"My Lord Governor!" said the Abbe, placing his great roll on the
table, "I thank you for admitting the missionaries to the Council.
We appear less as churchmen on this occasion than as the King's
ambassadors, although I trust that all we have done will redound to
God's glory and the spread of religion among the heathen. These
belts of wampum are tokens of the treaties we have made with the
numerous and warlike tribes of the great West. I bear to the
Governor pledges of alliance from the Miamis and Shawnees of the
great valley of the Belle Riviere, which they call the Ohio. I am
commissioned to tell Onontio that they are at peace with the King
and at war with his enemies from this time forth forever. I have
set up the arms of France on the banks of the Belle Riviere, and
claimed all its lands and waters as the just appanage of our
sovereign, from the Alleghanies to the plantations of Louisiana.
The Sacs and Foxes, of the Mississippi; the Pottawatomies,
Winnebagoes, and Chippewas of a hundred bands who fish in the great
rivers and lakes of the West; the warlike Ottawas, who have carried
the Algonquin tongue to the banks of Lake Erie,--in short, all
enemies of the Iroquois have pledged themselves to take the field
whenever the Governor shall require the axe to be dug up and lifted
against the English and the Five Nations.
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