Some of the many delivers in the strata of colonial history may beguile the tedium of statistical labours by computing what proportion of well-born pioneers were driven across the sea by unfortunate love affairs. The result would show that a Cupid-in-tears, or a spray of Love-lies-bleeding, might be incorporated with the arms of several of our proudest commonwealths.

In the year of our Lord 1738, William Johnson, eldest son of Christopher Johnson, Esq., of Warrenton County Down, Ireland, settled in the Mohawk Valley. He was of an excellent and ancient family. Sir Peter Warren, well known to readers of English naval history, was his maternal uncle. Another uncle Oliver Warren, was a captain in the Royal Navy in the reign of Queen Anne and George I. Sir Peter Warren owned an extensive tract of land on both sides of the Mohawk River and a handsome residence in New York City. In the latter he lived for a dozen years or more after his marriage with a daughter of James De Lancey, at one time Lieutenant-Governor of New York, and prominent in the annals of the troublous times immediately preceding the American Revolution.

The dwelling built and occupied by Sir Peter, known in our day as No. 1 Broadway, and used for long as the Washington Hotel, was made an object of interest to succeeding generations by the circumstance that General Sir William Howe and Sir Henry Clinton used it as headquarters during the earlier years of the war. Here were held the conferences between Sir Henry and his young aid, Major Andre, in which were arranged the details of Andre's mission to Arnold. Under the venerable roof he passed the last peaceful night he was to know on earth, setting out on the morrow for his fatal expedition up the river.

Sir Peter Warren's nephew, William Johnson, although but twenty-three years of age upon his arrival in the New World, had been desperately in love with a fair one in his native land, suffering such grievous torments from the cruelty of his enslaver that he forswore her, his home, and his country, and fled into permanent exile. The distemper had abated somewhat, or was a thing apart from the workings of an uncommonly cool and sagacious brain, by the time he closed with his uncle's offer to become his agent in the management of his Mohawk estate. He landed in New York in the spring of 1738. In the autumn he was in the full tide of farm-work, timbering, and country storekeeping. An advance of 200 Per annum was to be made by the wealthy Baronet to his young partner for the first three years, and paid off afterward in installments. Money, and whatever was needed to keep up the stock in the "store", were sent up the Hudson and Mohawk from New York. The city was the quarter-deck from which Sir Peter issued his commands to his able first mate

In 1742, there was much talk between the two of skins purchased and shipped down the river, and Sir Peter reiterates an admonition that the orchard be not neglected, and that "fruit-trees of the best kinds" be set out regardless of expense. His far reaching policy included the blossoming of the wilderness and a just return to it, although not in kind, of the wealth the kinsman were drawing from it.. Young Johnson, at this date, "roughed it" as if he had been a peasant immigrant, with no rich uncle within call. He took his grain to mill on horseback, riding upon the sacks fifteen miles to Caughnawaga, on the opposite side of the river, bringing back bags of cornmeal and flour for store, camp, and farmhands. In these expeditions he had cast his eye upon an eligible site for a saw-mill, also across the river, and bought it on his own responsibility and with his own money. He had no intention of building a dwelling-house upon it,-or so he assured his chief, who, apparently, had heard a rumour to that effect. Yet we find Johnson, in 1743, clearing ground in the neighborhood of the saw-mill for a spacious house, and hauling to the eligible sits so many loads of stone, timber and pearlash as to whet the curiosity of his white neighbors into the liveliest wonder and admiration.

He had done well for himself in the five years which had elapsed since he turned his back upon his distainful Dulcinea and the green shores of Erin. Sir Peter Warren's estate was in the very heart of the Iroquois and Mohawk tribes, then, and for many years thereafter, the friends in peace, and the allies in war, of the English. What Captain John Smith had hoped to do and become in Virginia,- failing by reason of the envy of his colleagues, the distrust of the London Company, under whose orders he was, and, finally, through the accident that crippled and sent him back to England,- William Johnson did and became in the more northern province. Irish wit, the light heart, quickness, and facility of adaptation to environment and associates characteristic of his countrymen of the better sort, were equipments he brought into the wilderness with him. He joined to them an unbending will, resolute ambition, and personal bravery that would have made him a leader of men anywhere. There were more Dutch than English settlers in the valley. In a year's time, he learned enough of their speech to bandy jokes with them over mugs of strong ale and tobacco-pipes, and to outwit them in trading. Within two years he could act as interpreter for Dutch boers and English landholders with the Indians, and in these negotiations had the balance of justice with so firm a hand that the most wary sachems were inbued with belief in his integrity. Here was one paleface who would neither cheat them himself, nor allow others to cheat them. He improved the advantage thus gained so cleverly that before the first rows of foundation-stones were laid for Johnson Hall in 1744, the owner and builder had more influence with the tribes than any other white man within an area of five hundred miles. In the winter's hunting-parties for moose and wolves; in trapping for otter and beaver; about the council fires; in the wild orgies and barbaric feasts followed by strong matches, races and dances, in which picked young men of the tribes were competitors.- Johnson was not a whit behind the most notable of hunters and warriors. He was with, and of, them. He might outbargain Dutch, Germans, and English. With the Indians he was upright and generous to a proverb, liked and trusted by all. He was no ephemeral popularity. Thirty years afterward, the eulogium spoken by a Mohawk sachem above the wampum-bound grave of the friend of his race-the adopted brother of his tribe-condensed the experience of all these years into one mournful sentence: "Sir William Johnson never deceived us."

As the immediate fruit of his policy, or principles, his was the first choice of the pelts brought into the European settlement by the Indians. Had he wished to purchase all, he could have secured a monopoly of whatever was available to the white traders. He virtually controlled the fish market of the regions skirting the river, and had his pick of such redskins as could be induced to work in the fields in summer, and at logging in winter. While he lived in a log-cabin, larger, but hardly more comfortable than a wigwam, any Iroquois or Mohawk was welcome to a bountiful share of venison, or bear-meat, hominy, and whiskey. The host ate with him and they smoked together afterward, over the coals or out-of-doors, discussing tribal politics, or the growing encroachments of the guest's hereditary enemies, the Cherokees and Choctaws, upon the Iroquois hunting-ground to the south of the Valley. When they were sleepy, both men rolled themselves up in their blankets on the floor, or stretched themselves upon pallets of fox- and bearskin. Disputes among the aborigines were referred to the wise and friendly white man, and no enterprise of note was undertaken without consultation with him.

