the blackest
colours. The story of the "Massacre of Wyoming" is a sample of the
manner in which the American writers of the day made history against the
Indians and the "Tories." When facts could not be sufficiently seasoned
to stimulate recruits for the army and appropriations from the people
for its support, fiction pure and simple was resorted to; and Dr.
Franklin himself did not think it unworthy of his antecedents, age and
position to employ this method to bring disrepute upon the "Tories," the
Indians, and the British Government itself, and to excite the hatred of
his countrymen against them. The accomplished author of the _Life of
Brant and the Border Wars of the American Revolution_ forcibly observes:

"The Indians of the Six Nations, in common with their chief, were loaded
with execrations for atrocities of which all were alike innocent,
because the deeds recorded were never committed, it having been the
policy of the public writers and those in authority, not only to magnify
actual occurrences, but sometimes, when those were wanting, to draw upon
their imaginations for such deeds of ferocity and bloodshed as might
best serve to keep alive the strongest feelings of indignation against
the parent country, and likewise induce the people to take the field in
revenge, if not driven thither by the nobler impulse of patriotism."[99]

Such deliberate fictions, for political purposes, as that by Dr.
Franklin, just referred to, were probably rare; but the investigations
into which the author has been, in the preparation of the present work,
have satisfied him that, from other causes, much exaggeration and
falsehood has obtained a permanent footing in American history. Most
historians of that period, English and American, wrote too near the time
when the events they were describing occurred, for a dispassionate
investigation of the truth; and other writers who have succeeded, have
too often been content to follow the beaten track, without incurring the
labour of diligent and calm inquiry. Reference has been made above to
Wyoming, concerning which, to this day, the world has been abused with
monstrous fictions, with tales of horror never enacted. Nor were the
exaggerations in regard to the invasion of Wyoming greater than were
those connected with the irruption into and destruction of Cherry
Valley, as the reader will discover in the course of the ensuing pages.
Indeed, the writer, in preparation of materials for this wor