They said that they had been seventy days on their
journey. Everywhere along their way they had seen houses and forts
springing up like, weeds across the green sod of their hunting lands.
Where once were great herds of deer and buffalo, they had watched
thousands of men at arms preparing for war. So many now were the white
warriors and their women and children that the red men had been obliged
to travel a great way on the other side of the Ohio and to make a detour
of nearly three hundred miles to avoid being seen. Even on this outlying
route they had crossed the fresh tracks of a great body of people with
horses and cattle going still further towards the setting sun. But their
cries were not to be in vain; for "their fathers, the French" had heard
them and had promised to aid them if they would now strike as one for
their lands.

After this preamble the deputy of the Mohawks rose. He said that some
American people had made war on one of their towns and had seized the
son of their Great Beloved Man, Sir William Johnson, imprisoned him, and
put him to a cruel death; this crime demanded a great vengeance and they
would not cease until they had taken it. One after another the fourteen
delegates rose and made their "talks" and presented their wampum strings
to Dragging Canoe. The last to speak was a chief of the Shawanoes. He
also declared that "their fathers, the French," who had been so long
dead, were "alive again," that they had supplied them plentifully with
arms and ammunition and had promised to assist them in driving out the
Americans and in reclaiming their country. Now all the Northern tribes
were joined in one for this great purpose; and they themselves were on
their way to all the Southern tribes and had resolved that, if any tribe
refused to join, they would fall upon and extirpate that tribe, after
having overcome the whites. At the conclusion of his oration the
Shawanoe presented the war belt--nine feet of six-inch wide purple
wampum spattered with vermilion--to Dragging Canoe, who held it extended
between his two hands, in silence, and waited. Presently rose a headman
whose wife had been a member of Sir William Johnson's household. He laid
his hand on the belt and sang the war song. One by one, then, chiefs
and warriors rose, laid hold of the great belt and chanted the war
song. Only the older men, made wise by many defeats, sat still in their
places, mute and dejected. "After that day every young fellow's fa