John Charles Dent

“ No expression of opinion was evermore unjust than that which has persistently held him up to the execration of mankind as a monster of cruelty. That the exigences of his position compelled him to wink at many atrocities committed by his troops is beyond question. That, however, was a necessary incident of Indian warfare; nay, of all warfare; and after a careful consultation and comparison of authorities we can come to no other conclusion than that, for an Indian, reared among the customs and traditions of the Six Nations, Joseph Brant was a humane and kind-hearted man. ”

“ On this occasion he has come over with instructions from Henry IV., King of France, to explore the St. Lawrence, to ascertain how far from its mouth navigation is practicable, and to make a survey of the country on its banks. He is accompanied on the expedition by a man of widely different mould; a man who is worth a thousand of such sordid, huckstering spirits; a man who unites with the courage and energy of a soldier a high sense of personal honour and a singleness of heart worthy of the Chevalier Bayard himself. ”

“ Responsive to his call, the troops rose as one man and poured in a volley so deadly as to strike even the well-trained veterans of France with awe. Scores of them fell to rise no more, and hundreds sank wounded on the plain. Such of the terrified Canadian troops as were able to run, fled in sheer terror. Before the smoke of that terrible volley had cleared away, Wolfe, his delicate frame trembling with illness, but buoyed up with the assurance of a glorious victory, placed himself at the head of the Louisburg Grenadiers and the 28th Regiment, and led them to the fray. ”

“ It is true that there is no occult power in a mere name. Ship-money, doubtless, was a doomed impost, even if there had been no particular individual called John Hampden. The practical despotism of the Stuart dynasty would doubtless have come to an end long before the present day, even if Oliver Cromwell and William of Orange had never existed. In the United States, slavery was a fated institution, even if there had been no great rebellion, and if Abraham Lincoln had never occupied the Presidential chair. ”

“ No sooner were the garrison well clear of the fort than the shrill war-whoop of the Indians was heard, and there ensued a slaughter so terrible, so indiscriminate, and so inconceivably hideous in all its details that even the history of pioneer warfare hardly furnishes any parallel to it. Nearly a thousand victims were slain on the spot, and hundreds more were carried away into hopeless captivity. ”

“ Such a man was the intrepid young Major-General who had been sent out by Pitt to sound the death-note of French Dominion in Canada. With a shattered constitution, and a frame already in an advanced stage of consumption, the indomitable young hero commenced the first moves in that desperate game which he was finally destined to win at the cost of his own life. The siege lasted nearly three months, during all of which time, consumed by organic disease, and worn out by long and uninterrupted service, his dauntless resolution never wholly failed him. ”

“ And if the Indians did not tamely submit to the yoke sought to be imposed upon their necks, they only acted as human beings, civilized and uncivilized, have always acted upon like provocation. Those who have characterized the Indian as inhuman and fiendish because he put his prisoners to the torture, seem to have forgotten that the wildest accounts of Indian ferocity pale beside the undoubtedly true accounts of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. ”

“ It is sad to think that a career hitherto without a blot should have been marred with repeated acts of cruelty and breaches of faith. On both counts of this indictment the Marquis of Montcalm must be pronounced guilty; and in view of his conduct at Oswego, and afterwards at Fort William Henry, the only conclusion at which the impartial historian can arrive is that he was lamentably deficient in the highest attributes of character. ”

“ Of all the characters who figure in the dark history of Indian warfare, few have attained greater notoriety, and none has been more persistently villified than the subject of this sketch. Joseph Brant was known to us in the days of our childhood as a firm and staunch ally of the British, it is true; but as a man embodying in his own person all the demerits and barbarities of his race, and with no more mercy in his breast than is to be found in a famished tiger of the jungle. And for this unjust view of his character American historians are not wholly to blame. ”

“ The dark, piercing eyes seem almost to transfix every one upon whom they rest. One half of the face seems to be covered by a mask, made to imitate the freshly-painted visage of a Mohawk Indian when starting out upon the war path. ”

“ There is at least evidence that he did his best to save life. Entering one of the houses, while the massacre was raging, he found there a woman quietly engaged in sewing. "Why do you not fly, or hide yourself?" he asked; "do you not know that the Indians are murdering all your neighbours, and will soon be here?" "I am not afraid," was the reply: "I am a loyal subject of King George, and there is one Joseph Brant with the Indians who will save me." "I am Joseph Brant," responded the Chief, "but I am not in command, and I am not sure that I can save you, but I will do my best." ”

