If Canada did not herself send an offensive army, all the savages were paid and protected by the English party: the Hurons and Iroquois committed their devastations on that whole frontier. Some baubles or a barrel of rum were sufficient to make them seize the tomahawk; they then rushed upon villages, burnt houses, destroyed harvests, massacred all, without regard to age or sex, and received on their return the price of each bloody scalp they could exhibit. A young American girl, whom her lover, an English, was expecting, that their marriage might take place, was killed by the very savages he had sent to escort her. Two Americans were actually eaten up by the Senecas, and a colonel of the English army was a guest at that horrible repast. "It is thus," was often said to the savages, whilst drinking with them at the councils, "it is thus we must drink the blood of rebels." M. de Lafayette, conscious that he could not protect such an immense extent of frontier, prepared quarters in every direction, and announced the speedy arrival of troops in all the counties; and this stratagem stopped the depredations of the savages, who do not usually attack those places in which they expect to find much resistance. But he kept the Albany troops close together, satisfied them a little as to payment, provisioned the forts, which had been hitherto neglected, and arrested a plot of which any particulars have never been precisely known. He found in George Clinton, governor of the state of New York, a firm and an enlightened co-operator.
Soon after, Schuyler and Duane, who were charged with the management of the affairs of the savages, appointed a general assembly at Johnson's Town, upon the Mohawk river. Recalling to them their former attachment to the French, M. de Lafayette repaired thither in a sledge to shew himself in person to those nations whom the English had endeavoured to prejudice against him. Five hundred men, women, and children, covered with various coloured paints and feathers, with their ears cut open, their noses ornamented with rings, and their half-naked bodies marked with different figures, were present at the councils. Their old men, whilst smoking, talked politics extremely well. Their object seemed to be to promote a balance of power; if the intoxication of rum, as that of ambition in Europe, had not often turned them aside from it. M. de Lafayette, adopted by them, received the name of _Kayewla_, which belonged formerly to one of their warriors; and under this name he is well known to all the savage tribes. Some louis which he distributed under the form of medals, and some stuffs from the state of New York, produced but little effect when compared to the presents they had received from England. A treaty was entered into, which some of them rigidly observed; and the course of the evil was at least arrested for the present. The Oneidas and Tuscaroras, the only real friends the Americans possessed, requested to have a fort; and M. de Lafayette left them M. de Gouvion, a French officer, whose talents and virtues rendered him of great value to the cause. Whenever savages were required at the army, whenever there was any dealings with these tribes, recourse was always had to the credit of M. de Lafayette, whose _necklaces_ and _words_ were equally respected.