He succeeded in soothing the exasperated chief, and then
proceeded to the confederate council at Onondaga, where he found the
assembled sachems full of anxieties and doubts. "We don't know what you
Christians, English and French, intend," said one of their orators. "We
are so hemmed in by you both that we have hardly a hunting-place left.
In a little while, if we find a bear in a tree, there will immediately
appear an owner of the land to claim the property and hinder us from
killing it, by which we live. We are so perplexed between you that we
hardly know what to say or think."[175] No man had such power over the
Five Nations as Johnson. His dealings with them were at once honest,
downright, and sympathetic. They loved and trusted him as much as they
detested the Indian commissioners at Albany, whom the province of New
York had charged with their affairs, and who, being traders, grossly
abused their office.
[Footnote 174: _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VI. 788. _Colonial Records of Pa._ V.
625.]
[Footnote 175: _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VI. 813.]
It was to remedy this perilous state of things that the Lords of Trade
and Plantations directed the several governors to urge on their
assemblies the sending of commissioners to make a joint treaty with the
wavering tribes.[176] Seven of the provinces, New York, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and the four New England colonies, acceded to the plan, and
sent to Albany, the appointed place of meeting, a body of men who for
character and ability had never had an equal on the continent, but whose
powers from their respective assemblies were so cautiously limited as to
preclude decisive action.
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