first occupied, about thirty years after the demand of the popular convention by the Dutch, the representatives of the people met in assembly; and their self-established "CHARTER OF LIBERTIES" gave New York a place by the side of Virginia and Massachusetts.

Supreme legislative power"- such was its declaration-"shall forever 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."

But the hope of a permanent representative government was to be deferred. It shows the true character of James, that, on gaining power by ascending the English throne, he immediately threw down the institutions which he had conceded. A direct tax was decreed by an ordinance; the titles to real estate were questioned, that larger fees and quitrents might be extorted; and of the farmers of Easthampton who protested against the tyranny, six were arraigned before the council.

While the liberties of New York were thus 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. The Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, the Five Nations, 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. The union was confirmed by an unwritten compact; the congress of the sachems, at Onondaga, transacted all common business. Authority resided in opinion, law in oral tradition. Honor and esteem

These

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. 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. The geographical position of their fixed abodes, including within their immediate sway the headlands, not of the Hudson only, but of the rivers that flow to the Gulfs of Mexico and St. Lawrence, the Bays of Chesapeake and Delaware, opened widest regions to their canoes, and invited them to make their war-paths along the channels where New York and Pennsylvania are now perfecting the avenues of commerce.

But the Five Nations had defied a prouder enemy. At the commencement of the administration of Dongan, the European population of New France, which, in 1679, amounted to eight thousand five hundred and fifteen souls, 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 warriors

WARS OF THE FIVE NATIONS WITH THE FRENCH. 65

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, hostilities had prevailed, with few interruptions. Thrice did Champlain invade the country of the Mohawks, till he was driven with wounds and disgrace 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, in 1637, under the eyes of its governor, openly intercepted canoes destined for Quebec. The French authority was not confirmed by founding a feeble outpost at Montreal; and Fort Richelieu, raised in 1642, 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 permanently 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 Huron, Erie, and Ontario. In 1649, depopulating the whole country on the Ottáwa, 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 still in perpetual danger; and, in 1660, Quebec itself was besieged.

On a winter's invasion of the country of the Mohawks, in 1666, 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 treaties, commanded the commerce of the lake.

The English, on recovering the banks of the Hudson,

gave new attention to Indian affairs, and, by the confidence with which their friendship inspired the Iroquois, increased the dangers that hovered over New France. 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 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, replied:

"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.”

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 envoys of the Senecas soon arrived, and 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, the governor-general of New France, appeared at Albany. But his complaints were unheeded. The sachems returned to nail the arms of the duke of York over their castles-a protection, as they thought,

1684.]

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67

against the French-an acknowledgment, as the English deemed, of British sovereignty.

Meantime the rash and confident 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 unhealthy 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 Dongan, refused to negotiate; but the other nations desired to secure independence by balancing the French against the English. An Onondaga chief called Heaven to witness his resentment at English interference. "Neither Onondio, the great sachem of Canada, nor Corlaer, the great sachem of New York, 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." And, peace having been concluded on terms humiliating to the French, the governor of Canada retreated, leaving his Algonquin allies exposed to the inroads of their enemies.

Meantime fresh troops arrived from France, and, in 1685, De la Barre was superseded by Denonville, an officer whose tried valor and active zeal were enhanced by prudence and sagacity. But blind obedience paralyzes conscience and enslaves reason; and quiet pervaded neither the Five Nations nor the English provinces.

For the defence of New France, a fort was to be established at Niagara. The design, which aimed to control the dominion and 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 began the long contest for territory in the west. The limits between the English and French never were settled; but, for the present, the