nd the Delaware, the Iroquois and Wyandot,
after centuries of war and bloodshed, could be suddenly brought together
in any efficient league or combination, that would withstand the test of
time, was vain and foolish. The history of the Indian tribes in America
from the days of the Jesuit fathers down to the day of Brant, had shown
first one tribe and then another in the ascendency. Never at any time
had there been peace and concord. Even within the councils of the same
tribe, contentions frequently arose between sachems and chiefs. It is
well known that in his later days the Little Turtle was almost
universally despised by the other Miami chieftains. A deadly hatred
existed between the Cornplanter and Joseph Brant. Tecumseh and Winamac
were enemies. Governor Arthur St. Clair, writing to the President of the
United States, on May 2, 1789, reported that a jealousy subsisted
between the tribes that attended the treaty at Fort Harmar; that they
did not consider themselves as one people and that it would not be
difficult, if circumstances required it, "to set them at deadly
variance."

Equally pretentious was Brant's claim of a common ownership of the
Indian lands. The Iroquois themselves had never recognized any such
doctrine. In October, 1768, at the English treaty of Fort Stanwix, they
had sold to the British government by bargain and sale, a great strip of
country south of the Ohio river, and had fixed the line of that stream
as the boundary between themselves and the English. At that time they
claimed to be the absolute owners of the lands ceded, to the exclusion
of all other tribes. At the treaty of Fort Wayne, in 1809, between the
United States and the northwestern tribes, the Miamis claimed the
absolute fee in all the lands along the Wabash, and refused to cede any
territory until a concession to that effect was made by William Henry
Harrison. In the instructions of Congress, of date October 26th, 1787,
to General Arthur St. Clair, relative to the negotiation of a treaty in
the northern department, which were the same instructions governing the
negotiations at Fort Harmar in January 1789, specific directions were
given to defeat all confederations and combinations among the tribes,
for congress clearly saw the British hand behind Brant's proposed
league, and knew how futile it was to recognize any such savage
alliance.

The British officials were well aware of the shortcomings of Brant's
league, but they hailed its