There were more than thirteen hundred of
them, gathered from a distance of full two thousand miles, Hurons and
Ottawas from Michillimackinac, Ojibwas from Lake Superior, Crees from
the remote north, Pottawatamies from Lake Michigan, Mascontins, Sacs,
Foxes, Winnebagoes, and Menominies from Wisconsin, Miamis from the St.
Joseph, Illinois from the river Illinois, Abenakis from Acadia, and
many allied hordes of less account; each savage painted with diverse
hues and patterns, and each in his dress of ceremony, leathern shirts
fringed with scalp-locks, colored blankets or robes of bison hide and
beaver skin, bristling crests of hair or long lank tresses, eagle
feathers or horns of beasts. Pre-eminent among them all sat their
valiant and terrible foes, the warriors of the confederacy. "Strange,"
exclaims La Potherie, "that four or five thousand should make a whole
new world tremble. New England is but too happy to gain their good
graces; New France is often wasted by their wars, and our allies dread
them over an extent of more than fifteen hundred leagues." It was more
a marvel than he knew, for he greatly overrates their number.
Callieres opened the council with a speech, in which he told the
assembly that, since but few tribes were represented at the treaty of
the year before, he had sent for them all to ratify it; that he now
threw their hatchets and his own into a pit so deep that nobody could
find them; that henceforth they must live like brethren; and, if by
chance one should strike another, the injured brother must not revenge
the blow, but come for redress to him, Onontio, their common father.
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