Having performed all these introductory formalities, he stood firm and erect, though perfectly easy and unconstrained, and with a bold expression of countenance, loud voice, and emphatical gesticulation, he thus addressed the council. "Fathers, brothers, chiefs, warriors, and brave men. You are all great men. I am a poor obscure individual. It has, however, become my duty to inform you, that the chiefs and warriors of my nation, sometime ago, held a council for the purpose of concerting measures, to terminate amicably, the cruel and unwelcome war, that has so long existed between us, and chose me, all insignificant as I am, to {36} bring to you this pipe which I hold in my hand. I have visited your village, that we might all smoke from the same pipe, and eat from the same bowl, with the same spoon, in token of our future union in friendship. "On approaching your village, my friends and relatives, I thought I had not long to live. I expected that you would kill me, and these poor men who have followed me. But I received encouragement from the reflection, that if it should be my fate to die to-day, I would not have to die to-morrow, and I relied firmly upon the Master of life. "Nor was this anticipation of death unwarranted by precedent. You may recollect that five winters ago, six warriors of my nation came to you, as I have now done, and that you killed them all, but one, who had the good fortune to escape. This circumstance was vivid in my memory when I yesterday viewed your village in the distance; said I, those warriors who preceded me in the attempt to accomplish this desirable object, although they were greater and more brave than I, yet were they killed by those whom they came to conciliate, and why shall not I share their fate; if so, my bones will bleach near theirs. If, on the contrary, I should escape death, I will visit the bones of my friends. The oldest of my followers here, was father-in-law to the chief of those slaughtered messengers; he is poor and infirm, and has followed me with difficulty; his relatives, also, are poor, and have been long lamenting the loss of the chief you killed. I hope you will have pity on him, and give him a pair of mockasins (meaning a horse) to return home with, for he cannot walk. Two or three others of my companions are also in want of mockasins for their journey homeward.