At Oswego a counsel had been held a few weeks before, in order to enlist in British service the other " nations " of the Iroquois, who were assured that the King was a man of great power and that they should never want for food and clothing if they adhered to him. Rum, it was said, would be " as plentiful as water in Lake Ontario." Presents were made, and a bounty offered on every white man's scalp that they might take. The Senecas notably, and to some extent the Onondagas and Cayugas, thus became fired with ambition to see something of the war. By the time St. Leger arrived at Oswego, about 700 warriors had been secured. Some of them still remained lukewarm as to fighting, but they were at last drawn into the campaign under an assurance that they need not fight themselves, but might sit by during the battle smoking their pipes, while they saw the redcoats " whip the rebels." The result was, that when a battle was imminent at Oriskany, the Indian's love of war was uppermost, and they became the most active participants in the conflict. They also became proportionately the heaviest losers and returned to their homes, not only with doleful shrieks and yells over their losses, but with a determined purpose to revenge themselves on the defenseless frontier. At what frightful cost to the Mohawk Valley they secured that revenge, the story of the ensuing four years bears ample witness. But, as I have said, the Indians lost more. When the war was over, they 'had practically lost everything. Their homes were destroyed and their altars obliterated. England virtually abandoned them to the men whom they had fought as rebels, but who were now victorious patriots, the masters of imperial possessions.