands, and actual settlement, he says the 
 Susquehanna River formed the real bound- 
 ary, from the mouth of the Unadilla 1 to the 
 mouth of Towanda Creek. "The purpose of 
 the easterly jog in the line," Buell says, "was 
 to include the Oghwaga and Tuscarora vil- 
 lages on the Susquehanna, between Cuna- 
 hunta (now Oneonta) and Chugunut (now 
 Choconut), within the Indian domain. But 
 many whites were already there, a good part 
 of them married to or living with Indian 
 women, and the Oghwagas and Tuscaroras 
 freely sold their lands to these whites. By 
 1774 there were almost as many whites and 
 half-breeds in this valley as full-blood In- 
 dians." 
 
 With the Fort Stanwix treaty and the run- 
 ning of the boundary-line consequent upon it, 
 the active public career of Sir William John- 
 son in the broad sense practically ended. The 
 rest of his life was devoted to study, cor- 
 respondence, the education of his children, 
 and the general management of his personal 
 
 1 Ezra Buell spells what we now call "Unadilla" "Tian- 
 anderha," which was really the nearest equivalent in English 
 letter sounds to the pronunciation of the name of the river in 
 the Oneida dialect of the Iroquois tongue. Other forms of 
 the word in early papers are Teyonadelhough, Cheunadilla, 
 and Tunadilla, the latter being the spelling Joseph Brant 
 employed. 
 
 245 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 estate. Occasionally he settled disputed ques- 
 tions between his deputies and the Indians 
 within their jurisdiction; but such disputes 
 seldom occurred. 
 
 At the period now under consideration 
 (1769) he received under charter from the 
 king a tract of land known as the "Royal 
 Grant." This land had previously been con- 
 veyed to him (in 1760) by the Council of Mo- 
 hawk Sachems for the consideration of £3,000 
 in money and about as much more in merchan- 
 dise. But the grant was not approved by the 
 king until 1769. It embraced all the land on 
 the north bank of the Mohawk River between 
 the mouths of Cayadutta (now East Canada) 
 and Canada (now West Canada) creeks. Its 
 total area was something over 100,000 acres, 
 but between 1760 and 1769 a good many set- 
 tlers had cleared and improved farms within 
 its borders. Sir William at once gave quit- 
 claims to all these, at the rate of threepence to 
 a shilling per acre, according to the value of 
 their holdings by reason of location. 
 
 When all these deductions were made, the 
 "Kingsland Grant " 1 embraced about 90,000 
 
 1 Most historians of this epoch adopt the legend that Sir 
 William obtained this grant by what might be described as a 
 " game of competitive dreaming " between him and old Hen- 
 drick. The legend was that Hendrick, visiting him one day 
 
 246 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 acres. The next year (1770) Sir William 
 acquired by purchase from the original pat- 
 entees under Governor Clinton, whose patents 
 had been confirmed by the king in 1761, a tract 
 embracing the valley of the Susquehanna 
 from the mouth of Charlotte Eiver to that of 
 the Unadilla. This tract was twenty-three 
 miles long by four miles wide — two miles back 
 from the river on each side — and embraced 
 about 92 square miles or, say, 58,000 acres. 
 It was his intention to settle on this tract a 
 numerous colony of Scotch-Irish emigrants 
 from the counties Down, Armagh, and An- 
 trim. But he did not live to accomplish his 
 purpose. The acquisition of this tract made 
 him the largest landholder in America and 
 perhaps in the world; his total possessions 
 
 when he had on the uniform of a British major-general, in- 
 formed him that he (Hendrick) had dreamed the night before 
 that he himself was clad in a uniform exactly like it. Sir 
 William, the legend says, gave Hendrick a major-general's 
 uniform. Then, visiting Hendrick a day or two afterward, 
 he told the chief he had dreamed that the Mohawks gave him 
 a tract of 100,000 acres of land. The legend further recites 
 that Hendrick gave him the land, but said, " Don't let's dream 
 any more ! " This is not a bad story ; but the fact is that the 
 tract was not offered to Sir William by the Mohawk Council 
 until 1760. Hendrick was killed at Lake George in 1755. 
 The alleged "competitive dreaming" on his side therefore 
 must have been done by his ghost! The real fact is that the 
 legend was a pure invention from beginning to end. 
 
 n 247 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 amounted to about 200,000 acres, after buying 
 up all the smaller patents embraced within 
 the limits of the Royal Grant. 
 
 Of this vast area all except the Susque- 
 hanna tract was more or less improved, and 
 the Mount Johnson and Johnstown tracts 
 were, for those days at least, thickly settled. 
 By 1770 the village of Johnstown, which he 
 founded about 1760 — or when he began build- 
 ing Johnson Hall — had grown to be a smart 
 little town of over a hundred dwellings and 
 about 500 people, with several stores, black- 
 smith's, gunsmith's, and carpenter's shops, a 
 good-sized flour-mill, two sawmills and a 
 wagon-shop. It also had a flourishing manor- 
 school, and an Episcopal chapel, both built 
 wholly by the baronet. Two years later 
 (1772), when Tryon County was formed from 
 the western part of Albany County, Johns- 
 town was made the shire town, or county-seat. 
 
 In 1770 Mary Brant bore to Sir William 
 her last child. It was the ninth in seventeen 
 years — 1754-1770 inclusive. Eight of these 
 lived, and one died quite young. The baronet 
 was now fifty-five, and Mary Brant thirty-six 
 years of age. Mary, though in her girlhood 
 as trim-built and supple as a young deer, grew 
 stout and matronly in her later years, but lost 
 none of her charms of manner or vivacity of 
 248 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 spirit. General Schuyler was a guest at 
 Johnson Hall frequently between 1768 and 
 1774, and in his papers he says : 
 
 Mary Brant was a most accomplished mistress 
 of such an establishment, and her numerous flock 
 of little half-breed Johnsons forms as interesting 
 a family as one can see anywhere. They attend 
 the Manor school at Johnstown, and I am told 
 they are among the smartest of the pupils. Sir 
 William is exceedingly proud of them, and loses 
 no opportunity of exhibiting their graces and 
 acquirements to his guests. He intends to send 
 his two half-breed boys to the new King's College 
 in New York [now Columbia University], and the 
 girls he will educate as they grow up in Mrs. Par- 
 dee's school for young ladies at Albany. 
 
 Among the last public enterprises of Sir 
 William, and one in the success of which he 
 found much satisfaction, was the introduction 
 of the manufacture of rifles in New York. 
 Prior to 1768 Lancaster, Pa., had practically 
 monopolized the making of rifles in this coun- 
 try. The few that found their way into the 
 hands of the New York settlers or Indians cost 
 exorbitant prices. Sir William's experience 
 had taught him that the rifle, either for hunt- 
 ing or for war, was much superior to the light 
 smoothbore gun he himself had designed for 
 the Indian and frontier trade twenty-five 
 249 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 years before. He therefore determined to do- 
 mesticate rifle-making in the Mohawk Valley. 
 But none of the gunsmiths there understood 
 the art of rifling, and they were unwilling to 
 undertake it. Not to be balked, Sir William 
 induced several skilled rifle-makers to leave 
 Lancaster and set up shops in New York. 
 Among them were the Palm brothers, Jacob 
 and Frederick, who established their shop at 
 Old Esopus, Ulster County, and made excel- 
 lent rifles there for many years ; Henry Haw- 
 kins, who selected Schenectady for his place 
 of business, and John Folleck, whose shop was 
 at Johnstown. Hawkins was not only a great 
 rifle-maker himself, but his sons and grand- 
 sons succeeded him in later years, establish- 
 ing shops at Rochester, Louisville, Detroit, 
 and St. Louis, until, during the last quarter 
 of the eighteenth and first half of the nine- 
 teenth century, the "Hawkins rifle " was as 
 famous all through the West as the Win- 
 chester is now. 
 
