Perhaps Brant
tried to quell the disorder, but, if he did, his efforts
were in vain. St Leger himself seemed to share in the
panic, for he beat a hasty retreat, following the road
leading to Oswego. But the War Chief of the Six Nations--it
is pleasant to relate--did not retreat with him. While
St Leger journeyed to the north, Brant had called together
a band of his willing followers. Then he took one of
those flying marches which made him famous in border
warfare. Crossing the territory of the enemy with great
skill and daring, he hurried eastward, and in a short
time he was in the camp of General Burgoyne on the banks
of the Hudson.

CHAPTER VIII

FIGHTING ON THE FRONTIER

Brant was now regularly in the pay of the British, and
until the close of the war he was to be employed actively
in weakening the colonists by destroying their settlements
intervening between the populous centres of the Atlantic
states and the borders of Canada. In this unhappy
fratricidal war each side used the Indians to strike
terror into the hearts of its enemies, and as a result,
in the quiet valleys lying between the Hudson and Ohio
and the Great Lakes, there was an appalling destruction
of property and loss of life. Brant proved himself one
of the most successful of the leaders in this border
warfare, and while he does not seem ever to have been
guilty of wanton cruelty himself, those under him, on
more than one occasion, ruthlessly murdered their foes,
irrespective of age or sex. That he tacitly permitted
his followers to murder and scalp unarmed settlers shows
that he was still much of a savage. As one historian has
written: 'He was not a devil, and not an angel.' It is
true, as we shall see, that on several occasions he
intervened to save Tory friends and acquaintances, but
these are isolated examples, and his raids were accompanied
by all the horrors of Indian warfare. The only excuse
that can be offered for him is that he was no worse than
his age, and that the white loyalist leaders, such as
the Butlers, as well as the colonial commanders of the
revolutionists, were equally callous regarding the
destruction of property and life.

Brant appears to have spent the winter of 1777 and 1778
in Canada, but with the opening of military operations
in the spring he was again at Oquaga and Unadilla. One
of his first exploits of the year 1778 was at Springfield,
a small settlement lying some miles beyond Cherry Valley
at the hea