I jumped back in bewilderment.
"What is it?" I gasped.
"Death," he said grimly. "'Tis the Snake Which Rattles, and its bite is fatal. Yet it is an honorable foe, for it always gives warning before it strikes. So let us permit it to depart in peace."
The evening of the third day we camped in the Oneida country at the base of a hill, which the trail encircles and which for that reason was called Nun-da-da-sis.[[2]] Here we had a stroke of what turned out afterward to be rare good luck. Whilst we were making camp a group of five canoes of the birch-bark which is used by other nations than the Iroquois[[3]] approached from up-stream, and their occupants camped beside us.
[[2]] "Around the Hill;" present site of Utica, N.Y.
[[3]] There were very few birches in Iroquois territory. They employed instead red elm and hickory bark, which were much heavier.
These Indians were Messesagues, whose country lay between the two great inland seas, the Erie and Huron Lakes. They were on their way to Fort Orange or Albany to trade their Winter catch of furs, which lay baled in the canoes. Ta-wan-ne-ars, as Warden of the Western Door, had held intercourse with these people before and understood their language.
They told him that they had had trouble with the Sieur de Tonty, commander of the French trading-post of Le De Troit,[[4]] which had been established in their country; and that in consequence de Tonty had been obliged to flee and they had decided to shift their trade to the English.[[5]] Ta-wan-ne-ars encouraged them in this design and described to them the high quality and quantity of the goods they might expect to get in exchange for their furs at Albany.
[[4]] Detroit, Mich.
[[5]] De Tonty was obliged to abandon his post temporarily about this time.