 Originally Sir William induced these pio- 
 neers of rifle-making to locate in New York 
 by advancing money for the building of their 
 shops and purchase of tools and then agree- 
 ing to take at a fixed price all their product 
 that did not promptly find market elsewhere. 
 This began in 1769. The market soon became 
 250 
 
Pontiac's War 
 
 brisk and other rifle-makers came in. By 
 1775 most of the settlers on the New York fron- 
 tier and many of the Indians had discarded 
 their old smoothbores for the new rifles, and 
 though the industry was only about six years 
 old, New York was second only to Pennsyl- 
 vania in the manufacture of what we com- 
 monly term "the national American weapon." 
 The author of this work has a Palm rifle, made 
 in 1773, in perfect preservation, flint lock, and 
 as effective now as it was when it left the shop. 
 It is 40 inches long in the barrel — which is 
 octagonal — 55 inches over all, full-stocked 
 with curly-birch root, carries 45 spherical 
 balls to the pound of lead, and weighs 10J 
 pounds. It saw service in Morgan's Riflemen 
 and was in the battle of Oriskany. 
 
 Sir William's success in starting the manu- 
 facture of rifles in New York was as complete 
 as in his other undertakings, and was due to 
 the same causes : the energy which he always 
 brought to bear on any project and the un- 
 stinted freedom with which he was willing to 
 spend his money to accomplish his object; and 
 in this respect it was immaterial to him 
 whether the object was the public welfare or 
 personal profit. 
 
 251 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SIR WILLIAM'S CHARACTER AND DEATH 
 
 1769-1774 
 
 After concluding the Fort Stanwix treaty 
 and supervising the running of the boundary 
 line, which was completed in 1769, Sir William 
 passed most of his spare time in reading, and 
 in writing papers on public topics. He had 
 accumulated one of the best private libraries 
 in the colonies ; having begun to import books 
 from England as early as 1740, or as soon as 
 he had means of his own to afford it. At the 
 end of his life he had over two thousand vol- 
 umes, which in those days was an extraordi- 
 nary private collection. 
 
 To indicate generally the character of his 
 selections, I give two orders, selected at ran- 
 dom from a number. These orders were sent 
 to London in 1749. They embraced Sir Isaac 
 Newton's complete works; Desagulier's 
 Course of Experimental Philosophy, in two 
 volumes, illustrated; Chambers's Dictionary, 
 two volumes ; Battles of Alexander the Great, 
 252 
 
Sir William's Character and Death 
 
 by LeBrun; Rhoderick Random; the Whole 
 Proceedings in the House of Peers Against the 
 Three Condemned Lords; Historical Review 
 of Transactions in Europe from the Com- 
 mencement of the War with Spain ; the Gentle- 
 man's Magazine; the Family Magazine; A 
 Large Globe; All Recent Pamphlets on Po- 
 litical or Scientific Subjects; Review of the 
 Services of His Majesty's Navy Since the 
 Accession of William III ; Life of the Duke of 
 Marlborough, 3 volumes, by Ledyard; Mili- 
 tary History of Prince Eugene and the Duke 
 of Marlborough, 2 volumes, by Campbell ; Life 
 of William III, translated from the Dutch of 
 Montanus; Life and Reign of King William 
 III, by Harris ; History of France Under the 
 Reign of Louis XIV, translated from the 
 French of de Larrey ; Life of Louis XIII, by 
 Howell; Life of Queen Anne, by Oldmixon; 
 An Account of the Conduct of the Duchess of 
 Marlborough, by Hooke; Life of Peter the 
 Great, 3 volumes, by Mottley; Life of the 
 Prophet Mohammed (in Latin), by Gag- 
 nier; Translation of the Koran (in Latin), 
 with Notes, Anon.; and lastly, Pictures of 
 Some of the Best Running Horses at New 
 Market. 
 
 Besides such special orders, from time to 
 time, he had a standing order with the prin- 
 253 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 cipal bookseller in London to send to him 
 "all new books on History, Philosophy, and 
 the Lives of Men Worth Reading About," as 
 they came from the press. 
 
 His own literary ability can be judged 
 only by his voluminous correspondence. As 
 a sample, I offer some extracts from a long 
 and comprehensive letter written by him to 
 Arthur Lee, at the request of the Eoyal Philo- 
 sophical Society, under date of February 28, 
 1771: 
 
 o IE . Johnson Hall, Feb. 28, 1771. 
 
 ... I am apprehensive that any account in 
 my power respecting inquiries amongst the unlet- 
 tered Indians will prove inadequate to the expecta- 
 tion formed in your letter; for, notwithstanding 
 my long residence in this country, the nature of my 
 office and the most diligent inquiries into these vari- 
 ous particulars, I find all researches of that sort, 
 for which I shall give reasons presently, involved 
 in such difficulty and uncertainty as to afford but 
 slender satisfaction — at least far short of my 
 inclination to gratify your desires thereon. How- 
 ever, I shall endeavor to make some atonement by 
 giving you some account of these difficulties, 
 together with such other hints as, from the motives 
 of enquiry suggested in your letter, may, I flatter 
 myself, be of some use or amusement to you. 
 
 It will be unnecessary to enlarge on the want 
 of laws, government, letters, or such other particu- 
 254 
 
Sir William's Character and Death 
 
 lars as are to be found in most authors who have 
 treated of the American Indians. .... 
 
 I must therefore observe that the customs and 
 manners of the Indians are in several cases liable 
 to changes which have not been thoroughly con- 
 sidered by authors, and therefore the description 
 of them at our particular period must be insuffi- 
 cient; and I must further premise that I mean to 
 confine my observations to those of the Northern 
 Nations, with whom I have the most acquaintance 
 and intercourse. 
 
 In all inquiries of this sort we should distin- 
 guish between the most remote tribes and those 
 Indians who, from their having been next to our 
 settlements several years, and relying wholly on 
 oral tradition for the support of their ancient 
 usages, have lost a great part of them and have 
 blended some customs amongst ourselves, so as to 
 render it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to 
 trace those customs to their origin or to discover 
 their application. Again those Indians who are a 
 degree farther removed have still a good deal of 
 intercourse with our traders, and having altered 
 their system of politics, though they still retain 
 many ancient customs, they are much at loss to 
 account for them ; whilst those who are far removed 
 from any intercourse with the whites (a few tra- 
 ders excepted) are still in possession of the greater 
 part of their primitive usages. Yet these cannot 
 give a satisfactory account of their original signifi- 
 cation ; and having so blended the whole with fable 
 
 255 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 as to render it a matter of great difficulty to sepa- 
 rate truth from it. Add to this that above a cen- 
 tury ago they had French Jesuits among them 
 who, partly for religious purposes, but chiefly to 
 secure particular ends in the wars they often 
 fomented, introduced some of their own inventions 
 which the present generation [of Indians] con- 
 found with their ancient ceremonies. . . . 
 
 With respect to your questions concerning the 
 chief magistrate or sachem and how he acquires 
 his authority, I am to acquaint you that there is 
 in every nation a sachem or chief, who appears to 
 have authority over the rest and it is greatest 
 amongst the most distant nations. But in most of 
 those bordering upon our settlements, the chief's 
 authority is hardly discernible, he seldom assuming 
 any power before his people. Indeed, this humility 
 is judged the best policy; for, wanting coercive 
 power, their commands would perhaps occasion 
 assassination, which sometimes happens. 
 
 The sachems of each tribe are usually chosen in 
 a public assembly of the chiefs and warriors, when 
 a vacancy happens by death or otherwise. They 
 are generally chosen for their sense and bravery 
 from among the oldest warriors and approved of 
 by all the tribe, on which they are saluted sachems. 
 There are, however, several exceptions; for some 
 families have a kind of heredity in the office, and 
 are called to this station sometimes in infancy. 
 
 The chief sachem is so either by inheritance or 
 by a kind of tacit consent, the consequence of his 
 
 256 
 
Sir William's Character and Death 
 
 superior abilities and influence. The duration of 
 his authority depends on his own wisdom, the num- 
 ber and consequence of his relations and the 
 strength of his particular tribe (if in a Confed- 
 eracy). But in those cases where the office de- 
 scends (by inheritance) should the successor 
 appear unequal to the task, some other sachem is 
 sure to possess himself of the powers and duties of 
 the station. I should have observed that military 
 services are the chief recommendation to this rank. 
 And it appears pretty clearly that heretofore the 
 chief of a nation had in some small degree the au- 
 thority of a sovereign. This is now the fact among 
 the most remote Indians. But, since the introduc- 
 tion of firearms they no longer fight in close 
 bodies, but every man is his own general; and I 
 am inclined to think that this is calculated to lessen 
 the power of a chief. . . . 
 
