Susquehanna and invaded the valley. Their approach,
however, had been discovered, and the entire militia of
the district, mustering eight hundred, advanced against
them. In the battle which followed, the defenders were
defeated with great slaughter and many scalps were taken.
Older American historians misrepresented the fight as a
cruel massacre of non-combatants and asserted that Brant
was present. British writers, following them, fell into
the same error. Thomas Campbell's poem, 'Gertrude of
Wyoming,' written in 1809, gives a gruesome picture of
the episode, telling of the work which was done by the
'monster Brant.' During his visit to England in 1823,
the War Chief's youngest son, John Brant, vindicated his
father in a letter to Campbell, and showed that the
reference to his father in this poem was based on false
information. He declared that 'living witnesses' had
convinced him that his father was not in the neighbourhood
of Wyoming at the time of the so-called massacre; testimony
has been forthcoming to support the claims which John
Brant then made. It has been shown that the tribesmen of
the Six Nations whom Butler had with him were Senecas,
while the rest were Indians from the western tribes, and
that Brant's tribe, the Mohawks, were not present.
Nevertheless the Wyoming slaughter differs only in degree
from other scenes of bloodshed and plunder in which Brant
took part. In the month, indeed, in which the vale of
Wyoming was being bathed in blood, he swept down on the
little hamlet of Andrustown, and, bearing away a few
captives and much booty, disappeared with his followers
in the surrounding forest.