Editing Joseph Brant (section)

==American Revolution==
[[File:Joseph Thayendaneken, The Mohawk Chief, 1776.jpg|thumb|Joseph Thayendaneken, The Mohawk Chief, 1776.]]
In 1775, he was appointed departmental secretary with the rank of Captain for the new British Superintendent's Mohawk warriors from Canajoharie. In April 1775, the American Revolution began with fighting breaking out in Massachusetts, and in May 1775, Brant traveled to a meeting at [[German Flatts, New York|German Flatts]] to discuss the crisis.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=38}} While traveling to German Flatts, Brant felt first-hand the "fear and hostility" held by the whites of Tryon County who hated him both for his tactics against Klock and as a friend of the powerful Johnson family.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=38}} Guy Johnson suggested that Brant go with him to Canada, saying that both their lives were in danger.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|pp=38–39}} When Loyalists were threatened after the war broke out in April 1775, Brant moved to the [[Province of Quebec (1763-1791)|Province of Quebec]], arriving in [[Montreal]] on July 17.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=39}} The governor of [[Province of Quebec (1763–1791)|Quebec]], General [[Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester|Guy Carleton]], personally disliked Johnson, felt his plans for employing the Iroquois against the rebels to be inhumane, and treated Brant with barely veiled contempt.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=39}} Brant's wife Susanna and children went to Onoquaga in south central New York, a [[Tuscarora people|Tuscarora]] Iroquois village along the [[Susquehanna River]], the site of present-day [[Windsor, New York|Windsor]].

On November 11, 1775, Guy Johnson took Brant with him to [[London]] to solicit more support from the government. They hoped to persuade the Crown to address past Mohawk land grievances in exchange for their participation as allies in the impending war.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=39}} Brant met [[George III]] during his trip to London, but his most important talks were with the colonial secretary, [[George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville|George Germain]].{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=39}} Brant complained that the Iroquois had fought for the British in the Seven Years' War, taking heavy losses, yet the British were allowing white settlers like Klock to defraud them of their land.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=39}} The British government promised the Iroquois people land in Quebec if the Iroquois nations would fight on the British side in what was shaping up as open rebellion by the American colonists. In London, Brant was treated as a celebrity and was interviewed for publication by [[James Boswell]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Boswell|first=James|date=July 1776|title=Am Account of the Mohock Indians, Who Lately Visited England|journal=London Magazine|volume=45|page=339}}</ref> He was received by King George III at [[St. James's Palace]]. While in public, he dressed in traditional Mohawk attire. He was accepted into [[freemason]]ry and received his ritual apron personally from King George.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=39}}

Brant returned to [[Staten Island, New York]], in July 1776. He participated with [[William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe|Howe]]'s forces as they prepared to [[New York and New Jersey campaign|retake New York]]. Although the details of his service that summer and fall were not officially recorded, Brant was said to have distinguished himself for bravery. He was thought to be with Clinton, [[Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis|Cornwallis]], and [[Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland|Percy]] in the flanking movement at [[Jamaica Pass]] in the [[Battle of Long Island]] in August 1776.{{sfn|Kelsay|1984|pp=182–184}} He became lifelong friends with Lord Percy, later Duke of Northumberland, in what was his only lasting friendship with a white man.

On his return voyage to New York City, Brant's ship was attacked by an American [[privateer]], during which he used one of the rifles he received in London to practice his sniping skills.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=40}} In November, Brant left New York City and traveled northwest through Patriot-held territory.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=39}} Disguised, traveling at night and sleeping during the day, he reached Onoquaga, where he rejoined his family. Brant asked the men of Onquaga to fight for the Crown, but the warriors favored neutrality, saying they wished to have no part in a war between white men.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=40}} In reply, Brant stated that he had received promises in London that if the Crown won, Iroquois land rights would be respected while he predicted if the Americans won, then the Iroquois would lose their land, leading him to the conclusion that neutrality was not an option.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=40}} Brant noted that George Washington had been a prominent investor in the Ohio Company, whose efforts to bring white settlement to the Ohio river valley had been the cause of such trouble to the Indians there, which he used to argue did not augur well if the Americans should win. More importantly, one of the "oppressive" acts of Parliament that had so incensed the Americans was the [[Royal Proclamation of 1763]], forbidding white settlement beyond the Appalachians, which did not bode well for Indian land rights should the Americans be victorious.{{sfn|Graymont|1972|p=49}}

