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 ;

have been two or three times ready to undertake ; But having reflected that, should they attack us before they had ruined in fact the allied nations, their neighbours, these would rally and, uniting together, would fall on them

and destroy their villages whilst occupied against us, they judged it

wiser to defer and amuse us whilst they were attacking those Nations, and having commenced, with that view, to attack the Illinois last year, they had so great an advantage over them that besides three

or four hundred killed, they took nine hundred of them prisoners, so that marching this year with

a corps of twelve hundred men, well armed and good warriors, there was no doubt but they would

exterminate them altogether and attack, on their return, the Miamis and the Kiskakous and by their

and the lakes Heri6 and Huron, the Bay des Puans and thereby deprive us of all the trade drawn from that country by destroying, at the same time, all the Christian Missions established among those nations and therefore it became necessary to make a last effort to prevent them ruining those Nations as they had formerly the Algonquins, the Andastez, the Loups (Mohegans), the Abenaquis and others, the remains of whom we have at the That to accomplish settlements of Sillery, Laurette, Lake Champlain and others scattered among us. that object, the state of the Colony was to be considered, and the means to be most usefully adopted against the enemy; that as to the Colony we could bring together a thousand good men, bearing arms and accustomed to manage canoes like the Iroquois, but when drawn from their settlements, it must be considered that the cultivation of the soil would be arrested during the whole period of their abdefeat render themselves masters of Missilimackina