On board the Margaret, "seven flaming fine gentlemen," headed by Thomas Lee, were about to take off on the first lap of a history-making mission. Indian war drums were sounding. Thomas Lee and William Beverley had been appointed commissioners from Virginia to meet the chiefs of the Six Nations of the Iroquois at Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Amid shouts and laughter and the booming of cannon the sloop headed down the Potomac, in the direction of the Chesapeake.
The Margaret sailed up the Bay toward Maryland and before noon the next day Annapolis had been reached. Here for five days and nights, the party was wined and dined. Philip Ludwell Lee, eighteen-year-old son of Thomas, danced until one in the morning with the pretty girls of Annapolis.
The remainder of the journey was by land. After four more days of travel the party was refreshed near Chester by a big bowl of lemon punch. In Philadelphia they were highly entertained for three weeks. While in that city Lee and Beverley marched in a procession to the market place to hear an official proclamation of a war between England and France. They were solemn now, for their mission was more important than ever. The colonists needed the Indians on their side.
This excursion was turning out to be an important diplomatic mission for the colony. It was to be Britain's first serious answer to French encroachments.
It was late in June when Lee's party finally reached Lancaster, a new and still raw town. The conference convened in the court-house, with Governor George Thomas, of Pennsylvania, presiding. On his right sat Lee and Beverley and on his left were the two commissioners from Maryland. The Indians occupied the space usually allotted to the audience, but the powerful chiefs, like Jonnhaty, Canasatego and Tocanuntie, met the white men as equals. A Pennsylvania Dutchman named Conrad Weiser, acted as interpreter. He was trusted by both sides.
The meeting was opened by the commissioners from Maryland, since they had issued the invitation to the meeting. This was in accordance with a rigid Iroquois custom.
The complaint of the Six Nations was that the white settlers were coming over the "Great Mountains" and moving into the Valley and trespassing on their ancestral lands. "You English have come settling on our lands like a flock of birds," said Canasatego.
The white men explained that when they entered the country west of the Blue Ridge it "was altogether deserted and free for any people to enter upon." To which the Indians replied: "We have the right of conquest, a right too dearly purchased and which cost us too much blood to give up without any reason, at all.... All the world knows we conquered the several nations living on Susquehanna, Cohongaranta and at the back of the Great Mountains."
Thomas Lee, when his turn came to speak, answered this charge by saying that the King of England held Virginia by right of conquest and that the bounds of the conquered land extended west as far as the Great Sea. However, he continued, the "Great King" was willing to pay them for certain lands. He was speaking, he told the Indians, for Assarogoa, Virginia's governor. Coming to the point, Thomas Lee laid down the customary string of wampum and said: