Editing Joseph Brant (section)

====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}}