Brant's own relations with the British were strained. [[John Butler (pioneer)|John Butler]] who was running the Indian Department in the absence of Guy Johnson had difficult relations with Brant.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=40}} Brant found Butler patronizing while Brant's friend Daniel Claus assured him that Butler's behavior was driven by "jealousy and envy" at the charismatic Brant.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=40}} At the end of December, Brant was at [[Fort Niagara]]. He traveled from village to village in the confederacy throughout the winter, urging the Iroquois to enter the war as British allies.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=40}} Many Iroquois balked at Brant's plans. In particular, the Oneida and Tuscarora gave Brant an unfriendly welcome.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=40}} [[Louis Cook]], a Mohawk leader who supported the rebel American colonists, became a lifelong enemy of Brant's.

The full [[Grand Council of the Six Nations]] had previously decided on a policy of neutrality at Albany in 1775. They considered Brant a minor war chief and the Mohawk a relatively weak people. Frustrated, Brant returned to Onoquaga in the spring to recruit independent warriors. Few Onoquaga villagers joined him, but in May he was successful in recruiting Loyalists who wished to retaliate against the rebels. This group became known as [[Brant's Volunteers]]. Brant's Volunteers consisted of a few Mohawk and Tuscarora warriors and 80 white Loyalists.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=40}} Paxton commented it was a mark of Brant's charisma and renown that white Loyalists preferred to fight under the command of a Mohawk chief who was unable to pay or arm them while at the same time that only a few Iroquois joined him reflected the generally neutralist leanings of most of the Six Nations.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=40}} The majority of the men in Brant's Volunteers were white.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=40}}

In June, he led them to [[Unadilla (village), New York|Unadilla]] to obtain supplies. There he was confronted by 380 men of the [[Tryon County militia]] led by [[Nicholas Herkimer]]. The talks with Herkimer, a Palatine who had once been Brant's neighbour and friend, were initially friendly.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=41}} However, Herkimer's chief of staff was Colonel Ebenezer Cox, the son-in-law of Brant's archenemy Klock, and he continually made racist remarks to Brant, which at one point caused Brant's Mohawk warriors to reach for their weapons.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=41}} Brant and Herkimer were able to defuse the situation with Brant asking his warriors to step outside while Herkimer likewise told Cox to leave the room.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=41}} Herkimer requested that the Iroquois remain neutral but Brant responded that the Indians owed their loyalty to the King.

===Northern campaign===
====Service as war leader, 1777–78 and "Monster Brant"====
[[Image:Joseph Brant by Charles Willson Peale 1797.jpg|thumb|right|upright=0.8|alt=Painting of Joseph Brant by Charles Willson Peale in 1797|Portrait of Joseph Brant by [[Charles Willson Peale]] (1797)]]
In July 1777 the Six Nations council decided to abandon neutrality and enter the war on the British side. Four of the six nations chose this route, and some members of the Oneida and Tuscarora, who otherwise allied with the rebels. Brant was not present, but was deeply saddened when he learned that Six Nations had broken into two with the Oneida and Tuscarora supporting the Americans while the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca chose the British.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=40}} ''[[Sayenqueraghta]]'' and [[Cornplanter]] were named as the war chiefs of the confederacy. The Mohawk had earlier made Brant one of their war chiefs; they also selected [[John Deseronto]].{{citation needed|date=April 2024}}

