"As your situation is such as causes you to suppose your castle in danger of being destroyed by your enemies in case of your absence, I by no means desire that more of your warriors should leave your castles than your council think proper to permit.
"As yet I am fully persuaded that all our enemies of the Six Nations will find too much to do at home, to suffer any of their warriors to go abroad to do mischief. If you should be satisfied after a little while that your castles are out of danger, and the whole or any part of your warriors think proper to come to us, I shall be glad to see you; and in the meantime perhaps you may be as serviceable where you are, as if you were with us.
"I shall immediately give orders to the officers commanding at Fort Schuyler to send some troops to your castle, and write to Colonel Van Schaick, who commands in my absence, to afford you every assistance in his power, as I am not authorized to order any of the troops now with me on any other command, being directed by our Great Chief and Warrior to proceed with the whole of these troops on the present route."
In the course of the interview, the sachems informed General Clinton that a party of about three hundred Indians, with a few Tories, had marched from Cayuga ten days before, for the purpose of hanging upon his outskirts and harassing his march to Tioga. Still it was supposed not to be their intention to do any serious fighting, until the invading forces should have advanced a considerable distance up the Tioga or Chemung river. Indeed, it was evidently the purpose of the enemy to make no stand, until the forces of Sullivan and Clinton should arrive in the neighborhood of the works of defence which the Indians and Tories had been constructing, even before the battle of Wyoming, on the banks of the Chemung.
In consequence of the requisition of the warriors, in their speech, General Clinton issued an order to the commanding officer at Fort Schuyler to detach a command of thirty or forty men to the Oneida fort, to be recalled as circumstances might require. With this understanding, and the assurances in the General's answer to their speech, the ten principal warriors, specially charged with the explanations, took their departure the same evening for their own castle--leaving the remaining twenty-five to accompany the expedition. [FN] General Clinton was impatient of delay, as appears by a letter addressed to his brother of the next day, from which the following is an extract:--