'34:2 A DOOMED NATION. [1647. 



early in June. It contained, as the Jesuits were 

 told, no less than thirteen hundred warriors. The 

 council assembled, and the chief ambassador ad- 

 dressed them : — 



" We come from the Land of Souls, where all 

 is gloom, dismay, and desolation. Our fields are 

 covered with blood ; our houses are filled only with 

 the dead ; and we ourselves have but life enough to 

 beg our friends to take pity on a people who are 

 di-awing near their end." ^ Then he presented the 

 wampum-belts and other gifts, saying that they 

 were the voice of a dying country. 



The Andastes, who had a mortal quarrel with the 

 Mohawks, and who had before promised to aid 

 the Hurons in case of need, returned a favorable 

 answer, but were disposed to try the virtue of 

 diplomacy rather than the tomahawk. After a 

 series of councils, they determined to send ambas- 

 sadors, not to their old enemies, the Mohawks, but 

 to the Onondagas, Oneidas, and Cayugas,^ who 

 were geographically the central nations of the 

 Iroquois league, while the Mohawks and the Sene- 

 cas were respectively at its eastern and western 

 extremities. By inducing the three central nations, 



1 " II leur dit qu'il venoit du pays des Ames, ou la guerre et la ter- 

 reur des ennemis auoit tout desole, oii les campagnes n'estoient couuertes 

 que de sang, ou les cabanes n'estoient remplies que de cadaures, et qu'il 

 ne leur restoit a eux-mesmes de vie, sinon autant qu'ils en auoient eu 

 besoin pour venir dire a leurs amis, qu'ils eussent pitie d'vn pays qui 

 tjroit k sa fin." — Eagueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1648, 58. 



'^ Examination leaves no doubt that the Ouionenronnons of Eagueneau 

 [Relation des Hurons, 1648, 46, 59) were the Oiogouins or Goyogouins, that 

 is to say, the Cayugas. They must not be confounded with the Ouen- 

 rohronnons, a small tribe hostile to the Iroquois, who took refuge among 

 the Hurons in 1638. 



