and the Deputy of the Onontague Iroquois, it is easy to infer that these people are inclined to follow the object of their enterprize, which is to destroy all the Nations in alliance with us, the one after the other, whilst they keep us in uncertainty and with folded arms ; so that, after having deprived us of

the entire fur trade which they wish alone to carry on with the English and Dutch established at Manate and Orange, they may attack us isolated, and ruin the Colony in obliging it to contract itself and abandon all the separate settlements, and thus arrest the cultivation of the soil which cannot

bear grain nor be cultivated as meadow except in quarters where it is of good quality.

As he is not informed in the short time since his arrival from France, of the state of these tribes and of the Colony, he requests them to acquaint him with all they know of these things in order that he may inform his Majesty thereof, and represent to him the necessities of this Colony, for the purpose as well of averting this war as for terminating and finishing it advantageously should it be

Whereupon the Meeting after being informed by the Rev d Jesuit fathers of what had passed during five years among the Iroquois Nations, whence they had recently arrived, and by M. Dollier of what occurred for some years at Montreal, remained unanimously and all of one accord, that the English have omitted nothing for four years to induce the Iroquois, either by the great number of presents which they made them or by the cheapness with which they gave them provisions and especially guns, powder and lead, to declare war against us, and which the Iroquois necessary to wage it ;