"To
fight you, you blockheads," answered a Mohawk Christian attached to
the French. A volley of bullets was fired at the scouts; but they
escaped, and carried the news to their villages. [Footnote:
_Information received from several Indians_, in _N. Y. Col. Docs_.,
III. 444.] Many of the best warriors were absent. Those that remained,
four hundred or four hundred and fifty by their own accounts, and
eight hundred by that of the French, mustered in haste; and, though
many of them were mere boys, they sent off the women and children, hid
their most valued possessions, burned their chief town, and prepared
to meet the invaders.
On the twelfth, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Denonville began
his march, leaving four hundred men in a hastily built fort to guard
the bateaux and canoes. Troops, officers, and Indians, all carried
their provisions at their backs. Some of the Christian Mohawks guided
them; but guides were scarcely needed, for a broad Indian trail led
from the bay to the great Seneca town, twenty-two miles southward.
They marched three leagues through the open forests of oak, and
encamped for the night. In the morning, the heat was intense. The men
gasped in the dead and sultry air of the woods, or grew faint in the
pitiless sun, as they waded waist-deep through the rank grass of the
narrow intervales.
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