George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

‘ [232] fresh enemies, and are almost out of breath. Now

Chap. X.} 1779.

we shall see whether you are our loving strong brother, or whether you deceive us. Brother! we are still strong for the king of England, if you will show us that he is a man of his word, and that he will not abandon his brothers, the Six Nations.’¹

The savages ran no risk of a surprise; for, during all the expedition, Sullivan, who delighted in the vanities of command, fired a morning and evening gun. On the twenty-ninth he opened a distant and useless

Aug. 29.

cannonade against breastworks which British rangers and men of the Six Nations—in all about eight hundred—had constructed at Newtown; and they took the warning to retire before a party which was sent against them could strike them in the rear.

The march into the country of the Senecas on the left extended to Genesee; on the right, detachments reached Cayuga lake. After destroying eighteen villages and their fields of corn, Sullivan, whose army had suffered for want of supplies, returned to New. Jersey. Meantime, a small party from Fort Pitt, under command of Colonel Brodhead, broke up the towns of the Senecas upon the upper branch of the Alleghany. The manifest inability of Great Britain to protect the Six Nations inclined them at last to desire neutrality.

In June the British general Maclean, who com-

June.

manded in Nova Scotia, established a British post of six hundred men at what is now Castine, on Penobscot bay. To dislodge the intruders, the Massachusetts