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George Croghan informed Washington that the sachems considered themselves treated with slight, in never being consulted in war matters. That he himself had repeatedly offered the services of the warriors under his command as scouts and outguards, but his offers had been rejected.
The whites who wished peace, the magistrates and leaders, had little more power over their evil and unruly fellows than the Indian sachems had over the turbulent young braves.
"Perhaps it may have been so at Johnson Hall or at Guy Park, perhaps, where came many chiefs and sachems and Sagamores in the great days of the great Sir William the days that are no more, O Sagamore!" And: "My brother's given name?" inquired the savage bluntly.
There were organic provisions apparently investing particular tribes with superior power; as, for example, the Onondagas were allowed fourteen sachems and the Senecas but eight; and a larger body of sachems would naturally exercise a stronger influence in council than a smaller.
So I, one of his loyal allies, have come to see his camp, known to the white man as London, his council which the whites call his Parliament, where his sachems and chiefs make the laws of his tribes, and to see his wigwam, known to the palefaces as Buckingham Palace, but to the red man as the "Tepee of the Great White Father." And this is what I see: What the Indian Sees.
"In the vale of Onondaga when the fifty old and wise sachems make a banquet," said Tayoga, "the maidens bring fruit and wild flowers to it that the eye also may have its feast. It is not a weakness, but an excellence in Great Bear to like the decorations." They lingered long over the board, protracting the feast far after the fall of night and interspersing it with pleasant conversation.
Ransom H. Gillett, Esq., a commissioner appointed by the President of the United States to attend and hold the said treaty, and also Josiah Trowbridge, Esq., the superintendent on behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, being severally present at the said treaty, the said sachems, chiefs and warriors, on behalf of the said Tuscarora Nation, did agree to sell and release to the said Thomas Ludlow Ogden and Joseph Fellows, and they, the said Thomas Ludlow Ogden and Joseph Fellows, did agree to purchase all the right, title and claim of the Tuscarora Nation of, in and to the tract, piece or parcel of land mentioned and described in the instrument of writing next hereafter set forth, and at the price or sum therein specified as the consideration or purchase money for such sale and release; which instrument being read and explained to the said parties, and mutually agreed to, was signed and sealed by the contracting parties, and is in the words following: This indenture, made this fifteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight, between the sachems, chiefs and warriors of the Tuscarora Nation of Indians, duly assembled in council, and acting for and on behalf of the said Tuscarora Nation, of the first part, and Thomas Ludlow Ogden, of the city of New York, and Joseph Fellows, of Geneva, in the county of Ontario, of the second part, witnesseth: That the said sachems, chiefs and warriors of the Tuscarora Nation, in consideration of the sum of nine thousand six hundred dollars to them in hand paid by the said Thomas Ludlow Ogden and Joseph Fellows, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, have granted, bargained, sold, released and confirmed, and by these presents do grant, bargain, sell, release and confirm to the said Thomas Ludlow Ogden and Joseph Fellows, and to their heirs and assigns, all that tract or parcel of land situated, lying and being in the county of Niagara, and State of New York, commonly called and known by the name of the Tuscarora Reservation, or Seneca grant, containing nineteen hundred and twenty acres, be the same more or less, being thelands in their occupancy, and not included in the land conveyed to them by Henry Dearborn, together with all and singular the rights, privileges, hereditaments and appurtenances to the said tract or parcel of land belonging or appertaining, and all the estate, right, title, interest, claim and demand of the said party of the first part, and of the said Tuscarora Nation of Indians of, in and to the same, and to every part and parcel thereof; to have and to hold all and singular the above described and released premises unto the said Thomas Ludlow Ogden and Joseph Fellows, and their heirs and assigns, to their proper use and behalf forever, as joint tenants and not as tenants in common.
In addition, there hung about the fort the usual habitués of a Northern fur post, young clerks from England, who had come out for a year's experience in the wilds; underpaid artisans, striving to mend their fortunes by illicit trade; hunters and coureurs and voyageurs, living like Indians but with a strain of white blood that forever distinguished them from their comrades; stately Indian sachems, stalking about the fort with whiffs of contempt from their long calumets for all this white-man luxury; and a ragamuffin brigade, squaws, youngsters, and beggars, who subsisted by picking up food from the waste heap of the fort.
At sight of the party standing to receive them they redoubled their clamor, then, flourishing their arms and legs and turning continually round, they gradually revolved into the presence of the explorers. They selected as chiefs and sachems of the party such as bore weapons, being the colonel, Marcoy and the two interpreters.
The wife of one of the Sachems was taken, and as she had protected two captive English girls she was treated with great consideration, and was much admired for her good sense and modesty; but the other prisoners were dispersed among the settlers to serve as slaves, and a great number of the poor creatures were shipped off to the West India Islands to work on the sugar plantations.
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