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It took the expedition nearly a month to reach the first village of the Mo hawks, but only to find it deserted. It was the same result in three other villages visited by the French. The Mohawks had made preparations for defence, but their courage failed them as they heard of the formidable character of the force that had come into the country.
Like all the other Indians in North America the Mohawks personified and worshipped the sun, which to them was the mighty Dweller in Heaven, almost the same as Manitou, a great spirit to whom sacrifices and thanksgivings were to be made.
"This is the tale of the Eight Thunders, told in the oldest tongue of the confederacy and to all ensigns of the three clans ere the Erians sued for peace. Therefore it is true. "Long ago, the Holder of the Heavens made a very poisonous blue otter, and the Mohawks killed it and threw its body into the lake.
The sentinels were not on guard that morning, though, warned by the Mohawks, the people had been looking for the attack all winter long. What is to be said of these tragedies?
Along this stream and the upper waters of the Hudson they made their first abode; and here they remained until, as their historian quaintly and truly records, "their language was altered." The Huron speech became the Iroquois tongue, in the form in which it is spoken by the Caniengas, or Mohawks.
The latter said that since his return from Moraviantown, and the hunting season having commenced, many of his braves were absent, but he would pledge the Mohawks would muster, when wanted, over one hundred tried men. Thanking the chiefs for their assurances, Brock continued: "The enemy has an army of over 6,000.
In the war of the revolution the Mohawks sided with England, and Brant was given a colonel's commission. He remained after the war a pensioner of the British government, and General Arthur St. Clair is authority for the statement that he received an annual stipend of four hundred pounds sterling.
The dark scout came back about the middle of the afternoon, and he told Colden and Willet that he had seen nothing of Daganoweda and his Mohawks, though there were indications in the forest that they had defeated the Hurons the night before. But St. Luc Was at hand, not much more than a mile away, where he had pitched a camp.
The sixty canoes left Quebec with more firing of guns for a God-speed; but at Lake St. Peter the Mohawks ambushed the flotilla. The enterprise of exploring the Great Beyond was abandoned by all the French but two. Gareau, who was mortally wounded on the Ottawa, probably by a Frenchman or renegade hunter, died at Montreal; and Dreuillettes did not go farther than Lake Nipissing.
He and Blackstaffe held many conferences through the day, and they longed for the presence of Simon Girty, who was farther west. That night an Onondaga runner arrived from one of the farthest villages of the Mohawks, far east toward Albany.
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