“ We can point to him as the man who, if not the actual author of Responsible Government in Canada, yet spent the best years of his life in contending for it, and who contributed more than any other person to make that project an accomplished fact. We can point to him as one who, though a politician by predilection and by profession, never stooped to disreputable practices, either to win votes or to maintain himself in office.. ”

“ Lawrence and the Ottawa, resolved upon taking the war-path against their enemies, the Iroquois, or Five Nations—the boldest, fiercest, and most powerful confederacy known to Indian history. Champlain, ever since his arrival in the country, had done his utmost to win the favour of the natives with whom he was brought more immediately into contact, and he deemed that by joining them in opposing the Iroquois, who were a standing menace to his colony, he would knit the Hurons and Algonquins to the side of the King of France by permanent and indissoluble ties. ”

“ Wolfe: "I feel for her more than words can say, and should, if it was given me to alleviate her grief, gladly exert every power which nature or compassion has bestowed; yet I feel we are the last people in the world who ought to meet." ”

“ What young lady of generous impulses would be likely to refuse the hand of the brave hero of Louisburg, whose praises were in everybody's mouth, and who was the favourite of the greatest statesman that ever swayed the destinies of Great Britain? ”

“ For British dominion in Canada was established, not by bravery alone. Montcalm's veteran troops were as brave as those to which they were opposed. Quebec was won by patience, by unceasing vigilance, by military skill, and by an inward conviction in the breast of the English commander that "All things are possible to him who will but do his duty, and who knoweth not when he is beaten." The time was one which called for action and no time was lost in useless deliberation. Wolfe's plan of attack was soon formed, and he at once proceeded to carry it out. ”

“ We have been accustomed to regard the aboriginal red man as an incarnation of treachery and remorseless ferocity, whose favourite recreation is to butcher defenceless women and children in cold blood. A few of us, led away by the stock anecdotes in worthless missionary and Sunday School books, have gone far into the opposite extreme, and have been wont to regard the Indian as the Noble Savage who never forgets a kindness, who is ever ready to return good for evil, and who is so absurdly credulous as to look upon the pale-faces as the natural friends and benefactors of his species. ”

“ Robert Baldwin, was a man who was not only incapable of falsehood or meanness to gain his ends, but who was to the last degree intolerant of such practices on the part of his warmest supporters. If intellectual greatness cannot be claimed for him, moral greatness was most indisputably his. Every action of his life was marked by sincerity and good faith, alike towards friend and foe. ”

“ To these qualities are added an absorbing passion for colonization, and a piety and zeal which would not misbecome a Jesuit missionary. He is poor, but what the poet calls "the jingling of the guinea" has no charms for him. Let others consume their souls in heaping up riches, in chaffering with the Indians for the skins of wild beasts, and in selling the same to the affluent traders of France. It is his ambition to rear the fleur-de-lis in the remote wildernesses of the New World, and to evangelize the savage hordes by whom that world is peopled. ”

“ Taking him all in all, making due allowance for the frailties and imperfections incidental to humanity, we must pronounce Joseph Brant to have possessed in an eminent degree many of the qualities which go to make a good and a great man. ”

“ Towards the close of the year 1785, Brant, feeling aggrieved at the non-payment of certain pecuniary losses sustained by the Mohawks during the war, again set sail for England, where in due course he arrived. As on the occasion of his former visit, he was received with the utmost consideration and respect, not by the nobility and gentry alone, but by royalty itself. He seems to have lived upon terms of equality with the best society of the British capital, and to have so borne himself as to do no discredit to his entertainers. ”

“ Fort Oswego was surrendered on the 14th of August. By the terms of capitulation the sick and wounded were specially entrusted to Montcalm, whose word was solemnly pledged for their protection and safe conduct. How was the pledge redeemed? No sooner were the British deprived of their arms than the Indian allies of the French were permitted to swoop down upon the defenceless prisoners and execute upon them their savage will. The sick and wounded were scalped, slain, and barbarously mutilated before the eyes of the Marshal of France, who had guaranteed that not a hair of their heads should fall. ”

“ This affair of Wyoming can after all scarcely be called an episode in Brant's career, inasmuch as he was not present at the massacre at all, and was many miles distant at the time of its occurrence. Still, historians and poets have so persistently associated it with his name, and have been so determined to saddle upon him whatever obloquy attaches to the transaction that a short account of it may properly be given here.
The generally-received versions are tissues of exaggerations and absurdities from first to last. Wyoming has been uniformly represented as a terrestrial paradise ”

