“The English have not yet come to help us,” said Tanacharison, in the Mingo council. “They should have built a fort with great guns in it, to turn the French back. Let us hear what these French have to say. To show that we are not at war we will put up the flags of the two nations.”
So the King George’s red flag given by the English traders was kept up, and the white French flag sent last year by Captain Joncaire himself was put up. Soon Indians from the outside again hurried in. Delawares of Kittanning up the Allegheny arrived to say that the French had landed there and had found nobody; and the Shawnees and Delawares from Shanopin’s-town arrived to say that the French had passed there; and Mingos and Delawares from fat Queen Allaquippa’s town of the Monongahela south of the Forks arrived to say that the French were there.
And the next noon here came, in a canoe paddled by Ottawas but bearing no soldiers, Captain Joncaire, bringing another French flag.
A swarthy, wrinkled man, was Captain Joncaire; small, lean, quick, dark but gray-haired, constantly smiling and merry, but exceedingly sharp. It was only by his smiles and his white teeth that he showed his French blood. His father was a French officer of Canada, but his mother was a Seneca and he spoke the Seneca tongue.
Now wearing a blue French soldier coat with captain’s epaulets, and gaily beaded leggins and moccasins, and a woodsman’s cap on his long gray hair, and a sword at his belt and a rifle on his back he sprang ashore at Logstown.
“Greetings to my brothers,” he called, in Seneca. “I am come from your father Onontio. A greater one than I am is following with presents and important words. Am I welcome?”
But he was answered with murmurs and black looks. With his Ottawas of the French he strode on to the council house where Tanacharison would be waiting for him. He and the chiefs smoked the calumet pipe; then Tanacharison the Half-King asked:
“What does my brother wish in Shenango?”
“I am come alone,” said Captain Joncaire. “I am a Seneca, I am among brothers. I come from the French of Onontio, who also are my brothers. The great Onontio does not like to see two flags floating in this country which he shares with his red children. He has heard that the English are crossing the mountains into your country and his, and are poisoning the minds of his children. So he is sending a company under a mighty captain down the Beautiful River to talk with his children the Mingo, the Wyandot, the Delaware, the Shawnee. From Shenango the captain goes on to scourge home the Miami and the Wyandot further west who have listened to the false songs of the English. This is French country; our father Onontio wishes all the Indians to live here at peace, but he will have no English traders, who are only spies.”
“Is Onontio at war with the English king across the water?” Half-King asked.