308 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



leave to open a road to Oswego. The Oneidas and Tuscaroras j 

 would help make it from German Flats to Canaseraga, and the 

 Onondagas thence to Oswego. He might build a fort at Oswego 

 Falls, to be destroyed when the war was over. He gave the 

 Indians kettles to feast on their enemies' flesh, which is noted 

 as figurative ; eating meat out of the kettles at a war feast being 

 called eating a Frenchman's flesh, as drinking is then termed 

 drinking an enemy's blood. 



He placed a medal on the Onondaga speaker's neck. A treaty 

 was made with the Delawares and Shawnees, and the former were 

 fixed at Tioga by the Six Nations, where some Iroquois then 

 lived. The Iroquois feared the French because of their many 

 Indian allies. On reaching home he had another conference with 

 the Delawares and Shawnees. With the consent of the Six 

 Nations, he declared the former no longer women but men, but 

 they were not formally made so for many years later. He sent 

 out many parties, and the Indians were pleased with their new 

 forts. 



Various collisions preceded the fall of Oswego, the most impor- 

 tant being Bradstreet's successful fight at Oswego Falls, of 

 which the French and English gave very different accounts. 

 While returning from Oswego with 300 boatmen and their boats, 

 he was attacked from the east side of the river at Battle island, 

 July 3, 1756. Landing on the small island there with six men, 

 he held it till reinforced, repulsing three assaults. Thence the 

 contest followed the west bank to the falls, lasting three hours. 



Oswego was invested by Montcalm Aug. 11, and surrendered 

 Aug. 14, Col. Mercer having been killed. With its siege the 

 Six Nations had nothing to do, but the French had many sav- 

 ages with them, whose mere yells did as much toward the sur- 

 render as the guns of the French. Their Indians, they said, 

 ''perpetrated a multitude of horrors, and assassinated more than 

 100 persons included in the capitulation, without our being able 

 to prevent them, or having the right to remonstrate." 



The dilatory — to use no stronger word — General Webb got 

 only to the Oneida portage. Learning there the loss of Oswego, 



