and a Freemason. He spoke at least three and possibly all of the Six Nation languages, and had frequently been useful as an interpreter in the Indian Department. His attachment to the Johnsons and his devotion to what he felt was the best interest of the Indian peoples made him a valuable ally for the British. Joseph in his turn was dependent upon his relations with the British. He was not a traditional chief or sachem of the Iroquois. He exercised his influence as a war chief, an office open to any brave who by the force of reputation and personality could draw together a war party and lead it. Even though he showed great capacities in that role, Brant was not ranked by the Iroquois as their most distinguished war chief. His prominence came as spokesman of the Indian interest to their British allies. Joseph’s education and his reliability endeared him to the whites, and they respected and admired him for his degree of acculteration. His complete dependability attracted British officials to him and raised him high in their esteem. Brant would be the linchpin in British-Indian relations both during the war years and for three decades afterwards.
In November 1775 Brant, together with Guy Johnson and other members of the Indian Department, had travelled to England. He returned in July 1776 fully convinced that the only salvation for his people lay in complete and active support of the royalist cause. During the winter and spring of 1775-76, while the Iroquois clung to their wavering neutrality, Brant made a wide-ranging tour through their territory, encouraging active involvement, gathering about him a party of about one hundred warriors and raising enthusiasm for the British cause.
At the same time John Butler, the Indian agent at Fort Niagara, was also working to break the Indians’ neutrality. Butler, who, like Johnson and Brant, would be a major figure in the early settlement of Ontario, was the son of a British soldier. As chief translator of the Indian Department, he had risen to be right-hand man of Sir William Johnson. Butler has been described as “a fat man, below middle stature, yet active. . . . Care sat upon his brow. Speaking quickly, he repeated his words when excited. Decision, firmness, courage were undoubted characteristics of the man.”4 Butler was a highly ambitious and driving individual who by early 1776 was turning all his considerable energies to encouraging Iroquois resistance of the Revolution. By a combination of feasting, drinking, gifts, reminders of ancient alliances and eloquent speeches, Butler single-handedly convinced three hundred Senecas to participate in the major campaign of 1777, thus decisively breaking the Indian neutrality by engaging an important segment of the Six Nations in the war.
The Warriors: “John Butler” (1728?-1796), by Henry Oakley
Butler was the most successful and the most feared of the Loyalist military leaders. The son of an officer in the British army, Butler was closely associated with the British Indian Department from early manhood. He served extensively in the Seven Years’ War, being second-in-command of the Indians when Sir William Johnson took Fort Niagara in 1759 and holding the same post in Amherst’s force advancing on Montreal. He was instrumental in winning the Iroquois to active participation in the Revolution on the British side; from 1777 he directed his own corps, Butler’s Rangers, in a devastating series of raids against the American frontier settlements. It has often been contended that Butler and his men were motivated by hatred and a desire for revenge. Their operations, however, had the important objectives of denying supplies to the Continental army and drawing off as many rebel troops as possible from operations further east. In these objectives Butler was enormously successful.
The entry of the Iroquois into the conflict seemed to come at a propitious moment. In the early years of the Revolutionary War, from 1775 to 1777, the British had attempted to strike first at rebellion in the north of the American colonies where resistance had been strongest. The rebels had had some early successes in forcing the British out of Boston and taking Fort Ticonderoga, the key to the passage of Lakes George and Champlain to Canada. When the Americans attacked Quebec City in December 1776, however, as we have seen, they were utterly defeated. The British pressed forward in the following year to take New York City and then pushed down towards Philadelphia, which they occupied in 1777.
The other major campaign the British undertook in 1777 was what they hoped would be a decisive blow against the rebel strongholds in the northern colonies. General John Burgoyne with a sizable army was to drive from Canada down Lake Champlain and the Hudson River to Albany, thus forcing a wedge between the solidly disaffected New England colonies and their more moderate sisters. An auxiliary force under Colonel Barry St. Leger and Sir John Johnson was to subdue the Mohawk Valley and then join Burgoyne on the Hudson for the main thrust. This second army, totalling 1,400 men, consisted mainly of Loyalists. It brought together for the first time the partisans who had been gathered by Johnson, Butler and Brant.
On August 3, St. Leger’s forces laid seige to Fort Stanwix, a rebel-held post near the head of the Mohawk Valley. When the American General Nicholas Herkimer attempted to relieve the garrison, he marched straight into an ambush carefully laid at Oriskany Creek by Butler and Brant. In savage hand-to-hand fighting during a torrential rainfall, both sides lost heavily. The rebels, although in possession of the field, were too weak to pursue the invaders. Despite their costly success at Oriskany, the Loyalist forces, equipped with insufficient artillery, were unable to crack the well-fortified Fort Stanwix. Disheartened by their own heavy losses, the besiegers had little stomach for holding on. False rumours of the approach of a massive American army led to the precipitous retreat of St. Leger’s little force. In revenge for Oriskany, Mohawk villages at Fort Stanwix and Fort Hunter were sacked by the Americans. Numbers of Mohawks fled behind the British lines.
Meanwhile, Burgoyne had advanced from Canada with an army of 7,000 regulars and German mercenaries accompanied by 680 Canadians and Loyalists and 500 Canadian Indians. Burgoyne’s Loyalist contingent consisted of a number of fledgling corps formed in 1777 – the Queen’s Loyal Rangers under John Peters, the Loyal Volunteers commanded by Francis Pfister and the King’s Loyal Americans under Ebenezer Jessup. In addition there were small groups under Captain Daniel McAlpin, Dr. Samuel Adams and Lieutenant Samuel McKay as well as a corps of bateaux men raised for the duration of the campaign. None of these units would survive in the form in which they existed in 1777 or grow to significant proportions.
Many of the Loyalists with the Burgoyne expedition were used in the hazardous tasks of maintaining supply lines, foraging, road and bridge repairs, and scouting. Some, notably the Queen’s Loyal Rangers, saw heavy fighting. The losses of the Loyalists were heavy and the rank and file of several units dwindled drastically. Burgoyne used the Indian warriors with his army to good effect, threatening to turn his braves loose on the frontier settlements. Panic-stricken, many colonists hastened to the British camp. Then a seemingly isolated incident nullified Burgoyne’s tactics. A small party of Indians escorting Jane McCrae, fiancée of a Tory officer, senselessly killed the girl. Horrified, Burgoyne demanded of his braves in the strongest terms that they abstain from indiscriminate warfare. This largely unjustified censure lost him the support of the bulk of the warriors, who deserted early in August. Most of Butler’s Senecas had returned home after the retreat from Fort Stanwix, but Brant’s party and others briefly joined Burgoyne. Finding he could do little to assist and being disgusted with what he considered the mismanagement of affairs, Brant returned to the Six Nations country. Others followed his lead.
The Warriors: “Colonel Guy Johnson” (ca. 1740-1788) by Benjamin West
Guy Johnson remained a rather peripheral figure in the Revolutionary War. A distant relation of Sir William Johnson, he married Sir William’s youngest daughter and was active in the Indian Department from 1759. He assumed the duties of superintendent in 1774 and the following year was one of the leaders of several hundred loyal residents who left the Mohawk Valley. Guy spent most of the war in London and New York, returning only in late 1779 to direct Indian affairs from Fort Niagara. He was replaced by his brother-in-law, Sir John Johnson, in 1783, because of his suspected involvement
