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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."

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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

people, we treated you kindly, and gave you land. Now, therefore, that you are great and we small, we hope you will protect us from the French. They are angry with us because we carry beaver to our brethren."

The envoys of the Senecas, on the fifth, expressed their delight that the tomahawk was already buried, and all evil put away from the hearts of the English sachems. On the same day a messenger from De la Barre appeared at Albany; but his complaints were unheeded. "We have not wandered from our paths," said the Senecas. "But when Onondio, the sachem of Canada, threatens us with war, shall we run away? Shall we sit still in our houses? Our beaver-hunters are brave men, and the beaver-hunt must be free." The sachems returned to nail the arms of the duke of York over their castles, a protection, as they thought, against the French, an acknowledgment, as the English assumed, of British sovereignty.

Meanwhile, the rash De la Barre, with six hundred French soldiers, four hundred Indian allies, four hundred carriers, and three hundred men for a garrison, advanced to the fort which stood near the outlet of the present Rideau canal. But the exhalations of August on the marshy borders of Ontario disabled his army; and, after crossing the lake, and disembarking his wasted troops in the land of the Onondagas, he was compelled to solicit peace. from the tribes whom he had designed to exterminate. The Mohawks, at the request of the English, refused to negotiate; but the other nations, jealous of English supremacy, desired to secure independence by balancing the French against the English. An Onondaga chief called Heaven to witness his resentment at English interference. "Onondio," he proudly exclaimed to the envoy of New York, "Onondio has for ten years been our father; Corlaer has long been our brother. But it is because we have willed it so. Neither the one nor the other is our master. He who made the world gave us the land in which we dwell. We are free. You call us subjects; we say we are brethren; we must take care of ourselves. I will go to my father, for he has come to my gate, and desires to speak with me words of reason. We will embrace peace instead of war; the axe shall be thrown into a deep water."

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The deputies of the tribes repaired to the presence of De la Barre to exult in his humiliation. "It is well for you," said the eloquent Haaskouaun, rising from the calumet, "that you have left under ground the hatchet which has so often been dyed in the blood of the French. Our children and old men had carried their bows and arrows into the heart of your camp, if our braves had not kept them back. Our warriors have not beaver enough to pay for the arms we have taken from the French; and our old men are not afraid of war. We may guide the English to our lakes. We are born free. We depend neither on Onondio nor Corlaer." Dismayed by the energy of the Seneca chief, the governor of Canada accepted a treaty which left his allies at the mercy of their

enemies.

Fresh troops arrived from France; and De la Barre was superseded by Denonville, an officer whom Charlevoix extols as possessing, in a sovereign degree, every quality of an honorable man. His example, it is said, made virtue and religion more respectable; his tried valor and active zeal were enhanced by prudence and sagacity. But quiet pervaded neither the Five Nations nor the English provinces.

For the defence of New France a fort was to be established at the point where the Niagara pours its waters into Lake Ontario. This design to control the fur trade of the upper lakes was resisted by Dongan; for, it was said, the country south of the lakes, the whole domain of the Iroquois, is subject to England. Thus, in May, 1686, began the long contest for territory in the west. The limits between the English and French never were settled; but, for the present, the Five Nations of themselves were a sufficient bulwark against encroachments from Canada, and in the summer of 1686 a party of English traders penetrated even to Michilimackinac.

"The welfare of my service," such were the instructions of Louis XIV. to the governor of New France, "requires that the number of the Iroquois should be diminished as much as possible. They are strong and robust, and can be made useful as galley-slaves. Do what you can to take a large number of them prisoners of war, and ship them for France." By

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