1838.]

Stone's Life of Brant.

195

ART. VIII.-Life of Joseph Brant-Thayendanegea: including the Border Wurs of the American Revolution, and Sketches of the Indian Campaigns of Generals Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne; and other matters connected with the Indian relations of the United States and Great Britain, from the peace of 1783 to the Indian peace of 1795. By WILLIAM L. STONE. New York: George Dearborn & Co. 1838. 2 vols. 8vo.

IDENTIFIED as we are in name with NEW YORK, and anxious to seize upon every opportunity of illustrating her literary resources, it is with peculiar pleasure that we take up an original work, embracing a most interesting portion of her annals. The border of our frontier state-the battle-field of three Eustory ropean wars, and the scene of interminable Indian conflicts alike with the Dutch, the French, and the English colonists, is abundantly rich in romantic incident: but while the most laborious researches have been expended upon the early annals of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and others of the older states, the field of the biographer and historian has been comparatively neglected with us; and our Indian wars, particularly—although so important, both from the number of men engaged in them, the stake for which they fought, and the modern results of nearly two centuries of continual strife-receive but passing notice in the general histories of the country.

Indeed we have still to go to the old French writers if we would learn the early deeds of those fierce cantons, whose indomitable valor and confederated patriotism compelled La Hontan, and other authors, to liken them to the brave Swiss, when-like that gallant people—they interposed the only obstacle to the descent of the French armies upon the fertile fields of the south.

The Indians of the lakes, and more especially the shy and imaginative Chippewas, with their strange traditions, and their poetic parables told in their shifting fishing camps, have often found an able and learned depicter of their manners and customs in Governor Cass and Mr. Schoolcraft; the brave Atlantic tribes of New England have had their history written upon many a page; the noble deeds of Pocahontas has interwoven the story of her people with the annals of Virginia; the credulous labors of the Moravian missionaries have kept

the fables of the Delawares from perishing; and Irving has made classic ground of the prairies, in painting their Bedouinlike rovers. But the proud and tameless Iroquois, who for half a century of his protracted reign, withstood the well appointed armies of Louis XIV, a people who, in the words of Dewitt Clinton, were contra-distinguished from all others upon this continent by their attainments in polity and in eloquence, in negotiation and in war, are fading away with but few memorials of their mighty race.

The meagre but still valuable work of Governor Colden was compiled alike during the intervals of pressing official duties, and at seasons already devoted to the abstruse mathematical studies which formed the chief delight of that accomplished scholar. His "History of the Five Nations," published in parts at long intervals, was given to the world rather as an earnest of something better than as a finished work of itself. It is since his day, too, that the annals of the Iroquois (or Aganuschion, as they called themselves) have been most intimately interwoven with those of our republic; and, indeed, unless the historian had recourse as well to the papers of the Dutch West India Company, as to the writings which have treated of the settlement and early wars of New France, it would have been impossible for him to have presented a full view of his subject.

"The Romans of America," as Volney, and Governeur Morris (Discourse before the New York Historical Society, 1812,) have termed the Six Nations, though far behind the Mexicans and Peruvians in civilization, yet when compared with the barbarous tribes by which they were surrounded, excelled them as much in their political and social organization, as did those famed nations of the south the naked savages upon their borders. "When you speak of the Five Nations in France, (said Monsieur de La Poterie, a century since,) they are thought by a common mistake to be mere barbarians, always thirsting after human blood; but their true character is very different. They are indeed the fiercest and most formidable people in North America; but, at the same time, are as politic and judicious as well can be conceived; and this appears from the management of all the affairs which they transact, not only with the French and English, but likewise with almost all the Indian nations of this vast continent."

The federal league of the Six Cantons, their "Central Council Fire," or grand representative assembly, with the distinct and well defined powers, alike of their general congress

at Onondaga, and of the local assemblies of the head men of each canton at its separate "castle," prove that the confederated tribes of the Aganuschion had made no slight advances in enlightened national polity. And the degree of respect accorded to their formal proceedings, alike by the French, the Dutch, and the English colonial commissioners, evince the dignity and discretion, the unanimity and vigor, with which all their diplomatic relations were conducted.

The permanent habitations and villages of the Iroquois, had doubtless much influence in promoting that decorous and business-like management of affairs that characterize civilized communities; but there was also much in their peculiar institutions which tended to mould the silent and stoical forester of the northern woods, into that sententious Spartan-like character, which the writers of fiction have with so little reflection ascribed to the whole race of red men. Now, indeed, that observation begins to remove this error, the commentator who regards only the primitive and mercurial tribes of the prairies, is likely, from generalizing upon the specimens of Indian character with which he is most familiar, to make a similar blunder with his predecessors, and discredit the delineations of those who painted a different people from the simple curious savage with whom he is conversant. This we observe has generally been the case with the English reviewers, who have criticised Washington Irving's exquisite description of prairie life, in the first volume of the Crayon sketches, or Mr. John T. Irving's life-like delineations of similar scenes in his first work; and they seem to think, that Campbell in his Oneida Chief, and Cooper in his "Last of the Mohicans," must have drawn entirely upon their own invention, for the qualities they accord to a New York Indian. A passing observation of the author of "the Prairies," seems more particularly to have induced this error:

"The Indians," says Mr. Irving, "that I have had an opportunity of seeing in real life, are quite different from those described in poetry. They are by no means the stoics that they are represented; taciturn, unbending, without a tear or a smile. Taciturn they are, it is true, when in company with white men, whose good will they distrust, and whose language they do not understand; but the white man is equally taciturn under like circumstances. When the Indians are among themselves, however, there cannot be greater gossips. Half their time is taken up in talking over their adventures in war and hunting, and in telling whimsical stories. They are great mimics and buffoons also, and entertain

themselves excessively at the expense of the whites with whom they have associated, and who have supposed them impressed with profound respect for their grandeur and dignity. They are curious observers, noting every thing in silence, but with a keen and watchful eye; occasionally exchanging a glance or a grunt with each other, when any thing particularly strikes them; but reserving all comment until they are alone. Then it is that they give full scope to criticism, satire, mimicry, and mirth.

"In the course of my journey along the frontier, I have had repeated opportunities of noticing their excitability and boisterous merriment at their games; and have occasionally noticed a group of Osages sitting round a fire until a late hour of the night, engaged in the most lively and animated conversation; and at times making the woods resound with peals of laughter. As to tears, they have them in abundance, both real and affected; at times they make a merit of them. No one weeps more bitterly or profusely at the death of a relative or friend; and they have stated times when they repair to howl and lament at their graves. I have heard doleful wailings at daybreak, in the neighborhood of Indian villages, made by some of the inhabitants, who go out at that hour into the fields to mourn and weep for the dead. At such times, I am told, the tears will stream down their cheeks in torrents.

"As far as I can judge, the Indian of poetical fiction is like the Shepherd of Pastoral Romance a mere personification of imaginary attributes."

Now, without meaning at all to dissent from so acute an observer as Mr. Irving, with whom our own experience coincides completely, we think the last sentence ought to be taken with some reservation. They who have painted the "Indian of poetical fiction" have erred, we apprehend, only in this particular they have ascribed the peculiar traits of one great community of Indians to the savages of the whole continent. The Five Nations of New York-the Ongue-honwe, or "men who surpassed all others," as they called themselves—are described by Colden, by La Hontan and a dozen other French writers, precisely allowing for the ordinary exaggeration of romance—as the Indians of the continent generally have been since painted by the writers of fiction. Many of these early writers were also conversant with the habits of other tribes, both on the Atlantic and in the far west. La Hontan, as long ago as 1688, was on the Ouisconsin and the Missouri: and from the discrimination he has displayed in hitting off the characteristics of the Ottawas, the Foxes, and other then remote tribes

now well known to us-there is no reason to doubt his truth when painting those nearer home. But if there remained

a doubt of the strong and broad difference between that savage race, whose warriors, collecting in their head-quarters at Onondaga, carried their arms a thousand miles away-alike to the swamps of Carolina, the prairies of Illinois, and the forests of Maine it would be cleared up by the remains of their eloquence which have come down to us in various public documents. Nothing can be more characteristic of the genius of a people, than these remains, while they are essentially dissimilar from other records of Indian character. In the majority of instances, they are terse, dry, and argumentative, characterized sometimes by figurative language, but reminding us in their metaphors rather of the bold and abrupt illustrations of Scandinavian poetry, than of the Asiatic verbiage of others of our aboriginal tribes; lacking the buoyant imagery and grace of the southern and western Indian, furnished to us in many a specimen of native eloquence; but marked by a directness and concise business character, which is often wanting in their more fanciful appeals. In the way of pathos, the reader is probably familiar with the celebrated speech of Logan, an Iroquois (or, as the English termed them, Mingo) chief, and he will find the same laconic eloquence characterizing the political discussions of the countrymen of that noble Cayugan.

Of the advancement of the Iroquois in the arts of peace, we have sufficient evidence in the official statements of General Sullivan, and the extracts from the private journals of his officers, (which will be hereafter quoted from the work before us,) when he proceeded with four thousand picked troops to lay waste their country, and burned houses and granaries, uprooted gardens, cut down orchards, and devastated cornfields, which, according to his own assertion, exhibited a degree of agricultural wealth and rural comfort superior to that attained in his time by the white farmers of the Mohawk valley.

In war their discipline as well as their valor was, at an earlier period complimented, in the despatches of more than one veteran general, who came fresh from the well fought fields of Flanders to match the skill of the European soldier with that of the warriors of the Aganuschion. The art of fortifying a camp seems to have been not unknown to them at the first visit of Europeans to these shores. And the usage of adopting young captives, and like the Mamalukes of Egypt bringing them up as soldiers, which in other Indian tribes is now and then practised as caprice may dictate, was a matter of regular system with the Iroquois, whose ranks of fighting men were always thus kept well filled. This