In July, Brant led his Volunteers north to link up with [[Barry St. Leger]] at Fort Oswego. St. Leger's plan was to travel downriver, east in the Mohawk River valley, to Albany, where he would meet the army of [[John Burgoyne]], who was coming from [[Lake Champlain]] and the upper [[Hudson River]]. St. Leger's expedition ground to a halt with the [[Siege of Fort Stanwix]]. General Herkimer raised the Tryon County militia, which consisted mostly of Palatines, to march for the relief of Fort Stanwix while Molly Brant passed along a message to her brother that Herkimer was coming.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=42}} Brant played a major role in the [[Battle of Oriskany]], where an American relief expedition was stopped on August 6.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=42}} As Herkimer marched through the forest at the head of a force of 800, they were ambushed by the Loyalists, who brought down heavy fire from their positions in the forest.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=42}} The Americans stood their ground, and after six hours of fighting, the battle ended inconclusively, though the Americans losses, at about 250 dead, were much greater than the Loyalist losses.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=42}} The Canadian historian Desmond Morton described Brant's Iroquois warriors as having "annihilated a small American army".{{sfn|Morton|1999|p=45}}

Though Brant stopped Herkimer, the heavy losses taken by the Loyalist Iroquois at Oriskany led the battle to be considered a disaster by the Six Nations, for whom the loss of any life was unacceptable, making the 60 Iroquois dead at Oriskany a catastrophe by Iroquois standards.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=42}} St. Leger was eventually forced to lift the siege when another American force approached, and Brant traveled to Burgoyne's main army to inform him.{{sfn|Watt|2002|p=269}} The Oneida, who had sided with the Americans together with the Tryon County militia sacked Canajoharie, taking particular care to destroy Molly Brant's house.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=42}} Burgoyne restricted participation by native warriors, so Brant departed for [[Fort Niagara]], where his family joined him and he spent the winter planning the next year's campaign. His wife Susanna likely died at Fort Niagara that winter. ([[Saratoga campaign|Burgoyne's campaign]] ended with his surrender to the Patriots after the [[Battles of Saratoga]].) Helping Brant's career was the influence of his sister Molly, whom Daniel Claus had stated: "one word from her [Molly Brant] is more taken notice of by the Five Nations than a thousand from a white man without exception".{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=43}} The British Army officers found Molly Brant to be bad-tempered and demanding, as she expected to be well rewarded for her loyalty to the Crown, but as she possessed much influence, it was felt to be worth keeping her happy.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=43}}

In April 1778, Brant returned to Onoquaga. He became one of the most active partisan leaders in the frontier war. He and his Volunteers raided rebel settlements throughout the Mohawk Valley, stealing their cattle, burning their houses, and killing many. The British historian Michael Johnson called Brant the "scourge of the American settlements of New York and Pennsylvania", being one of the most feared Loyalist irregular commanders in the war.{{sfn|Johnson|2003|p=16}} Morton wrote the fighting on the New York frontier was not so much between Americans and the British as "a cruel civil war between Loyalist and Patriot, Mohawk and Oneida, in a crude frontier tradition".{{sfn|Morton|1999|p=46}} On May 30, Brant led an [[Battle of Cobleskill|attack on Cobleskill]]. At the Battle of the Cobleskill, Brant ambushed an American force of 50 men, consisting of Continental Army regulars and New York militiamen, killing 20 Americans and burning down the farms.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=43}} In September, along with Captain [[William Caldwell (ranger)|William Caldwell]], he led a mixed force of Indians and Loyalists in a [[Attack on German Flatts (1778)|raid on German Flatts]]. During the raid on German Flatts, Brant burned down almost the entire village, sparing only the church, the fort, and two houses belonging to Loyalists.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=44}} Brant's fame as a guerrilla leader was such that the Americans credited him with being behind any attack by Loyalist Haudenosaunee, even when he was not.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|pp=43–44}} In the [[Battle of Wyoming]] in July, the Seneca were accused of slaughtering noncombatant civilians. Although Brant was suspected of being involved, he did not participate in that battle, which nonetheless gave him the unflattering epithet of "Monster Brant".{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=44}}

