The father, of course, preferred his home and his white children; and the promise was faithfully fulfilled, of escorting him in safety back to his cabin. One can easily imagine that the young Cornplanter intended to “heap coals of fire on his head,” though he had never heard the Scripture injunction; and in this instance, certainly acted according to the golden rule, of doing as he would be done by. His father had rejected him; had never performed the parent’s duty of sheltering him, or giving him food or clothes, or bestowed upon him a word of affection, or manifested in him any interest. That he had a son among them, may have softened his feelings towards Indians, and prompted him to befriend them; but our impressions concerning the promptings of Indian blood, would lead us to expect retaliation for such neglect. We might expect him to ask, Why should the father love and cherish his white children, and leave him to run wild in the forest? Very likely these thoughts passed through his mind, but no Christian mother ever more thoroughly inculcated the precept, “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,” than the untaught Indian woman in the wilderness. If Cornplanter had fallen upon his white brethren and sisters in anger, and meted out to them vengeance, on account of their being the Benjamins of their father’s household, we should have called it consistent with Indian character. But though he had it in his power at any time to cause them to be slain, or taken captive, he left them by their firesides in safety and peace. That he sometimes thought of the injustice he was experiencing, is evident from the ironical allusions he made to the peculiar embarrassment of neglected children, in his speeches. At one time, he, with several other Chiefs, was at a great dinner, given upon the ratification of a long-pending treaty. Wine being part of the entertainment, Cornplanter took his glass and said: “I thank the Great Spirit for this opportunity of smoking the pipe of friendship and love. May we plant our own vines, be the fathers of our own children, and maintain them!” The Indian name of Cornplanter was Ga-ne-o-di-yo, or Handsome Lake; and he had a half-brother, who became distinguished among the Iroquois as the founder of a new religion. Having spent his youth in dissipation, he suddenly reformed, and announced that he had been commissioned by the Great Spirit as an apostle, endowed with supernatural gifts, and having a new revelation. At the time of his conversion—if such it may be termed—he resided with Cornplanter, in a little village on the Alleghany River, in the State of Pennsylvania.