Those Hurrons Lived In A Vast Country That They Found Unhabited, & They In A Great Number Builded Villages & They Multiplied Very Many.

The Iroquoits also gott a great country, as much by sweetnesse as by force.

They became warriors uppon their owne dispences and cost. They multiplied so much, but they became better souldiers, as it's seene by the following of this discourse. The hurrons then inhabited most advantageously in that place, for as much as for the abundance of dears and staggs, from whence they have the name since of Staggy. It's certaine that they have had severall other callings, according as they have builded villages. Fishing they have in abundance in his season of every kind; I may say, more then wee have in Europe. In some places in this lake where is an innumerable quantity of fish, that in 2 houres they load their boat with as many as they can carry.

At last [they] became so eminent strong that they weare of a minde to fight against the neighbouring nation. Hearing that their sworne ennemys the Iroquoits retired towards the nation called Andasstoueronom, which is beyond the lake d'Ontario, between Virginia & that lake, they resolved to goe & search them for to warre against them; but they shall find it to their ruine, which I can affirme & assure, because the Iroquoits in the most part of their speeches, which comes from father to son, says, we bears (for it's their name) whilst we scraped the earth with our pawes, for to make the wheat grow for to maintaine our wives, not thinking that the deare shall leape over the lake to kill the Beare that slept; but they found that the beare could scratch the stagge, for his head and leggs are small to oppose. Such speeches have they commonly together, in such that they have had warrs many years.

The Holanders being com'd to inhabit Menada, furnished that nation with weopens, by which means they became conquerors. The ffrench planters in Newfrance came up to live among this nation. In effect they doe live now many years; but the ambition of the fathers Jesuits not willing to permitt ffrench families to goe there, for to conserve the best to their profitt, houlding this pretext that yong men should frequent the wild women, so that the Christian religion by evil example could not be established. But the time came that they have forsook it themselves. For a while after the Iroquoits came there, the number of seaven hundred, on the snow in the beginning of Spring, where they make a cruell slaughter as the precedent years, where some ghostly fathers or brothers or their servants weare consumed, taken or burnt, as their relation maks mention.

This selfesame yeare they tooke prisoners of 11 or 12,000 of those poore people in a village att [in] sight of the Jesuits' Fort, which had the name Saint, but [from] that houre it might have the name of feare. Heere follows sicknesse, and famine also was gott among these people, flying from all parts to escape the sword.

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