1764, Nov.] PRIDE OF THE SHAWANOES. 229 



the chain of friendship which we now extend to 

 you. We, who are also warriors, will take hold as 

 you do ; and we will think no more of war, in pity 

 for our women, children, and old men." ^ 



On this occasion, the Shawanoe chiefs, express- 

 ing a hope for a renewal of the friendship which 

 in former years had subsisted between their people 

 and the English, displayed the dilapidated parch- 

 ments of several treaties made between their 

 ancestors and the descendants of William Penn, — 

 documents, some of which had been preserved 

 among them for more than half a century, with the 

 scrupulous respect they are prone to exhibit for 

 such ancestral records. They were told that, since 

 they had not delivered all their prisoners, they 

 could scarcely expect to meet the same indulgence 

 which had been extended to their brethren ; but 

 that, nevertheless, in full belief of their sincerity, 

 the English would grant them peace, on condition 

 of their promising to surrender the remaining cap- 



1 The Shawanoe speaker, in expressing his intention of disarming his 

 enemy by laying aside liis own designs of war, makes use of an unusual 

 metaphor. To bury the hatchet is the figure in common use on such occa- 

 sions, but he adopts a form of speech which he regards as more significant 

 and emphatic, — that of throwing it up to the Great Spirit. Unwilling to 

 confess that he yields through fear of tlie enemy, he professes to wish for 

 peace merely for the sake of his women and children. 



At the great council at Lancaster, in 1762, a chief of the Oneidas, 

 anxious to express, in the strongest terms, the firmness of the peace 

 which had been concluded, had recourse to the following singular figure : 

 "In the country of the Oneidas there is a great pine-tree, so huge and old 

 that half its branches are dead with time. I tear it up by the roots, and, 

 looking down into the hole, I see a dark stream of water, flowing with a 

 strong current, deep under ground. Into this stream I fling the hatchet, 

 and the current sweeps it away, no man knows whither. Then I plant 

 the tree again where it stood before, and thus this war will be ended for 

 ever." 



