I90I-2.] Joseph Brant in the American Revolution. 401 



of grain. The severity of the blow from a mihtary point of view was 

 freely acknowledged by their enemies. 



James Madison wrote from Philadelphia on November 14th, 1780: — 



" The inroads of the enemy on the frontiers of New York have been 

 most fatal to us in this respect. They have almost totally ruined that fine 

 wheat country which was able, and from the energy of the government 

 was likely, to supply magazines of flour both to the main army and the 

 northwestern posts. The settlement of Schoharie which alone was able 

 to furnish, according to a letter from General Washington, 80,000 bushels 

 of grain for public use has been totally laid in ashes." 



Brant returned to Niagara where he remained about two months to 

 recover from the effects of his wound, but on the first day of February he 

 again marched for the Mohawk river at the head of 185 Onondagas and 

 Oneidas, accompanied by thirty rangers under the command of Lieut. 

 John Bradt, a nephew of Colonel Butler, and Volunteer Hare. He was 

 instructed to blockade Fort Stanwix and observe the motions of the 

 enemy generally. The perils and hardships of such an expedition had 

 been vastly increased by the destruction of the Indian villages and the 

 devastation of the border settlements, as Colonel Johnson pointed out. 



" This post (Niagara) is unluckily at a great distance from the rebels 

 settlements, which not only occasions delay, but causes each party to 

 carry three weeks or a month's provisions as (since the loss of the Indian 

 towns,) none can be had by the way. The Mohawk river has ceased to 

 be an object as being almost totally ruined." 



They arrived one day too late to intercept a convoy of provisions, but 

 cut off a party of soldiers sent out from the fort to cut wood of whom 

 was one killed and sixteen captured. After lurking in the vicinity for 

 several weeks, they returned to Niagara on March 17th. 



By this time reports had been received from Detroit that parties of 

 frontiersmen from Pennsylvania and Virginia had been directed to 

 assemble at various stations on the Ohio river, under the command of 

 Colonel George Rogers Clark, with the avowed intention of invading the 

 territory of the Western Indians and possibly attacking that post. 

 Colonel Guy Johnson accordingly determined to despatch Brant with an 

 escort of seventeen young Seneca warriors to deliver " a speech and belt 

 [of wampum] to the Indians there and also to the Shawanese villages, to 

 encourage them to act with vigour and to watch the enemy's motions, 

 with the promise of such aid as time and circumstances will permit 

 from hence." 



