colonial assembly had been defeated, in March, 1682, by the grand jury, and trade became free just as Andros was returning to England. All parties joined in entreating for the people a share in legislation. The duke of York temporized. The provincial revenue had expired; the ablest lawyers in England questioned his right to renew it; the province opposed its collection with a spirit that required compliance, and in January, 1683, the newly appointed governor, Thomas Dongan, nephew of Tyrconnell, a Roman Catholic, was instructed to call a general assembly of all the freeholders by the persons whom they should choose to represent them. Accordingly, on the seventeenth of the following October, about seventy years after Manhattan was first occupied, about thirty years after the demand of the popular convention by the Dutch, the people of New York met in assembly, and by their first act claimed the rights of Englishmen. "Supreme legislative power," such was their further declaration, "shall for ever be and reside in the governor, council, and people, met in general assembly. Every freeholder and freeman shall vote for representation without restraint. No freeman shall suffer but by judgment of his peers; and all trials shall be by a jury of twelve men. No tax shall be assessed, on any pretence whatever, but by the consent of the assembly. No seaman or soldier shall be quartered on the inhabitants against their will. No martial law shall exist. No person, professing faith in God by Jesus Christ, shall at any time be any ways disquieted or questioned for any difference of opinion." So New York, by its self-enacted "charter of franchises and privileges," took its place by the side of Virginia and Massachusetts, surpassing them both in religious toleration. The proprietary accepted the revenue granted by the legislature for a limited period, permitted another session to be held, and promised to make no alterations in the form or manner of the bill containing the franchises and privileges of the colony, except for its advantage; but in 1685, in less than a month after he had ascended the throne, James II. prepared to overturn the institutions which, as duke of York, he had conceded. A direct tax was decreed by an ordinance; the titles to real estate were questioned, that larger fees and quit-rents might be ex

torted; and of the farmers of Easthampton who protested against the tyranny, six were arraigned before the council.

While the liberties of New York were sequestered by a monarch who desired to imitate the despotism of France, its frontiers had no protection against encroachments from Canada, except in the valor of the Iroquois. Their Five Nations, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, dwelling near the river and the lakes that retain their names, formed a confederacy of equal tribes. The union of three of the nations precedes tradition; the Oneidas and Senecas were younger associates. Each nation was a sovereign republic, divided again into clans, between which a slight subordination was scarcely perceptible. The clansmen dwelt in fixed places of abode, surrounded by fields of beans and of maize; each castle, like a New England town or a Saxon hundred, constituted a little democracy. There was no slavery, no favored caste. All men were equal. The union was confirmed by an unwritten compact; the congress of the sachems, at Onondaga, like the Witenagemots of the Anglo-Saxons, transacted all common business. Authority resided in opinion; law in oral tradition. Honor and esteem enforced obedience; shame and contempt punished offenders. The leading warrior was elected by the general confidence in his virtue and conduct; merit alone could obtain preferment to office; and power was as permanent as the esteem of the tribe. No profit was attached to eminent station, to tempt the sordid. As their brave men went forth to war, instead of martial instruments, they were cheered by the clear voice of their leader. On the smooth surface of a tree from which the outer bark had been peeled, they painted their deeds of valor by the simplest symbols. These were their trophies and their annals; these and their war-songs preserved the memory of their heroes. They proudly deemed themselves supreme among mankind, men excelling all others; and hereditary arrogance inspired their young men with dauntless courage. When Hudson, John Smith, and Champlain were in America together, the Mohawks had extended their strolls from the St. Lawrence to Virginia; half Long Island paid them tribute; and a Mohawk sachem was reverenced on Massachusetts bay. The rivers that spring

from the uplands of their fixed abodes opened widest regions to their canoes, and invited them to make their war-paths along the channels where New York and Pennsylvania have perfected the avenues of commerce. Becoming possessed of firearms by intercourse with the Dutch, they, in 1649, renewed their merciless, hereditary warfare with the Hurons; and, between 1653 and 1655, in the following years, the Eries, on the south shore of the lake of which the name commemorates their existence, were defeated and extirpated. The Alleghany was next descended; and, in the sixteen years following 1656, the tribes near Pittsburg, probably of the Huron race, were subjugated and destroyed, leaving no monument but a name to the Guyandot river of Western Virginia. In the east and in the west, from the Kennebec to the Mississippi, the Abenakis, as well as the Miamis and the remoter Illinois, could raise no barrier against the Iroquois.

