ssent to this course, but indicated that he had no objection to the
British officers being present. They were accordingly sent for, but in
the meantime the Farmer's Brother and other British adherents were
telling the Indians that Proctor proposed taking them to the "verge of
the ocean" and that the treaty grounds were twelve months' journey away.

Shortly afterwards Colonel Butler with a staff of British army officers
came into camp. Butler was bold, and told the Indians in Proctor's
presence that Colonel Joseph Brant, of Grand River, and Alexander McKee,
the British agent of Indian affairs at Detroit, were now preparing to go
among the Indians at war with the Americans, "to know what their
intentions were, whether for war or for peace;" that nothing must be
done until their return, for should any embassy be undertaken, this
would certainly bring down the wrath of war upon themselves, and result
in the death of all, for the Miamis were angry with them already.

A strange event now happened. The Iroquois women suddenly appeared in
the Indian councils and seconded the pleas of the American peace
commissioner. Seated with the Indian chiefs, they easily swung the
scales, and carried the day. Red Jacket and other chiefs and warriors
were appointed to accompany Proctor to the west. But the English now
played their final trump card. On the fifth of May, Proctor had written
to Colonel Gordon, the British commandant at Niagara, to obtain
permission to freight one of the schooners on Lake Erie, to transport
the American envoy and such Indian chiefs as might accompany him, to
Sandusky. He now received a cold and insolent answer that at once
blasted all his hopes. Gordon refused to regard Proctor "in any other
light than a private agent," and peremptorily refused to let him charter
any of the craft upon the lake. This made the contemplated mission
impossible.

Let us now see what Alexander McKee and Joseph Brant were doing in the
west. Shortly before Proctor's arrival at Buffalo Creek, Brant had
received private instructions from British headquarters to set out for
the Grand River, and to go from thence to Detroit. It appears that
shortly after Harmar's defeat, the confederated nations of the
Chippewas, Potawatomi, Hurons, Shawnees, Delawares, Ottawas, and Miamis,
together with the Mohawks, had sent a deputation of their chiefs to the
headquarters of Lord Dorchester at Quebec, to sound him on the
proposition as to what aid or as