with us to Onnontagu6 at the close of the last summer, and who were cruelly massacred in our arms and in our bosom by the most signal treason imaginable. They then made prisoners of their poor wives and even burned some of them with their children of three and four years, at a slow fire. Tins bloody execution was followed by the murder of three Frenchmen at Montreal by the Oneidas, who scalped them and carried these as if in triumph into their villages in token of declared

war.

This act of hostility having obliged

M Dailleboust, then commanding in this country, to .

cause a dozen of Iroquois, in part Onnontagu<§s and mostly Mohawks, to be arrested and put in irons at Montreal, Three Eivers

and Quebec, where they happened to be at the time, both Iroquois Nations became irritated at this detention of their people, pretending that it was unjust ;

and to cruelly

avenge themselves convoked a secret Council where they formed the scheme of an implacable war against the French.

Yet, they judged it fitting to dissimulate for some time until through the return

of Father Simon Le Moine, then with the Mohawks, they should have obtained the delivery of their folks who were in irons.

In that Council they even looked on our persons as precious hostages,

either for the exchange of some of their tribe who were in prison, or obtainment of whatever pleased

them when within view of our French settlements they should make us feel the effects of their cruelty doubting not that these horrible spectacles and the lamentations of forty and fifty innocent French would touch with compassion and distress the Governor and inhabitants of what place so ;