 The chief sachems form the Grand Council and 
 those of each tribe often deliberate apart on the 
 affairs of their particular tribe. All their delibera- 
 tions are conducted with extraordinary regularity 
 and decorum. They never interrupt him who is 
 speaking or use harsh language, whatever may be 
 their thoughts. 
 
 The chiefs assume most authority in the field, 
 but this must be done even there with extreme cau- 
 tion. . . . 
 
 They are severe upon those guilty of theft, (a 
 crime indeed uncommon among them) ; and in 
 cases of murder the relatives are left to take what- 
 
 257 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 soever revenge they please. In general they are 
 unwilling to inflict capital punishments. 
 
 On their hunts, as on all other occasions, they 
 are strict observers of meum and tuum and on this 
 pure principle, holding theft in contempt, they are 
 rarely guilty of it though tempted by articles of 
 much value or ardently coveted. Neither do the 
 strong oppress the weak or attempt to seize their 
 prey of the chase or anything else of their property. 
 And I must do them the justice to say that unless 
 heated by liquor or inflamed by revenge, their 
 ideas of right and wrong and their practices in 
 consequence of them would, if more known, do 
 them much honor. . . . 
 
 As to your remark on their apparent repug- 
 nance to civilization, I must observe that this is not 
 owing to any viciousness of their nature or want 
 of capacity, as they have a strong genius for arts 
 and uncommon patience. I believe they are put in 
 English schools too late in life and sent back too 
 soon to their people, whose political maxim, Spar- 
 tan-like, is to discountenance all pursuits but war, 
 holding all other knowledge as unworthy the dig- 
 nity of man and tending to enervate and divert 
 them from that warfare on which they conceive 
 their liberty and happiness depend. Such senti- 
 ments constantly instilled into the minds of youth 
 and illustrated by examples drawn from the con- 
 temptible state of domesticated tribes, leave lasting 
 impressions that can hardly be eradicated by an 
 ordinary school education. . . . 
 
 258 
 
Sir William's Character and Death 
 
 With regard to language, there is so remarkable 
 a difference between the tongue of the Iroquois and 
 all the rest, as to afford some ground for inquiry 
 as to their distinct origin. The Indians north of 
 the St. Lawrence and north and west of the Great 
 Lakes and those who live in the Valley of the Ohio, 
 notwithstanding the differences between them in 
 other respects, speak a language radically the same, 
 and can, in general, communicate their wants to 
 each other, while the Iroquois who live in the midst 
 of them are incapable of conveying a single idea 
 to their neighbors; neither can they pronounce a 
 word of their language correctly. There is some 
 difference in dialect among the nations of the Iro- 
 quois themselves, but there is little more than may 
 be found in the different provinces of large states 
 in Europe. . . . 
 
 I am Sir, your very Humble Servant 
 
 Wm. Johnson. 
 
 We have reproduced the foregoing rather 
 as a sample of Sir William's literary style 
 than for the sake of the information it con- 
 tains. All the facts stated in it are well 
 known now ; but they were not so familiar to 
 the reading public in 1771. Only about one- 
 third of the whole letter appears above. It 
 was, in fact, a paper, and was printed as such 
 in the Proceedings of the Philosophical Soci- 
 ety. Most modern critics would call the style 
 somewhat involved and, perhaps, ponderous; 
 259 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 but after all Sir William managed to make 
 his points clear. 
 
 Sir William Johnson, though not college- 
 bred, as intimated in the first chapter, was 
 well educated. He was particularly well 
 versed in Latin, and his library was well 
 stocked with the classics of that tongue, and 
 also with more modern works written in it. 
 He often received letters in Latin from 
 French priests in Canada, after the conquest, 
 because they could not write English and he 
 could not read French. It was his habit to 
 make notes of his own and attach them to all 
 important letters when he put them on file; 
 and examination of his manuscripts showed 
 that his notes on the letters in Latin were al- 
 ways in that language. He was an excep- 
 tionally good mathematician, and could make 
 and plot a land survey as well and as accu- 
 rately as any professional surveyor. 
 
 Though he never had the slightest military 
 training in his youth, and though his first 
 actual experience in warfare was the com- 
 mand of a considerable force, he "took to the 
 trade " intuitively, and became, by great odds, 
 the ablest and most successful of all the Pro- 
 vincial generals, excepting, perhaps, Sir Will- 
 iam Pepperell. In battle he exhibited the 
 most daring bravery, but in the general han- 
 260 
 
Sir William's Character and Death 
 
 dling of his troops, maneuvring, etc., he was 
 cool and cautious, even to the extent — as some 
 of his contemporaries thought — of over-pru- 
 dence. 
 
 On this point, however, he used to say him- 
 self that, as he had large responsibilities of 
 command thrust upon him without adequate 
 military experience or training, he was often 
 in doubt ; and when so situated, always deter- 
 mined that any error he might commit should 
 be on the safe side ! " I was always," he once 
 said, "on the lookout for an ambush, and was 
 resolved that, whatever else my fate might 
 be, it should not be that of Braddock ! " 
 When commanding Indians he always let 
 them fight their own way; never attempting 
 to do anything except encourage them by his 
 presence and example. Leading white troops 
 he observed the tactical methods then in 
 vogue ; but in woods-fighting was much more 
 flexible in his generalship than British regu- 
 lar officers usually were. 
 
 On this point General Amherst once said 
 to another British officer of high rank — Gen- 
 eral Gage — "We can all learn something from 
 Johnson in the style of fighting we have to 
 practice here ! " 
 
 In the ordinary affairs of life he was so- 
 ciable, free from pretension, easy in manner, 
 261 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 decorous in speech, and temperate in all 
 things. Singular as his domestic relations 
 were for the greater part of his life, he was 
 always devotedly attached to his home, and 
 exceedingly fond of his Indian companions 
 and of their half-breed children. In business 
 matters he was shrewd, but invariably honest 
 to a penny, and withal a generous creditor. 
 His benevolence was proverbial, and no other 
 man in the colonies during his time gave half 
 as much in charity as he did. Though form- 
 ally a member of the Church of England, he 
 viewed other creeds with equal favor, and 
 built several chapels for his Lutheran neigh- 
 bors or tenants, besides mission school- 
 houses for missionaries of other denomina- 
 tions than his own. He was not very strict in 
 his own religious observances, but always 
 insisted that his family — particularly his 
 girls, white and half-breed alike — should be 
 close Conformists in all the rites and ceremo- 
 nies of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
 
 His favorite pastimes were gunning, fish- 
 ing, and horse-racing. He was in the habit 
 of inviting the whole countryside either to 
 Mount Johnson or Johnson Hall several 
 times a year for all kinds of athletic sports, 
 of which his own favorites were boxing and 
 wrestling — at both of which, in his younger 
 262 
 
Sir William's Character and Death 
 
 days, lie was exceedingly expert and formi- 
 dable. On one occasion a militia company 
 in his own regiment, when electing officers, 
 voted a tie for the position of second lieu- 
 tenant. They appealed to him to decide. 
 "Let them strip," he said, "and box it out. 
 I want the best man to have the commis- 
 sion ! " 
 
 On the whole and without further anal- 
 ysis, we think it clear that Sir William John- 
 son possessed a masterful mind, of quick in- 
 tuitions and wide versatility; fertile in 
 resource and keen in perception; prompt in 
 decision and tremendously energetic in execu- 
 tion. Not, perhaps, amounting to what is 
 rather indefinitely termed "genius," but well- 
 balanced, steady, and safe. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Sir William's 
 last years were made gloomy by the growing 
 contentions and rapidly widening breach be- 
 tween the colonies and the mother country. 
 Politically, he was an ardent Whig, and as 
 such naturally opposed the policies of the 
 Grenville and North ministries toward the 
 colonies. But in his public utterances and in 
 his correspondence at the time he was con- 
 servative to the point of being non-committal. 
 In a letter to General Gage, dated September, 
 is 263 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 1765, after deploring the "riotous conduct" 
 of certain colonists, he says : 
 
 Having a large property to lose I cannot be 
 supposed to think differently from the real inter- 
 ests of America ; yet, as a lover of the British Con- 
 stitution, I shall retain sentiments agreeable to it, 
 although I should be almost singular [alone] in 
 my opinion, and I have great reason to think that 
 the late transactions and what is daily expected 
 in other Colonies, will be productive of dangerous 
 consequences. But I do not enter into their de- 
 bates nor suffer myself to be led by artful con- 
 structions of the law. 
 
