he fashion of the frontier, some sort of _menage_ was
inaugurated for Law and his party. Here they lived through the rest of
the winter and through the long, slow spring.

And then set on again the heats of summer, and there came apace the time
agreed upon, in the month of August, for the widely heralded assembling
of the tribes for the Great Peace; one of the most picturesque, as it
was one of the most remarkable and significant meetings of widely
diverse human beings, that ever took place within the ken of history.

They came, these savages, now first owning the strength of the invading
white men, from all the far and unknown corners of the Western
wilderness. They came afoot, and with little trains of dogs, in single
canoes, in little groups and growing flotillas and vast fleets of
canoes, pushing on and on, down stream, following the tide of the furs
down this pathway of more than a thousand miles. The Iroquois, for once
mindful of a promise, came in a compact fleet, a hundred canoes strong,
and they stalked about the island for days, naked, stark, gigantic,
contemptuous of white and red men, of friend and foe alike. The
scattered Algonquins, whose villages had been razed by these same savage
warriors, came down by scores out of the Northern woods, along little,
unknown streams, and over paths with which none but themselves were
acquainted. From the North, group joined group, and village added itself
to village, until a vast body of people had assembled, whose numbers
would have been hard to estimate, and who proved difficult enough to
accommodate. Yet from the farther West, adding their numbers to those
already gathered, came the fleets of the driven Hurons, and the
Ojibways, and the Miamis, and the Outagamies, and the Ottawas, the
Menominies and the Mascoutins--even the Illini, late objects of the
wrath of the Five Nations. The whole Western wilderness poured forth its
savage population, till all the shores of the St. Lawrence seemed one
vast aboriginal encampment. These massed at the rendezvous about the
puny settlement of Montreal in such numbers that, in comparison, the
white population seemed insignificant. Then, had there been a Pontiac or
a Tecumseh, had there been one leader of the tribes able to teach the
strength of unity, the white settlements of upper America had indeed
been utterly destroyed. Naught but ancient tribal jealousies held the
savages apart.

With these tribesmen were many prisoners, capti