[...]

A batch of white prisoners, men, women, and children, were being herded together when one of the men spoke quietly to a Seneca guard in his own tongue and asked what they intended to do with them. The surprised guard summoned Brant who stared hard at the tall, sinewy man of about fifty-five with a weather-beaten face. The Mohawk knew him to be John O'Bail (also spelled in colonial documents O'Beal, O'Ball, and Abeel), and they talked for a few moments. In his youth O'Bail had lived with the Indians and at one time had a Seneca wife. After she died he had returned to the Mohawk and made a haphazard living as farmer, trapper, Indian interpreter, and scout. Brant hurried to find Cornplanter.

Before they left the valley, Cornplanter came up to the prisoners and studied O'Bail closely.
"Are you the white man called John O'Bail?" he asked at last.
"I am John O'Bail," the settler replied.
"Did you have a wife in the Seneca Castle?" Cornplanter asked.
"I had a Seneca woman, but that was a long time ago," was the reply.
The Seneca war captain, his face streaked with red and black paint, put his hand on O'Bail's shoulder.

"That woman was my mother, I am your son." He took O'Bail aside and told him "If you now choose to follow me and live with my people I will promise to cherish your old age with plenty of venison and you shall live easy. But if it is your choice to return to your people and live with your white children I will send a party of my young men to escort you to safety."

"I am a white man. I have a wife and children. I will return to my own people," O'Bail said.
Cornplanter nodded. "I respect you, my father." Before they left the Mohawk, Cornplanter assigned several young warriors as an escort for O'Bail, his wife, and children.

Red Jacket, Brant, and Cornplanter comprised the great triumvirate of Iroquois chiefs who led their people in the trying postwar period of the Revolution. In later years Cornplanter became a religious zealot and a bitter enemy of Red Jacket. In the winter of 1801-1802, he traveled to Washington as the guest of Jefferson who became his frequent corrispondent. He died February 18, 1836, "aged about 100 years" on a reservation over nine hundred acres in Pennsylvania.