In September 1778 Brant's forces attacked [[Percifer Carr|Percifer Carr's]] farm where American scouts under [[Adam Helmer]] were based. Three of the scouts were killed. Helmer took off running to the north-east, through the hills, toward Schuyler Lake and then north to Andrustown (near present-day [[Jordanville, New York]]) where he warned his sister's family of the impending raid and obtained fresh footwear. He also warned settlers at Columbia and Petrie's Corners, most of whom then fled to safety at Fort Dayton. When Helmer arrived at the fort, severely torn up from his run, he told Colonel Peter Bellinger, the commander of the fort, that he had counted at least 200 of the attackers en route to the valley (see [[Attack on German Flatts (1778)|Attack on German Flatts]]). The straight-line distance from Carr's farm to Fort Dayton is about thirty miles, and Helmer's winding and hilly route was far from straight. It was said that Helmer then slept for 36 hours straight. During his sleep, on September 17, 1778, the farms of the area were destroyed by Brant's raid. The total loss of property in the raid was reported as: 63 houses, 59 barns, full of grain, 3 grist mills, 235 horses, 229 horned cattle, 279 sheep, and 93 oxen. Only two men were reported killed in the attack, one by refusing to leave his home when warned.{{citation needed|date=April 2024}}

In October 1778, Lieutenant Colonel [[William Butler (colonel)|William Butler]] led 300 Continental soldiers and New York militia [[Raid on Unadilla and Onaquaga|attacked Brant's home base at Onaquaga]] while he and his volunteers were away on a raid. The soldiers burned the houses, captured the cattle, cut down the fruit trees, and destroyed the corn crop. Butler described Onaquaga as "the finest Indian town I ever saw; on both sides [of] the river there was about 40 good houses, square logs, shingles & stone chimneys, good floors, glass windows." In November 1778, Brant and his volunteers joined forces with [[Walter Butler (Loyalist)|Walter Butler]] in an [[Cherry Valley massacre|attack on Cherry Valley]].{{sfn|Graymont|1983}} Brant disliked Butler, who he found to be arrogant and patronizing, and several times threatened to quit the expedition rather than work with Butler.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=44}}

With Butler was a large contingent of Seneca angered by the rebel raids on Onaquaga, Unadilla, and Tioga, and by accusations of atrocities during the [[Battle of Wyoming]]. The force rampaged through Cherry Valley, a community in which Brant knew several people. He tried to restrain the attack, but more than 30 noncombatants were reported slain in the attack.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=44}} Several of the dead at Cherry Valley were Loyalists like Robert Wells who was butchered in his house with his entire family.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=44}} Paxton argued that it is very unlikely that Brant would have ordered Wells killed, who was a long-standing friend of his.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=44}} Patriot Americans believed that Brant had commanded the [[Wyoming Valley massacre]] of 1778, and also considered him responsible for the [[Cherry Valley massacre]]. At the time, frontier rebels called him "the Monster Brant", and stories of his massacres and atrocities were widely propagated. The violence of the frontier warfare added to the rebel Americans' hatred of the Iroquois and soured relations for 50 years. While the colonists called the Indian killings "massacres", they considered their own forces' widespread destruction of Indian villages and populations simply as part of the partisan war, but the Iroquois equally grieved for their losses. Long after the war, hostility to Brant remained high in the Mohawk Valley; in 1797, the governor of New York provided an armed bodyguard for Brant's travels through the state because of threats against him.

