In strange contradiction to the Canadian governor's words, Alexander McKee came to the Rapids of the Miami in the month of April to hold a council with the Wabash confederates. Thither came Brant, summoned from Buffalo Creek. McKee waited three months for the gathering of the tribes, but about July first they were all assembled. "Not only the Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, Ottawas, Potawatomis and others," says Roosevelt, "who had openly taken the hatchet against the Americans, but also representatives of the Six Nations, and tribes of savages from lands so remote that they carried no guns; but warred with bows, spears, and tomahawks, and were clad in buffalo-robes instead of blankets. McKee in his speech to them did not incite them to war. On the contrary, he advised them, in guarded language, to make peace with the United States; but only upon terms consistent with their "honor and interest." He assured them that, whatever they did, he wished to know what they desired; and that the sole purpose of the British was to promote the welfare of the confederated Indians. Such very cautious advice was not of a kind to promote peace; and the goods furnished the savages at the council included not only cattle, corn and tobacco, but also quantities of powder and balls." England was determined that the Miami chieftains should command the valleys of the Wabash and the Maumee, and while breathing forth accents to deceive the credulous, were arming the red men with the instruments of war. On the sixteenth of May, the American prisoner, Thomas Rhea, captured by a party of Delawares and "Munsees" arrives at Sandusky. An Indian captain is there with one hundred and fifty warriors. Parties are coming in daily with prisoners and scalps. Alarm comes in on the twenty-fourth of May that a large body of American troops in three columns are moving towards the Miami towns. The Indians burn their houses and move to Roche de Bout, on the Maumee. Here are Colonels Joseph Brant and Alexander McKee, with Captains Bunbury and Silvie, of the British troops. They are living in clever cabins built by the Potawatomi and other Indians, eighteen miles above Lake Erie. They have great stores of corn, pork, peas and other provisions, which, together with arms and ammunition, they are daily issuing to the Indians. Savages are coming in in parties of one, two, three, four and five hundred at a time, and receiving supplies from McKee, and going up the Maumee to the Miami villages. Pirogues, loaded with the munitions of war are being rowed up the same stream by French-Canadians. They are preparing for an American attack.