 A more significant expression occurs in a 
 subsequent letter to Dr. Cadwallader Colden, 
 where he uses the more epigrammatic, though 
 still ambiguous, phrase: "For my part, I 
 neither wish us here more power than we can 
 make good use of, nor less liberty than we 
 have a right to expect." 
 
 In another letter he "congratulates his 
 correspondent on the repeal of the Stamp 
 Act," and in another says: "Unless they alter 
 the Stamp Act, we shall all be Republicans ! " 
 
 General Schuyler, whom he visited at Al- 
 bany in 1773, on the occasion of placing two of 
 his half-breed daughters in a private semi- 
 nary there, records him as "using language 
 concerning the attitude of the ministry, and 
 264 
 
Sir William's Character and Death 
 
 also its personal make-up, which I should have 
 hesitated to use myself ! " But Schuyler does 
 not quote him — doubtless because it was a 
 dinner-table conversation. In April, 1774, 
 he visited New York city, and said to Philip 
 Livingston, in the course of a friendly chat : 
 
 If the Colonies unite in revolt and the people 
 are unanimous — or nearly so — in it, I do not be- 
 lieve the Crown can subdue them. The regular 
 troops will find it very different if they have our 
 Old Provincials against them instead of with them. 
 I believe, notwithstanding the extreme lengths to 
 which the troubles have proceeded, there is yet one 
 chance left for reconciliation. But I fear it can 
 never be accomplished by His Majesty's present 
 advisers ! 
 
 His last recorded utterance on the subject 
 was early in July, 1774, not more than a week 
 before his death. Dr. Wheelock was visiting 
 him, as he habitually did during vacations. 
 The doctor records him as saying : 
 
 All this trouble must lead to blows before long. 
 A serious collision may happen any day now. The 
 Colonists cannot retreat, and the King, apparently, 
 will not. I am filled with forebodings. I dread the 
 coming of a struggle that must shake the British 
 Empire to its foundations. For my part I can 
 only say now that I shall not be found on the side 
 of the aggressor! 
 
 265 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 Governor Seymour, who had seen the 
 above in the Wheelock MSS. and copied it, in- 
 terpreted it as a guarded declaration of intent 
 to espouse the American cause, and invariably 
 expressed the belief that he would have done 
 so had he lived to hear the news from Bunker 
 Hill. 
 
 The nearest approach to positive testi- 
 mony that I have ever seen occurs in a state- 
 ment made by Colonel Daniel Claus, Sir Will- 
 iam's son-in-law, which has never before been 
 published, so far as I know, and for a copy 
 of which I am indebted to W. Max Reid, au- 
 thor of the History of the Mohawk Valley. 
 
 For brevity I may premise that after their 
 defeat at Oriskany and the slaughter they suf- 
 fered there, followed so closely by the sur- 
 render of Burgoyne, the Iroquois became 
 deeply dejected, and many of them, particu- 
 larly the Senecas and Cayugas, seriously con- 
 templated neutrality, if not making terms with 
 the American colonists and abandoning the 
 British cause. This situation called forth all 
 the resources of the great chief, Joseph Brant, 
 to keep the Indians faithful to the king. On 
 this subject Colonel Claus says : 
 
 Brant was ably seconded in his efforts by the 
 tears and prayers of his sister Molly, who had been 
 driven from her home at Danube by the enraged 
 266 
 
Sir William's Character and Death 
 
 Americans after the battle of Oriskany. The 
 Americans had not expelled Molly in 1776 at the 
 time the Royalists were driven out, but had left 
 her in peace at the Indian Castle at Danube, where 
 she took up her residence with her family, when 
 Sir John Johnson occupied Johnson Hall after the 
 baronet's death. 
 
 Shortly after the battle of Oriskany the Amer- 
 icans found out that when St. Leger and Brant 
 were besieging Fort Schuyler, Molly sent a mes- 
 sage by an Indian runner warning Brant that a 
 body of nearly a thousand Militia under General 
 Herkimer were on the march to relieve the garri- 
 son of that Fort. She was then obliged to leave 
 the Mohawk Valley, and she went for safety among 
 the Five Nations, where she was assisted by her 
 brother and the people, and among whom she took 
 asylum. Every one of them pressed her to stay 
 with them, but she fixed upon Cayuga as the center, 
 and having relations among them by whom she was 
 kindly received. After General Burgoyne's sur- 
 render she found them, in general, very fickle and 
 wavering, particularly the Head Chief of the 
 Senecas, Cayenguorrahton, with whom she had a 
 long conversation in council. She reminded the 
 Chief of the great friendship between him and the 
 late Sir William Johnson, whose name she could 
 never mention without tears, which always greatly 
 affect the Indians. 
 
 She told the Chief that she had often heard 
 Sir William declare his fixed intention to live and 
 
 267 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 die a firm adherent of the King of England and all 
 his friends ; together with other striking arguments, 
 which had such an effect upon the Chief and other 
 Sachems present that they promised henceforth 
 truthfully to keep their engagements with her late 
 friend the Baronet; for she is considered and 
 esteemed by them as his relict, and one word from 
 her would go further than a thousand from any 
 white man whatever, because the white man must 
 generally purchase the friendship of the Indians 
 at a high rate. In fact they attached much more 
 importance to her advice than even to that of her 
 brother Joseph, whose prominence, zeal and activ- 
 ity rather occasioned envy and jealousy with many 
 of the Indians. 
 
 It is fair to presume that Colonel Claus 
 reported Molly's interview with the Seneca 
 chief correctly. There might, perhaps, be 
 some question as to Molly's own accuracy in 
 quoting Sir William, or in the representations 
 she made of his opinions and his decision. 
 She was at that time undoubtedly in a most 
 revengeful mood toward the Americans. She 
 desired, above all things, that the Indians 
 should remain true to the cause of the king. 
 She realized that nothing but the success of 
 the Royal cause could restore to her and 
 her children the fortune bequeathed to them 
 in Sir William's will. Under these condi- 
 tions she may have been, and probably was, 
 268 
 
Sir William's Character and Death 
 
 what the lawyers called an interesting wit- 
 ness. 
 
 Yet, if Sir William ever expressed any 
 such views, she was quite as likely to hear 
 them as any other person then living. It may 
 be mentioned as a strange fact in connection 
 with this matter, that neither Sir William's 
 son, Sir John Johnson, nor his two sons-in- 
 law, Colonel Claus and Guy Johnson, ever 
 pretended to have heard him make any posi- 
 tive expression on the subject. 
 
 Whatever deductions we may draw from 
 this conflicting testimony, one thing alone is 
 certain : to the day of his death he held scru- 
 pulously aloof from the debates and the coun- 
 cils of both sides, taking no part whatever in 
 the agitation; and he was invariably equally 
 kind and hospitable to the Sons of Liberty, 
 and to the officials of the Crown. If he had 
 really made up his mind, he took his decision 
 with him to the tomb. 
 
 For my own part, I venture no opinion. 
 But it seems quite justifiable to say that had 
 he lived and adhered to the American cause, 
 the fate of the "Old New York Frontier," in 
 respect to the warfare of Indians and Tories 
 on the settlers, would have been vastly differ- 
 ent from what it was ; because the only man 
 who could have swerved the Iroquois from 
 269 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 their ancient covenant with the king was Sir 
 William Johnson. 
 