But the Five Nations had defied a prouder enemy. In 1676, at the commencement of the administration of Dongan, the European population of New France may have been a little more than ten thousand; the number of men capable of bearing arms was perhaps three thousand-about the number of the warriors of the Five Nations. But the Iroquois were freemen; New France suffered from despotism and monopoly. The Iroquois recruited their tribes by adopting captives of foreign nations; New France was sealed against the foreigner and the heretic. For nearly fourscore years, between 1609 and 1685, hostilities had prevailed, with few interruptions. Thrice did Champlain invade the country of the Mohawks, and was driven with wounds from their wilderness fastnesses. The Five Nations, in return, at the period of the massacre in Virginia, attempted the destruction of New France. Though repulsed, they continued to defy the province and its allies, and, under the eyes of its governor, openly intercepted canoes destined for Quebec. The French authority was not confirmed by founding, in 1640, a feeble outpost at Montreal; and Fort Richelieu, at the mouth of the Sorel, scarce protected its immediate environs. Negotiations for peace led to no permanent result; and even the influence of the Jesuit missionaries, the most faithful, disinterested, and persevering of their order,

could not effectually restrain the sanguinary vengeance of the barbarians. The Iroquois warriors scoured every wilderness to lay it still more waste; they thirsted for the blood of the few men who roamed over the regions between Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario. In 1649, depopulating the country on the Ottawa, they obtained an acknowledged superiority over New France, mitigated only by commercial relations of the French traders with the tribes that dwelt farthest from the Hudson. The colony was in perpetual danger; and, in 1660, Quebec itself was besieged.

A winter's invasion of the country of the Mohawks, in 1666, was useless. The savages disappeared, leaving their European adversaries to war with the wilderness.

By degrees the French made firmer advances; and, in 1672, a fort built at the outlet of Ontario, for the purpose, as was pretended, of having a convenient place for holding treaties, commanded the commerce of the lake.

We have seen the Mohawks, in 1673, brighten the covenant chain that bound them to the Dutch. The English, on recovering the banks of the Hudson, confirmed without delay the Indian alliance, and, by the confidence with which their friendship inspired the Iroquois, increased the dangers that hovered over New France.

The ruin which menaced Canada gave a transient existence to a large legislative council; and, in 1683, an assembly of notables was convoked by De la Barre, the governor-general, to devise a remedy for the ills under which the settlements languished. Instead of demanding civil franchises, they solicited a larger garrison from Louis XIV.

The governor of New York had been instructed to preserve friendly relations with the French; but Dongan refused to neglect the Five Nations. From the French traders, who were restrained by a strict monopoly, the wild hunters of beaver turned to the English, who favored competition; and their mutual ties were strengthened by an amnesty of past injuries.

Along the war-paths of the Five Nations, down the Susquehannah, and near the highlands of Virginia, the proud Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga warriors had left bloody traces

VOL. I.-39

of their presence. The impending struggle with New France quickened the desire of renewing peace with the English; and in July, 1684, the deputies from the Mohawks and the three offending tribes, soon joined by the Senecas, met the governors of New York and Virginia at Albany.

To the complaints and the pacific proposals of Lord Howard, of Effingham, Cadianne, the Mohawk orator, on the fourteenth replied: "Sachem of Virginia, and you, Corlaer, sachem of New York, give ear, for we will not conceal the evil that has been done." The orator then rebuked the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas, for their want of faith, and gave them a belt of wampum to quicken their memory. Then, turning to Effingham, he continued: "Great sachem of Virginia, these three beaver-skins are a token of our gladness that your heart is softened; these two, of our joy that the axe is to be buried. We are glad that you will bury in the pit what is past. Let the earth be trod hard over it; let a strong stream run under the pit, to wash the evil away out of our sight and remembrance, so that it never may be digged up. You are wise to keep the covenant chain bright as silver, and now to renew it and make it stronger. These nations are chain-breakers; we Mohawks"-as he spoke he gave the skins of two beavers and a raccoon-"have kept the chain entire. The covenant must be preserved; the fire of love of Virginia and Maryland, and of the Five Nations, burns in this place; this house of peace must be kept clean. We plant a tree whose top shall touch the sun, whose branches shall be seen afar. We will shelter ourselves under it, and live in unmolested peace."

At the conclusion of the treaty, each of the three offending nations gave a hatchet to be buried. "We bury none for ourselves," said the Mohawks, "for we have never broken the ancient chain." The axes were buried, and the offending tribes in noisy rapture chanted the song of peace.

"Brother Corlaer," said a chief for the Onondagas and Cayugas in August, "your sachem is a great sachem; and we are a small people. When the English came first to Manhattan, to Virginia, and to Maryland, they were a small people, and we were great. Because we found you a good