of Pennsylvania and New York to the Senecas who kept so well the western door of the "Long House of the Iroquois." It was a fruitless mission. "The people at the setting sun are bad people," said an old warrior to the intrepid herald; "you must look when it is light in the morning until the setting sun, and you must reach your neck over the land, and take all the light you can, to show the danger."
The Senecas were right and the further Proctor "reached his neck out" over the land the more plainly was this seen to be true. Gordon, the British commander at Niagara, forbade him taking ship for the Maumee; "the unfriendly denial," he wrote the Secretary of War, "puts a stop to the further attempting to go to the Miamies." Another item in his letter was of significance: Joseph Brant with forty warriors had gone westward to the confederated tribes on an unknown mission.
In April, Colonel Timothy Pickering was also sent to the Senecas, and, meeting them in convention at Painted Post, urged the chieftains to hold back the young men from joining the hostile tribes. Governor St.
