1684.] AN IROQUOIS POLITICIAN. 95 



with his consent. The envoy found two French- 

 men in the town, whose presence boclecl ill to his 

 errand. The first was the veteran colonist of Mon- 

 treal, Charles le Moyne, sent by La Barre to invite 

 the Ononclagas to a conference. They had known 

 him, in peace or war, for a quarter of a century ; 

 and they greatly respected him. The other was 

 the Jesuit Jean de Lamberville, who had long 

 lived among them, and knew them better than 

 they knew themselves. Here, too, was another 

 personage who cannot pass unnoticed. He was a 

 famous Onondaga orator named Otreouati, and 

 called also Big Mouth, whether by reason of the 

 dimensions of that feature or the greatness of the 

 wisdom that issued from it. His contemporary, 

 Baron La Hontan, thinking perhaps that his 

 French name of La Grande Gueule was wanting 

 in dignity, Latinized it into Grangula ; and the 

 Scotchman, Golden, afterwards improved it into 

 Garangula, under which high-sounding appellation 

 Big Mouth has descended to posterity. He was 

 an astute old savage, well trained in the arts of 

 Iroquois rhetoric, and gifted with the power of 

 strong and caustic sarcasm, which has marked 

 more than one of the chief orators of the confeder- 

 acy. He shared with most of his countrymen the 

 conviction that the earth had nothing so great as 

 the league of the Iroquois ; but, if he could be 

 proud and patriotic, so too he could be selfish and 

 mean. He valued gifts, attentions, and a good 

 meal, and would pay for them abundantly in 

 promises, which he kept or not, as his own interests 