 He died as he had lived — in harness. On 
 the 11th of July, 1774, he made a long speech 
 — nearly two hours — to about six hundred 
 Indians, mostly Iroquois, who had assembled 
 at Johnson Hall to invoke his influence to pre- 
 vent the invasion of the Indian country on the 
 Ohio known as "Dunmore's War/' which cul- 
 minated in the defeat and destruction of a 
 considerable force of Indians — mostly from 
 the Ohio tribes — under the chief, Cornstalk, 
 by a superior army of Virginia, Maryland, 
 and Pennsylvania frontiersmen under Gen- 
 eral Andrew Lewis at Point Pleasant — the 
 confluence of the Ohio and Great Kanawha 
 rivers. 
 
 He was at this time much weakened by 
 dysentery, and exposure to an extremely hot 
 sun, together with the excessive mental and 
 physical strain of the long speech, brought on 
 prostration by heat, which soon developed into 
 cerebral apoplexy. He died at six o'clock p. m., 
 July 11, 1774, about two hours after finishing 
 his speech. His last words were spoken to 
 Joseph Brant, who, with others, carried his 
 limp form into the Hall. They were: "Jo- 
 seph, control your people — control your peo- 
 ple ! I am going away ! " 
 270 
 
Sir William's Character and Death 
 
 These words, spoken to Brant in the Iro- 
 quois tongue, were echoed through every 
 village of the Six Nations, from the Lower 
 Mohawk Castle to Niagara. Unquestionably 
 they, more than any other influence — or more 
 than all other influences combined — caused 
 the almost unanimous election of Brant to be 
 grand sachem or senior chief of the Iroquois 
 Confederacy not long afterward. The Indi- 
 ans interpreted the words to mean that Sir 
 William, with his latest conscious breath, be- 
 queathed his mantle to Joseph Brant, and the 
 magic of his power over them was not im- 
 paired by death itself. 
 
 Sir John Johnson was at his home — the 
 Mount — nearly ten miles away, when his 
 father was stricken. An express sent by the 
 hands of young William Johnson, the half- 
 breed son, mounted on the fleetest horse in Sir 
 William's racing-stable, reached Sir John 
 about five o'clock — young William ruining the 
 blooded horse he rode. Sir John instantly 
 saddled his own best race-horse — an Irish 
 steeplechaser named Royal Duke, the most 
 valuable stallion then in the colonies — and 
 covered nine miles of the distance in thirty 
 minutes. The steeplechaser fell dead with- 
 in a mile of Johnson Hall, and Sir John 
 borrowed the horse of a farmer who hap- 
 18* 271 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 pened to be in the road when his own stal- 
 lion fell, and soon arrived at the Hall. But 
 his father, though still breathing, was un- 
 conscious, and in a few minutes passed 
 away. 
 
 272 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 WORKS CONSULTED 
 
 Life of Sir William Johnson . 
 
 Life of Sir William Johnson . 
 
 Life of Sir William Johnson . 
 
 Life of Sir William Johnson (Canadian) . 
 
 Life of Joseph Brant .... 
 
 The Old' New York Frontier . 
 
 The Mohawk Valley 
 
 History of Herkimer County . 
 
 History of Chenango County . 
 
 History of. Otsego County 
 
 History of the Five Nations . 
 
 History of Herkimer County . 
 
 A Voyage to North America, 1772 . 
 
 Memoir of Rev. Dr. Wheelock 
 
 Dr. Wheelock's Narrative of the Indian 
 
 School at Lebanon, Conn. 
 Settlement of the Genesee Country . 
 Gazetteer of New York State, 1821 . 
 Historical Gazetteer of New York, 1860 
 History of Schoharie County . 
 Narrative of Mary Jemison 
 Life of Mary Jemison . 
 Annals of Tryon County .... 
 Early Times on the Susquehanna . 
 Montcalm and Wolfe .... 
 Pontiac's Conspiracy .... 
 History of Braddock's Expedition . 
 Narrative of Ezra Buell . . . . 
 New York Colonial Documents 
 History of Montgomery County 
 
 273 
 
 William L. Stone. 
 
 William E. Griffis. 
 
 Claus. 
 
 Anon. 
 
 William L. Stone. 
 
 Francis W. Halsey. 
 
 W. Max Reid. 
 
 Benton. 
 
 Anon. 
 
 Anon. 
 
 Cadwallader Colden. 
 
 Beers. 
 
 Peter Kalm. 
 
 McClure. 
 
 Auto. 
 
 Williamson. 
 
 Spofford. 
 
 French. 
 
 Jephtha R. Simms. 
 
 Auto. 
 
 Seaver. 
 
 Wm. W. Campbell. 
 
 Mrs. Perkins. 
 
 Francis Parkman. 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 Sargent. 
 
 Auto. 
 
 Public Print. 
 
 Beers. 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 The Iroquois League .... 
 Eight Years in America. Journal of an 
 
 Officer's Wife 
 
 Narrative of James Smith. Six Years' 
 
 Captivity 
 
 Journal of Jean Francois Joncaire . 
 Journal of Father Joliet .... 
 Journal of Father Moline 
 Journal of George Washington. Ohio 
 
 Expeditions 
 
 Journal of Captain Orme. Braddock's 
 
 Expedition 
 
 Reports of the Marquis Duquesne. 
 
 Operations in New France, 1752-1755 . 
 History of New France. (Histoire de la 
 
 Nouvelle France) . . 
 
 The Holy Cross in America. Collection 
 
 of Narratives of Jesuit Fathers . 
 Life of General John Stark 
 Life of General John Stark 
 History of the Seneca Nation . 
 Rites and Social Customs of the Iroquois. 
 
 (By a daughter of Sir William Johnson) 
 Public Correspondence of Sir William 
 
 Johnson 
 
 History of the Fur Trade 
 Half a Century of Conflict 
 Essays of Voltaire. 
 The Defeat of Braddock . . . 
 Memoir of Father Picquet 
 The Montours, Mother, Sons, and Grand- 
 sons ....... 
 
 Memoir of the Comte de Frontenac 
 
 Diary of Admiral Sir Peter Warren . -j 
 
 Sketch of Sir William Pepperell 
 Journal of Dr. Williams, with Letters to 
 his Wife 
 
 274 
 
 Lewis H. Morgan. 
 
 Mrs. Julia Grant. 
 
 Auto. 
 Auto. 
 Auto. 
 Auto. 
 
 Auto. 
 
 Auto. 
 
 Auto. 
 
 St. Martin. 
 
 Anon. 
 
 Caleb Stark. 
 Edward Everett. 
 Parker. 
 
 Mrs. Kerr. 
 
 Sir John Johnson. 
 
 Heath. 
 
 Francis Parkman. 
 
 Dumas. 
 Anon. 
 
 Mackenzie. 
 By his Grandson. 
 Navy Records Soci- 
 ety, of England. 
 Wilson. 
 
 Auto. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ABE 
 
 ABERCROMBIE, General James, 
 - in French war, 163, 164 ; at- 
 tack on Fort Ticonderoga, 165, 
 180. 
 
 Abraham, Chief, 44, 49, 52, 54 ; at 
 Albany conference, 65. 
 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, 1748, 33, 
 38, 114. 
 
 Albany, grand council at, 62 ; visit 
 of chiefs to Governor Clinton at, 
 78 ; convention of Colonial dele- 
 gates at, in 1754, 89. 
 
 Alexandria, Va., conference of Co- 
 lonial governors with General 
 Braddock at, 133. 
 
 Amherst, General Sir Jeffrey, 161 
 note, 169 ; character and ability, 
 181 ; takes Louisburg, 180; orders 
 respecting Colonial officers, 181 ; 
 capture of Ticonderoga and 
 Crown Point, 182, 184, 192 ; cam- 
 paign against Montreal, 197 ; 
 capitulation of Montreal, 202 ; 
 plans expedition against Louisi- 
 ana, 208 ; bitterness toward the 
 Senecas, 227 ; raised to the peer- 
 age, 207 ; compliments Sir Will- 
 iam Johnson, 192 ; opinion of Sir 
 William Johnson, 261. 
 
 Amsterdam, N. Y., 13. 
 
 Anasthose, Chief, in command of 
 Indians at Braddock's defeat, 106, 
 129. 
 
 Anne, Queen, reign of, 2. 
 
 BRA 
 
 Austrian Succession, War of the, 
 
 effect on American colonies, 31. 
 
 ~D ARCLAY, Mrs., 48. 
 
