[Footnote 16: The great meeting at Montreal was held on Aug. 4, 1701. The deed of cession referred to in the text was dated July 19, 1701.] [Footnote 17: See above, p. 111.] [Sidenote: _The Iroquois cede their hunting-grounds to the King of England._] They sent representatives of all their nations to Albany, and there, on July 19, 1701, ceded to the King of England their 'beaver hunting-ground,' retaining for themselves the right of free hunting. The deed was of the most formal character, attested by the totem marks of all the Five Nations.[18] It is an interesting document, setting forth that the Iroquois had already subjected themselves and their lands 'on this side of Cataraqui (Ontario) lake wholly to the Crown of {122} England,' and conveying to the King a wide area to the north of the lake, which the Five Nations claimed as their hunting-ground in right of conquest. The tract was estimated at 800 miles in length by 400 in breadth, extending on the north to Lake Superior, on the west to Chicago, and it specifically included Detroit,[19] the French designs on which were stated as the reason for making the cession. A white man's hand must have drawn the deed. It gave away the Iroquois entirely. Hitherto they had stubbornly rejected any English claim to sovereignty. Brother the Governor of New York had been, but not father, and no allegiance had been offered to the King of England; but in the conveyance William III figured as 'the great lord and master' of the Five Nations, and on paper the acknowledgement of British sovereignty was complete. [Footnote 18: A certified copy in manuscript sent home at the time may be seen at the Record Office, and a printed copy is included in the New York documents.] [Footnote 19: Spoken of in the deed in one place as 'Tiengsachrondio alias Fort de Tret.'] It was a piece of parchment only, and as such and no more the Iroquois probably regarded it; but it embodied a small element of fact. These hardheaded, hardhanded Indians were gradually being worn down by the white men on either side, owing such measure of independence as they still retained not so much to their own fighting strength as to the constant enmity between Great Britain and France. When war broke out again, after Queen Anne's accession, they remained for the most part neutral; what they had claimed and conveyed as their hunting-ground passed more and more under French control, while, as the result of Marlborough's victories on the other side of the Atlantic, their own land and its cantons was awarded to Great Britain in 1713 by the Treaty of Utrecht.[20] [Footnote 20: Clause xv of the Treaty of Utrecht ran as follows: 'The subjects of France inhabiting Canada, and others, shall hereafter give no hinderance or molestation to the Five Nations or Cantons of Indians subject to the dominion of Great Britain nor to the other natives of America who are friends to the same.']