George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[89] along the Blue Ridge to Western New York. They

chap. IV.} 1751.

approached the grand council, singing the words of reconciliation, bearing their ensigns of colored feathers, not erect, as in defiance, but horizontally, as with friends; and, accompanied by the rude music from their calabashes, they continued their melodies, while their great chief lighted the peace-pipe. He himself was the first to smoke the sacred calumet; then Hendrick, of the Mohawks; and all the principal sachems in succession. Nor was the council dismissed, till the hatchet was buried irrecoverably deep, and a tree of peace planted, which was to be ever green as the laurel on the Alleghanies, and to spread its branches till its shadow should reach from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Thus was South Carolina first included in the same bright chain with New England. When would they meet in council again? Thus did the Indians, in alliance with England, plight faith fo one another, and propose measures of mutual protection.

To anticipate or prevent the consummation of these designs remained the earnest effort of the French. They sent priests, who were excited partly by ambition, partly by fervid enthusiasm, to proselyte the Six Nations; their traders were to undersell the British; in the summer of 1751, they launched an armed vessel of unusual size on Lake Ontario,¹ and converted their trading-house at Niagara into a fortress;² they warned the governor of Pennsylvania,³ that the English