[siebert] loyalists AND SIX NATION INDIANS 83 



acquainted with the aboriginees' customs and manner of making war. 

 The men were to clothe and equip themselves. The outcome of St. 

 Leger's expedition and Butler's visit to Quebec interrupted the en- 

 rolment of Rangers for a brief period. Then, recruiting officers 

 were sent out from Niagara, among them being Depue, who betook 

 himself to the Susquehanna; but enlistments were slow, and the first 

 company was not completed until the middle of December. By 

 May of the next year the number had increased to 125 only, which 

 was but 36 more than the number reported to Carleton a twelve- 

 month previously.^ 



The Indians, on the other hand, did not need to be solicited to 

 come to Niagara. The activity of the Americans, stimulated by 

 the British disasters at Fort Stanwix and Saratoga, caused numbers 

 of the red men to flee thither for refuge; and although thousands of 

 them still dwelt north of the Susquehanna country in the isolation 

 afïorded by the vast stretches of wilderness and the cedar swamps 

 by which they were surrounded, no less than 2,300 Indians were 

 at Niagara in December, 1777, making endless demands on the com- 

 missary department. By the middle of the following May this num- 

 cer had increased to 2,700, and Colonel Bolton, commandant of the 

 fort, relates that he found it necessary "to send to Detroit for a supply 

 of provisions, and to buy up all the cattle, etc., that could possibly be 

 procured, otherwise this garrison must have been distressed or the 

 savages ofifended." With the situation so serious in the land of the 

 Six Nations, we can understand why the chiefs and warriors appealed 

 to Butler at this time to conduct his corps to the frontiers of the re- 

 bellious Colonies, since they looked to their white friends to protect 

 their settlements and harass the enemy. ^ 



The collecting of Tories to serve under Butler was not confined 

 to regular recruiting agents: it appears to have been one of the pur- 

 poses with which Brant set out for Oghwaga and Unadilla early in 

 1778. At Unadilla, which an American officer described as "a com- 

 mon receptacle for all rascally Tories and runaway negroes," Brant 

 was assisted by John Young, and at Oghwaga by a former Susquehanna 

 settler named McGinnis, both of whom had been sent forward by 

 Butler. From Oghwaga the Mohawk chieftain proceeded with his 



^ Cruikshank, Butler's Rangers, 35-37, 39, 40; Severance, Old Trails of the Nia- 

 gara Frontier, 59; Johnson's Orderly Book, 10, n., 4, n, 82, n.; Stone, Life of Joseph 

 Brant, 182, 186, 209; Reid, The Mohawk Valley, 411-425; Haldimand Papers, 

 21, 765, 424; B. 40, 4. 5. 



^ Zeisberger, "Hist, of Northern Am. Indians" in the Ohio Arch, and Hist. 

 Quar. for Jan. and Apr., 1910, 37, 38; Severance, Old Trails of the Niagara Frontier, 

 57. 