When growing wealth and a growing family led him to build, besides Johnson Hall, a less ambitious dwelling, called Johnson Castle, some miles farther up the river, the savage horde was still free to come and go as will, or convenience, impelled them. Parkman says that Johnson Hall was "surrounded by cabins built for the reception of the Indians, who often came in crowds to visit the proprietor, invading his dwelling at all unseasonable hours, loitering in the doorways, spreading their blankets in the passages, and infecting the air with the fumes of stale tobacco."

What manner of housewife and woman was she who could submit with any show of patience to the lawless infusion of uncouth savages, and the attendant nuisances of vermin, filth, and evil odours?

"Begging for a drink of raw rum, and giving forth a strong smell, like that of a tame bear, as he toasted himself by the fire,"-thus one writer describes a specimen visitor.

To be consistent with this adoption of Indian manners and usages, and to cement his authority with his allies, the astute trader-planter should have wedded some savage maiden and filled his lodge with a dusky race. At a later day the policy commended by France's king, urged by him upon France's colonists in America, and approved by them in theory and practice, seemed right and cunning in William Johnson's sight, as we shall see.

In religion, as in morals, he was catholic and eclectic, and a law unto himself. The fascinated student of his biography cannot resist the conviction that, within the stalwart body of this educated backwoodsman, lived two natures as diverse and distinct, the one from the other, as the fabled Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There were Dutch and German Reformed churches up and down the river-one of which, "Stone Arabia," retains name and place unto this day. Each had its attendance of devout communicants, men and women who lived godly and virtuous married lives in lonely cabins and sparse settlements in the clearings they had made in the primeval forest. William Johnson was on neighbourly terms with them all, doing many a kind and liberal turn for them, as occasion offered; subscribing money to build houses of worship, giving voluntarily fifty acres for a glebe farm upon condition that a parsonage should be built for the Lutheran minister, and, the next week, making a like gift to the Calvinistic congregation with a similar proviso. While calling himself an Episcopalian, he entertained British priests travelling from log-house to camp, in ministry upon the few sheep in the wilderness that owned allegiance to the Parent Church. He enjoyed conversation with the reverend fathers; he fed them with the fat of lambs and of beeves, cheered them with his best liquors, and pressed them, with friendly violence, to tarry for days and nights in an abode that reeked with the fumes of raw rum, stale tobacco, and the exhalations of unwashed savages. While he had not had the university training most young men of his birth and class enjoyed in Great Britain, his education was far more thorough than is generally supposed by those familiar with his manner of living, and the outlines of his career. He received and read letters written in French and Latin, and made descriptive endorsements of the contents upon them in the same languages.

When he cast an eye of favour upon a buxom German lass, Catherine Wissenberg by name, the daughter of a fellow immigrant, he made his courtship brief. Whether his comely presence, his reputed wealth, and his nimble wits and tongue won the damsel's consent, or whether, as was hinted, the negotiation was purely commercial, and her father profited by the result, we do not know. It is certain that Catherine Wissenberg became the mistress of the stately new mansion on the river-slope and sharer of the master's fortunes.

Parkman, in his delightful history of The Conspiracy of Pontiac, says that she was a Dutch girl whom, in justice to his children, Johnson married upon her death-bed. Stone's carefully prepared Life and Times of Sir William Johnson strips the alliance of the picturesque element by asserting that the marriage was in good and regular form and date, and thus recorded in the Johnson Bible. The introduction of this same family Bible lends verity to the latter story, and a smack of demure respectability to this important episode of the singular life that entitles it to a place on the Dr. Jekyll side of the page.

In birth and social position Mrs. Johnson was her husband's inferior, and, it goes without saying, in education also. She was gentle of temper, had plenty of good common sense, and was sincerely attached to her handsome spouse. Three children were the fruit of the marriage: John (afterward Sir John), Mary, who in due time married Guy Johnson, her cousin and the son of another pioneer, and Ann, or Nancy, who became the wife of Colonel Daniel Claus-a name that declares his Dutch extraction.

Mrs. Johnson did not live long to enjoy the dignities of the first lady in the Valley. She died early in the year 1745. In his will, made almost a quarter-century after the beginning of his widowerhood, Johnson refers to her as his "beloved wife Catherine," and directs that his remains shall be laid beside hers. In view of the relations which succeeded marital respectability, we are inclined to consider this section of his testament as a Jekyllish figure of speech, although the tribute to the amiable and dutiful matron may have been sincere.

The threatening aspect of the times in which he lived would have distracted his thoughts from honest and deep mourning. The political heavens were black with portents of storm. To quote Parkman:

"With few and slight exceptions, the numerous tribes of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, besides a host of domiciliated savages in Canada itself, stood ready, at the bidding of the French, to grind their tomahawks and turn loose the ravenous war-parties; while the British colonists had too much reason to fear that now those tribes which seemed most friendly to their cause, and which formed the sole barrier of their unprotected borders, might at the first sound of the war-whoop, be found in arms against them." Even the Mohawks and Iroquois living on the confines of Canada were gradually won over by the wily French, assisted by the powerful influence of the priesthood.

Johnson, up to this time, had taken little active part in the administration of public affairs. He was too busy shipping furs to London, and flour to Halifax and the West Indies, farming and clearing and lumbering, embellishing the extensive grounds of Johnson Hall with English shrubbery, setting, in the broad front of the mansion, the costly windows with "diapered panes," made in, and imported from, France expressly for him, and otherwise forwarding the interests of a fast-rising man in a new country,-to mix himself up with matters which he thought would right themselves without his interference. He would seem to have had his first definite indication that he might have a serious and imminent interest in the popular tumults, in the autumn after Mrs. Johnson's decease. An intimate friend, a resident of Albany, wrote to him from that place, entreating that he would not think of passing the winter at Johnson Hall, or as it was otherwise called, "Fort Johnson."

"The French have told our Indians that they will have you, dead or alive, because you are a relation of Captain Warren, their great adversary," was the reason given for the friendly warning.