Some historians have argued that Brant had been a force for restraint during the campaign in the Mohawk Valley. They have discovered occasions when he displayed compassion, especially towards women, children, and non-combatants. One British officer, Colonel Mason Bolton, the commander of Fort Niagara, described in a report to Sir Frederick Haldimand, described Brant as treating all prisoners he had taken "with great humanity".{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=44}} Colonel [[Ichabod Alden]] said that he "should much rather fall into the hands of Brant than either of them [Loyalists and Tories]."{{sfn|Kelsay|1984|p=227}} But, [[Allan W. Eckert]] asserts that Brant pursued and killed Alden as the colonel fled to the Continental stockade during the Cherry Valley attack.{{sfn|Eckert|2003|p=461}} Morton wrote: "An American historian, Barbara Graymount, has carefully demolished most of the legend of savage atrocities attributed to the Rangers and the Iroquois and confirmed Joseph Brant's own reputation as a generally humane and forbearing commander".{{sfn|Morton|1999|p=46}} Morton wrote that the picture of Brant as a mercenary fighting only for "rum and blankets" given to him by the British was meant to hide the fact "that the Iroquois were fighting for their land" as most American colonists at the time "rarely admitted that the Indians had a real claim to the land".{{sfn|Morton|1999|p=46}} As the war went on and became increasingly unpopular in Britain, opponents of the war in Great Britain used the "Monster Brant" story as a way of attacking the Prime Minister, Lord North, arguing the Crown's use of the "savage" Mohawk war chief was evidence of the immorality of Lord North's policies.{{sfn|Morton|1999|p=46}} As Brant was a Mohawk, not British, it was easier for anti-war politicians in Britain to make him a symbol of everything that was wrong with the government of Lord North, which explains why paradoxically the "Monster Brant" story was popular on both sides of the Atlantic.{{sfn|Morton|1999|p=46}}

Lt. Col. [[William Stacy]] of the [[Continental Army]] was the highest-ranking officer captured by Brant and his allies during the Cherry Valley massacre. Several contemporary accounts tell of the Iroquois stripping Stacy and tying him to a stake, in preparation for what was ritual torture and execution of enemy warriors by Iroquois custom. Brant intervened and spared him. Some accounts say that Stacy was a [[Freemason]] and appealed to Brant on that basis, gaining his intervention for a fellow Mason.{{sfn|Barker|1958|p=35}}{{sfn|Edes|Darlington|1873|pp=70–71}}{{sfn|Drake|1873|pp=465–467}}{{sfn|Beardsley|1852|p=463}} Eckert, a historian and historical novelist, speculates that the Stacy incident is "more romance than fact", though he provides no documentary evidence.{{sfn|Eckert|2003|pp=461–462}}

During the winter of 1778–1779, Brant's wife Susanna, died, leaving him with the responsibility of raising their two children, Issac and Christina alone.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=44}} Brant chose to have children stay in Kanienkeh, deciding that a frontier fort was no place for children.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=44}} For Brant, being away from his children as he went to campaign in the war was a source of much emotional hardship.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=44}}

====Commissioned as officer, 1779====
In February 1779, Brant traveled to Montreal to meet with [[Frederick Haldimand]], the military commander and Governor of Quebec. Haldimand commissioned Brant as Captain of the Northern Confederated Indians. He also promised provisions, but no pay, for his Volunteers. Assuming victory, Haldimand pledged that after the war ended, the British government would restore the Mohawk to their lands as stated before the conflict started. Those conditions were included in the [[Proclamation of 1763]], the [[Treaty of Fort Stanwix]] in 1768, and the [[Quebec Act]] in June 1774. Haldimand gave Brant the rank of captain in the [[British Army]] as he found Brant to the most "civilized" of the Iroquois chiefs, finding him not to be a "savage".{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=44}}

In May, Brant returned to Fort Niagara where, with his new salary and plunder from his raids, he acquired a farm on the [[Niagara River]], six miles (10&nbsp;km) from the fort. To work the farm and to serve the household, he used [[slaves]] captured during his raids. Brant also bought a slave, a seven-year-old [[African-American]] girl named [[Sophia Pooley|Sophia Burthen Pooley]]. She served him and his family for six years before he sold her to an Englishman named Samuel Hatt for $100.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/anorthsideviews00drewgoog <!-- quote=pooley. --> Drew 192–196]. She stayed with Hatt for seven years before running away.</ref><ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite web |title=Sophia Burthen Pooley: Part of the Family? |url=http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/explore/online/slavery/sophia_pooley.aspx |publisher=Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services |access-date=June 24, 2020}}</ref> He built a small chapel for the Indians who started living nearby. There he also married for a third time, to Catherine Croghan (as noted above in Marriage section).

