Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/518

498 Government. An Indian department was organized in 1775, and its direct aim was to thwart the intrigues of Sir John Johnson, Guy Johnson, and the famous Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant, who held a British commission in engaging the natives. Brant, who was a great warrior and had a wide range among the tribes, with whom he had done much civil business, was a formidable foe to the colonists. The Six Nations at first agreed to a neutrality. The river Indians favored the colonists, as did the Oneidas; the Cawnawagas were halting; the Delawares, neutral. But the fickle and inconstant natives, governed by caprice and impulse, could be but little depended on. Thus we had around us all the elements of a twofold civil war. Our temporary success in Canada was followed by disasters, the sharpest of which was the affair at the “Cedars,” in May, 1776. The policy of Congress was now changed from seeking the neutrality of the Six Nations and other tribes to attempts to draw them into active allied service, under pay. Though Washington favored the measure, Schuyler opposed it. Both parties had occasion to regret the alliance and service of the savages, as wholly unmanageable, regardless of the rules of civilized warfare, plundering, rioting, and carousing, not distinguishing between friend and foe, and watching the changing tide of fortune. New York and Pennsylvania bore the sharpest penalties in broils, murders, burnings, and massacres from this partition of ferocious barbarians in the strifes of civilized men. The Valley of Wyoming has had its tragic woes versified in a poem; and the truth compels the confession, that the white matched the red men in barbaric deeds.

We have to recognize the fact that the experience which French and English colonists had alike had of the cruel inhumanities and the revolting atrocities of Indian warfare had excited among them a dread of that element of their quarrels, and even what may be called scruples of conscience in those who called themselves in any sense