The writer went on to represent that there was room in his own home for his menaced friend, and as many of his servants as he cared to bring. As no mention is made of the motherless children, the presumption is that they were already in Albany, or some other safer asylum than their father's house. Johnson declined the urgent invitation and fortified the Hall with what our historian styles the barriers of the English frontier. He knew his Indians, and they believed in him. Throughout the winter they lurked and loitered about, and in, the house on the hill, apparently as lazy and dull as hibernating bears-in reality alert in every sense for the protection of their patron.

In the spring his scouts corroborated the news from Albany that the French at Crown Point mediated an attack upon the nearest English settlements. He had his material ready when the request came from army headquarters that "a few Mohawks whom he knew to be trusty" might be sent to reconnoitre the Valley. Sixteen picked men were despatched upon this errand. Their report of the extent of hostile preparations aroused Johnson to the consciousness that his living "barrier" might be insufficient to protect his property from destruction, however well they might play the watch-dog for his person. He wrote to Albany, asking that a small force of regular soldiery be sent to Johnson Hall. Among other valuables that might tempt the enemy, he specified eleven thousand bushels of wheat ready for the mill. The white settlers all about him were fleeing for their lives into forts and fortified towns. A troop of thirty "regulars" was placed at his disposal, and, reinforced by a considerable body of militia, composed the garrison of Johnson Hall, bivouacking in lawn and gardens, and feasting at the master's expense.

Partly to show his unabated confidence in the loyalty of his Indian allies, somewhat incommoded now by the influx of white warriors, partly to strengthen and establish his influence with them, he offered himself for adoption into the Mohawk tribe. A great council of sachems and braves was convened, and with formalities many, speeches innumerable, and a confusing passing back and forth of wampum belts as tangible punctuation points and italic dashes, he was made a Mohawk, inside and out, and proclaimed a chieftain, with all the rights, powers, and immunities pertaining to the rank. "In this capacity," says Stone, "he assembled them at festivals and appointed frequent war dances, by way of exciting them to engage actively in the war." He wore blanket, moccasins, and feathered head-gear,- a garb that became him rarely,-spoke their dialect, and deported himself in all things as if born to the honours conferred upon him by his "brothers." Many of the chiefs were persuaded by him to accept the Governor's invitation to visit him at Albany for consideration of the best means of ensuring the safety of the colony. The younger braves were wrought upon by argument and flattery to pledge themselves to support the English cause in the event of active hostilities between the English and French. All but three of the Mohawk and Iroquois sachems were, by these means, committed to the side represented to them by their newly made chief.

In 1746, Johnson was made contractor for the trading-post of Oswego, trammelled in purchase and sale only by the stipulation that "no higher charges be made in time of war than it had been usual to pay in time of peace."

He had, that same year, a welcome visitor in the person of his brother, Captain Warren Johnson, of the Royal Army. He brought from Governor Clinton a letter addressed to "Colonel William Johnson," enjoining him to "keep up the Indians to their promises of keeping out scouts to watch the motions of the French," and concluding with the pleasant intimation, "I have recommended you to his Majesty's favour through the Duke of Newcastle."

Neither the Governor's favour nor the promise of royal patronage put money into the new Colonel's purse. He told the Governor plainly, in 1747, that he was "like to be ruined for want of blankets, linen, paints, guns, cutlasses, etc.," which were not to be had in Albany,-all, as will be seen, commodities for his copper-coloured allies. The date of the letter is March 18th, and a touch of Irish humour flashes out in the closing paragraph:

"We kept St. Patrick's Day yesterday, and this day, and drank your health, and that of all friends in Albany, with so many other healths that I can scarce write."

In May he renders a curious and blood-curdling report of prisoners and scalps, brought to Johnson Hall by a party under command of Walter Butler, a name destined to become notorious in Revolutionary annals. Butler was a mere youth at this date, and, as we can but see, taking a novitiate in methods of warfare which stamped the family with infamy when the loyal subject of King George became, with no change of principle or practice, the bloodthirsty Tory. He had been skirmishing in the vicinity of Crown Point, at the head of a mixed band of whites and Indians, and brought back his prizes to the Colonel and chief.

"I am quite pestered every day," writes Johnson to Clinton, "with parties returning with prisoners and scalps, and without a penny to buy them with, it comes very hard upon me, and displeasing to them."

One speculates, in standing in the central hall of the ancient house, in what array the scalps were hung against the walls, and if the master carried his conformity to Indian customs to the length of wearing a fringe of them at his girdle. "Pestered" is a darkly significant word in this connection and one which Mr. Hyde would have snarled out in like circumstances. The rest of the letter is in the same vein. There is a requisition for "blue camlet, red shalloon, good lace, and white metal buttons, to make up a parcel of coats for Seneca chiefs." Also "thirty good castor hats, with scallop lace for them all,-white lace, if to be had, if not, some yellow with it. This, I assure your Excellency, goes a great way with them."

As he is finishing the letter, "another party of mine, consisting of only six Mohawks," renders a tale of seven prisoners and three scalps-"which is very good for so small a party."

The cool complacency of the comment, and the calm and certain conviction that his news will not displease his Excellency, belong to that day and generation. Let us thank God they are not ours!

His house was "full of the Five Nations" as he penned this despatch to his superior. "Some are going out to-morrow against the French. Others go for news which, when furnished, I shall let your Excellency know."

The tenor of each communication shows that his fighting-blood was in full flow, and that his ways and means were dictated by the aroused savage within him. Clinton had given him his head in a letter written in April.

"The council did not think it proper to put rewards for scalping or taking poor women or children prisoners, in the bill I am going to pass," is a crafty phrase of the official document. "But the Assembly has assured me the money shall be paid when it so happens, if the Indians insist upon it."

In his turn, Governor Clinton assured his complaisant Assembly that, "whereas it had formerly been difficult to obtain a dozen or twenty scouts, Col. Johnson engaged to bring a thousand warriors into the field upon any reasonable notice. Through his influence the chiefs have been weaned from their intimacy with the French, and many distant Indian nations are now courting the friendship of the English."

