Little Red Foot

The day Sir William died there died the greatest American of his day.
Because, on that mid-summer evening, His Excellency was still only a
Virginia gentleman not yet famous, and best known because of courage and
sagacity displayed in that bloody business of Braddock.

Indeed, all Americans then living, and who since have become famous,
were little celebrated, excepting locally, on the day Sir William
Johnson died. Few were known outside a single province; scarcely one
among them had been heard of abroad. But Sir William was a world figure;
a great constructive genius; the greatest land-owner in North America; a
wise magistrate, a victorious soldier, a builder of cities amid a
wilderness; a redeemer of men.

He was a Baronet of the British Realm; His Majesty's Superintendent of
Indian Affairs for all North America. He was the only living white man
implicitly trusted by the savages of this continent, because he never
broke his word to them. He was, perhaps, the only representative of
royal authority in the Western Hemisphere utterly believed in by the
dishonest, tyrannical, and stupid pack of Royal Governors, Magistrates
and lesser vermin that afflicted the colonies with the British plague.

He was kind and great. All loved him. All mourned him. For he was a very
perfect gentleman who practiced truth and honour and mercy; an
unassuming and respectable man who loved laughter and gaiety and plain
people.