The Six Nations League of the Iroquois were friends of the English, and enemies of the French. That had long been the case. All the Iroquois lands from the Alleghany Mountains to the setting sun were open to the English; “for,” said the Iroquois, “we have conquered it, and it is yours who are our brothers.”
Therefore, at the big council, the Iroquois agreed to help the English to keep the French out. The English were to put many more traders into the Ohio River country, so that the Indians should be fat with goods and strong to fight.
The Mingos had been directed to talk with the Delawares and the Shawnees, and ask them to take up the hatchet against the French, and against the Ottawas and the Potawatomis of the north, who were allies of the French. But the Delawares and Shawnees of the Ohio were undecided.
King Shingis of the Delawares spoke fiercely. He was a small man, but strong and quick, and his eyes glowed hotly. He hated the English, and wished no white men at all.
“No,” he said. “This is our country. The Delaware are men. They stand on their own ground. If the French and English desire to fight, let them fight in their own land or on the big water. If they fight here, the Indian will be like cloth under a pair of shears and will be cut in pieces. We ask for nothing but to be let alone. Besides, the English are stingy. They give little. The French give much. The Swannoks (which was a name of contempt for the English) fool us with trash and take our lands and drive us out. The French will leave us our lands and live among us.”
And so said King Beaver, of the Delawares farther west, in Ohio.
“The Delaware are not women, to be ordered by the Iroquois,” said King Beaver. “Three times the Iroquois have sold our lands and made us move. Now this is our land and not a Frenchman nor an Englishman shall have one foot of it.”
And so said Killbuck, and Kateuskund. Old Shanopin of Shanopin’s-town said nothing; but the fiery young Cat-a-he-cassa or Blackhoof of the Shawnees cried angrily:
“What our grandfathers the Delaware say, we say. Onontio is a better man than the King of the Swannoks, but we wish no white men except traders in our land.”
The French came. Runners from the Senecas of Venango in the north panted in to declare that the French of Onontio were descending the Allegheny River in twenty-three canoes. There were more than two hundred soldiers and Ottawas under a French captain; and they were sending Captain Joncaire the half-Seneca ahead, to make things ready. They were burying lead plates and nailing up signs at the mouths of the rivers, seizing the land for Onontio, and driving out the English traders.