tion of the plain where the religious ceremonies of the
Onondagas were performed, and where their council fires were lighted.

In the interval of eighteen seasons, that had rolled away since the
erection of the fortress at Oswego, the character of the red men of
the valley had undergone a great and disastrous change.

From the most peaceable, inoffensive, and happy, of all the sons of
the forest, they had become the most dissolute, quarrelsome, and
drunken. They were constantly seen about the villages of the whites
begging, bartering every thing they possessed, and performing every
drudgery, however servile or degrading, for the strong waters of the
pale-face. The free and lofty spirit that once animated the nation was
gone; a spirit which, though it had not been often aroused to action,
was yet susceptible of the highest efforts of Indian heroism. Their
encounters with the neighbouring tribes had not been frequent, yet,
when they did take place, the Onondagas had displayed a spirit of
intrepid daring, of craft, of patience, and of hardihood in suffering,
that had seldom been surpassed among the nations of the forest. But
now the spirit of the tribe was broken, and they were no longer
numbered among the fierce resenters of wrong. The Oneidas trespassed
upon their hunting-grounds and slaughtered their people, yet their
warriors were too debased and abject to avenge the insult, or wipe
away the memory of their wrongs with blood. They were, evidently,
hastening to ruin. Their numbers were rapidly diminishing, as well
from the usual effects of intoxication as from the exposures and
accidents to which they were subjected from its influence; and, more
than all, from the constant quarrels and murders which daily took
place among them. In a few more years, if the course they then pursued
had been continued, the whole tribe must have become utterly extinct;
their name existing but in the recollection of the story-teller, and
the green turf alone marking the lands they once inhabited. It
fortunately happened, however, at the period alluded to, that the
prophets, together with a few of the elder chiefs, who had stood aloof
from the contaminating influence of the white men, were enabled to
arouse the almost extinguished energy of the people, so far as to
assemble them round a council-fire, that was lighted at early dawn one
frosty morning, in the Moon of Falling Leaves, on the Prophets' Plain.
The whole tribe was called together.