438 THE DESTROYERS. [1654. 



to the Governor, " Our young men will no more 

 fight the French ; but they are too warlike to stay 

 at home, and this summer we shall invade the 

 country of the Eries. The earth trembles and 

 quakes in that quarter ; but here all remains 

 calm." ^ Early in the autumn, Father Le Moyne, 

 who had taken advantage of the peace to go on a 

 mission to the Onondagas, returned with, the tidings 

 that the Iroquois were all on fire with this new 

 enterprise, and were about to march against the 

 Eries with eighteen hundred warriors.^ 



The occasion of this new war is said to have been 

 as follows. The Eries, who it will be remembered 

 dwelt on the south of the lake named after them, 

 had made a treaty of peace with the Senecas, and 

 in the preceding year had sent a deputation of thirty 

 of their principal men to confirm it. While they 

 were in the great Seneca town, it happened that 

 one of that nation was killed in a casual quarrel 

 with an Erie ; whereupon his countrymen rose in a 

 fury, and murdered the thirty deputies. Then en- 

 sued a brisk war of reprisals, in which not only the 

 Senecas, but the other Iroquois nations, took part. 

 The Eries captured a famous Onondaga chief, and 

 were about to burn him, when he succeeded in con- 

 vincing them of the wisdom of a course of concilia- 

 tion ; and they resolved to give him to the sister 

 of one of the murdered deputies, to take the place 

 of her lost brother. The sister, by Indian law, had 



A Le Mercier, Relation, 1654, 9. 



2 Ihid., 10. Le Moyne, in his interesting journal of his mission, 

 repeatedly alludes to their preparations. 



