NEW YORK, NY.- A letter from a Native American chief pledging support to King George III in his battle against revolutionary forces has taken $35,000 at Swann Auction Galleries.

The letter, dated 31 May 1776, came from the hand of the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, also known as Thayeadanegea, who had earlier travelled to England, where he had spent five months, meeting the king and being inducted as a freemason.

He wrote to an unidentified recipient from Falmouth in Cornwall as he prepared for his return to America.

Detailing how he had travelled with the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs of the northern colonies, Colonel Guy Johnson, Brant relates how American rebels had killed 13 Indians.

“This is to acquaint you that I was here in England this five months. I came over with Col'l Johnson and his people. We are now ready to return to America, only waiting for fair wind,” the letter begins.

“I was with Col'l Johnson since Sir Will'ms daeght [death], gave me much trouble for he is a strange sort of a man… I have no news to tell you at present, only what happen last year, we lost thirteen Indians by the rebels. I hope we will have our satisfaction some way [o]rother. Nothing cou'd give me so much Pleasure is to see you in America. I want you & I shou'd be together these warlike times…”

When Brant returned to America in November of 1776, he worked to persuade the Iroquois nations to fight against the American revolutionaries, leading the Mohawk and several of the Iroquois nations in campaigns throughout the Mohawk Valley region and, in 1778, he shared command with other Iroquois and British Loyalists during the Cherry Valley massacre.

Brant became a Third Degree Freemason on April 26, 1776, in a Lodge of the Moderns, the Falcon, in London.

This letter was on temporary loan to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, PA, where it was displayed in their permanent exhibition space between June and November, 2018.