colonies, to refrain from his intended invasion of British territory.1

Dongan next laid before the assembled sachems the complaints made against them in the letter of La Barre. They replied by accusing the French of carrying arms to their enemies, the Illinois and the Miamis. "Onontio," said their orator, "calls us his children, and then helps our enemies to knock us in the head." They were somewhat disturbed at the prospect of La Barre's threatened attack; and Dongan seized the occasion to draw from them an acknowledgment of subjection to the Duke of York, promising in return that they should be protected from the French. They did not hesitate. "We put ourselves," said the Iroquois speaker, "under the great sachem Charles, who lives over the Great Lake, and under the protection of the great Duke of York, brother of your great sachem." But he added a moment after, "Let your friend [King Charles] who lives over the Great Lake know that we are a free people, though united to the English."2 They consented that the arms of the Duke of York should be planted in their villages, being told that this would prevent the French from destroying them. Dongan now insisted that they should make no treaty with. Onontio without his consent; and he promised that if their country should be invaded, he would send

1 Dongan à La Barre, 24 Juin, 1684.

2 Speech of the Onondagas and Cayugas, in Colden, Five Nations, 63 (1727).

1684.]

MISSION TO ONONDAGA.

97

four hundred horsemen and as many foot-soldiers to their aid.

As for the acknowledgment of subjection to the King and the Duke of York, the Iroquois neither understood its full meaning nor meant to abide by it. What they did clearly understand was, that, while they recognized Onontio, the governor of Canada, as their father, they recognized Corlaer, the governor of New York, only as their brother. Dongan, it seems, could not, or dared not, change this mark of equality. He did his best, however, to make good his claims, and sent Arnold Viele, a Dutch interpreter, as his envoy to Onondaga. Viele set out for the Iroquois capital, and thither we will follow him.

He mounted his horse, and in the heats of August rode westward along the valley of the Mohawk. On a hill a bow-shot from the river, he saw the first Mohawk town, Kaghnawaga, encircled by a strong palisade. Next he stopped for a time at Gandagaro, on a meadow near the bank; and next, at Canajora, on a plain two miles away. Tionondogué, the last and strongest of these fortified villages, stood like. the first on a hill that overlooked the river, and all the rich meadows around were covered with Indian corn. The largest of the four contained but thirty

1 Except the small tribe of the Oneidas, who addressed Corlaer as "Father." Corlaer was the official Iroquois name of the governor of New York; Onas (the Feather, or Pen), that of the governor of Pennsylvania; and Assarigoa (the Big Knife, or Sword), that of the governor of Virginia. Corlaer, or Cuyler, was the name of a Dutchman whom the Iroquois held in great respect.

VOL. I.-7

houses, and all together could furnish scarcely more than three hundred warriors.1

When the last Mohawk town was passed, a ride of four or five days still lay before the envoy. He held his way along the old Indian trail, now traced through the grass of sunny meadows, and now tunnelled through the dense green of shady forests, — till it led him to the town of the Oneidas, containing about a hundred bark-houses, with twice as many fighting men, the entire force of the tribe. Here, as in the four Mohawk villages, he planted the scutcheon of the Duke of York, and, still advancing, came at length to a vast open space where the rugged fields, patched with growing corn, sloped upwards into a broad, low hill, crowned with the clustered lodges of Onondaga. There were from one to two hundred of these large bark-dwellings, most of them holding several families. The capital of the confederacy was not fortified at this time, and its only defence was the valor of some four hundred warriors.2

In this focus of trained and organized savagery, where ferocity was cultivated as a virtue, and every emotion of pity stifled as unworthy of a man; where ancient rites, customs, and traditions were held with

250.

1 Journal of Wentworth Greenhalgh, 1677, in N. Y. Col. Docs., iii.

2 Journal of Greenhalgh. The site of Onondaga, like that of all the Iroquois towns, was changed from time to time, as the soil of the neighborhood became impoverished, and the supply of wood exhausted. Greenhalgh, in 1677, estimated the warriors at three hundred and fifty; but the number had increased of late by the adoption of prisoners.

1684.]

AN IROQUOIS POLITICIAN.

99

the tenacity of a people who joined the extreme of wildness with the extreme of conservatism, here burned the council-fire of the five confederate tribes; and here, in time of need, were gathered their bravest and their wisest to debate high questions of policy and war.

The object of Viele was to confirm the Iroquois in their very questionable attitude of subjection to the British Crown, and persuade them to make no treaty or agreement with the French, except through the intervention of Dongan, or at least with his consent.

Here,

The envoy found two Frenchmen in the town, whose presence boded ill to his errand. The first was the veteran colonist of Montreal, Charles le Moyne, sent by La Barre to invite the Onondagas to a conference. They had known him, in peace or war, for a quarter of a century; and they greatly respected him. The other was the Jesuit Jean de Lamberville, who had long lived among them, and knew them better than they knew themselves. too, was another personage who cannot pass unnoticed. He was a famous Onondaga orator named Otréouati, and called also Big Mouth, whether by reason of the dimensions of that feature or the greatness of the wisdom that issued from it. His contemporary, Baron la Hontan, thinking perhaps that his French name of La Grande Gueule was wanting in dignity, Latinized it into Grangula; and the Scotchman, Colden, afterwards improved it into Garangula, under which high-sounding appellation Big Mouth has

descended to posterity. He was an astute old savage, well trained in the arts of Iroquois rhetoric, and gifted with the power of strong and caustic sarcasm, which has marked more than one of the chief orators of the confederacy. He shared with most of his countrymen the conviction that the earth had nothing so great as the league of the Iroquois; but if he could. be proud and patriotic, so too he could be selfish and mean. He valued gifts, attentions, and a good meal, and would pay for them abundantly in promises, which he kept or not, as his own interests or those of his people might require. He could use bold and loud words in public, and then secretly make his peace with those he had denounced. He was so given to rough jokes that the intendant, Meules, calls him a buffoon; but his buffoonery seems to have been often a cover to his craft. He had taken a prominent part in the council of the preceding summer at Montreal; and doubtless, as he stood in full dress before the governor and the officers, his head plumed, his face painted, his figure draped in a colored blanket, and his feet decked with embroidered moccasins, he was a picturesque and striking object. He was less so as he squatted almost naked by his lodge-fire, with a piece of board laid across his lap, chopping rank tobacco with a scalping-knife to fill his pipe, and entertaining the grinning circle with grotesque stories and obscene jests. Though not one of the hereditary chiefs, his influence was great. "He has the strongest head and the loudest voice