ons neutral in the event of another war;
the English wished to spur them to active hostility; but while the
former pursued their purpose with energy and skill, the efforts of the
latter were intermittent and generally feeble.

"The Nations," writes Schuyler, "are full of factions." There was a
French party and an English party in every town, especially in Onondaga,
the centre of intrigue. French influence was strongest at the western
end of the confederacy, among the Senecas, where the French officer
Joncaire, an Iroquois by adoption, had won many to France; and it was
weakest at the eastern end, among the Mohawks, who were nearest to the
English settlements. Here the Jesuits had labored long and strenuously
in the work of conversion, and from time to time they had led their
numerous proselytes to remove to Canada, where they settled at St.
Louis, or Caughnawaga, on the right bank of the St. Lawrence, a little
above Montreal, where their descendants still remain. It is said that at
the beginning of the eighteenth century two-thirds of the Mohawks had
thus been persuaded to cast their lot with the French, and from enemies
to become friends and allies. Some of the Oneidas and a few of the other
Iroquois nations joined them and strengthened the new mission
settlement; and the Caughnawagas afterwards played an important part
between the rival European colonies.

The "Far Indians," or "Upper Nations," as the French called them,
consisted of the tribes of the Great Lakes and adjacent regions,
Ottawas, Pottawattamies, Sacs, Foxes, Sioux, and many more. It was from
these that Canada drew the furs by which she lived. Most of them were
nominal friends and allies of the French, who in the interest of trade
strove to keep these wild-cats from tearing one another's throats, and
who were in constant alarm lest they should again come to blows with
their old enemies, the Five Nations, in which case they would call on
Canada for help, thus imperilling those pacific relations with the
Iroquois confederacy which the French were laboring constantly to
secure.

In regard to the "Far Indians," the French, the English, and the Five
Iroquois Nations all had distinct and opposing interests. The French
wished to engross their furs, either by inducing the Indians to bring
them down to Montreal, or by sending traders into their country to buy
them. The English, with a similar object, wished to divert the "Far
Indians" from Montreal and draw the