“ If you approve of my opinions, and elect me, I will carry them out in Parliament. If I should alter those opinions I will come back and surrender my trust, when you will have an opportunity of re-electing me or of choosing another candidate; but I shall pledge myself at the bidding of no man." A gentleman still living in Toronto once accompanied him on an electioneering tour in his constituency of North York. There were many burning questions on the carpet at the time, on some of which Mr. Baldwin's opinion did not entirely coincide with that of the majority of his constituents. ”

“ The curiosity of the other guests is aroused, and, pass from room to room as often as he may, a numerous train follows in his wake. One of the masquers composing this train is arrayed in the loose vestments of a Turk, and indeed is suspected to be a genuine native of the Ottoman Empire who has been sent to England on a diplomatic mission. Being emboldened by the wine he has drunk, the Oriental determines to penetrate the mystery of the dusky stranger. He approaches the seeming Indian, and after various ineffectual attempts to arrest his attention, lays violent hold of the latter's nose. ”

“ The British colonists had spent their time in commercial and agricultural pursuits, and had not cast loose from the spirit of puritanism which had animated the breasts of their forefathers. As compared with the mother-country they were poor enough in all conscience, but they were as a rule, frugal, industrious and intelligent; and, as compared with their Canadian neighbours, they might almost be said to be in affluent circumstances. ”

“ Christian Spain—nay, even Christian England—tortured prisoners with a diabolical ingenuity which never entered into the heart of a pagan Indian to conceive. And on this continent, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, men of English stock performed prodigies of cruelty to which parallels can be found in the history of the Inquisition alone. For the terrible records of battle, murder, torture and death, of which the history of the early settlement of this continent is so largely made up, the white man and the Christian must be held chiefly responsible. ”

“ One may well wonder, with the Arch-Cynic, where the bones of all the sinners are deposited. In the case of Governor Simcoe, however, there is much to be said in the way of just commendation, and the inscription is not so nauseously fulsome us to excite disgust. Toronto's citizens, especially, should take pleasure in doing honour to his memory. But for him, the capital of the Province would not have been established here, and the site of the city might long have remained the primitive swamp which it was when his eyes first beheld it on the morning of the 4th of May, 1793. ”

“ Swifter than hounds, the allies tore through the bushes, in pursuit. Some of the Iroquois were killed, more were taken. Camp, canoes, provisions, all were abandoned, and many weapons flung down in the panic flight. The arquebuse had done its work. The victory was complete." The victorious allies, much to the disgust of Champlain, tortured their prisoners in the most barbarous fashion, and returned to Quebec, taking with them fifty Iroquois scalps. Thus was the first Indian blood shed by the white man in Canada. ”

“ The Guildhall, with its oldtime memories, and Rougemont Castle, once the abode of the West-Saxon kings, are dear to the hearts of local antiquarians. The elm-walk, near the Sessions House, is an avenue of such timber as can be seen nowhere out of England, and is a favourite resort for the inhabitants on pleasant afternoons. The Cathedral-close has been consecrated by the genius of one of the most eminent of living novelists, and its purlieus are familiar to many persons who have never been within thousands of miles of it. ”

“ From time to time one party would gain the upper hand, and would drive the other from the Valley in apparently hopeless destitution; but the defeated ones, to whichsoever side they might belong, invariably contrived to re-muster their forces, and return to harass and drive out their opponents in their turn. The only purpose for which they could be induced to temporarily lay aside their disputes and band themselves together in a common cause, was to repel the incursions of marauding Indians, to which the valley was occasionally subject. ”

“ According to some accounts of this second massacre, no escort whatever was furnished. According to others, the escort was a mere mockery, consisting of a totally inadequate number of French troops, who were very willing to see their enemies butchered, and who did not even make any attempt to restrain their allies. All that can be known for certain is, that if there was any escort at all it was wholly ineffective; and, leaving humanity altogether out of the question, this was in itself an express violation of the terms upon which the garrison had been surrendered. ”

“ Close by is a mound where lie the bodies of many of Brant's Indian contemporaries buried, native fashion in a circle, with the feet converging to a centre.
Thirty years ago, the wooden vault in which Brant's remains and those of his son John were interred had become dilapidated. The Six Nations resolved upon constructing a new one of stone, and re-interring the remains. Brant was a prominent member of the Masonic fraternity in his day, and the various Masonic lodges throughout the neighbourhood lent their aid to the Indians in their undertaking. ”

“ They possessed in an eminent degree those qualities—energy, endurance, and courage—which mark the Anglo-Saxon race in every quarter of the globe. Such a foe, if once disciplined and roused to united action, was not to be despised, even by the veteran battalions of France, and the most Christian King showed his appreciation of this fact by sending against them a general who was regarded as the most consummate soldier in Europe. ”