WHITE INDIAN CHIEFS. 219 



sary to prevent their escape back to the settlements. 

 But the great distance to which they were generally 

 carried off to prevent the likelihood of pursuit or re- 

 capture was generally in itself sufficient to render 

 escape out of the question: for several hundred miles 

 of a wilderness of almost impassable forest was often 

 placed between them and the homes of their fathers. 



We may mention a few notable instances of this 

 adoption of strangers into the tribes, to illustrate 

 what we have said above for independently of the 

 adoption of numbers of captives in the manner described, 

 it became the practice of many of the tribes to elect 

 certain whites (who had done a good turn to the Indians, 

 and who had treated them with friendliness and consider- 

 ation, and in whose honour the Indians believed they 

 could trust) as political or war chiefs of the clan. 

 One of the most notable of these was Sir William 

 Johnson, who was elected paramount chief of the Mo- 

 hawks in 1746; another was Dr. Cadwallader Golden, 

 Surveyor General, and afterwards Lieutenant Governor 

 of the colony of New York, who was also adopted by 

 the Mohawk tribe. Then there was one of the Dukes 

 of Northumberland, who served as Lord Percy in the 

 American revolutionary war, who was created chief 

 of " The Six Nations. " Washington Irving was also 

 adopted a member of the Huron nation, and the 

 late General Porter, U.S.A., was long a chief of the 

 Senecas. * 



In the case of adopted white captives therefore, from 

 the moment of their adoption into the tribal community 

 they were treated with every degree of friendly con- 



* The Life and Times of Sir Wm. Johnson, by W. L. Stone, publd. 

 at Albany, 1865, Vol. i, p. 541. (Appendix No. i). 



