262 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. V. 



speeches, they now greeted each other with a show of cordiality. There 

 too, Brant learned with much distress that the Americans had burned 

 the Onondaga village and carried off one of his children among thei^ 

 prisoners. This did not, however, diminish his zeal, for as soon as he 

 arrived at Niagara, he volunteered to accompany Captain Butler to 

 Detroit in the hope of inspiriting the western Indians to rally for the 

 •defence of that place. They were already upon their way to Fort Erie 

 where they intended to embark in a sailing vessel, when they encount- 

 ered a runner bearing the alarming intelligence that the enemy was 

 advancing against the Cayuga village. Brant hurried off to the assist- 

 ance of his friends, but on learning that it was a false alarm, made a 

 rapid march through the woods to Venango and Pittsburg where an 

 expedition against Detroit was reported to be in preparation. Having 

 accomplished his object of alarming the American garrisons in that 

 quarter, he wheeled sharply about and taking a wide circuit through the 

 country returned to his former post of observation at Oquaga. A 

 formidable army was then assembling at Wyoming with the evident 

 intention of invading the Indian country, and another was reported to 

 be forming at Otsego Lake for the same purpose. Butler with 300 

 rangers was watching their movements from the Indian village of 

 Canadasaga. The Indians themselves were starving and Butler's men 

 were living on salted provisions brought from England. In the hope of 

 diverting the attention of the enemy to the defence of their own frontier 

 and at the same time obtaining cattle for the subsistence of his followers, 

 Butler sent one party under Captain Macdonnell to attack the settle- 

 ments on the west branch of the Susquehanna while Brant with another 

 was simultaneously instructed to descend the Delaware as far as 

 Minnesink. 



On the 29th of July, the latter was back at Oquaga where he penned 

 this direct and modest account of his incursion which had terminated in 

 a sharp encounter with a pursuing force : 



" I arrived here last night from Minnesink, and I was a good deal disap- 

 pointed, I could not get into that place a little before day as I wished to 

 do, I did not arrive till noon, when all the cattle were in the woods, so 

 we could get very few of them. We have burnt all the settlement 

 called Minnesink except one fort, which we lay before about an hour 

 and had one man killed and one wounded. We destroyed several small 

 stockades and forts and took four scalps and three prisoners, but did not 

 in the least injure women and children. The reason we could not take 

 any more of them was owing to the many forts about the place into 



