Note 440 — Chapter XXVII · 1764. BOUQUET FORCES THE DELAWARES AND SHAWANOES TO SUE FOR PEACE.

The Shawanoe speaker, in expressing his intention of disarming his enemy by laying aside his own designs of war, makes use of an unusual metaphor. To bury the hatchet is the figure in common use on such occasions, but he adopts a form of speech which he regards as more significant and emphatic,—that of throwing it up to the Great Spirit. Unwilling to confess that he yields through fear of the enemy, he professes to wish for peace merely for the sake of his women and children.

At the great council at Lancaster, in 1762, a chief of the Oneidas, anxious to express, in the strongest terms, the firmness of the peace which had been concluded, had recourse to the following singular figure: “In the country of the Oneidas there is a great pine-tree, so huge and old that half its branches are dead with time. I tear it up by the roots, and, looking down into the hole, I see a dark stream of water, flowing with a strong current, deep under ground. Into this stream I fling the hatchet, and the current sweeps it away, no man knows whither. Then I plant the tree again where it stood before, and thus this war will be ended for ever.”