BUFFALO SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCES 393 



During the three or four years preceding these events and 

 while the attention of the Senecas was turned to the tribes west 

 of Lake Michigan, the Lower Iroquois had been warring with 

 the nations to the southward and in the numerous frays had 

 killed and plundered settlers of Virginia. In 1684 Lord How- 

 ard of Effingham, then Governor of Virginia, held a council with 

 the Iroquois at Albany. After the business of the meeting had 

 been conducted, Governor Dongan of New York laid before them 

 a message which he had received from De la Barre in which he 

 informed the English Governor that a Seneca war party had 

 plundered French canoes and that he intended to attack them in 

 their castles. Dongan was the shrewdest diplomat that New 

 York had had up to that time, and in reply he naturally made 

 use of this opening to assert the sovereignty of the English over 

 all the cantons of the Five Nations and to warn De la Barre not to 

 invade English territo^. He then laid the whole message be- 

 fore the council, thus warning the Senecas of the intended at- 

 tack. The whole council was disturbed and not a little alarmed, 

 and the astute governor made use of this alarm to induce the 

 Iroquois not only to acknowledge the King of England as their 

 sovereign, and put themselves under the protection of the Duke 

 of York, but to allow the governor, for their greater safety, to 

 place in their villages the arras of the Duke of York. That this 

 acknowledgment really amounted to nothing Dongan seems to 

 have understood clearly, and to induce the Iroquois to make 

 their subjection a fact, rather than a name, he promptly sent as 

 envoy to the Onondagas, a Dutch interpreter, one Arnold Viele. 



The Onondagas were at this time more inclined to be friendly 

 with the French than the Upper Iroquois. This friendliness 

 was due, partly at any rate, to the presence in their towns of 

 two French envoys, both of whom were known to the Onondagas 

 and trusted by them, namely Charles le Moyne and Jean de 

 Lamberville. These so played upon the feelings of the Onon- 

 dagas that they consented to act as peacemakers between the 

 Senecas and the French. 



The Senecas on the other hand were hot for war and ready 

 for the expected attack. Lamberville reported that they had 

 concealed all their valuables and their corn and had hidden their 

 non-combatants, and that as a defense they had planned to keep 

 three hundred warriors in their double palisaded forts while 

 twelve hundred others were detailed to harass the French. At 



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