In the month of February, 1748, Colonel Johnson was put in command of the Colonel forces under arms for the defence of the English frontiers.

At one of the regimental militia musters,-called by our forefathers "training days,"-reviewed by the Colonel in command, his attention and that of the officers grouped with him wandered from the business of the day to a "side-show," as diverting as it was unexpected. Hundreds of spectators stood on the outskirts of the training-ground, a large proportion being women and children. Conspicuous among the squaws in the inner circle was Mary, otherwise Molly, Brant, a young half-breed, the dashing belle of her dark-skinned coterie, and known by sight to most of the white officers. Her step-father, in whose family she was brought up, figures in Colonel Johnson's letters as "Nickus Brant," "Old Brant," and "Brant of Canajoharie." Johnson's home, when in Canajoharie, was "at Brant's house," and the more than amicable relations between the two men were manifested in many ways. In 1758, Johnson records, in his Diary, the presentation by himself of a string of wampum to Brant and Paulus, two important sachems of the Mohawks.

Nobody assumed that Old Nickus was the father of Molly and her brother Joseph. They took for common use, the name of their mother's husband, Barnet, or Bernard, corrupted by common usage to Brant. The mother was a Mohawk squaw. Her girl and boy were half-breeds. When Joseph became and warrier of renown under the title of Thayendane gea ("Two-sticks-of-wood-bound-together,"-a symbol of strength), an effort was made by this tribe to prove him a full-blooded Indian, and his father to have been a sachem of the Mohawks. It is but fair to state that Joseph Brant, while signing both Indian and English names to letters and treaties, does not seem to have attempted to support this claim. If his mother confided to him the secret of his parentage, he kept it for her, and for himself. Jared Parks-than whom we have no better authority upon Revolutionary history-believed the younger of the half-breed children, Joseph, to have been William Johnson's son. Other annalists of less note held the same opinion. The hypothesis draws colour and plausibility from Johnson's marked partiality for the lad. Although but thirteen years old when the battle of Lake George was fought (1755), he followed Colonel Johnson to the field, and had there his "baptism of fire,"-in ruder English, his first taste of blood. He was educated at Johnson's expense in Moor Charity School, afterward Dartmouth College. A fellow student was his young nephew, William Johnson, the son of Colonel Johnson and Molly Brant. Brant's after-life belongs to a later period of our story.

Return we to the handsome Indian girl, laughing in the front rank of the spectators of the parade, brave in bright blanket and fluttering ribbons, and shooting smart sallies from a ready tongue at such soldiers as accosted her in passing. A mounted officer presently rode up closer to the lookers-on than any private had dared to venture, and leaned from his saddle-bow to speak to her. His horse was a fine, spirited animal, and Molly praised him rapturously, finally begging permission to ride him. As gaily the officer bade her mount behind him. With one agile spring, the girl was upon the crupper, and clasped the rider's waist. The mettled horse reared, then dashed off at full speed. Round and round the paradeground they flew, the astonished officer able to do nothing except keep the saddle and guide the frantic beast into the line of the improvised race-course. The blanket had dropped from Molly's shoulders as she leaped from the ground; her black hair streamed upon the wind; her shining eyes, white teeth, and crimson cheeks transformed the swarthy belle into a beauty. Screams of laughter, encouraging huzzas, and clapping of hands followed her flight. When the discomfited victim of the mad escapade at last regained control of his horse and Molly slipped from her perch as lightly as she had mounted, the first person to salute and congratulate her upon her grace and dexterity was the Colonel of the regiment, the great man of the Valley, and, as he made her and the lookers-on to understand, henceforward her most obedient servant.

No time was lost in preliminaries. Molly Brant became, without benefit of clergy or regard to the prejudices of society, the "tribal wife" of the adopted Mohawk, and retained the position until Johnson's death. Mrs. Grant, in her interesting work, An American Lady, launders the liaison into conventional decency and polish:

"Becoming a widower in the prime of life, he [Johnson] connected himself with an Indian maiden, daughter of a sachem, who possessed an uncommonly agreeable person and good understanding."

Molly and her tribe undoubtedly considered the connection as valid as if law had sealed and gospel blessed it. It served to rivet the already strong bonds by which Johnson held them to his and to the English interests. While he lived, no word or deed of his tended to cast disrespect upon the woman who reigned over his mighty establishment of negro and Indian servants, German and Dutch tenants.

After he became a Baronet-General, living in a style befitting his rank and wealth, Molly held her own without apparent effort.

"Nothing could have better shown how powerful Sir William had become," says Harold Frederic, [In the Valley, by Harold Frederic] and how much his favour was to be courted, than the fact that ladies of quality and strict propriety, who fancied themselves very fine folk indeed,-the De Lanceys and Phillipses and the like,-would come visiting the widower baronet in his Hall, and close their eyes to the presence there of Mill Molly and her half-breed children. Sir William's neighbours, indeed, overlooked this from their love of the man, and their reliance in his sense and strength. But the others-the aristocrats-held their tongues from fear of his wrath, and of his influence in London.

"He would suffer none of them to markedly avoid or affront the Brant squaw, whom, indeed, they had often to meet as an associate and an equal."

Staid British matrons from over the sea, copper-sheathed in the proprieties of wedded virtue, accepted the hospitalities of Johnson Hall upon like terms. Lady Susan O'Brian, daughter of the Earl of Ilchester, with her husband, was entertained for several days by Sir William in 1765. The titled dame pronounced "his housekeeper, a well-bred and pleasant lady," perfectly aware, all the while, what were her relations to the courtly host, and whose were the children who called him "father," and had, apparently, equal rights with the acknowledged heir, John Johnson, and his sisters. Lord Adam Gordon, a Scotch peer, was domesticated at the Hall for a much longer time than the O'Brians, and when he sailed for England took John with him, "to try to wear off the rusticity of a country education," as the lad's father phrased it.

