DE LA BARRE’s EXPEDITION TO HUNGRY BAY.

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15® and last Word. Prevent the Christians of the Sault and of the Mountain coining any moreamong us, to seduce our people to Montreal ; let them cease to dismember our country as they doevery year.

Answer. It is not my children of the Sault nor of the Mountain who dismember your country;it is yourselves who dismember it by your drunkenness and superstitions. Besides, there is fullliberty to come and reside among us; no person is retained by force.

The General added two presents to the above.

By the first he said: You see the consideration which I have for the request you have made me.I ask you in return, if the Seneca, Cayuga or any other commit a similar insult against me, that youfirst give him some sense, and if he will not hear you, that you abandon him as one disaffected.

By the last belt, he exhorted them to listen not to evil sayings, and told them to conduct Tegan-nehout back to Seneca and to inform these of the above conclusions.

M. DE MEULLES TO THE MINISTER.

[From the same.]

My Lord—I thought you would be impatient to learn the success and result of the war the Generalhad undertaken against the Iroquois which rendered it necessary for him to call a part of the peopleof this country together and make all necessary preparation, at his Majesty’s expense, for this expe-dition. The troops have been as far as a place called La Famine, thirty leagues beyond Fort Fron-tenac. The army consisted of nine hundred French and three hundred Savages, and from theNiagara side there was another army of six hundred men, one third of whom were French and theremainder Ottawas and Hurons, amounting in all to eighteen hundred men.

What Indians there were evinced the best disposition to fight the Iroquois to the death. Sieur dela Durantaye who brought the last six hundred men from Missilimakinak, has informed us that helearned from a Miami Chief that more than a thousand Illinois were coming to our aid on learningthat we were about to fight the Iroquois , to such a degree are they their irreconcileable enemies.Certainly, never was there remarked a better disposition to fight and conquer them and purge thecountry of that nation which will be eternally our enemy. All the French breathed nothing butwar, and though they saw themselves obliged to abandon their families, they consoled themselveswith the hope of liberating them by one victory from a nation so odious as the Iroquois , at whosehands they constantly dreaded ambushes and destruction. But the General did not think proper topush matters any farther, and without any necessity sent Sieur Le Moyne to the said Iroquois to treatot peace at a time when every one was in good health, and when all necessary provision was madeof food, &c. to dare every enterprize; and finally after various comings and goings on one side andthe other, the General concluded peace such as you will see by the articles which I take the libertyto send you as written by the hand of his Secretary.

This peace, my Lord, has astonished all the officers who had the command in that army and allthose who composed it, who have testified so deep a displeasure and so sovereign a contempt for theGeneral’s person that they could not prevent themselves evincing it to him. I assure you, myLord, that had I strayed ever so little from my duty and not exhibited exteriorly, since his return,the respect I owe Ins character, the whole world would have risen against him and would have beenguilty of some excess.