 -*— ' Beaujeau, Captain, 120 ; de- 
 feats Braddock, 127. 
 
 Blanchard, Colonel J. A., 137. 
 
 Boquet, Colonel Henry, relieves 
 Fort Pitt, 225. 
 
 Boscawen, Admiral Edward, 168. 
 
 Braddock, Major-General Edward, 
 chosen for the American com- 
 mand, 124 ; arrival in America, 
 124 ; reappoints Sir William John- 
 son, 125 ; plans for the campaign, 
 133 ; campaign, defeat, and death, 
 126 ; Braddock's defeat, effect on 
 the colonies, 156 ; effect on Indi- 
 ans, 137. 
 
 Brant, Joseph, 20, 48, 53, 69 note ; 
 education, 223 ; in campaign 
 against Crown Point, 139 ; at 
 Lake George, 159 ; in Fort Ni- 
 agara campaign, 189 ; in St. Law- 
 rence campaign, 200 note ; after 
 battle of Oriskany, 266 ; final ad- 
 vice of Sir William to, 270. 
 
 — , Mary, relations of Sir William 
 Johnson with the Indian woman, 
 48, 52, 55, 61, 248 ; after battle of 
 Oriskany, 266. 
 
 — , Chief Nicklaus, 44, 49, 53, 57; 
 on Seneca expedition, 86 ; suc- 
 ceeds Hendrick, 158 ; after Ger- 
 
 275 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 BUE 
 
 man Flats massacre, 176 ; in Fort 
 
 Niagara campaign, 189. 
 Buell, Ezra, 21, 237, 244. 
 — , Simon, 20. 
 Butler, John, 22. 
 Byrne, Michael, 53. 
 
 CANADA, French, population of, 
 94 ; commercial records of, 
 99 ; preparations for the war in, 
 117. 
 
 Caroline (Hendrick), relations of 
 Sir William Johnson with the In- 
 dian woman, 44, 49, 61 ; death, 57. 
 
 Cayugas, 28, 58, 65 ; disaffection of, 
 176 ; conference at Mount John- 
 son in 1758, 183. 
 
 Claus, Colonel Daniel, deputy su- 
 perintendent of Indian affairs, 
 219, 222, 235 ; on Si William's at- 
 titude toward the Revolution, 266. 
 
 Clauzun, Mile., marries Jean Fran- 
 cois Joncaire, 106. 
 
 Clauzun-Joncaire, Jean Francois, 
 106, 132 note. 
 
 Clinton, George, Governor of New 
 York, 15 ; correspondence with 
 Sir William Johnson on Indian 
 question, 15, 25, 29, 34; Albany 
 conference, 64; and Hardenburgh 
 affair, 74 ; receives delegation to 
 protest Sir William Johnson's 
 resignation as superintendent of 
 Indian affairs, 78. 
 
 Clinton, General Sir Henry, 15. 
 
 Cole, Lieutenant-Colonel, at Lake 
 George, 146. 
 
 Colonial troops, value of, 157 ; con- 
 trasted with French Canadian 
 militia, 111 ; at first capture of 
 Louisburg, 33 ; in Braddock cam- 
 paign, 126 ; in campaign against 
 Crown Point, 136 ; under Sir Jef- 
 frey Amherst, 181. 
 
 Colonies, English, in America, in 
 1715, 3, 93. 
 
 DIN 
 
 Colonies, French, in America, 93. 
 
 Contrecoeur, Captain, receives sur- 
 render of Captain Trent, 84 ; at 
 Fort Duquesne, 130. 
 
 Cornplanter, Chief, domestic life of, 
 239. 
 
 Croghan, Major George, in com- 
 mand at Fort Pitt, 225 ; deputy 
 superintendent of Indian affairs, 
 219, 235. 
 
 Crown Point, movement of 1746 
 upon, 32 ; of 1747, 34 ; expedition 
 for the reduction of, 134 ; Mont- 
 calm at, 171 ; captured by Gen- 
 eral Amherst, 182, 184, 192. 
 
 Cumberland, Duke of, Commander- 
 in-chief of British army, 122, 179 ; 
 praise of Sir William Johnson, 
 192. 
 
 D' 
 
 'AUBREY, Colonel, French 
 commander, defeated at Ni- 
 agara by Sir William Johnson, 
 188. 
 
 De Jumonville, French command- 
 er, Washington's fight with, 84. 
 
 De Lancey, James, Chief-Justice, 
 23, 25 ; the Hardenburgh affair, 74. 
 
 — , Stephen, 9, 23. 
 
 — , Susan (Lady Peter Warren), 9 
 note. 
 
 Detroit, Sir William's visit to, 108 ; 
 grand council at, in 1761, 212 ; 
 Pontiac's attack on, 224. 
 
 De Vaudreuil, Marquis, Governor- 
 General of Canada, 143 ; in com- 
 mand at Montreal, 197, 202. 
 
 De Villiers, French commander, re- 
 ceives capitulation of Fort Neces- 
 sity, 85. 
 
 Dieskau, Baron, attack upon Sir 
 William Johnson at Lake George, 
 143 ; after battle of Lake George, 
 167. 
 
 Dinwiddie, Robert, Governor of Vir- 
 ginia, 84. 
 
 276 
 
Index 
 
 DON 
 
 Donaldson, Professor, quoted, 50, 
 243. 
 
 Dunbar, Colonel Thomas, 123, 126. 
 
 Dunmore's War, 270. 
 
 Duquesne, Marquis, Governor-Gen- 
 eral of Canada, 94, 117, 120. 
 
 ENGLAND, colonies in America, 
 3, 93 ; claim to the Ohio Valley, 
 81 ; preparations for the French 
 War, 122. 
 
 FOLLECK, John, rifle-maker, 
 250. 
 
 Fontenoy, battle of, 119. 
 
 Forbes, General John, captures 
 Fort Duquesne, 169, 180. 
 
 Fort Cumberland, 126. 
 
 Fort Duquesne, 121 ; captured by 
 General Forbes, 180. See Fort 
 Pitt. 
 
 Fort Edward, site of, 39 ; estab- 
 lished, 138 ; General Webb at, 165. 
 
 Fort Le Boeuf , 87, 121 ; massacre 
 at, in Pontiac's War, 227. 
 
 Fort Necessity, capitulation of, 85, 
 122. 
 
 Fort Pitt, 219 ; attack on, in Ponti- 
 ac's War, 225. See Fort Du- 
 quesne. 
 
 Fort Stanwix, 86. 
 
 Fort Stanwix Treaty Line of 1769, 
 22, 244. 
 
 Fort William Henry, demonstra- 
 tion against, 171 ; capture and 
 massacre at, 172, 165. 
 
 France, colonies of, in America, 93 ; 
 claim of, to the Ohio Valley, 81 ; 
 preparations for the war, 1 17. 
 
 Frontenac, Comte de, 68 note ; at 
 Schenectady massacre, 175. 
 
 GAGE, General Thomas, in com- 
 mand at Oswego, 193 ; in 
 Montreal campaign, 204. 
 German Flats, massacre of, 175. 
 
 IND 
 
 Gist, Christopher, explores the 
 Ohio, 84 
 
 Gladwyn, Major, in command at 
 Detroit, 224. 
 
 Grant, Mrs. Julia, visit to Mount 
 Johnson, 43. 
 
 Great Meadows, Washington's 
 skirmish at. 84. 
 
 Griffis's, " Life of Sir William John- 
 son," quoted, 59. 
 
 TXALF-BREEDS, importance of, 
 
 -*-■*- in French war, 113. 
 
 Halket, Sir Peter, 123, 126. 
 
 Hardenburgh, Sir William John- 
 son's affair with representative, 
 73. 
 
 Haviland, Colonel, in Montreal 
 campaign, 197, 202. 
 
 Hawke, Sir F^ward, in French 
 War, 168. 
 
 Hawkins, Henry, rifle-maker, 250. 
 
 Hendrick, Chief, 36, 44, 52, 54, 65 ; 
 protests against Sir William 
 Johnson's resignation, 78 ; in 
 campaign against Crown Point, 
 139 ; death of, at Lake George, 
 145, 158. 
 
