Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/57

DELAWARE COUNTY, 33 link in the history of the frontier settlements. Inheriting as they did, a goodly portion of the bold and martial spirit which had conspicuously characterized their ancestors, and profiting by the experience and knowledge of Indian character and its peculiarities, acquired by the elder John during the long cam- paign through which he had passed in Maine, they were enabled to cultivate successfully amicable relations with the Six Nations, and to exert over them a powerful controlling influence, a consideration of the utmost importance in their exposed , situation at that period. Between the afterward renowned Indian sachem, Jo Brant, as he was familiarly known, and John Harper, Jr., an intimacy had sprung up while attending school together at Lebanon, Connecticut, where the young half-breed had been placed, through the influence of Sir William Johnston, in July, 1761. This school was at that time under the supervision of the Bev. Doctor Wheelock, afterward President of Dartmouth College, into which this institution was merged at a subsequent date. It is now familiarly known, as it was then called the Moor Charity School." In 1768, the Harpers and several other individuals, whom they had associated with them in the novel enterprise, deter- mined upon founding a settlement of their own; but what induced them to decide upon Harpersfield as the theatre for their future operations, it is impossible at this remote day but to conjecture. It might have been at the instigation of friendly Indians, but more probably was the result of their own explorations and observations. The manufacture of maple sugar was then looked upon as a comparative lucrative business, and requiring but a limited capital — a sap hettle and a supply of wooden troughs being all that was necessary ; as the forests at that early day were considered as. of but little consequence. Accordingly, during the winter months small parties of two or three persons would associate themselves