1 896-97- ] BRANT IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. • 243 



JOSEPH BRANT IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 



By Capt. Ernest Cruikshank. 



(Read 3rd April, 18 gy.) 



Among the few remarkable persons known to history, produced by 

 his race, a place in the first rank must naturally be assigned to Joseph 

 Brant as being equally distinguished in the council and in the field. 

 Energetic, brave, and skilled in all the arts and devices of partisan 

 warfare, his numerous expeditions were marked by almost uniform 

 success. A burly and muscular frame and perfect health enabled him to 

 endure extremes of privation and fatigue. His shrewdness and undoubted 

 eloquence and argumentative skill gained him even greater reputation 

 and influence among the whites than with his own people. He possessed 

 the valuable faculty of displaying his talents at all times to the best 

 advantage and impressing nearly every white man he met with perhaps 

 an exaggerated idea of his consequence and ability. From the close of 

 the American Revolution until his death in 1807, he was universally 

 regarded as the most eminent and powerful of his race and was con- 

 stantly courted and caressed by the officials of both governments and 

 was at the same time equally feared and distrusted by them, as a 

 necessary result of his tortuous and disquieting line of policy. His 

 biography was written at considerable length by Mr. Stone some fifty 

 years ago ; but the materials at the disposal of the author were so 

 imperfect that it abounds in errors and misstatements. Quite recently 

 documents have become accessible which render it possible to correct 

 these and construct the narrative of his career on a more secure 

 foundation. 



He was born in the year 1742, at the upper Mohawk village of 

 Canajoharie. Sir William Johnson's relations with his sister Mary, 

 induced him to take notice of the young Indian, who displayed at a 

 very early age remarkable readiness in learning to read and write 

 his native language under the instruction of a native Indian school- 

 master maintained in his village by the " Society for the Propa- 

 gation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." By Sir William, he was then 

 sent to an English school of reputation at Lebanon, Conn., where 



