dered with gold fringe.
Some wore brooches and rings in their noses. Among them were handsome
faces and erect and noble forms.

In the center of the plain stood a great stack of wood and green boughs
of spruce and balsam built up in layers for the evening council fire.

Old Kiodote knew Solomon and remembered Jack, whom he had seen in the
great council at Albany in 1761.

"He says your name was 'Boiling Water,'" Solomon said to Jack after a
moment's talk with the chief.

"He has a good memory," the young man answered.

The two white men were invited to take part in the games. All the
warriors had heard of Solomon's skill with a rifle. "Son of the
Thunder," they called him in the League of the Iroquois. The red men
gathered in great numbers to see him shoot. Again, as of old, they
were thrilled by his feats with the rifle, but when Jack began his
quick and deadly firing, crushing butternuts thrown into the air, with
rifle and pistol, a kind of awe possessed the crowd. Many came and
touched him and stared into his face and called him "The Brother of
Death."

3

Solomon's speech that evening before the council fire impressed the
Indians. He had given much thought to its composition and Jack had
helped him in the invention of vivid phrases loved by the red men. He
addressed them in the dialect of the Senecas, that being the one with
which he was most familiar. He spoke of the thunder cloud of war
coming up in the east and the cause of it and begged them to fight with
their white neighbors, under the leadership of The Great Spirit for the
justice which He loved. Solomon had brought them many gifts in token
of the friendship of himself and his people.

Old Theandenaga, of the Mohawks, answered him in a speech distinguished
by its noble expressions of good will and by an eloquent, but not
ill-tempered, account of the wrongs of the red men. He laid particular
stress on the corrupting of the young braves with fire-water.

"Let all bad feeling be buried in a deep pool," Solomon answered.
"There are bad white men and there are bad Indians but they are not
many. The good men are like the leaves of the forest--you can not
count them--but the bad man is like the scent pedlar [the skunk].
Though he is but one, he can make much trouble."

Every judgment of the league in council had to be unanimous. They
voted in sections, whereupon each section sent its representative into
the higher council and no verdict