Francis Whiting Halsey

“ William Andrews, who had already been in the country and knew something of the Mohawk language, came over and spent three years among the Mohawks and Oneidas. With money supplied by Queen Anne, a fort one hundred and fifty feet square was built at the Mohawk castle known afterward as Fort Hunter, with a block-house at each corner and quarters for twenty men. The Indians built a school-house thirty feet long and twelve wide, and from distant places prepared to have children sent for instruction. ”

“ While it is not unlikely that Jogues saw some of the head-waters of the Susquehanna, for here were Mohawk hunting grounds, it is more probable that Jacques Bruyar actually came into that valley. He lived many years alternately among the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Mohawks, and was in the Iroquois lands for more than thirty years before the eighteenth century began. It was the fate of these missionaries to lead roving lives like the Indians whom they sought to convert ”

“ Andrews came out to teach the Oneidas as well as the Mohawks, and bore as his credentials a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury. In going to the Oneidas he passed over one hundred miles “through a vast wilderness of woods” and along a narrow Indian path. Wherever he labored the great difficulty was to overcome the demoralizing influence of hunting expeditions in which boys as well as men engaged. Mr. Andrews complained that nothing he did seemed to last. An evil influence was exerted by Dutch traders who falsely told the Indians he would claim one-tenth of all they had. ”