e hem. She had been summoned to the council to give a promise of help;
but she had her own grievances to relate in the fact that her husband
had been slain while fighting for the English, and yet she had never
received any compensation or acknowledgment of his services. The
incident holds for us its chief interest as a proof of the high standing
of individual women among the tribes of the Atlantic slope. This female
rule was not a passing custom; it was evidently of long establishment at
the time of the coming of the colonists, and it continued into later
colonial and even into Revolutionary times. Of the later instances of
women chiefs, Queen Esther furnishes a noted example. This abominable
woman, who played such a prominent part in the massacre of Wyoming in
1778, was a half-breed, probably the daughter of Catherine Montour, also
a half-breed and a fiend incarnate. In the attack upon Wyoming Valley,
led by Major John Butler, son of that Walter Butler whose name was so
execrated by the colonists,--the Senecas took part, led by a noted chief
named Gi-on-gwah-tuh and by Queen Esther, who was probably, though this
is not certain, in supreme command of the Indians. However this may be,
we know that she led the attack, fighting like a fiend, and that after
the action sixteen prisoners were placed in a circle around a large
stone, known to this day as Queen Esther's Rock. Striking up a chant,
she passed around the circle, at each step dashing out the brains of a
victim. Two of the prisoners, however, managed to make a dash for
liberty and succeeded in effecting their escape, and it is to them that
we owe our account of the massacre.

As is so often the case in matters of colonial record, there is a
confusion between Queen Esther and her mother, and most writers allege
that the "queen" was herself the Catherine Montour whom others claim to
have been the mother of the chieftainess. The latter theory is probably
correct. When in 1744 Catherine Montour, who, in her youth, had been
captured and adopted by the Senecas, appeared at a council of the Indian
commissioners and delegates from the Six Nations, the council being held
at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we are told by Stone, in his life of Sir
William Johnson, that "Although so young when made a prisoner, she had
nevertheless preserved her language; and being in youth and middle age
very handsome and of good address, she had been greatly caressed by the
gentlewomen of Philadelphia