With all his outward show of affection for his black-browed mistress, and the tribute of deference he exacted for her from high and low, the other self of this dual-natured potentiate set her decidedly aloof, in his thoughts and in legal documents, from the station a lawful wife would have taken and kept. The will, ordaining that he should be buried by his "beloved wife Catherine," provides for mourning and maintenance for "my housekeeper, Mary Brant," and scores a broad line of demarcation between "my dearly beloved son, Sir John Johnson," and "Peter, my natural son by Mary Brant." Also, between his daughters, Ann Claus and Mary Johnson, and the children of "said housekeeper, Mary Brant." There was never any blending or confusion of boundary lines between the two personalities in the single body. European and Mohawk, aristocrat and savage,-each was sharply drawn and definite. Neither infringed upon the other's rights, and the unities of the queer double-action life-drama were never violated.

In the outer world the signs of the times were ominous enough. That the Iroquois remained proof against the blandishments of the wily French, backed by the threats of the Indian allies of France, throughout the disturbances of 1747-49, was due entirely to Johnson's influence. "Anyone other than he would have failed," testifies a contemporary.

"On one day he is found ordering from London lead for the roof of his house; despatching a load of goods to Oswego; battering with the Indians for furs, and writing to Governor Clinton at length on the encroachments of the French, doing everything with neatness and despatch. At the same time he superintended the militia, attended to the affairs of the Six Nations, and, as Ranger of the woods for Albany County, kept a diligent watch upon those who were disposed to cut down and carry off by stealth the King's timber."

Envy at his success, joined to animosity against Clinton, moved the Assembly at Albany to neglect the payment of the Colony's debt to Johnson. They even accused him of making out fraudulent bills, and refused to meet his demand for the return of l200 advanced from his private fortune for defence of frontiers and treaties with the Indians. Stung to the quick of a haughty nature, he resigned his position as Superintendent of Indian Affairs, at the same time sending word to the tribes that his interest in all that concerned them would remain unabated. His resolution to have nothing more to do with public business was opposed strenuously by the Indians.

"One half of Colonel Johnson belongs to your Excellency, the other half to us," was the wording of a petition sent by a council of braves to the Governor. "We all lived happily while we were under his management. We love him. He is, and has always been, our good and trusty friend."

After the victory of Lake George, Colonel Johnson was created a Baronet and received a vote of thanks from Parliament, with a gift of l5000. Johnstown was founded by him in 1760. He was the active patron of an Indian Mission School at Stockbridge, also of one established in Albany in 1753, and was the father of that at Lebanon which grew into Dartmouth College. He built an Episcopal church at Schenectady, a Masonic lodge at Johnson Hall, and, the war being over, had leisure to superintend the erection of two stately stone houses for his daughters, his gifts to them, together with 640 acres of ground apiece.

As years gathered upon him, his desire increased to educate and Christianise the race to which "one half of him" belonged by adoption. Upon this and other benevolent schemes he wrought as one who felt that the time for labour was brief. We had cause for the premonition. An old wound, received at Lake George, troubled him sorely. By the advice of his redskin friends, he visited Saratoga, to test the curative properties of waters until then unknown to the whites. When his son John, who had been knighted (for his father's sake) in England, brought a New York bride home to the Hall, she was received by her august father-in-law with all the state and cordiality due to her position as the wife of his heir and the prospective queen of the fair domain. For some days the Baronet played again, and for the last time, the courtly lord of the manor to the throng of guests from other mansions, for fifty miles up and down the Mohawk and the Hudson, invited to welcome the bridal pair. Satin-shod feet skimmed the oaken floors; the thick walls echoed all day long and far into the night with the clamour of merry voices; there were feasting and dancing and song, and much exchange of curtsies and bows and fine speeches, and as little apparent concern on account of the impending quarrel between the mother country and colonies as apprehension as to the cause of the ashy pallor which had supplanted bronze and glow in the master's face.

Attended by a faithful body-servant, he set off for New London at the end of a week, in the hope of invigoration from the sea-air and sea-bathing, leaving the young couple in charge of the hall during his absence.

Gradually one active duty after another was demitted, Sir William spending much time in his library, reading books he had, at last, leisure to study, and writing at length to the Governor of Virginia of Indian manners, customs, traditions, and history.

True to his pledges to his tribe, he emerged from his semi-seclusion in July, 1774, to preside over a congress of six hundred Indians assembled to confer with him upon divers and vital affairs, big with fate in the eyes of the Six Nations. The gathering was in the grounds of Johnson Hall; the delegates were fed from the Hall kitchen; the floors of rooms, halls, and porches were covered at night with blankets, as was the turf of lawn and grove. Sir William occupied the chief seat of honour in the conclave of Saturday, July 9. The peculiar pallor that betrayed the ravages of the mysterious and subtle disease preying upon his vitals, and the shrunken outlines of the once powerful figure were all the indices of failing physical strength his indomitable will suffered to be seen. Wrapped in the scarlet blanket trimmed with gold lace, dear to the barbaric taste of his congeners, he sat bolt upright, his features set in stern gravity becoming a sachem, and hearkened patiently to the long-drawn-out details of the wrongs the tribes had endured at the hands of their nominal friends, the English. The boundaries of their territories were invaded by squatters; their hunting-grounds were ranged over by lawless furriers and trappers; the venders of fire-water brought the deadly thing to the very doors of their wigwams.

The sun was nearing the zenith when the tale began. It was not far from the western hills when the last orator ceased speaking. The Presiding chief reminded them that the day was far spent, and that the morrow would be the Sabbath, on which their white brothers did no work. On Monday they should have their answer from his lips-the lips that had never lied to them.

Johnstown was now a village of eighty families, with shops and dwellings built with lumber from Johnson's saw-mills, and pearlash from his factories. In the centre of the town, named for his oldest son, stood the Episcopal church, a gift to the parish from the founder of the place. We wish we knew whether he sat in the Johnson pew that Sunday, or sought recuperation for his waning forces in such rest and quiet as were attainable in the solitude of his library, with six hundred savages encamped under the windows.

He began his oration to them at ten o'clock Monday morning, standing, uncovered, under the July sky. From the preamble, his tone was conciliatory; sometimes it was pleading. He assured the malcontents that the outrages they resented, and with reason, were not the act of the government, but of lawless individuals. He promised redress in the name of King and Governor; recapitulated past benefits received from both of these; counselled charity of judgment and moderation in action. He had never been more eloquent, never more nearly sublime than in this, the final union of the finest type of Indian and of the upright white citizen of the New World. He was the warrior in every inch of his lofty stature, quivering with energy in the impassioned periods that acknowledged the red man's wrongs and maintained the red man's rights. He was no less the loyal subject of King George in the calm recital of what the parent government had done for its allies, and solemn pledges for the future.

