f
half Indian, being the son of a French officer and a Seneca squaw,
speaking fluently his maternal tongue, and, like his father, holding an
important place in all dealings between the French and the tribes who
spoke dialects of the Iroquois. On this occasion his success was not
complete. It needed all his art to prevent the alarmed savages from
taking to the woods. Sometimes, however, Celoron succeeded in gaining
an audience; and at a village of Senecas called La Paille Coupee he read
them a message from La Galissoniere couched in terms sufficiently
imperative: "My children, since I was at war with the English, I have
learned that they have seduced you; and not content with corrupting your
hearts, have taken advantage of my absence to invade lands which are not
theirs, but mine; and therefore I have resolved to send you Monsieur de
Celoron to tell you my intentions, which are that I will not endure the
English on my land. Listen to me, children; mark well the word that I
send you; follow my advice, and the sky will always be calm and clear
over your villages. I expect from you an answer worthy of true
children." And he urged them to stop all trade with the intruders, and
send them back to whence they came. They promised compliance; "and,"
says the chaplain, Bonnecamp, "we should all have been satisfied if we
had thought them sincere; but nobody doubted that fear had extorted
their answer."

Four leagues below French Creek, by a rock scratched with Indian
hieroglyphics, they buried another leaden plate. Three days after, they
reached the Delaware village of Attique, at the site of Kittanning,
whose twenty-two wigwams were all empty, the owners having fled. A
little farther on, at an old abandoned village of Shawanoes, they found
six English traders, whom they warned to begone, and return no more at
their peril. Being helpless to resist, the traders pretended obedience;
and Celoron charged them with a letter to the Governor of Pennsylvania,
in which he declared that he was "greatly surprised" to find Englishmen
trespassing on the domain of France. "I know," concluded the letter,
"that our Commandant-General would be very sorry to be forced to use
violence; but his orders are precise, to leave no foreign traders within
the limits of his government."[6]

[Footnote 6: Celoron, _Journal_. Compare the letter as translated in
_N.Y. Col. Docs_., VI. 532; also _Colonial Records of Pa_., V. 325.]

On the next day they reached