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103, 104

tutions which he had conceded. A direct tax was CHAP. decreed by an ordinance; the titles to real estate were questioned, that larger fees and quitrents might be Wood extorted; and of the farmers of Easthampton who protested against the tyranny, six were arraigned before the council.

While the liberties of New York were thus sequestered by a monarch who desired to imitate the despotism of France, its frontiers had no protection against encroachments from Canada, except in the valor of the Iroquois. The Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, the Five Nations, dwelling near the river and the lakes that retain their names, formed a confederacy of equal tribes. The union of three of the nations precedes tradition; the Oneidas and Senecas were younger associates. Each nation was a sovereign republic, divided again into clans, between which a slight subordination was scarcely perceptible. The clansmen dwelt in fixed places of abode, surrounded by fields of beans and of maize; each castle, like a New England town or a Saxon hundred, constituted a little democracy. There was no slavery; no favored caste. All men were equal. The union was confirmed by an unwritten compact; the congress of the sachems, at Onondaga, like the Witena-gemots of the Anglo-Saxons, transacted all common business. Authority resided in opinion; law in oral tradition. Honor and esteem enforced obedience; shame and contempt punished offenders. The leading warrior was elected by the general confidence in his virtue and conduct; merit alone could obtain preferment to office; and power was as permanent as the esteem of the tribe. No profit was attached to eminent station, to tempt the sordid. As their brave men went forth to war, instead of martial

416

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WARS OF THE FIVE NATIONS WITH OTHER TRIBES.

CHAP. instruments, they were cheered by the clear voice of their leader. On the smooth surface of a tree from which the outer bark had been peeled, they painted their deeds of valor by the simplest symbols. These were their trophies and their annals; these and their war-songs preserved the memory of their heroes. They proudly deemed themselves supreme among mankind; men excelling all others; and hereditary arrogance inspired their young men with dauntless courage. When Hudson, John Smith, and Champlain, were in America together, the Mohawks had extended their strolls from the St. Lawrence to Virginia; half Long Island paid them tribute; and a Mohawk sachem was reverenced on Massachusetts Bay. The geographical position of their fixed abodes, including within their immediate sway the headlands not of the Hudson only, but of the rivers that flow to the gulfs of Mexico and St. Lawrence, the bays of Chesapeake and Delaware, opened widest regions to their canoes, and invited them to make their war-paths along the channels where New York and Pennsylvania are now perfecting the avenues of commerce. Becoming possessed of fire-arms by intercourse with the Dutch, they renewed 1649. their merciless, hereditary warfare with the Hurons; 1653 and, in the following years, the Eries, on the south 1655. shore of the lake of which the name commemorates their 1656 existence, were defeated and extirpated. The Allegha1672. ny was next descended, and the tribes near Pittsburg, probably of the Huron race, leaving no monument but a name to the Guyandot River of Western Virginia, were subjugated and destroyed. In the east and in the west, from the Kennebec to the Mississippi, the Abenakis as well as the Miamis and the remoter Illinois, could raise no barrier against the invasions of the Iroquois but by alliances with the French.

to

to

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1615.

But the Five Nations had defied a prouder enemy. CHAP. At the commencement of the administration of Dongan, the European population of New France, which, in 1676. 1679, amounted to eight thousand five hundred and fifteen souls, may have been a little more than ten thousand; the number of men capable of bearing arms was perhaps three thousand, about the number of warriors of the Five Nations. But the Iroquois were freemen; New France suffered from despotism and monopoly. The Iroquois recruited their tribes by adopting captives of foreign nations; New France was sealed against the foreigner and the heretic. For nearly fourscore years, hostilities had prevailed, with few interruptions. Thrice did Champlain invade the country of the Mohawks, till he was driven with wounds 1609 and disgrace from their wilderness fastnesses. The to Five Nations, in return, at the period of the massacre 1622, in Virginia, attempted the destruction of New France. 1623. Though repulsed, they continued to defy the province and its allies, and, under the eyes of its governor, 1637. openly intercepted canoes destined for Quebec. The French authority was not confirmed by founding a 1640. feeble outpost at Montreal; and Fort Richelieu, at the 1642. mouth of the Sorel, scarce protected its immediate environs. Negotiations for peace led to no permanent 1645. result; and even the influence of the Jesuit missionaries, the most faithful, disinterested, and persevering of their order, could not permanently restrain the sanguinary vengeance of the barbarians. The Iroquois warriors scoured every wilderness to lay it still more waste; they thirsted for the blood of the few men who roamed over the regions between Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Depopulating the whole country on the 1649. Outáwa, they obtained an acknowledged superiority

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WARS OF THE FIVE NATIONS WITH THE FRENCH.

CHAP. Over New France, mitigated only by commercial rela tions of the French traders with the tribes that dwelt 1654. farthest from the Hudson. The colony was still in 1660. perpetual danger; and Quebec itself was besieged.

To what use a winter's invasion of the country 1666. of the Mohawks? The savages disappeared, leaving their European adversaries to war with the wilderness.

By degrees the French made firmer advances; and 1672. a fort built at the outlet of Ontario, for the purpose, as was pretended, of having a convenient place for treaties, commanded the commerce of the lake.

1673.

We have seen the Mohawks brighten the covenant chain that bound them to the Dutch. The English, on recovering the banks of the Hudson, confirmed, without delay, the Indian alliance, and, by the confidence with which their friendship inspired the Iroquois, increased the dangers that hovered over New France. The ruin which menaced Canada gave a transient 1682, 1683. existence to a large legislative council; and an assembly of notables was convoked by De la Barre, the governor-general, to devise a remedy for the ills under which the settlements languished. It marks the character of the colonists, that, instead of demanding civil franchises, they solicited a larger garrison from Louis XIV.

1683. The governor of New York had been instructed to preserve friendly relations with the French; but Dongan refused to neglect the Five Nations. From the French traders who were restrained by a strict monopoly, the wild hunters of beaver turned to the English, who favored competition; and their mutual ties were strengthened by an amnesty of past injuries.

Along the war-paths of the Five Nations, down the

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Susquehannah, and near the highlands of Virginia, the CHAP. proud Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga warriors had left bloody traces of their presence. The impending struggle with New France quickened the desire of renewing peace with the English; and the deputies from the Mohawks and the three offending tribes, 1684. soon joined by the Senecas, met the governors of July New York and Virginia at Albany.

13.

To the complaints and the pacific proposals of Lord Colden Howard of Effingham, Cadianne, the Mohawk orator, July replied:

"Sachem of Virginia, and you, Corlaer, sachem of New York, give ear, for we will not conceal the evil that has been done." The orator then rebuked the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas, for their want of faith, and gave them a belt of wampum, to quicken their memory. Then, turning to Effingham, he continued:

"Great sachem of Virginia, these three beaver-skins are a token of our gladness that your heart is softened; these two of our joy, that the axe is to be buried. We are glad that you will bury in the pit what is past. Let the earth be trod hard over it; let a strong stream run under the pit, to wash the evil away out of our sight and remembrance, so that it never may be digged up.

"You are wise to keep the covenant-chain bright as silver; and now to renew it and make it stronger. These nations are chain-breakers; we Mohawks "—as he spoke he gave two beavers and a raccoon-“ we Mohawks have kept the chain entire. The covenant must be preserved; the fire of love of Virginia and Maryland, and of the Five Nations, burns in this place: this house of peace must be kept clean. We plant a tree whose top shall touch the sun, whose branches

14.