They often spoke of the pathetic loneliness of this good-looking, kindly, mismated woman. Jack and Solomon reached the council on the fifth day of their travel. There, a level plain in the forest was covered with Indians and the snow trodden smooth. Around it were their tents and huts and houses. There were males and females, many of the latter in rich silks and scarlet cloths bordered with gold fringe. Some wore brooches and rings in their noses. Among them were handsome faces and erect and noble forms.
In the center of the plain stood a great stack of wood and green boughs of spruce and balsam built up in layers for the evening council fire.
Old Kiodote knew Solomon and remembered Jack, whom he had seen in the great council at Albany in 1761.
"He says your name was 'Boiling Water,'" Solomon said to Jack after a moment's talk with the chief.
"He has a good memory," the young man answered.
The two white men were invited to take part in the games. All the warriors had heard of Solomon's skill with a rifle. "Son of the Thunder," they called him in the League of the Iroquois. The red men gathered in great numbers to see him shoot. Again, as of old, they were thrilled by his feats with the rifle, but when Jack began his quick and deadly firing, crushing butternuts thrown into the air, with rifle and pistol, a kind of awe possessed the crowd. Many came and touched him and stared into his face and called him "The Brother of Death."
3
Solomon's speech that evening before the council fire impressed the Indians. He had given much thought to its composition and Jack had helped him in the invention of vivid phrases loved by the red men. He addressed them in the dialect of the Senecas, that being the one with which he was most familiar. He spoke of the thunder cloud of war coming up in the east and the cause of it and begged them to fight with their white neighbors, under the leadership of The Great Spirit for the justice which He loved. Solomon had brought them many gifts in token of the friendship of himself and his people.
Old Theandenaga, of the Mohawks, answered him in a speech distinguished by its noble expressions of good will and by an eloquent, but not ill-tempered, account of the wrongs of the red men. He laid particular stress on the corrupting of the young braves with fire-water.
"Let all bad feeling be buried in a deep pool," Solomon answered. "There are bad white men and there are bad Indians but they are not many. The good men are like the leaves of the forest--you can not count them--but the bad man is like the scent pedlar [the skunk]. Though he is but one, he can make much trouble."