THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE gI 
Pittsburg now stands— and an attacking force of Dela- 
wares summoned him to surrender, with sugared words, 
assuring him that if he would retreat to Carlisle, they 
would protect him from some bad Indians in the neigh- 
bourhood who thirsted for his blood ; but if he stayed, 
they would not be responsible for the consequences. 
Ecuyer thanked them for their truly disinterested 
advice, but assured them that he did not care a rush 
for the bad Indians, and meant to remain where he 
was; but, he added, “an army of six thousand pale- 
faces is now on the way hither, and another of three 
thousand has just gone up the lakes to annihilate 
Pontiac, so you had better be off. I have told you 
this in acknowledgment of your friendly counsels to 
me; but don’t whisper it to those bad Indians, for 
fear they should run away from our deadly ven- 
geance!” This story of the English armies was, of 
course, a lie of the first magnitude. The poor fellow 
had but a handful of men wherewith to repel his swarm 
of assailants, and he knew very well that any reénforce- 
ment was rather to be longed for than expected. But 
his adroit lie sent the savages away in a panic without 
further provoking their wrath, and so was worth much 
more than a successful battle. 
Skilful as the French usually were in their dealings 
with the savages, their position in the country was 
nevertheless such that at an early period they were 
brought into conflict with the most warlike of all the 
Indian tribes, and this circumstance interfered materi- 
ally with the success of the Canadian colony. In the 
seventeenth century the country east of the Mississippi, 
from the line of Tennessee and the Carolinas northward 
to Hudson Bay, was occupied by two families or races 
