empire I ever heard of; because the League which bound these nations into a confederacy, and which was called by them “The Great Peace,” had been established, not for the purpose of waging war, but to prevent it.

Until men of my own blood and colour had taught them treachery and ferocity and deceit, they had been, as a confederacy, guiltless of these things. Before the advent of the white man, a lie among the Iroquois was punished by death; also, among them, unchastity was scarcely known so rare was it. Even now, that brutal form of violence toward women, white or red, either in time of war or peace, was absolutely non-existent. No captive woman needed to fear that. Only the painted Tories — the blue-eyed Indians — remained to teach the Iroquois that such wickedness existed. For, as they said of