For many months Washington had been watching for an opportunity of sufficient relief from British activity, to punish the Indians who perpetrated their outrages in the Wyoming Valley; and as early as the sixth of March, he tendered to General Gates the command of an expedition for that purpose. In this assignment he enclosed an order for him to assume General Sullivan’s command at Providence, in case he declined the expedition. General Gates, then at Boston, thus replied: “Last night, I had the honor of your Excellency’s letter. The man who undertakes the Indian service should enjoy youth and strength, which I do not possess. It therefore grieves me that your Excellency should offer me a command to which I am entirely unequal. In obedience to your command I have forwarded your letter to General Sullivan; and that he may not be one moment delayed, I have desired him to leave the command with General Greene until I arrive in Providence.” General Sullivan marched from Eastern Pennsylvania, reaching Wyoming Valley on the thirty-first of July, and Tioga Point, N.Y., on the eighth of August, with a force of five thousand men. Gen. James Clinton joined him from the northern army. The brigades of Generals Poor, Hand, and Maxwell, Parr’s Rifle Corps, and Proctor’s Artillery, all familiar to the reader, formed the invading force. On the twenty-ninth day of August, the Battle of Chemung was fought, near the present city of Elmira, and the towns of the Six Nations were laid waste, including orchards, gardens, houses, clothing, and provisions, indiscriminately. There was nothing in this punishment of the Six Nations which commended the American cause to their favor; but they did not regard the details of these ravages as a part of Washington’s instructions. When the War for Independence closed, and their alliance with the United States became a fixed fact, Washington represented their ideal of the great soldier—“_He had made the power of Britain to yield to his arms_.” Governor Blackstone, Chief of the Senecas, Cornplanter, and Halftown, the famous trio who made the treaty with Washington, were ever known as “the friends of Washington.” A silver medal presented to Governor Blackstone, which bore the simple inscription “Second Presidency of George Washington,” was long esteemed as a most precious relic. Handsome Lake, known as the “Peace Prophet,”—brother of Tecumseh,—made as a tribute to Washington one of the most impressive utterances of his mission among the Six Nations. Even as late as the Eleventh United States Census, 1890, Washington’s name, alone of all the American Presidents, was not found among the children’s names of the Six Nations; so greatly was he held in reverence. They also engrafted into their religion the myth that “he occupies a mansion at the gate of Paradise, where he becomes visible to all who enter its portals and ascend to the Great Spirit, and both recognizes and returns the salute of all who enter.”