The Indians were utterly downcast over their defeat. [Footnote:  Canadian Archives, William Johnson Chew to Joseph Chew, December 7. 1794.] The destruction of their crops, homes, and stores of provisions was complete, and they were put to sore shifts to live through the winter.  Their few cattle, and many even of their dogs, died; they could not get much food from the British; and as winter wore on they sent envoy after envoy to the Americans, exchanged prisoners, and agreed to make a permanent peace in the spring.  They were exasperated with the British, who, they said, had not fulfilled a single promise they had made. [Footnote:  Brickell’s Narrative.]

    Their Anger with the British.

The anger of the Indians against the British was as just as it was general.  They had been lured and goaded into war by direct material aid, and by indirect promises of armed assistance; and they were abandoned as soon as the fortune of war went against them.  Brant, the Iroquois chief, was sorely angered by the action of the British in deserting the Indians whom they had encouraged by such delusive hopes; and in his letter to the British officials [Footnote:  Canadian Archives, Joseph Brant to Joseph Chew, Oct. 22, 1794; William J. Chew to J. Chew, Oct. 24, 1794.] he reminded them of the fact that but for their interference the Indians would have concluded “an equitable and honorable peace in June 1793”—­thus offering conclusive proof that the American commissioners, in their efforts to make peace with the Indians in that year, had been foiled by the secret machinations of the British agents, as Wayne had always thought.  Brant blamed the British agent McKee for ever having interfered in the Indian councils, and misled the tribes to their hurt; and in writing to the Secretary of the Indian Office for Canada he reminded him in plain terms of the treachery with which the British had behaved to the Indians at the close of the Revolutionary War, and expressed the hope that it would not be repeated; saying:[Footnote:  Canadian Archives, Brant to Joseph Chew, Feb. 24, and March 17, 1795.] “If there is a treaty between Great Britain and the Yankees I hope our Father the King will not forget the Indians as he did in the year ’83.”  When his forebodings came true and the British, in assenting to Jay’s treaty, abandoned their Indian allies, Brant again wrote to the Secretary of the Indian Office, in repressed but bitter anger at the conduct of the King’s agents in preventing the Indians from making peace with the Americans while they could have made it on advantageous terms, and then in deserting them.  He wrote:  “This is the second time the poor Indians have been left in the lurch & I cannot avoid lamenting that they were prevented at a time when they had it in their power to make an Honorable and Advantageous Peace.” [Footnote:  Do., Brant to Chew, Jan. 19, 1796.]

    Wrath of the British Indian Agents.