94 LA BARRE AND THE IROQUOIS. [1684. 



ing about a hundred bark houses, with twice as 

 many fighting men, the entire force of the tribe. 

 Here, as in the four Mohawk villages, he planted 

 the scutcheon of the Duke of York, and, still ad- 

 vancing, came at length to a vast open space where 

 the rugged fields, patched with growing corn, 

 sloped upwards into a broad, low hill, crowned with 

 the clustered lodges of Onondaga. There were 

 from one to two hundred of these large bark dwell- 

 ings, most of them holding several families. The 

 capital of the confederacy was not fortified at 

 this time, and its only defence was the valor of 

 some four hundred warriors. 1 



In this focus of trained and organized savagery, 

 where ferocity was cultivated as a virtue, and every 

 emotion of pity stifled as unworthy of a man ; where 

 ancient rites, customs, and traditions were held 

 with the tenacity of a people who joined the 

 extreme of wildness with the extreme of con- 

 servatism, — here burned the council fire of the 

 five confederate tribes ; and here, in time of need, 

 were gathered their bravest and their wisest to 

 debate high questions of policy and war. 



The object of Yiele was to confirm the Iroquois 

 in their very questionable attitude of subjection 

 to the British crown, and persuade them to make 

 no treaty or agreement with the French, except 

 through the intervention of Dongan, or at least 



i Journal of Greenhalgh. The site of Onondaga, like that of all the 

 Iroquois towns, was changed from time to time, as the soil of the 

 neighborhood became impoverished, and the supply of wood exhausted. 

 Greenhalgh, in 1677, estimated the warriors at three hundred and fifty; 

 but the number had increased of late by the adoption of prisoners. 



