Editing Joseph Brant (section)

====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}}