Indian siege of Fort Laurens--Successful stratagems--Flight of the pack-horses--The fort abandoned--Projected enterprise from Detroit--Gov. Hamilton captured at St. Vincent by Col. Clarke--Projects of Brant--Uneasiness in the West of New-York--Deliberations of the Oneidas and Onondagas--Brant's projects defeated--Treachery of the Onondagas--Colonel Van Schaick marches to lay waste their towns--Instructions of General Clinton--Passage of Wood Creek and Oneida Lake--Advance upon the Indian towns--Their destruction--Return of the expedition to Fort Schuyler--Mission of the Oneidas to Fort Schuyler in behalf of the Onondagas--Speech of Good Peter--Reply of Colonel Van Schaick--Irruption of Tories and Indians into the lower Mohawk country--Stone Arabia--Defence of his house by Captain Richer--The Indians in Schoharie--General Clinton traverses the Mohawk valley--McClellan's expedition to Oswegatchie--Unsuccessful--Irruption of the Onondagas into Cobleskill--Defeat of the Americans--The settlement destroyed--Murders in the neighborhood of Fort Pitt--Irruptions of Tories into Warwasing--Invasion of Minisink--Battle near the Delaware--Massacre of the Orange County militia--Battle with the Shawanese. 396 INTRODUCTION. * * * * * It is related by AEsop, that a forester once meeting with a lion, they traveled together for a time, and conversed amicably without much differing in opinion. At length a dispute happening to arise upon the question of superiority between their respective races, the former, in the absence of a better argument, pointed to a monument, on which was sculptured, in marble, the statue of a man striding over the body of a vanquished lion. "If this," said the lion, "is all you have to say, let us be the sculptors, and you will see the lion striding over the vanquished man." The moral of this fable should ever be borne in mind when contemplating the character of that brave and ill-used race of men, now melting away before the Anglo-Saxons like the snow beneath a vertical sun--the aboriginals of America. The Indians are no sculptors. No monuments of their own art commend to future ages the events of the past. No Indian pen traces the history of their tribes and nations, or records the deeds of their warriors and chiefs--their prowess and their wrongs. Their spoilers have been their historians; and although a reluctant assent has been awarded to some of the nobler traits of their nature, yet, without yielding a due allowance for the peculiarities of their situation, the Indian character has been presented with singular uniformity as being cold, cruel, morose, and revengeful; unrelieved by any of those varying traits and characteristics, those lights and shadows, which are admitted in respect to other people no less wild and uncivilized than they.