1647.] DIPLOMACY AND WAR. 341 



the great town of the Senecas. They entered it at 

 midnight, and found, as usual, no guard ; but the 

 doors of the houses were made fast. They cut a 

 hole in the bark side of one of them, crept in, 

 stirred the fading embers to give them light, chose 

 each his man, tomahawked him, scalped him, and 

 escaped in the confusion.^ 



Despite such petty triumphs, the Hurons felt 

 themselves on the verge of ruin. Pestilence and 

 war had wasted them away, and left but a skeleton 

 of theu' former strength. In their distress, they 

 cast about them for succor, and, remembering an 

 ancient friendship with a kindred nation, the An- 

 dastes, they sent an embassy to ask of them aid in 

 war or intervention to obtain peace. This power- 

 ful people dwelt, as has been shown, on the Eiver 

 Susquehanna.^ The way was long, even in a dhect 

 line ; but the Iroquois lay between, and a wide 

 circuit was necessary to avoid them. A Christian 

 chief, whom the Jesuits had named Charles, to- 

 gether with four Christian and four heathen Hurons, 

 bearing wampum-belts and gifts from the council, 

 departed on this embassy on the thirteenth of April, 

 1647, and reached the great town of the Andastes 



1 Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1646, 55, 56. 



2 See Introduction. The Susquehannocks of Smith, clearly the same 

 people, are placed, in his map, on the east side of the Susquehanna, some 

 twenty miles from its mouth. He speaks of them as great enemies of the 

 Massawomekes (Mohawks). No other savage people so boldly resisted 

 the Iroquois; but the story in Hazard's Annals of Pennsylvania, that a 

 hundred of them beat oflf sixteen hundred Senecas, is disproved by the 

 fact, that the Senecas, in their best estate, never had so many warriors. 

 The miserable remnant of the Andastes, called Conestogas, were massa- 

 cred by the Paxton Boys, in 1763. See " Conspiracy of Pontiac," 414. 

 Compare Historical Magazine, II. 294. 



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