He spoke for two hours The day was firecely hot. When he would have resumed his seat, he staggered and reeled backward. His servants rushed forward and carried him into the library. An express messenger leaped upon his horse off madly for Sir John Johnson, who was at his own home, nine miles away, thankful, we make no doubt, to escape the assembling of the tribes. The son rode a blooded hunter eight miles in fifteen minutes, the animal falling dead under him three-quarters of a mile from Johnson Hall. Leaving him in the road, Sir John procured another horse and dashed on. His father still lay in the library, supported by his trusty body-servant. The son fell upon his knees at his side, and poured a flood of anguished questions into the dulled ear. There was no answer, and no token of recognition. In less than ten minutes the last breath was drawn.

"He died of a suffocation," wrote Guy Johnson to the Earl of Dartmouth. The report of the sorrowing Council at Albany said, "a fit of some kind." He had been subject for many months to "a sense of compressive and tightness across the stomach," diagnosed by his physician as "stoppage of the gall-duct." Whatever might have been the malady, he had battled with it long and valiantly; he died with his harness on, as sachem and Anglo-Saxon should.

Two thousand whites attended the funeral, and "of Indians a great multitude, who behaved with the greatest decorum and exhibited the most lively marks of a real sorrow." At their earnest instance they were allowed to perform their own ceremonies over the remains when the Christian services were concluded. A double belt of wampum was laid upon the body; sic rows of the same were bound about the grave. Each was deposited as the "Amen" of a panegyric upon the virtues and deeds of the deceased chieftain. The pregnant sentence I have already quoted summed up the body and soul of the testimony:

"Sir William Johnson never deceived us."
Thus lived and thus died, in his sixtieth year, the best friend the North American Indian has ever had, William Penn not excepted.

The progress of Sir William Johnson's mortal malady was accelerated by his grief at the rupture between the American Colonies and the Mother Country.

Parkman says:
"He stood wavering in an agony of indecision, divided between his loyalty to the sovereign who was the source of all his honours, and his reluctance to become the agent of a murderous Indian warfare against his countrymen and friends. His resolution was never taken. He was hurried to his grave by mental distress, or, as many believed, by the act of his own hand."

Dismissing the latter hypothesis with the remark that there was nothing in the incidents of the death-scene, as related to our preceding chapter, to warrant the suspicion of suicide, we cannot gainsay the evidence that the indecision-a novelty to him in any circumstances-was a veritable agony. At one and the same time we find him writing letters condemnatory of the Stamp Act, and exhorting his Indian allies-"Whatever may happen, you must not be shaken out of your shoes in your allegiance to your King." Joseph Brant believed that he was following up the task his great patron had laid down at the grave's mouth, when he declared that he "joined the Royal army purely on account of my forefathers' engagements with the King." The Rev. Dr. Wheelock, Brant's preceptor at the Moor Charity School, was deputed to remonstrate with him upon his espousal of the Tory cause, and received a reply as suave, yet as stringent, as Sir William himself could have framed:

"I can never forget, dear Sir, your prayers and your precepts. You taught me to fear God and to honour the King!"

Sir John Johnson succeeded to his father's title and the bulk of his estates; Guy Johnson, as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Joseph Brant was Guy Johnson's secretary. Colonel John Butler and his son Walter were among the Johnson's nearest neighbours and closest friends. In all the disrupted Colonies there was no hotter bed of toryism than Johnson Hall became in less than a year from the founder's death. In 1775, Guy Johnson, accompanied by his secretary and spokesman, made a formal progress from tribe to tribe of friendly Indians to confirm them in their allegiance to the Crown. Brant, who had, in his earlier youth, zealously "endeavoured to teach his poor brethren the things of God"; who had assisted an English divine in the preparation of an Indian prayer-book, had help translate into the Indian tongue the Acts of the Apostles, and a History of the Bible; the humble communicant in the Johnstown Episcopal Church,-harangued his race upon the imperative duty of resisting treason to the bloody death, adjuring them by the memory of his benefactor and theirs to join the Scotch colonists and the tenantry of Johnson Hall in the holy purpose of giving the King his own again.

Sir John fortified the stone house, garrisoned it with the white reserve, and surrounded it with the living "barriers" his father had cast about him for protection against the French. Then he awaited the results of his determined attitude.

On January 19, 1776, the fort was surprised by a body of rebels-still so called-under General Schuyler; the garrison was disarmed and disbanded, and Sir John paroled. In May of the next year news reached Schuyler's headquarters that the paroled man was in correspondence with the British in Canada, sending out and receiving spies, accumulating ammunition in and near the Hall, and inciting the Mohawks to a massacre of the Valley people. An order was issued for his arrest. He heard of it in season to escape with a few retainers to Canada. Before his flight he buried an iron chest containing family plate in the garden, another, filled with money and valuable papers, in the cellar, hiding-places known to none of those left behind except Lady Johnson.

She was living in Albany with her own relatives when Lafayette visited Johnson Hall in 1780. Once more the outlying slopes about the stone house were covered with Indians, and the resources of the establishment were taxed to the utmost to provide for their entertainment. Five out of the Six Nations were represented in the Council attended and addressed by the titled Frenchman.

Joseph Brant convened a very different assembly of his countrymen in the neighbourhood early in the year 1780. He was then a "likely fellow of fierce aspect, tall and rather spare," gorgeously arrayed in a short green coat, laced round hat, leggings and breeches of blue cloth. His moccasins were embroidered with beads, his blue cloth blanket was carefully draped so as to make the most of his glittering epaulets. His name was now a word of terror throughout the land; his fellow marauders were the Butlers and William Johnson (the son of his sister, Mary Brant, and Sir William Johnson), Colonel Guy Johnson and Colonel Daniel Claus, the husband of Nancy Johnson, Molly Brant had lived, since Sir William's death, at one of the upper Mohawk Castles, with her younger children. Tradition describes her as visiting the Hall, once her home, when especially daring expeditions were under discussion, sitting, as darkly handsome and fierce as a panther, at the council-table, and fearlessly putting into words the project of devastating the beautiful Valley with fire, bullet, and tomahawk. She had secret means of communication with her brother wherever he was, giving him much valuable information as to the weak points in the defences of the Americans, and the movements of their forces.

