“Listen,” he said.  “Hast ever seen the moon in the lake when the evening is clear and the weather calm?  It appears in the water, yet nothing is truer than that it is in the sky.  Some among you are very old; but know, that were you all to return to early youth and take it into your heads to fish up the moon in the lake, you would more easily succeed in scooping that planet up in your nets than in effecting what you are ruminating now.  In vain do you fatigue your brains.  You cannot live with the bear and share your food with the wolf.  You must choose.  Be assured of this; the English and French cannot be in the same place without killing one another.”

There was more in the same vein.  Only one nation could hold the country for the fur trade.  If the French were that nation the Indians would be protected, their fighting men would be given arms, their families would be cared for, the great father at Quebec would reward them as brothers.  He gave the Hurons and Ottawas each a war belt to testify to his intention.

Here was the crisis.  But each tribe took the belt and kept it.  I could scarcely forbear glancing at Cadillac.  But I dared not be too elated, for we had yet the Senecas to deal with.  Cadillac turned to them and asked their mission among us.  He did it briefly, and I hoped they would answer with equal bluntness, for I dreaded this part of the council.  All of the Iroquois nations were trained rhetoricians, and I would need a long ear to catch their verbal quibbles and see where their sophistry was hiding.

Cannehoot, their oldest chief, spoke for them all.  He made proposal after proposal with belts and tokens to seal them.  His speech was moderate, but his ideas crowded; it was hard to keep them in sequence.

They had come to learn wisdom of us.  They gave a belt.

They had come to wipe the war paint from our soldiers’ faces.  They gave another belt.

They wished the sun to shine on us.  They gave a large marble as red as the sun.

They wished the rain of heaven to wash away hatred.  They gave a chain of wampum.

And so on and on and on.  They gave belts, beavers, trinkets.  They had peace in their mouths and kindness in their hearts.  They desired to tie up the hatchet, to sweep the road between the French and themselves free from blood.  But with that clause they gave no belt.  They made no mention of the English prisoners, and they desired to close their friendly visit and to go home.

Cadillac looked at them with contempt.  He was always too choleric to hide his mind, and he answered with little pretense at civility.  He gave them permission to go home, and sent a knife by them to their kindred.  It was not for war, he told them, but that they might cut the veil that hung before their eyes, and see things as they really were.  He left their belts lying on the floor, and dismissed the council.  He motioned to me to follow, and we went at once to his room.