Brant's honors and gifts caused jealousy among rival chiefs, in particular the Seneca war chief [[Sayenqueraghta]]. A British general said that Brant "would be much happier and would have more weight with the Indians, which he in some measure forfeits by their knowing that he receives pay". In late 1779, after receiving a colonel's commission for Brant from [[George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville|Lord Germain]], Haldimand decided to hold it without informing Brant.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=46}}

Over the course of a year, Brant and his Loyalist forces had reduced much of New York and Pennsylvania to ruins, causing thousands of farmers to flee what had been one of the most productive agricultural regions on the eastern seaboard.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=45}} As Brant's activities were depriving the Continental Army of food, General George Washington ordered General John Sullivan in June 1779 to invade Kanienkeh and destroy all of the Haudenosaunee villages.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=45}} In early July 1779, the British learned of plans for a major American expedition into Iroquois [[Seneca nation|Seneca]] country. To disrupt the Americans' plans, [[John Butler (pioneer)|John Butler]] sent Brant and his Volunteers on a quest for provisions and to gather intelligence in the upper [[Delaware River]] valley near [[Minisink, New York]]. After stopping at Onaquaga, Brant attacked and defeated American militia at the [[Battle of Minisink]] on July 22, 1779. Brant's raid failed to disrupt the [[Continental Army]]'s plans, however.

In the [[Sullivan Expedition]], the Continental Army sent a large force deep into Iroquois territory to attack the warriors and, as importantly, destroy their villages, crops and food stores. Brant's Volunteers harassed, but were unable to stop Sullivan who destroyed everything in his path, burning down 40 villages and 160,000 bushels of corn.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=45}} The Haudenosauee still call Washington "Town Destroyer" for the Sullivan expedition.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=45}} As Brant looked over the devastated land of Kanienkeh he wrote in a letter to Claus: "We shall begin to know what is to befal [befall] us the People of the Long House".{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=45}} Brant and the Iroquois were defeated on August 29, 1779, at the [[Battle of Newtown]], the only major conflict of the expedition. Sullivan's Continentals swept away all Iroquois resistance in New York, burned their villages, and forced the Iroquois to fall back to Fort Niagara. Brant wintered at Fort Niagara in 1779–80. To escape the Sullivan expedition, about 5,000 Senecas, Cayugas, Mohawks and Onondagas fled to Fort Niagara, where they lived in squalor, lacking shelter, food and clothing, which caused many to die over the course of the winter.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=45}}

Brant pressed the British Army to provide more for his own people while at the same time finding time to marry for a third time.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=45}} Brant's third wife, Adonwentishon, was a Mohawk clan mother, a position  of immense power in Haudenosauee society, and she did much to rally support for her husband.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|pp=45–46}} Haldimand had decided to withhold Brant the rank of colonel in the British Army that he had been promoted to, believing that such a promotion would offend other Loyalist Haudenosauee chiefs, especially Sayengaraghta, who viewed Brant as an upstart and not their best warrior, but he did give him the rank of captain.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=46}} Captain Brant tried his best to feed about 450 Mohawk civilians who had been placed in his care by Johnson, which caused tensions with other British Army officers who complained that Brant was "more difficult to please than any of the other chiefs" as he refused to take no for an answer when he demanded food, shelter and clothing for the refugees.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=46}} At one point, Brant was involved in a brawl with an Indian Department employee whom he had accused of not doing enough to feed the starving Mohawks.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=45}}

====Wounded and service in Detroit area, 1780–1783====
In early 1780, Brant resumed small-scale attacks on American troops and white settlers in the Mohawk and Susquehanna river valleys.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=46}} In February 1780, he and his party set out, and in April attacked [[Harpersfield, New York|Harpersfield]].{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=46}}  In mid-July 1780 Brant attacked the [[Oneida people|Oneida]] village of [[Oneida Castle, New York|Kanonwalohale]], as many of the nation fought as allies of the American colonists.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=46}} Brant's raiders destroyed the Oneida houses, horses, and crops. Some of the Oneida surrendered, but most took refuge at [[Fort Stanwix]].

