The War Chief of the Six Nations | Page 8

prelude of the American Revolution. A brief lull came in the storm. But as Britain still insisted on the right to tax the colonies and made an impost on tea the test of her right, rebels in Boston accepted the challenge and were inflamed to violence; they swarmed on a tea-ship which had entered the bay, dragged the packets from the hold, and cast them into the waters of the harbour. When news of this act of violence reached England, parliament passed a bill providing for the shutting up of the port of Boston and removing the seat of government to Salem. In 1774 General Gage, the recently appointed governor of Massachusetts, placed the colony under military rule, and it was cut off from the rest of the country. The signal for revolt was thus given, and a general revolution soon followed.
The colonists immediately divided into two parties; on the one side were those who felt that they must obey what they thought to be the call of liberty; on the other were those who had no desire, and felt no need, to follow a summons to insurrection against His Majesty the King. The red man began to see clearly that the whites, the 'Long Knives,' brethren of the same race, would soon be at one another's throats, and that they, the natives, could not remain neutral when the war broke out.
During these alarming days Sir William Johnson died, when scarcely sixty years of age. He had seen that the break with the motherland was coming, and the prospect was almost more than he could bear. On the very day of his death he had received dispatches from England that probably hastened his end. He was told, under the royal seal, of the great peril that lay in store for all the king's people, and he was urged to keep the Six Nations firm in their allegiance to the crown. On that morning, July 11, 1774, the dying man called the Indians to council, and spoke what were to be his parting words to the tribes. They must, he said, stand by the king, undaunted and unmoved under every trial. A few hours later the gallant Sir William Johnson, the friend of all the sons of the forest, the guide and helper of Joseph Brant, had breathed his last. His estates and titles were inherited by his son John Johnson, who was also promoted to the rank of major-general in the army. The control of Indian Affairs passed into the hands of his son-in-law, Colonel Guy Johnson, an able man, but less popular and wanting the broad sympathies of the great superintendent. Brant was at once made secretary to Guy Johnson, and to these two men Sir William's work of dealing with the Indians now fell. Their task, laid on them by their king, was to keep the Six Nations true to his cause in the hour when the tomahawk should leave its girdle and the war fires should again gleam sullenly in the depths of the forest.
Joseph Brant set about this work with restless energy. He was no longer the stripling who had gone away to the West that he might aid in bending the pride of Pontiac. Ten years had passed, and now he was a mature man with an ever-broadening vision. Some time during these years he had reached the position among his tribesmen which he long had coveted. He had been recognized by the Mohawks as one of their chieftains. This honour he had won by right not of birth but of merit, and for this reason he was known as a 'Pine-tree Chief.' Like the pine-tree, tall and strong and conspicuous among the trees of the forest, he had achieved a commanding place in the Mohawk nation. True, he was a chief merely by gift of his tribe, but he seems, nevertheless, to have been treated with the same respect and confidence as the hereditary chiefs. He rejoiced in his new distinction. Evil days were ahead, and he was now in a position to do effective work on behalf of his people and of the British when the inevitable war should break out. A still greater honour was in store for him. When war was declared he at once became recognized as the war leader of the Six Nations--the War Chief. The hereditary successor of King Hendrick, who was slain at Lake George in 1755, was Little Abraham; but Little Abraham, it appears, desired to remain neutral in the impending struggle, and by common consent Brant assumed the leadership of the Iroquois in war.
Two things favoured Brant in any appeal he might make in the interests of the British to the loyalty of the Six Nations. For over a hundred years they had taken from