Immediately upon the close of the Revolutionary war he became the fast friend of the white man and the government. Satisfied that his nation had been fraudulently decoyed into alliance with the British during the war, and basely betrayed by then allies at its close, he hastened to repair the wrong, by giving all his influence and energies to the inauguration of a peace between the United States and the Six Nations, of which he was then a distinguished Chief. Although resisted by all the craftiness of BRANT, and the eloquence of RED JACKET, he persisted until his purpose was consummated by the treaties of Fort Stanwix and Fort Harmar, both of which were secured through and executed by himself. By them the Indian claims to most of the land in Western New York, and North-Western Pennsylvania, was surrendered, and a perpetual peace ordained.
But the great merit of his life, and which most entitled him to the gratitude of the American government, and the State of Pennsylvania, was his successful efforts to prevent the Six Nations uniting in the Confederacy of western Indians formed in 1790-91. Had these tribes, then the most powerful on the continent, joined that Confederacy, the bloody realities of the war that followed, would have spread over the entire western frontier of Pennsylvania, and its termination in 1794, by the victory of General WAYNE, rendered exceedingly doubtful.
General ST. CLAIR anticipated and forwarned against this union, after his defeat in '91, and General KNOX, then Secretary of War, dreaded and fortified against it. But CORNPLANTER, with untiring exertions, and at the hazard of his own life, prevented such a disastrous result, and thus saved the settlers on the Allegheny and upper Ohio, from the horrors of a merciless Indian warfare. For his invaluable services in the procurement and maintenance of peace between his people and the infant nation, just recuperating from its exhausting conflict with the British lion, CORNPLANTER received the thanks and liberal donations of the government and General WASHINGTON.
We are now assembled upon the homestead which CORNPLANTER lived, and where, after an eventful life, during the most eventful period of this continent, he lived and died, at peace with himself, with all the world, and, we trust, with his Merciful Creator. For many years, the appearance of his venerable form, at any point in the Valley of this beautiful river, from its source to its outlet, was the signal for a courteous and kindly greeting by all who knew him. His visitors, whether on business or for curiosity, were always treated with a dignified kindness and hospitality that would have graced the castle of a Duke, in the days of chivalry.