108 LA BARRE AND THE IROQUOIS. [1684. 



forests that make our country inaccessible to the 

 French, or that the lake had overflowed them so 

 that we could not escape from our villages. You 

 must have thought so, Onontio ; and curiosity to 

 see such a fire or such a flood must have brought 

 you to this place. Now your eyes are opened ; for 

 T and my warriors have come to tell you that the 

 Senecas, Cayugas, Ononclagas, Oneidas, and Mo- 

 hawks are all alive. I thank you in their name 

 for bringing back the calumet of peace which they 

 gave to your predecessors ; and I give you joy that 

 you have not dug up the hatchet which has been 

 so often red with the blood of your countrymen. 



" Listen, Onontio. I am not asleep. My eyes 

 are open ; and by the sun that gives me light I see 

 a great captain at the head of a band of soldiers, 

 who talks like a man in a dream. He says that 

 he has come to smoke the pipe of peace with the 

 Onondagas ; but I see that he came to knock them 

 in the head, if so many of his Frenchmen were not 

 too weak to fight. I see Onontio raving in a camp 

 of sick men, whose lives the Great Spirit has saved 

 by smiting them with disease. Our women had 

 snatched war-clubs, and our children and old men 

 seized bows and arrows to attack your camp, if 

 our warriors had not restrained them, when }^our 

 messenger, Akouessan, appeared in our village." 



He next justified the pillage of French traders 

 on the ground, very doubtful in this case, that 

 they w r ere carrying arms to the Illinois, enemies 

 of the confederacy ; and he flatly refused to make 

 reparation, telling La Barre that even the old men 



