“My Lord Governor!” said the Abbé, placing his great roll on the table, “I thank you for admitting the missionaries to the Council. We appear less as churchmen on this occasion than as the King's ambassadors, although I trust that all we have done will redound to God's glory and the spread of religion among the heathen. These belts of wampum are tokens of the treaties we have made with the numerous and warlike tribes of the great West. I bear to the Governor pledges of alliance from the Miamis and Shawnees of the great valley of the Belle Rivière, which they call the Ohio. I am commissioned to tell Onontio that they are at peace with the King and at war with his enemies from this time forth forever. I have set up the arms of France on the banks of the Belle Rivière, and claimed all its lands and waters as the just appanage of our sovereign, from the Alleghanies to the plantations of Louisiana. The Sacs and Foxes, of the Mississippi; the Pottawatomies, Winnebagoes, and Chippewas of a hundred bands who fish in the great rivers and lakes of the West; the warlike Ottawas, who have carried the Algonquin tongue to the banks of Lake Erie,--in short, all enemies of the Iroquois have pledged themselves to take the field whenever the Governor shall require the axe to be dug up and lifted against the English and the Five Nations. Next summer the chiefs of all these tribes will come to Quebec, and ratify in a solemn General Council the wampums they now send by me and the other missionaries, my brothers in the Lord!” The Abbé, with the slow, formal manner of one long accustomed to the speech and usages of the Indians, unrolled the belts of wampum, many fathoms in length, fastened end to end to indicate the length of the alliance of the various tribes with France. The Abbé interpreted their meaning, and with his finger pointed out the totems or signs manual--usually a bird, beast, or fish--of the chiefs who had signed the roll. The Council looked at the wampums with intense interest, well knowing the important part these Indians were capable of assuming in the war with England. “These are great and welcome pledges you bring us, Abbé,” said the Governor; “they are proofs at once of your ability and of your zealous labors for the King. A great public duty has been ably discharged by you and your fellow-missionaries, whose loyalty and devotion to France it shall be my pleasure to lay before His Majesty. The Star of Hope glitters in the western horizon, to encourage us under the clouds of the eastern. Even the loss of Acadia, should it be final, will be compensated by the acquisition of the boundless fertile territories of the Belle Riviere and of the Illinois. The Abbé Piquet and his fellow-missionaries have won the hearts of the native tribes of the West. There is hope now, at last, of uniting New France with Louisiana in one unbroken chain of French territory.