George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 2, 17th edition.

[421] our hundred carriers, and three hundred men for a

Chap XVII.} 1684

garrison, advanced to the fort which stood near the outlet of the present Rideau Canal. But the unhealthy exhalations of August on the marshy borders of Ontario disabled his army; and, after crossing the lake, and disembarking his wasted troops in the land of the Onondagas, he was compelled to solicit peace from the tribes whom he had designed to exterminate. The Mohawks, at the request of the English, refused to negotiate, but the other nations, jealous of English supremacy, desired to secure independence by balancing the French against the English. An Onondaga chief called Heaven to witness his resentment at English interference. ‘Onondio,’ he proudly exclaimed to the envoy of New York, ‘Onondio has for ten years been our father; Corlaer has long been our brother. But it is because we have willed it so. Neither the one nor the other is our master. He who made the world gave us the land in which we dwell. We are free. You call us subjects; we say we are brethren; we must take care of ourselves. I will go to my father, for he has come to my gate, and desires to speak with me words of reason. We will embrace peace instead of war; the axe shall be thrown into a deep water.’

The deputies of the tribes repaired to the presence

La Hom tau.

of De la Barre to exult in his humiliation. ‘It is well for you,’ said the eloquent Haaskouaun, rising from the calumet, ‘that you have left under ground the hatchet which has so often been dyed in the blood of the French. Our children and old men had carried their bows and arrows into the heart of your camp, if our braves had not kept them back.—Our warriors have not beaver enough to pay for the arms we have taken from the French; and our old men are not afraid of ’