THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 59 



Albany and Schenectady, where they went into win- 

 ter quarters. Lee was present at several conferences 

 between Sir William Johnson and the chiefs of the 

 Six Nations, and became much interested in the 

 Indians. His relations with them soon became so- 

 friendly that he was adopted into the Mohawk tribe of 

 the Bear, and thus acquired the privilege of smoking 

 a pipe with them as they sat around the council fire. 

 He also formed a temporary matrimonial alliance with 

 one of the foremost families of the Six Nations, and 

 wrote about it to his sister in England, with quaint 

 frankness. "My wife," said he, "is daughter to the 

 famous White Thunder who is Belt of Wampum to 

 the Senakas which is in fact their Lord Treasurer. 

 She is a very great beauty, and is more like your 

 friend Mrs. Griffith than anybody I know. I shall 

 say nothing of her accomplishments, for you must be 

 certain that a woman of her fashion cannot be without 

 many." The Indians, he continues, are even more 

 polite than the French, " if you will allow good breed- 

 ing to consist in a constant desire to do everything that 

 will please you, and a strict carefulness not to say or 

 do anything that may offend you." Of this well-bred 

 desire to please, the same letter gives an instance. 1 

 A young Mohawk, anxious to show his gratitude for 

 some trifling service Lee had rendered him, prowled 

 about the neighbouring woods until he succeeded in 

 killing a French sergeant on picket duty; then he 

 carefully decorated the scalp with bright blue ribbons 

 and presented it to Lee in token of brotherly love. 

 Lee's definition of good breeding is excellent ; but his 

 practice did not comport with his theory. He was 



1 New York Historical Society Collections, Lee Papers, I. 5. 



