This area was once a gathering place for Tories and Indians intent on destroying American frontier settlements. In 1777, General Nicholas Herkimer met Chief Joseph Brant here to discuss a peace that might have ended the bloody raids on the Mohawk Valley, but Brant, unshaken by Herkimer's large escort of Tryon County militia, declared that he was ready for war. Herkimer returned north, and the two later met again on the battlefield of Oriskany. After Oriskany, in 1779, American forces destroyed Indian villages, described as real towns of stone houses with glass windows and brick chimneys, and burned the corn, leaving the Iroquois homeless and starving as victims in a white man's war. The result was the migration of the Senecas and many of their Iroquois brothers to Canada.