"I made this speech to him," the half-king answered with a smile; and he proceeded to rehearse his address to the French commander. As Washington preserved the speech of Tanacharisson, together with the French general's reply, we furnish the remainder of the interview from that valuable document: "Fathers, I am come to tell you your own speeches, what your own mouths have declared. "Fathers, you, in former days, set a silver basin before us, wherein there was the leg of a beaver, and desired all the nations to come and eat of it,--to eat in peace and plenty, and not to be churlish to one another; and that if any such person should be found to be a disturber, I here lay down by the edge of the dish a rod, which you must scourge them with; and if your father should get foolish, in my old days, I desire you may use it upon me as well as others. "Now, fathers, it is you who are the disturbers in this land, by coming and building your towns, and taking it away unknown to us, and by force. "Fathers, we kindled a fire a long time ago at a place called Montreal, where we desired you to stay, and not to come and intrude upon our land. I now desire you may dispatch to that place; for be it known to you, fathers, that this is our land, and not yours. "Fathers, I desire you may hear me in civilness; if not, we must handle that rod which was laid down for the use of obstreperous. If you had come in a peaceable manner, like our brothers, the English, we would not have been against your trading with us as they do; but to come, fathers, and build houses upon our land, and to take it by force, is what we cannot submit to. "Fathers, both you and the English are white; we live in a country between; therefore the land belongs to neither one nor the other. But the Great Being above allowed it to be a place of residence for us; So, fathers, I desire you to withdraw, as I have done our brothers, the English; for I will keep you at arm's length. I lay this down as a trial for both, to see which will have the greatest regard to it, and that side we will stand by, and make equal sharers with us. Our brothers, the English, have heard this, and I come now to tell it to you, for I am not afraid to discharge you off this land." This, he said, was the substance of what he spoke to the general, who made this reply: