196 RETURN OF FBONTENAC. [1689. 



magnates, with their usual deliberation, deferred 

 answering till a general council of the confeder- 

 acy should have time to assemble ; and, mean- 

 while, they sent messengers to ask the mayor 

 of Albanv, and others of their Dutch and English 

 friends, to come to the meeting. They did not 

 comply, merely sending the government inter- 

 preter, with a few Mohawk Indians, to represent 

 their interests. On the other hand, the Jesuit 

 Milet, who had been captured a few months before, 

 adopted, and made an Oneida chief, used every 

 effort to second the designs of Frontenac. The 

 authorities of Albany tried in vain to induce the 

 Iroquois to place him in their hands. They under- 

 stood their interests too well, and held fast to the 

 Jesuit. 1 



The grand council took place at Onondaga on 

 the twenty-second of January. Eighty chiefs and 

 sachems, seated gravely on mats around the coun- 

 cil fire, smoked their pipes in silence for a while ; 

 till at length an Onondaga orator rose, and an- 

 nounced that Frontenac, the old Onontio, had 

 returned with Ourehaoue and twelve more of their 

 captive friends, that he meant to rekindle the 

 council fire at Fort Frontenac, and that he invited 

 them to meet him there. 2 



1 Milet was taken in 1G89, not, as has been supposed, in 1690. Lettre 

 du Pere Milet, 1601, printed by Shea. 



2 Frontenac declares that he sent no sucli message, and intimates 

 that Cut Nose had been tampered with by persons over-anxious to con- 

 ciliate the Iroquois, and who had even gone so far as to send them 

 messages on their own account. These persons were Lamberville, 

 Francois Hertel. and one of the Le Moynes. Frontenac was very angry 

 at this interference, to which he ascribes the most mischievous conse- 