It was suspected that she was one of the few dwellers in the Valley who was not surprised when on the night of May 21, 1780, a horde of three hundred whites-British and Tories-and two hundred Indians fell like a pack of hell-hounds upon the peaceful neighbourhood in which John Johnson was born and brought up. No mercy was shown to age, sex, or former friendships. Killing, scalping, and burning as they went, the invaders pushed their murderous way up to the doors of Johnson Hall, put the few inmates to flight, and occupied the house and grounds. No time was to be lost. The blazing houses and barns would tell the story of that night's work for many miles up and down the river, and Sir John had known something of the colonists in such circumstances-"the rude, unlettered, great-souled yeomen of the Mohawk Valley, who braved death at Oriskany that Congress and the free Colonies might be free." In hot haste he unearthed the treasure from cellar and garden; forty knapsacks full of booty were laid upon as many soldiers' shoulders, and the bloody crew departed as swiftly as they had come.

"He might have recovered his plate," says Stone, dryly and sorrowfully, "without lighting up his path by conflagration of neighbours' houses, or staining his skirts with innocent blood."

Sir John's raid upon his homestead and the vicinity as followed in less than a month by Brant's as sudden descent upon Canajoharie, fifteen miles away. All the inhabitants who were not killed were carried off prisoners; towns and forts were burned. From the porch of Johnson Hall and the fields about Johnstown, groups of terrified men and women watched the rise and flare of the cruel flames against the sky, and guessed truly by whose orders they were kindled.

The town, which is, to this day, a memorial of the Baronet-General's fondness for his son and heir, was better prepared to repel invasion in 1781, Taught wariness by adversity, the stout-hearted burghers and boers stood ready and undismayed to receive the mixed force of four hundred whites and half as many Indians, that hurled themselves upon Johnstown, led by the Butlers, father and son.

A bloody fight ensued. Instead of making Johnson Hall their headquarters as they had hoped to do, the attacking party was beaten back with heavy losses. Walter Butler was shot and scalped in the retreat by an Oneida chief. His violent dealings had returned upon his own head. In connection with this expedition Brant had said, when upbraided with the cruelties committed by the invaders:

"I do not make war upon women and children! I am sorry to say that I have those engaged with me who are more savage than the savages themselves" -and named the Butlers.

The story goes that the Oneida who killed Walter Butler had aided the settlers in the abortive attempt to save their homes and families from the Cherry Valley massacre mentioned a while ago. When the wounded white captain cried for "quarter," the Oneida yelled, "I give you Cherry Valley quarter!" and buried his tomahawk in the wretched man's brain. Such was the abhorrence felt by the Indian allies of the American forces for the slain Tory that his body was left unburied where it lay, to be devoured by wild beasts and carnivorous birds, on the bank of a stream known from that bloody day as "Butler's Ford."

The Butler homestead is still standing, a few miles from Johnson Hall. Sir John Johnson had left behind him, in his first hurried flight to Canada, the Family Bible, containing the record of his parents' marriage. As no other documentary proof of it was extant the act was culpably careless if he valued his birthright as a legitimate son. The book found its way to the hands of an Albany citizen, and was by him restored to the rightful owner. At the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, Sir John went to England and remained there for some years, returning to Canada in 1785. There, in acknowledgment of the services he had rendered the Royal cause in the struggle with the rebellious Colonies, he was made Superintendent of Indian Affairs in America and received valuable grants of Canadian lands. He died at the age of eighty-eight, in Montreal, in the year 1830. His son and successor was Sir Adam Gordon Johnson. Their descendants are numerous, most of them living in Canada.

Other of Sir William Johnson's descendants intermarried with prominent New York families.

Johnson Hall, with the large estate surrounding it,, being confiscated by the Continental Government, was sold to James Caldwell, Esq., of Albany, for $30,000, "in public securities." Within a week from the day of purchase he sold it in his turn, and for hard cash, for $7,000, clearing a handsome sum by the operation. The place changed hands four times in the ten years lying between 1785 and 1795.

In 1807 Mr. Eleazar Wells was married to Miss Aken in the drawing-room of Johnson Hall. The mansion had been so well cared for that the paint and paper of this apartment were the same as in Sir William's time and in excellent preservation. Mr. Wells became the owner of the place in 1829. It is now the property of his widowed daughter-in-law, Mrs. John E. Wells, and retains the reputation for large-hearted hospitality established and maintained by the founder.

Lossing says of it in 1848, "It is the only baronial hall in the United States." But for the modernising touches visible in the bay-windows and the wing at the beholder's right, as he faces the ancient building, the main body of the Hall is unaltered. It is of wood, the massive clapboards laid on to resemble stone blocks. The front elevation is forty feet in width, and the depth is sixty feet. Two stone blockhouses, with loopholes under the eaves, flanked the mansion as erected by Sir William, for nearly a century after his decease. That on the right was burned some years ago. These "forts" were connected with the mansion by tunnelled passages. A central hall, fifteen feet wide, cuts the dwelling in two, running from front to back doors. The broad staircase is fine. After the manner of their English forbears, the consists made much of stairways, sometimes to the extent of cramping living-rooms to give sweep to the ascent, and breadth to landings. The mahogany balustrades, imported by Sir William Johnson, are in place, but the polished rail is hacked, as with a hatchet, at intervals of ten or twelve inches, all the way down. The tradition, which has never been doubted, of the mutilation is that it was done by Brant in 1777, the date of Sir John Johnson's precipitate departure from the home of his father to escape the consequences of his double dealing with General Schuyler, who had paroled him. In view of the strong probability that the deserted house might be entered, plundered, and fired by some wandering band of Indians, the half-breed leader left upon the wood hasty hieroglyphics which they would understand the respect. The roof reared by the patron who had filled a father's place to him,-whether or not he had a natural right of the office,-must be spared for that patron's sake.

