exterminated, they resorted to
their old cunning and knavery. They sent a deputation of their principal
warriors, with the sacred calumet (1) and the belt of peace, to the sons
of their grandfather. But they appeared not to wish for peace, but to be
guided by wisdom and compassion alone, and to be fearful only of being
considered as cowards. "A warrior," said they, "with the bloody weapon
in his hand should never intimate, a desire for peace, or hold pacific
language to his enemies. He should shew throughout a determined courage,
and appear as ready and willing to fight as at the beginning of the
contest. Will a man who would not be thought a liar threaten and sue in
the same breath; will he hold the peace-belt in one hand, and smoke the
unpainted calumet, while his other hand grasps a tomahawk? Will he
strike his breast, and say 'I am brave and fearless,' yet shew that he
is a mocking-bird? No, men's actions should be of a piece with their
words, whether good or bad; good cannot come out of evil, neither can
the brave man feel faint-hearted, or the fawn become a tiger. The Mengwe
were brave: they would not abase themselves in the eyes of the Lenape by
admitting that they were vanquished, or proposing peace. They made use
of their women to soften the hearts of our nation. They said to their
wives and the wives of the Lenape, Are you tired of the fathers of your
children?--to the mothers, Does the Lenape hate her sons?--to our young
women, Do the eyes of the maidens turn with aversion from the youths of
your nation? if the wife is tired of her husband, if the mother hate her
sons, if the dark-eyed maiden feels no grief when the Lenape youth goes
forth to battle and certain death, nor sheds a tear when he paints his
face, and dresses his hair, and fills his quiver with arrows, then let
them remain silent, and the messengers of the Mengwe will return to
their nation."

The women to whom they spoke were moved by the eloquence of the
treacherous Iroquois, and they persuaded the enraged combatants to bury
their hatchets, and make the tree of peace grow tall and firm-rooted.
They lamented, with great feeling and many tears, the loss which their
country had sustained in these wars: there was not a woman among them
who had not lost a son, or a brother, or a father, or a husband. They
described the sorrows of bereaved mothers and widowed wives; the pains
mothers endured ere they were permitted to behold their offspring; the
anxi