and dared the Mohawk chief to single combat, or to send
a chosen body of men to meet him in fair field against
an equal number. If he showed his face in Cherry Valley,
threatened McKean, 'they would change him from a Brant
into a Goose.'

Brant knew the impulsive nature of McKean and took this
amusing letter for what it was worth. Yet the letter was
not without its effect upon him. They had dared him;
they had taunted him with threats; he would show them
that Joseph Brant would have a day of reckoning and that
right early. 'Cherry Valley people,' he wrote in the
postscript of a short note sent to an ardent loyalist,
'[are] very bold, and intended to make nothing of us;
they call us wild geese, but I know the contrary.'

Early in July a bloody engagement had occurred in the
valley of Wyoming, an extensive region in Pennsylvania
on the north branch of the Susquehanna river. For many
years after the encounter it was commonly believed that
Brant was the leader of the Indians who took part in it.
The valley of Wyoming had once been a possession of the
tribes of the Six Nations but, in 1754, they had been
ousted from their inheritance by a colonizing company.
When the Revolutionary War began it was already well
peopled with settlers. Naturally eager for vengeance,
the dispossessed Indians invited the co-operation of
Colonel John Butler and his rangers in a raid. Butler
accepted the invitation, and the Indians and rangers to
the number of five hundred made a swift descent of the