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he remained for several years. His marked proficiency in reading and 

 writing English and the aptness he manifested in translating from the 

 various Indian dialects procured him employment as an interpreter in 

 the Indian Department before he reached the age of twenty. In this 

 service it was an easy matter for him to gain distinction, as the majority 

 of his fellow interpreters were rather illiterate and dull-witted men, and 

 and at the same time he secured the warm approbation of successive 

 missionaries by his exemplary conduct as a Christian. The Rev. Samuel 

 Kirkland, a Presbyterian, and later on, a fierce advocate of the revolution- 

 ary movement, said ''he endeavours to teach his poor brethren the things 

 of God in which his own heart seems much engaged. His house is an 

 asylum for the missionaries in that wilderness." Mr. Stuart, the Church 

 of England missionary, engaged him to translate a large part of the New 

 Testament into Mohawk, as well as the church catechism and a number 

 of sermons, a task which was performed to his satisfaction. 



Brant's own tribe, the Mohawks, once the most numerous, always the 

 most warlike and aggressive, had been so diminished by its losses in the 

 late wars with the French that it had become the smallest of the Six 

 Nations, although still regarded as first in rank and reputation. There 

 were now but two small villages known as Canajoharie, or the Upper 

 Mohawk town, and the Lower Mohawk town, containing together barely 

 400 inhabitants and these were quite surrounded by populous white 

 settlements. There were, in addition, some twenty families, equally 

 isolated, living in the valley of Schoharie, 



" Nothing less than manifest injury, in my opinion," Governor Tryon 

 had declared with emphasis, in 1772, "will drive the Mohawks from 

 their steady attachment to His Majesty's interest. They appear to be 

 actuated as a community by principles of rectitude which would do 

 honour to the most civilized nations. Indeed they are in a civilized 

 state and many of them good farmers." Sir William Johnson had been 

 received into this tribe by adoption and had for many years taken a 

 keen interest in its welfare. He founded schools, built churches, and 

 bought black cattle and agricultural implements for its use. There was 

 already a strong strain of white blood in the veins of many of its mem- 

 bers and he endeavoured earnestly to strengthen the ties which united 

 the races in every way. The Annual Register for 1767, records the fact 

 that " eighteen young white women have lately been married to as many 

 young Indian chiefs. Sir William Johnson gives all possible encourage- 

 ment to intermarriage with the Indians which has long been practiced 

 by every nation in America but the English." 



The fertile plots of bottom lands occupied by the Mohawks had 



