The Senecas were, in 1779, the largest and most active of the tribes, and “the Seneca country” was a general name for the great region which Sullivan was to traverse. Our soldiers were to enter the Long House through the southern door, at Tioga Point, near which, on the fertile slope of the valley, was Esthertown, or the Indian Queen Esther’s country and castle. One of their hardest marches would be through the swampy valley stretching from the town of Chemung west of Esthertown to the castle of Queen Catherine Montour, her sister, at Montour Falls, N. Y. The mention of Queen Esther’s name recalls the fact that the savages were not entirely alone in their schemes of hostility, but that the brain and hands of white men assisted them in their bloody forays. Indeed, it was one of the counts in the Declaration of Independence that the colonies were justified in their war of independence, because George III. “has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” There were several hundred white men aiding and abetting the Indians in the arts of war and in methods of fortification. Besides the British regulars, Johnson’s Greens, loyalists, Canadians and half-breeds, two of the most eminent Iroquois women called “Queens” had white blood in their veins. Both boasted descent from the French Count Frontenac, and were married to powerful chiefs. Esther, at Sheshequin, near Tioga Point, and Catherine, at Montour Falls, near the modern Watkins Glen, were the owners of large and well-worked corn fields and of fenced gardens, of horses, cattle, hogs, and other live stock and of houses made of sawed and carved timber and spoken of as “palaces.”