METALLIC IMPLEMENTS OF NEW YORK INDIANS dd 
month of February, a great number of the hunters of Sonnon- 
touan (Seneca) and of Oiogoen, (Cayuga) having repaired hither, 
“made the war feast, which lasted several nights: . . The 
Father (Chaumonot) was invited to put something into the ket- 
' tle to make it better. He told them that that was certainly 
his desire; and accommodating himself to their customs, he 
assured them that the French would put some powder under this 
kettle, which pleased them greatly. 
To upset this kettle was to abandon warlike plans. To boil 
the flesh of an enemy in it was often metaphoric, but much 
_more frequently literal. William L. Stone quotes from Ram- 
say's History of the revolution a passage apparently referring to 
Guy Johnson’s council with the Indians at Oswego in 1775: 
OPE oS ye ere Oe 
_ Colonel Johnson had repeated conferences with the Indians 
_and endeavoured to influence them to take up the hatchet, but 
they steadily refused. In order to gain this cooperation, he 
_ invited them to feast on a Bostonian and to drink his blood. 
_ This, in the Indian style, meant no more than to partake of a 
{ 
_ roasted ox and a pipe of wine at a public entertainment, which 
was given on design to influence them to cooperate with the 
British troops. The colonial patriots affected to understand it 
in its literal sense.—Stone, 1:88 
It may be noted that Was-to-heh-no is still the Onondaga name 
for the people of the United States, being the nearest approach 
they could make to pronouncing “ Bostonian” a century ago. 
_ The figurative use of many terms has been often explained but 
_ the early Iroquois had a well founded reputation for cannibal 
tastes. The eastern Indians called them Man-eaters. 
Though the subject of cooking and serving meals is connected 
_ with that of the utensils employed, a bare reference may serve 
here. Not much time was wasted in preparing food till those 
“later days when the kettle was always over the fire. Some 
ate directly from this; others used small kettles, bark dishes 
and wooden spoons. Indians had their changing and local fash- 
ions even as we do. Their few vegetables and abundant game 
gave them all the variety they required. Greatly prized were 
the three supporters of life, corn, beans and squashes, and of 
these they have pretty stories to tell. In agriculture the colon- 
ists learned some useful lessons from them, and the French mis- 
