The pipe had passed around the circle of hideous. and paint-begrimed warriors, when the leader of the band arose and harangued his followers.

At last the conference was ended. Darkness settled again upon the face of the surrounding waters, and the shore of the little isle was swarming with a horde of bloodthirsty braves in full war array, who were now to re-embark upon their terrible mission of rapine and wholesale murder.

Very soon all were afloat, headed for the low-lying shore of Sea-wan-ha-ka, to the south.

In the darkness and stillness of the midnight hour the belated travellers and settlers who were abroad were petrified with terror when a fierce, long-drawn yell broke startlingly upon the air:

"Whoo-0-0-0-0-0ot-a-loo-o-o-oot!" the warcry of the renowned and dreaded Mohawks.

CHAPTER XXXV

SINE-RONG-NI-RESE

"Hand to hand, and foot to foot,
Nothing there, save death, was mute;
Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry
For quarter, or for victory."

PON a low-lying strip of territory, almost
devoid of hillocks, if we except the bluff
that lined the shores, was the country of

the Canarsees, comprising a few square miles, situated at the extreme southwestern end of Sea-wan-ha-ka.

They were a small but valiant tribe of red men, who were found here by Hendrick Hudson when that intrepid mariner's Half-Moon was first kissed by the waters of the noble river that still bears his

name.

Like the Rockaways, their neighbours on the east, the Canarsees were a race of fishermen, or more properly, wampum-makers, as the south and west shores of their domain were washed by the waves of the Atlantic and indented by numerous creeks and inlets that teemed with every variety of shells from which wampum was wrought.

The Canarsees were also cunning hunters, and conducted a not inconsiderable commerce with their red brethren inland, in dried fish and dried clams.

As one of the thirteen confederated tribes of Seawan-ha-ka, the Canarsees had long paid tribute to the Grand Sachem of Montauk.

When the Mohawks made the conquest of the Hudson, or North River country, and drove the Mohicans, or River Indians, to the eastward, they descended upon the Canarsees and conquered them.

The unwillingness of the latter to engage in a war with the fierce and warlike people who outnumbered them ten to one was but natural, as such a war would mean the loss of their identity and independence and an exile from their beloved home, by being forced to amalgamate with some other minor tribe of Sea-wan-ha-ka, with the loss of the rich harvest their waters yielded them in the annual run of the myriad shoals of salmon and shad. These considerations, together with the fact that they were free from territorial disturbances on two sides, and immunity from interference by their single neighbours to the eastward, determined them to submission.

On the other hand, while the Mohawks were easily the masters of the situation, they could not profitably or safely colonise the territory, if acquired, for they were neither fishers nor makers of wampum. Hence, we find that at the time of the advent of white settlers the Canarsees were under unwilling tribute to the Mohawks, who demanded it with remorseless exaction.

In course of time the influx of whites from England, Holland and France, and their questionable and unscrupulous methods of dealing with the Indians, not only betrayed their too apparent greed, but alarmed and aroused the entire family of aborigines with whom they had come in contact.

At this period the different tribes were designated as "friendly" or "hostile," and every colony was the theatre of Indian uprisings and attacks, or of massacres by the whites, and this unhappy state of

affairs had a depressing effect upon the industries of the Canarsees, whose trade in wampum and dried fish was cut off with the tribes living in the interior.

Encroachments by white settlers upon their small, tribal domain, under one pretext or another, had reduced it to less than one-half its original acreage, and from this small residue the game was rapidly disappearing, which caused apprehension and distrust, and more or less disturbance with the neighbouring whites.

The peace-loving Canarsees accepted the inevitable, and, as a means of livelihood, settled down to planting corn. The moons had waxed and waned until the tribute due the Mohawks was payable, and the Canarsees, who were insolvent, by the advice of the whites refused to pay it. This enraged the revengeful Iroquois and sounded the death-knell of the Canarsees.

Accordingly, Sine-rong-ni-rese, the great war Sachem of the Mohawks, resolved to destroy the hapless Canarsees.

It was at the time when the confederated tribes of the Five Nations, inhabiting the country stretching between the Hudson and Ohio Rivers, constituted the league of the Iroquois who were making the conquest of all the surrounding tribes, east, south, and west of them, whose wise men saw, with prophetic vision, the doom of the entire race if the invasion of their country by the pale-faces was not stopped, and the white man driven out or annihilated.

On the night preceding the contemplated attack, after the war-canoes had shot the rapids of Hell Gate and gained the rocky cliffs of Sea-wan-ha-ka, one of them touched the base of a precipitous bluff long enough for two lithe savages to alight. These were scouts who were to report to the war party on