 — , Caroline. See Caroline (Hen- 
 drick). 
 
 Hi-o-ka-to, chief of Senecas, 63, 72 ; 
 visit to, 86 ; in campaign against 
 Crown Point, 137; in Fort Niagara 
 campaign, 189 ; in St. Lawrence 
 campaign. 199 note. 
 
 Holborn, Admiral, 174. 
 
 Howe. Sir Richard, 168. 
 
 TNDIAN affairs, condition of, in 
 -*- early eighteenth century, 14 ; 
 Sir William Johnson's service in, 
 16, 25 ; superintendent of, 34 ; re- 
 signs, 77 ; reappointed by Brad- 
 dock, 125. 
 — Commissioners, Board of, 26; 
 abolished, 34. 
 
 277 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 IND 
 
 Indians, customs and habits, 44, 57, 
 254 ; domestic life, 19 ; number, 
 241 ; hospitality, 85 ; missions to, 
 27, 101 ; French and English 
 methods of dealing with the In- 
 dians, 97 ; in first campaign 
 against Crown Point, 36, 38 ; in 
 French War, 97, 100, 107 ; under 
 French at Braddock's defeat, 
 129 ; assembly at Mount Johnson 
 in 1755, 135 ; at battle of Lake 
 George, 147 ; status after the 
 French War, 209. 
 
 "Indian trade smooth bore," in- 
 vented by Sir William, 71. 
 
 Iroquois, number of the, 102 ; na- 
 ture and customs, 50 ; compara- 
 tive civilization, 235. 
 
 — confederacy, 19, 27 ; importance 
 of, 42 ; in French and Indian 
 War, 101, 136 ; in Fort Niagara 
 campaign, 187. 
 
 Isle aux Noix, 182. 
 
 u TEAN CC-EnR." See Joncaire, 
 *J Jean Francois. 
 
 Jemison, Mary, 63. 
 
 Jesuits, labors and influence of the, 
 with the Indians, 101 ; schools in 
 Canada, 106 ; after the French 
 and Indian War, 211. 
 
 Johnson, Anne (Warren), mother 
 of Sir William, 4. 
 
 — , Anne, daughter of Sir William 
 by Katharine Weisenburg, 17, 46 ; 
 marriage, 219, 222. 
 
 — , Anne, daughter of Sir William 
 by Mary Brant, 55. 
 
 — , Caroline, daughter of Sir Will- 
 iam by Caroline (Hendrick), 52, 
 56, 222. 
 
 — , Charlotte, daughter of Sir Will- 
 iam by Caroline (Hendrick), 52, 
 56, 222. 
 
 — , Christopher, father of Sir Will- 
 iam, 4. 
 
 278 
 
 JOH 
 
 Johnson, Elizabeth, daughter of 
 Sir William by Mary Brant, 55. 
 
 — , George, son of Sir William by 
 Mary Brant, 55. 
 
 — , Colonel Guy, nephew of Sir 
 William, 213, 219, 222, 235. 
 
 — , Sir John, son of Sir William by 
 Katharine Weisenburg, 17, 46 ; in 
 St. Lawrence campaign, 199 note ; 
 at Detroit conference, 213 ; suc- 
 ceeds to estate at Mount John- 
 son, 221, 271. 
 
 — , Katharine (Weisenburg), wife of 
 Sir William, 16 ; died, 46. 
 
 — , Magdalene, daughter of Sir 
 William by Mary Brant, 55. 
 
 — , Margaret, daughter of Sir Will- 
 iam by Mary Brant, 55. 
 
 — , Mary, daughter of Sir William 
 by Katharine Weisenburg, 17, 46; 
 marriage, 219, 222. 
 
 — , Mary, daughter of Sir William 
 by Mary Brant, 55, 222. 
 
 — , Peter Warren, son of Sir Will- 
 iam by Mary Brant, 55. 
 
 — , Suzanne, daughter of Sir Will- 
 iam by Mary Brant, 55. 
 
 — , William, son of Sir William by 
 Caroline (Hendrick), 52, 54, 55, 
 271 ; education, 222, 237. 
 
 — , Captain Warren, brother of Sir 
 William, 18, 23 ; at siege and cap- 
 ture of Louisburg, 33. 
 
 — , Sir William : parentage, 4 ; birth 
 and boyhood, 4 ; school life, 6 ; 
 personality, 43 ; character, 261 ; 
 scholarship, 260 ; military ability, 
 260 ; knowledge of Indian cus- 
 toms, 14, 254 ; marriage to Kath- 
 arine Weisenburg, 16 ; domestic 
 life, 43, 46 ; children, 17, 46, 52, 
 55 ; estate, 246 ; library, 252 ; 
 stock-raising, 30 ; slaves, 31 ; ar- 
 rival in New York, 9 ; method of 
 distributing land, 18 ; corre- 
 spondence with Governor Clin- 
 
Index 
 
 JOH 
 ton on the Indian question, 15, 25, 
 29, 34 ; land titles, referee in re- 
 gard to, in Mohawk Valley, 25 ; 
 wounded at Lake George, 150 ; 
 designs gun for Indian trade, 71 ; 
 king's magistrate, 30 ; colonel of 
 militia, 29; commissioned colonel, 
 34 ; major-general, 155 ; receives 
 baronetcy, 155 ; death, 270. 
 
 — Hall, removal to, 221. 
 
 -— , Mount. See Mount Johnson. 
 
 Johnstown, N. Y., founded, 221 ; 
 growth of, 248. 
 
 Joncaire, Chabert or Chaubert, 104, 
 131. 
 
 — , Captain Jean Francois, 104, 69 
 note, 102, 120 ; meets Sir William 
 at Kanandegea, 87 ; at Braddock's 
 defeat, 128 ; last days, 131 note. 
 
 KAY-AG-SHO-TA, father of Red 
 Jacket, 240 ; at Albany con- 
 ference, 66. 
 
 Kanandegea, principal town of the 
 Senecas, 85. 
 
 Kaskaskia, 111., established, 115. 
 
 Kerr, Mrs., daughter of Sir William 
 and Mary Brant, 56. 
 
 King, George, 53. 
 
 " King George's War," 32. 
 
 ~T A BUTE, Jacques, 216, 243. 
 
 -L^ La Galette, capture of, 200. 
 
 La Gallissoniere, Count de, Govern- 
 or-General of Canada, 117, 120. 
 
 Lake George, arrival of Sir William 
 Johnson at, 141 ; battle of, 143. 
 
 Lawrence, Governor Charles, of 
 Nova Scotia, 134. 
 
 Lewis, General Andrew, defeats 
 the Indians at Point Pleasant, 270. 
 
 Liquor, laws in regard to selling, 
 to Indians, 27. 
 
 Little Abe, Chief, 53. 
 
 Loudoun, Lord, in French War, 163, 
 180 ; retreat fram Louisburg, 174. 
 
 MOR 
 
 Louis XIV, wars with William of 
 Orange, 1. 
 
 — XV, reign of, 3 ; attitude 
 toward Canada, 116. 
 
 Louisburg, Cape Breton, 98 ; cap- 
 tured by Provincial soldiers, 32 ; 
 threatened by Lord Loudoun, 
 174 ; captured by General Am- 
 herst, 180 ; Wolfe at, 182. 
 
 Louisiana, expedition planned 
 against, 208. 
 
 Lyman, General Phineas, 47, 137, 
 140 ; at Lake George, 150. 
 
 MACKINAW, massacre at, in 
 Pontiac's War, 227. 
 Militia, reorganization of Albany, 
 
 40 ; French Canadian, 111. 
 Missions, Jesuit, to the Indians, 
 
 27 ; Protestant, to the Indians, 
 
 27. 
 Maumee, massacre at, in Pontiac's 
 
 War, 227. 
 Metcalf, Simon, chief surveyor of 
 
 Fort Stanwix treaty line, 22, 237, 
 
 244. 
 Mohawk, early settlements on the, 
 
 8, 13, 18, 30. 
 Monroe, Colonel, massacred at Fort 
 
 William Henry, 166, 172. 
 Montcalm, General Louis Joseph, 
 
 111 ; character and ability, 167 ; 
 
 defense of Fort Ticonderoga, 165 ; 
 
 takes Oswego, 169 ; takes Fort 
 
 William Henry, 172 ; defense of 
 
 Quebec and death, 195. 
 Montour, Andre, 68 note. 
 — , Catharine, 68 note. 
 — , Jean, 68, 78 ; in campaign 
 
 against Crown Point, 137 ; in Fort 
 
 Niagara campaign, 189. 
 Montreal, 98 ; retreat of the French 
 
 forces to, 196 ; final campaign of 
 
 General Amherst against, 197 ; 
 
 capitulation of, 201. 
 Morgan, General Daniel, 53, 225. 
 
