Another chief rose to speak. The sun had gone, and the long building was growing dark rapidly. A number of squaws came through the circle, throwing wood on the fires. The new flames shot up, and threw a flickering light on the copper faces, many of which still wore the paint of the morning. The smoke lay over them in wavering films, now and again half hiding some sullen face until it seemed to fade away into the darkness.
At last the whole situation lay clear before the council. Some speakers were for war, some for peace, others for aiding the Senecas as a matter of principle. The house was divided.
There was a silence, and the pipes glowed in the dusk; then the Long Arrow rose. The listless spectators stirred and leaned forward. The maid, too, was moved, feeling that at last the moment of decision was near. She was 248 surprised to see that he had none of the savage excitement of the morning. He was as quiet and tactful in speech as the Big Throat himself.
Slowly the Long Arrow drew his blanket close about him and began to speak. The house grew very still, for the whole tribe knew that he had, in his anger of the morning, disputed the authority of the Big Throat. There had been hot words, and the great chief had rebuked him contemptuously within the hearing of half a hundred warriors. Now he was to stand before the council, and not a man in that wide circle but wondered how much he would dare to say.
He seemed not to observe the curious glances. Simply and quietly he began the narrative of the capture of the hunting party at Fort Frontenac. At the first words Menard turned to Father Claude with a meaning look. The maid saw it, and her lips framed a question.
“It is better than I hoped,” Menard whispered. “He is bringing it up himself.”
“Not two moons have waned,” the Long Arrow was saying, “since five score brave young warriors left our village for the hunt. They left the hatchet buried under the trees. They took no war-paint. The Great Mountain 249 had said that there was peace between the redman and the white man; he had asked the Onondagas to hunt on the banks of the Great River; he had told them that his white sons at the Stone House would take them as brothers into their lodges. When the Great Mountain said this, through the mouths of the holy Fathers, he lied.”
The words came out in the same low, even tone in which he had begun speaking, but they sank deep. The house was hushed; even the stirring of the children on the benches died away.
“The Great Mountain has lied to his children,”––Menard’s keen ears caught the bitter, if covered, sarcasm in the last two words; they had been Governor Frontenac’s favourite term in addressing the Iroquois––“and his children know his voice no longer. There is corn in the fields? Let it grow or rot. There are squaws and children in our lodges? Let them live or die. It is not the Senecas who ask our aid; it is the voice of a hundred sons and brothers and youths and squaws calling from far beyond the great water,––calling from chains, calling from fever, calling from the Happy Hunting Ground, where they have gone without guns or corn or 250 blankets, where they lie with nothing to comfort them.” The Long Arrow stood erect, with head thrown back and eyes fixed on the opposite wall. “Our sons and brothers went like children to the Stone House of the white man. Their hands were stretched before them, their muskets hung empty from their shoulders, their bowstrings were loosened; the calumet was in their hands. But the sons of Onontio lied as their fathers had taught them. They took the calumet; they called the Onondagas into their great lodge; and in the sleep of the white man’s fire-water they chained them. Five score Onondagas have gone to be slaves to the Great-Chief-Across-the-Water, who loves his children and is kind to them, and would take them all under his arm where no storm can harm them. My brothers of the Long House have heard the promises of Onontio, and they have seen the fork in his tongue. And so they choose this time to speak of corn and squaws and children.” The keen, closely set eyes slowly lowered and swept around the circle. “Is this the time to speak of corn? Our Manitou has sent this Great Mountain into our country. He has placed him in our hands so that we may strike, so that we may tell the white man with our 251 muskets that our Manitou is stern and just, and that no Iroquois will listen to the idle words of a double tongue.”
He paused, readjusted his blanket, and then stood motionless, that all might digest his words. Then, after a long wait, he went on:––