stance, the French again determined on the ferocious scheme of exterminating the Iroquois. Nursing this horrible resolve, they waited their opportunity, and put upon themselves a desperate restraint, till they should have collected a force in the colony equal to the entire annihilation of the Iroquois people. This time seemed to have arrived in 1687, when, under Denonville, they had a population of 11,249 persons, one third of whom were capable of bearing arms. Having a disposable force of near 4,000 people, they were secure in their own mind of the accomplishment of their object; but, to make assurance doubly sure,
the speech of Garangula, one of their chiefs, when M. de la Barre, the governor in 1684, was proposing one of these hollow alliances. All the time that de la Barre spoke, Garangula kept his eyes fixed on the end of his pipe. As soon as the governor had done, he rose up, and said most significantly, "Yonondio!" (the name they always gave to the governor of Canada), "you must have believed, when you left Quebec, that the sun had burnt up all the forests which render our country inaccessible to the French; or that the lakes had so far overflowed their banks that they had surrounded our castles, and that we could not get out of them. Yes, Yonondio, surely you must have dreamt so, and the curiosity of seeing so great a wonder has brought you so far. Now you are undeceived, since I and the warriors here present, are come to assure you that the Senekas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks, are yet alive! I thank you, in their name, for bringing back into their country the Calumut which your predecessor received from their hands. It was happy for you that you left under ground that murdering hatchet that has been so often dyed in the blood of the French. Hear, Yonondio! I do not sleep; I have my eyes open; and the sun which enlightens me, shews me a great captain at the head of a company of soldiers, who speaks as if he were dreaming. He says that he came to the lake to smoke on the great Calumut with the Onondagas; but Garangula says that he sees to the contrary—it was to knock them on the head, if sickness had not weakened the arms of the French."