 279 
 
Sir William Johnson 
 
 MOU 
 
 Mount Johnson, 13, 17, 43 ; Indian 
 visitors, 43, 58 ; assembly of In- 
 dians at, in 1755, 135 ; Indian con- 
 ference at, in 1758, 183 ; removal 
 from, to Johnson Hall, 221. 
 
 Murray, General James, in Mon- 
 treal campaign, 197, 202. 
 
 N- 
 
 AVY, English, work of, in 
 French War, 168. 
 
 Newcastle, Duke of, Prime Min- 
 ister, 37, 122, 163; end of min- 
 istry, 179. 
 
 Niagara, Fort, General Shirley's 
 campaign against, 134, 143, 156, 
 162 ; General Prideaux's and Sir 
 William Johnson's expedition 
 against, 184, 186 ; attacks on, in 
 Pontiac's War, 226 ; visit to, in 
 1766, 131 note ; grand council at, 
 in 1766, 233. 
 
 /^\GHWAGA. See Oquawgo. 
 
 kj 
 
 Ohio Land Company, 81. 
 
 Ohio Valley, French and English 
 claims to the, 82, 114 ; first cam- 
 paigns in the, 84. 
 
 Onondagas, disaffection of, 176 ; 
 ' conference at Mount Johnson 
 with the, in 1758, 183. 
 
 Oquawgo or Oghwaga, trading- 
 post at, 19. 
 
 Oriskany, battle of, 54, 266. 
 
 Orme, Captain, Braddock's chief of 
 staff, 126. 
 
 Oswegatchie, capture of, 200. 
 
 Oswego, captured by Montcalm, 
 169; General Gage in command 
 at, 193; assembly of troops at, 
 for St. Lawrence campaign, 199 ; 
 Pontiac's surrender at, 233. 
 
 PALM, Frederick, rifle-maker, 
 250. 
 Palm, Jacob, rifle-maker, 250. 
 Park man, Francis, provincial bias 
 of, 46 note. 
 
 SAI 
 
 Pepperell, Sir William, at siege and 
 capture of Louisburg, 33 ; in com- 
 mand at Albany, 1747-48, 36 ; at 
 beginning of French War, 123; 
 military ability, 260. 
 
 Pitt, William, accession to the min- 
 istry, 179. 
 
 Polk, Colonel Thomas, deputy su- 
 perintendent of Indian affairs, 235. 
 
 Pontiac, at Braddock's defeat, 129 ; 
 with Montcalm at Oswego, 169; 
 meets Rogers and Stark near De- 
 troit, 207 ; Pontiac's War, 69 note, 
 131, 223 ; formal surrender, 232. 
 
 Pottier, Father Pierre, Jesuit mis- 
 sionary to the Indians, at Detroit 
 conference, 216. 
 
 Pouchet, French commander at 
 Fort Niagara, 191 ; at La Galette, 
 800. 
 
 Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.), 120, 121; 
 massacre at, in Pontiac's War, 
 227. 
 
 Prideaux, General John, expedition 
 with Sir William Johnson against 
 Fort Niagara, 184, 186 ; killed, 187. 
 
 QUEBEC, 98 ; Wolfe's campaign 
 against, 184, 195. 
 Queen Esther, 69 note. 
 
 RANDALL, Henry, 53. 
 Reid, VV. Max, History of the 
 Mohawk Valley, quoted, 17, 51. 
 
 Revolution, the American, Sir Will- 
 iam Johnson's attitude toward, 
 263. 
 
 Rifle manufacture in America, 70 ; 
 introduced into New York, 249. 
 
 Rogers, Major Robert, expedition 
 to Detriot, 207. 
 
 ST. CHARLES, Mo., established, 
 115. 
 St. Genevieve, Mo., established, 115. 
 St. Joseph, massacre at, in Pon- 
 tiac's War, 227. 
 
 280 
 
Index 
 
 SAI 
 
 St. Martin, Father, Jesuit mission- 
 ary to the Indians, History of 
 New France, 108 ; at Detroit 
 conference, 216, 243. 
 
 St. Mary's, massacre at, in Pon- 
 tiac's War, 227. 
 
 St. Pierre, Captain Jacques Legar- 
 deur de, 131, 144. 
 
 Sandusky, massacre at, in Pon- 
 tiac's War, 227. 
 
 Schenectady, 8; massacre at, in 
 1690, 175. 
 
 Schuyler, Colonel Peter, 26. 
 
 Senecas, 28, 58, 65 ; disaffection 
 among the, 85, 101, 176 ; and news 
 of Braddock's defeat, 137 ; con- 
 ference at Mount Johnson with 
 the, in 1758, 183 ; in Montreal 
 campaign, 199 note ; in Pontiac's 
 War, 226 ; General Amherst's bit- 
 terness toward, 227. 
 
 Shirley, Governor William, of Mas- 
 sachusetts, 90; controversy with 
 Sir William Johnson, 138, 159 ; 
 at beginning of French War, 123 ; 
 expedition against Fort Niagara, 
 134, 143, 156, 162. 
 
 Spencer, Thomas, 54. 
 
 Stark, John, in campaign against 
 Crown Point, 140; at Battle of 
 Lake George, 150; in St. Law- 
 rence campaign, 200 note ; expe- 
 dition to Detroit, 207. 
 
 rpHAYENDANEGEA. See Jo- 
 
 -*- seph Brant. 
 
 Ticonderoga, Fort, built by Mont- 
 calm, 171; Abercrombie's attack 
 on, 165, 180; captured by Gen- 
 eral Amherst, 182, 184, 192. 
 
 Trent, Captain, expedition to the 
 Ohio, 87 ; surrender, 122. 
 
 WOL 
 
 VAN COURTLANDT, Philip, 
 72. 
 Van Ness, Rev. Mr., 27. 
 Venango, French fort at, 121 ; 
 Washington's visit to, 87; mas- 
 sacre at, in Pontiac's War, 227. 
 Vincennes, Ind., established, 115. 
 
 TTTARREN, Anne. See Anne 
 ' " (Warren) Johnson. 
 
 Warren, Admiral Sir Peter, 5, 8, 11 ; 
 fortune of, 23 ; at siege and cap- 
 ture of Louisburg, 33. 
 
 Warrensburg, orWarrensbush, first 
 settlement at, 10, 13. 
 
 Washington, Augustine, 82. 
 
 Washington, George, in early Ohio 
 River campaign, 84 visit to Ve- 
 nango, 87; capitulation of Fort 
 Necessity, 85, 122; in General 
 Braddock's campaign, 126; esti- 
 mate of Braddock, 132. 
 
 Washington, Lawrence, 82. 
 
 Webb, General, incapacity of, 163, 
 165, 180; Fort William Henry 
 massacre, 165, 172. 
 
 Weisenberg, Rev. Jacob, 16, 26. 
 
 Weisenburg, Katharine. See Kath- 
 arine (Weisenburg) Johnson. 
 
 Wetzel, Lewis, Indian fighter, 226. 
 
 Wheelock, Dr. Eleazar, 58; acad- 
 emy at Lebanon, Conn., 223, 237. 
 
 Whiting, Major Nathan, at Lake 
 George, 147. 
 
 William of Orange, wars with Louis 
 XIV, 1 ; debt of England to, 2. 
 
 Williams, Colonel Ephraim, death 
 of. at Lake George, 145. 
 
 Williams, Major Thomas, 140. 
 
 Wolfe, General James, 169, 180; 
 Quebec campaign, 184, 195; 
 death, 195. 
 
 THE END 
 
 281 
 
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