Traveling east, Brant's forces attacked towns on both sides of the Mohawk River: Canajoharie on the south and Fort Plank. He burned his former hometown of Canajoharie because it had been re-occupied by American settlers.  On the raiders' return up the valley, they divided into smaller parties, attacking [[Old Stone Fort (Schoharie, New York)|Schoharie]], [[Cherry Valley, New York|Cherry Valley]], and [[German Flatts, New York|German Flatts]]. Joining with Butler's Rangers and the [[King's Royal Regiment of New York]], Brant's forces were part of a third major raid on the Mohawk Valley, where they destroyed settlers' homes and crops. In August 1780, during a raid with the King's Royal Regiment of New York in the Mohawk valley, about 150,000 bushels of wheat were burned.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=46}} Brant was wounded in the heel at the [[Battle of Klock's Field]].

In April 1781, Brant was sent west to [[Fort Detroit]] to help defend against Virginian [[George Rogers Clark]]'s expedition into the [[Ohio Country]]. In August 1781, Brant [[Lochry's Defeat|soundly defeated]] a detachment of Clark's force, capturing about 100 Americans and ending the American threat to Detroit.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=46}} Brant's leadership was praised by British Army officers who described him as an intelligent, charismatic and very brave commander.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=46}} He was wounded in the leg and spent the winter 1781–82 at the fort. During 1781 and 1782, Brant tried to keep the disaffected western Iroquois nations loyal to the Crown before and after the British [[Siege of Yorktown|surrendered at Yorktown]] in October 1781.

In June 1782, Brant and his Indians went to Fort Oswego, where they helped rebuild the fort.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=46}} In July 1782, he and 460 Iroquois raided forts [[Fort Herkimer|Herkimer]] and [[Fort Dayton|Dayton]], but they did not cause much serious damage. By 1782, there was not much left to destroy in New York and during the raid Brant's forces killed 9 men and captured some cattle.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=46}} Sometime during the raid, he received a letter from Governor Haldimand, announcing peace negotiations, recalling the war party and ordering a cessation of hostilities.{{sfn|Graymont|1983}}  Brant denounced the British "no offensive war" policy as a betrayal of the Iroquois and urged the Indians to continue the war, but they were unable to do so without British supplies.

Other events in the New World and Europe as well as changes in the British government had brought reconsideration of British national interest on the American continent.  The new governments recognized their priority to get Britain out of its four interconnected wars, and time might be short. Through a long and involved [[Peace of Paris (1783)|process]] between March and the end of November 1782, the preliminary peace treaty between Great Britain and America would be made; it would become public knowledge following its approval by the [[Congress of the Confederation]] on April 15, 1783. In May 1783, a bitter Brant, when he learned about the treaty of Paris, wrote "England had sold the Indians to Congress".{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=47}} Much to Brant's dismay, not only did the Treaty of Paris fail to mention the Haudenosaunee, but the British negotiators took the viewpoint that the Iroquois would have to negotiate their own peace treaty with the Americans, who Brant knew were a vengeful mood against him.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=47}} Like all of the Indians who fought for the Crown, Brant felt a profound sense of betrayal when he learned of the Treaty of Paris, complaining that the British diplomats in Paris did nothing for the Indian Loyalists.{{sfn|Morton|1999|p=49}} Nearly another year would pass before the other foreign parties to the conflict signed treaties on September 3, 1783, with that being ratified by Congress on January 14, 1784, and formally ending the American Revolutionary War.

The American Revolutionary War is known to the Haudenosaunee as "the Whirlwind" that led to many of them being exiled from Kanienkeh to Canada, and the decision of Joseph and Molly Brant to be loyal to the Crown as the best way of preserving the Haudenosaunee lands and way of life has been controversial, with many Hadenosaunee historians believing that neutrality would have worked better.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=34}} However, Paxton noted that after the war the United States imposed treaties that forced the Tuscarora and the Oneida who fought for the United States to surrender most of their land to white settlement; which Paxton used to argue that if all Six Nations had fought for the United States or remained neutral, they still would have lost most of their land.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=34}} In this context, Paxton maintained that the decision of the Brant siblings in 1775 to support the Crown, which at least promised to respect Haudenosaunee land rights was the most rational under the circumstances.{{sfn|Paxton|2008|p=34}}