Outside the official class, however, there were patriots in plenty ; none of the colonies possessed more ; but as New York City was completely dominated by Tory influences, so was the M'ohawk Valley dominated by the Johnsons and their army of followers, in whom loyalty to England was a deep-seated sentiment and a fixed principle of conduct. Sir William Johnson had died just as the Revolution was about to begin. His successors became not only as great Loyalists as ever he had been, but, being men of smaller minds and fewer talents. They added to the sentiment of loyalty an expression of it wliich took the form of satanic bitterness and brute savagery. It was these men who, with their followers, became the hated Tories of the frontier of New York -- men of whom in some instances, Joseph Brant said, they had been more savage than the savages themselves. The attitude of the Indians can be best understood if we remember that they had been practically in alliance with the English of New York for a hundred years. When war began between the

THE PRIMARY CAUSES OF THE BORDER WARS. 25

mother country and the colonies, or between what the Indians called " two brother nations," they were lost in amazement and tried in vain to understand it. Their own history for three hundred years had been one of peace between brother nations. " No taxation without representation " was a principle beyond their comprehension. The men who defied Britis'h soldiers in the streets of New York and Boston seemed to them exactly like the French of Canada who in the older wars had stormed English forts on the Northern Frontier, since they were engaged in war with the King of England, and the King was the Indians' powerful fr'iend.