But his motives were impugned and misunderstood. Some of his own warriors called him a coward and promptly followed Cornplanter and Brant to battle. These two chiefs seemed to have had a contempt for Red Jacket because of his supposed cowardice. They nicknamed him _Cow-Killer,_ and often told with much gusto a story at his expense. This story was to the effect that at the commencement of the Revolutionary War, the young chief, with his usual eloquence, exhorted the Indians to courage, and promised to be with them in the thickest of the fight. When the battle came off, however, he was missing, having stayed at home to cut up a cow which he had captured. This story, with the speech just quoted in opposition to war, tended to convince many of the Indians that the Seneca sachem was a coward. But when the very things he prophesied literally happened, when in the progress of the war, as we have recorded in the life of Brant, Sullivan's army destroyed forty populous towns, with many orchards and fields of golden grain; when the Senecas were driven further west, and the proud Mohawks across the boundary into Canada, the deluded Indians saw that Red Jacket, the sage, was a true prophet. Had they followed his advice all would have been well, but they refused, and the Mohawks had "become homeless and helpless wanderers" for the sake of the British, who cared nothing for them when the war was over. At the close of the Revolution, the influence of Red Jacket was restored; for the reason that even his enemies had to concede that he was right, that he opposed war not from cowardice, but because his sagacious mind could see the end from the beginning, and he knew that in any case it must end disastrously for the Indian. He is to be commended for acting with wisdom and prudence. Another sage of old has said: "A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on and are punished." No one accused Washington of cowardice, when he advised his countrymen to keep neutral and make no entangling alliance with a foreign power. This, in its last analysis, was about the same position taken by Red Jacket. Why, then, should it be assumed that he was a coward? But there are other positive proofs of Red Jacket's courage. On one occasion the Mohawks challenged the Senecas to a game of ball. The challenge was accepted, and a large number of the Iroquois had gathered to witness the game.