Stay till the next yeare, & then you are like to have the
number of 600 men in company with you.
Then you may freely goe without
intermission. Yee shall take the church along with you, & the ffathers &
mothers will send their children to be taught in the way of truth of the
Lord." Our answer was that we would speake in publique, which granted, the
day appointed is come. There gathered above 800 men to see who should have
the glorie in a round. They satt downe on the ground. We desired silence.
The elders being in the midle & we in their midle, my brother began to
Speake. "Who am I? am I a foe or a friend? If I am a foe, why did you
suffer me to live so long among you? If I am friend, & if you take so to
be, hearken to what I shall say. You know, my uncles & brethren, that I
hazarded my life goeing up with you; if I have no courage, why did you not
tell me att my first coming here? & if you have more witt then we, why did
not you use it by preserving your knives, your hattchetts, & your gunns,
that you had from the ffrench? You will see if the ennemy will sett upon
you that you will be attraped like castors in a trape; how will you defend
yourselves like men that is not courageous to lett yourselves be catched
like beasts? How will you defend villages? with castors' skins? how will
you defend your wives & children from the ennemy's hands?"
Then my brother made me stand up, saying, "Shew them the way to make warrs
if they are able to uphold it." I tooke a gowne of castors' skins that one
of them had uppon his shoulder & did beat him with it. I asked the others
if I was a souldier. "Those are the armes that kill, & not your robes. What
will your ennemy say when you perish without defending yourselves? Doe not
you know the ffrench way? We are used to fight with armes & not with robes.
You say that the Iroquoits waits for you because some of your men weare
killed. It is onely to make you stay untill you are quite out of stocke,
that they dispatch you with ease. Doe you think that the ffrench will come
up here when the greatest part of you is slained by your owne fault? You
know that they cannot come up without you. Shall they come to baptize your
dead? Shall your children learne to be slaves among the Iroquoits for their
ffathers' cowardnesse? You call me Iroquoit. Have not you seene me
disposing my life with you? Who has given you your life if not the ffrench?
Now you will not venter because many of your confederates are come to visit
you & venter their lives with you. If you will deceave them you must not
think that they will come an other time for shy words nor desire.
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