During the next few years the War Chief was unsparing in his efforts to come to some solution of the problem which the attitude of the United States had presented.  He was quite aware that there was not enough concerted action among the various tribes.  In his efforts to unite them he was aided and supported in all that he did by the English officials.  But, try as Brant might, it seemed impossible to arrive at that wide union among the tribes at which he was aiming.  On every hand were differences of opinion and petty jealousies.  In 1789 General St Clair, indeed, was able to make two separate treaties with the Indians, much to the delight of the government at Philadelphia.  ‘I am persuaded,’ St Clair wrote confidently, ’[that] their general confederacy is entirely broken.  Indeed it would not be very difficult, if circumstances required it, to set them at deadly variance.’

But though unwilling to unite, it was with jealous and angry eyes that they watched the white men cross the Ohio.  The year 1790 found the western tribes ablaze with passion and again on the war-path against the United States.  The Shawnees, Potawatomis, and Miamis were the leaders of the revolt.  An expedition under General Harmar marched against them, but it was defeated with great loss.  The Six Nations were the next in arms, and fell without mercy on the settlements by the Alleghany river.

The horizon was now dark and it seemed as though a widespread struggle with the Indians was certain to occur.  While the British authorities trusted implicitly in Joseph Brant, the executive of the United States was also trying to win his confidence.  Both sides clearly recognized that the future of the red men depended largely on the policy that Brant should adopt.  To have two great nations each striving to enlist one’s services is a fair indication that the possession of those services will give either nation a distinct advantage.  Brant did not lack vanity, and on this occasion he was more than flattered.  But, to do justice to Brant, it must be admitted that all the time he had been in favour of peace.  He did not wish the tribes to go madly into an unequal contest when there was very slight hope of success, and yet he was strongly of the opinion that his people must not bow too readily to the avarice of the pale-face.  The Ohio river should be the dividing-line between the Indian territories in the west and those of the republic, and by this they must stand or fall.

The government of the United States at length concluded that neither Brant nor the tribes would listen to its terms and that war was inevitable.  It determined to carry the fight vigorously into the very strongholds of the western tribes.  General St Clair was chosen for this purpose, and he was given a large force to deal with a certain unrest which had developed in the country of the Miamis.  What the War Chief had feared was now about to happen.  His hatchet was dull and rusted, and he had grown unused to the strain and hazard of the war-path.  But could he hold aloof?  The ‘Long Knives’ were moving against the lodges of his brethren in the west, and so he bent his ear once more to hear the warrior’s call.