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Updated: June 17, 2025
As nearly as the unhappy men could understand, there was a long, angry interview between Sir John, Thayendanega, and some of the British officers before the matter was settled, and then they were delivered up to the Indians, even the Tories shutting their ears to the prayers for mercy.
He was barely civil when General Herkimer advanced to receive him, and, without greeting the commander, he pointed toward a clearing in the wilderness half a mile or more away, as he said: "There will Thayendanega meet his brother, the white chief, and without firearms." "To-day?" General Herkimer asked.
"Surely to one so high in command Brant would listen, when he might refuse even to speak with one of less rank." "The thought was not in my mind that Thayendanega himself would be opposed to our commander; but if you know what was done last year, it is easy to understand my meaning."
Unless the entire gang had spent the night with the white men, however, it was positive these exceedingly brave warriors of whom Thayendanega boasted, had no idea of continuing the part of allies during this day at least.
It sounds like an unreasonable tale, or something after the style of a fairy-story, to say that a party of lads, drilling with wooden guns, were able, without being conscious of the fact, to frighten from his bloody work such a murderous, powerful sachem as Thayendanega, or Joseph Brant, to use his English name, but such is the undisputed fact.
It was perhaps half an hour after daybreak when Colonel Cox, the same officer who by injudicious use of his tongue had well-nigh compassed the death of us all during the powwow with Thayendanega, approached General Herkimer while the latter was walking slowly around the encampment as if on a tour of inspection, and said, in a tone so loud that all in the vicinity might hear it: "Are we to go forward, sir, as men should who set out to relieve a besieged fort, or must we loiter here until the enemy has worked his will?"
"Yes, that can be done," Thayendanega replied, indifferently, "and if it gives you pleasure to indulge in what can be of no profit, we will meet here again to-morrow morning; but now it were wiser my young men went back to the encampment."
Thayendanega had hardly gained the shelter of the thicket before black clouds overspread the heavens, and it seemed as if in a twinkling the rain came down in torrents; sharp flashes of lightning zigzagged across the ominous-looking sky, and more than one around me declared it was a portent, a sign, a token of the tempest which was about to break upon our peaceful homes.
He told me that at one time, before Thayendanega had become so powerful a sachem, he and General Herkimer were near neighbors, and quite intimate friends. It seems, from the story this soldier told me, that Sir William Johnson, Sir John's father, sent the Indian boy to school, and after he had received a good education gave him employment as secretary.
When we had learned all that our acquaintances among the command could tell us, Jacob insisted that Sergeant Corney see General Herkimer without delay, in order to learn if that officer would so far interest himself in the fate of Peter Sitz as to make inquiries of Thayendanega regarding him, in case the opportunity offered.
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