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Updated: June 10, 2025
They heard a shrill whoop; an Indian came running from Wakatomica. The heart of Simon Butler sank again. He did not like whoops in that tone of voice, and the Indian was signaling them. "It's the distress halloo. We are summoned to the council-house," said Simon Girty. "We must go at once." They and their friend Red Pole, a Shawnee, went to meet the runner.
He was taken suddenly ill at the Council-house, of cholera morbus and returned home, saying to his wife, "I am sick; I could not stay at the council, I shall never recover." He then took off his rich costume, and laid it carefully away, reclined upon his couch, and did not rise again till morning. His wife prepared him medicine, which he took, but said, "it will do no good. I shall die."
Children played about the doorways; boys in canoes shot down the shimmering reaches of the river; warriors congregated in the council-house and the half-open buildings surrounding the "beloved square," and in its sunny sandy spaces sundry old men were placidly engaged in the game of "roll the bullet."
Between these lines, for more than half a mile to the village, the wretched prisoner was doomed to run for his life, exposed to such injury as his tormentors could inflict as he passed. If he succeeded in reaching the council-house alive, it would prove an asylum to him for the present.
The council-house was a hundred paces or more in length. The frame was of tall hickory saplings planted in the ground in two rows, with the tops bent over and lashed together in the form of an arch. The building was not more than fifteen yards wide. The lower part of the outer wall was of logs, the upper part and the roof of bark.
The moment for starting arrived, the great drum at the door of the council-house was struck; and Kenton sprang forward in the race. He, however, avoided the row of his enemies, and, turning to the east, drew the whole party in pursuit of him.
Their meetings were held without the walls of the fort, on a level plain of white clover, under a grand old elm. Beneath its mighty branches a hundred people could without crowding find refuge from the noon-day sun; it was a fit council-house for this pioneer legislature of game hunters and Indian fighters.
Captains Lewis and Clarke, who went on shore one after the other, were met on landing by ten well-dressed young men, who took them up in a robe, highly decorated, and carried them to a large council-house, where they were placed on a dressed buffalo-skin by the side of the grand chief.
Each manager at this time carries a dried tortoise or turtle shell, containing a few beans, which he frequently rubs on the walls of the houses, both inside and out. This kind of manoeuvering by the committee continues two or three days, during which time the people at the council-house recreate themselves by dancing.
Having performed this virtuous act, the Senecas moved eastward to the long council-house of the Six Nations, which was located in the country of the Onondagas, where they were to receive their presents and share in the deliberations of their confederacy.
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