If your allies are your slaves or your
children, treat them like slaves or children, and forbid them to deal
with anybody but your Frenchmen.
"We have knocked the Illinois in the head, because they cut down the
tree of peace and hunted the beaver on our lands. We have done less
than the English and the French, who have seized upon the lands of
many tribes, driven them away, and built towns, villages, and forts in
their country.
"Listen, Onontio. My voice is the voice of the Five Tribes of the
Iroquois. When they buried the hatchet at Cataraqui (_Fort Frontenac_)
in presence of your predecessor, they planted the tree of peace in the
middle of the fort, that it might be a post of traders and not of
soldiers. Take care that all the soldiers you have brought with you,
shut up in so small a fort, do not choke this tree of peace. I assure
you in the name of the Five Tribes that our warriors will dance the
dance of the calumet under its branches; and that they will sit quiet
on their mats and never dig up the hatchet, till their brothers,
Onontio and Corlaer, separately or together, make ready to attack the
country that the Great Spirit has given to our ancestors."
The session presently closed; and La Barre withdrew to his tent,
where, according to La Hontan, he vented his feelings in invective,
till reminded that good manners were not to be expected from an
Iroquois.
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