We cannot but view the rude indentations reverently. With mute eloquence they awaken thoughts of the mark left "upon the lintels and the two side-posts" of the houses to be spared by the destroying angel on the passover night. Nothing we have seen in any other Colonial homestead appeals more strongly to heart and imagination than these tokens of love and gratitude, stronger than death, and of the authority exercised by the educated savage over his fierce followers.

The rooms are large and lofty and wainscoted with native woods, rich with the dyes of a hundred and fifty years. The library, in which Sir William drew his last breath, is now used as a bedroom.

The late General Thomas Hillhouse was wont to say that "Sir William Johnson was the greatest Proconsul the English ever had in the American Colonies, and that if he had lived, the entire course of the Revolution might-would probably have been changed.

The stamp of his potent personality lingers upon the neighbourhood he rescued from the wilderness. Tales of a life without parallel in the history of our country are circulated in Johnstown and Fonda and Caughnawaga, as of one who died but yesterday. Some are grave; some are comic; many are unquestionably myths; all are interesting. We may discredit the story, seriously retailed by Lossing, that Sir William was the father of a hundred children. Presumably, although our delightful gossip does not state it in so many words, ninety-odd were half-breeds.

We incline a listening ear to the account of the seclusion in which May and "Nancy" Johnson were brought up after their mother's death. According to this, the two girls were educated by the Widow of an English officer, a gentlewoman who had been Mrs. Johnson's intimate friend. She lived with her charges apart from the rest of the household, training them in the few branches of learning studied by young ladies of that day, teaching them fine needlework of various kinds, one with them in their pleasures and pursuits. They are said to have dressed after a fashion dictated by their governess and never altered while they were under her care; a sort of pelisse, or loose gown,-like the modern peignoir,-of fine flowered chintz, opened in front to show a green silk petticoat. Their hair, thick, long, and very beautiful, was tied at the back of the head with ribbon. We are asked, furthermore, to believe that up to the age of sixteen, the sisters had seen no women of their own station except their governess, and no white man but their father, who visited them every day, and took a lively interest in their education. When, in his judgment, they were ready to leave the conventual retreat, he married Mary to her cousin, Guy Johnson, Ann to Daniel Claus. After their marriages, they acquired the ways of the outer world with wonderful rapidity, and played their parts as society women well.

The tradition, if it be true, ranks itself upon the reputable, country-gentlemen side of their father's dual nature. By no other means could he have kept Mary Brant and her brood apart from the fair-faced daughters of Catherine Wissenberg, or prevented the shadow of early equivocal associations from darkening the fame of Mesdames Guy Johnson and Daniel Claus. He was passing wise in his generation.

If the tale be not authentic, it ought to be. Many of the incidents linked into the story of Johnson Hall rest upon the valid testimony of Mrs. Edwards, a sister of Mr. Eleazar Wells. This venerable gentlewoman lived to see her eighty-seventh birthday, and preserved her excellent memory to the latest day of her life. One of these anecdotes is curiously suggestive. On a certain day in the year 1815, or thereabouts, a party of eight or ten horsemen appeared at the Hall, and demanded permission to go into the cellar. None of the men of the family were at home, and Mrs. Wells, dreading violence if the visitors were refused, granted the singular request, contriving, nevertheless, that their proceedings should be watched. In a dark corner of the cellar was a well, dug by Sir William Johnson to supply the garrison with water in the event of a siege, but now half filled with stones and earth. The intruders began at once to tear out the rubbish, presently unearthing several boxes,, which they carried into the upper air and into a field back of the house and orchard. In the sight of the terrified women watching them from the upper windows, they emptied the coffers of the papers that filled them and "sat on the ground a long time, -said Mrs. Edwards,-opening and examining them. At last, they made a fire upon the hillside and threw armful after armful of the papers into it. When all were consumed, they remounted their horses and rode off "towards Canada." Sir John Johnson was then alive. The surmise was inevitable that search and destruction were instigated by him, and for reasons we can never know.

At some period of its history the interesting old landmark had rough usage from temporary occupants. If the hall-carpet were lifted we should see the print of stamping hoofs upon the oaken boards beneath, proving that troopers-American or Tory-stabled their horses there, tethering them to the noble staircase protected from nominal barbarians by the gashes of Brant's hatchet.

Sir William Johnson was buried in a brick vault constructed in his lifetime under the chancel of St. John's Church in Johnstown. The corner-stone of the building "was laid in 1772 with Masonic ceremonies, Sir William Johnson, Sir John Johnson, John Butler, Daniel Claus, Guy Johnson, and General Herkimer taking part therein . . . This church contained the first church-organ west of Albany."

So writes Mr. James T. Younglove, an accomplished antiquarian and a zealous student of the stirring history of the Mohawk Valley.

William Elliott Griffis adds that when the church was burned in 1836, and rebuilt (with the old stones as far as possible) in 1838, "the site was so changed that the grave of Johnson was left outside the new building . . . In 1862 the rector, Rev. Charles H. Kellogg, took measurements, sunk a shaft, and discovered the brick vault."

The sanctity of the tomb of the loyal subject of King George had been invaded long before. The leaden case enveloping the solid mahogany coffin was melted down and moulded into bullets during the Revolutionary War (to be fired at those of his own blood and name!). The ring with which he married Catherine Wissenberg was found embedded in his dust, and is still preserved by the Masonic Lodge he established at Johnson Hall. After his death the lodge was removed to the quarters it now occupies in Johnstown. The cradle in which "Mary Brant, housekeeper," rocked his tawny children, is also kept there.

The poor mortal remains of the fearless master among men were reburied in a "hollowed granite block" in the churchyard. No other grave is near it. For sixty years schoolboys played and romped and shouted over it, and passers in the streets of the now thriving town gave as little thought to the unmarked mound. Within the past five years the earnest efforts of the President of the Johnstown Historical Society, Hon. Horace E. Smith, have been the means of enkindling new and intelligent interest in one whom Dr. Griffis calls "the Maker of America." A movement is now on foot to erect a suitable monument to the pioneer to whom Johnstown owes birth, name, and the associations that make it an historic shrine.

Johnson Hall built 1762 (Photo taken about 1890)