How strictly in spirit these injunctions were followed, and with what good effect, their whole history shows. A notable instance of the readiness and ingenuity of their statesmen in finding the means of public reconciliation in such cases is given in the Jesuit narrative. On the 24th of July, 1657, a great council was held at Onondaga to consider three matters, all of special import. First in order was the necessity of appeasing a threatened quarrel between two of the leading nations, the Senecas and the Caniengas, caused by a misadventure in which a Seneca "captain" had been killed by some warriors of the eastern nation. Next in importance was the reception of a large party of Frenchmen, headed by Father Francis le Mercier, the Superior of the Jesuit missionaries in Canada, who had come to form a settlement among the Iroquois. And, finally, they had to prepare the plan and the means for an expedition against some hostile tribes. Before the meeting of the Council the Frenchmen had paid a formal visit to the Seneca delegates, whom they found "filling the air with songs of mourning" for their slaughtered chief, and had manifested their sympathy by a present, "to alleviate the grief" of the mourners. This incident seems to have suggested to the assembled councillors a method of effecting--or at least of announcing--the desired accommodation, and of paying at the same time a happy compliment to their reverend visitors. By common consent the affair was referred to the arbitrament of the Father Superior, by whom the difference was promptly settled. [Footnote: On the: Grand conseil le 24 du mois de Juillet, ou toutes les Nations remisent entre les mains d'Achiendase qui est nostre Père Superieur le diffrend Centre les Sonnontoüeronnons et les Agnieronnons, qui fait bien et terminé.--_Relation of_ 1657, p. 16.] It was not necessary for the politic senators to inform their gratified visitors that the performance in which they thus took part was merely a formality which ratified, or rather proclaimed, a foregone conclusion. The reconciliation which was prescribed by their constitution had undoubtedly been arranged by previous conferences, after their custom in such matters, before the meeting of the Council. [Footnote: For a curious instance of the manner in which questions to be apparently decided by a Council were previously settled between the parties, see the _Life of Zeisberger_, p. 190: "Gietterowane was the speaker on one side, Zeisberger on the other. These two consulted together privately,--Zeisberger unfolding the import of the strings [of wampum which he had brought as ambassador] and Gietterowane committing to memory what he said."] So effective was this provision of their constitution that for more than three centuries this main cause of Indian wars was rendered innocuous, and the "Great Peace" remained undisturbed. This proud averment of their annalists, confirmed as it is for more than half the period by the evidence of their white