January 2000
Abenaki Conference with Phineas Stevens
This transcript is from:
Documents Related to the Colonial History
of the State of New York
Vol. X. pg. 252-254
donated by Jeffery Miller - Administrator of Fort #4
NEW YORK COLONIAL MANUSCRIPTS
Conference of Captain Phineas Stevens with the St. Francis Indians
Propositions of the Abenakis of St. Francis to Captain Phineas Stevents, delegate from the Governor of Boston, in presence of the Baron de Longueuil. Governor of Montreal, Commandant of Canada and of the Iroquois of the Sault Saint Louis and of the Lake of the Two Mountains, 5th of July, 1752.
Atiwaneto, Chief Speaker
1 - Brother, We speak to you as if we spoke to your Governor of Boston.
We hear on all sides that this Governor and the Bostonians say that the Abenakis are bad people. 'Tis in vain that we are taxed with having a bad heart; it is you, brother, that always attack us; your mouth is of sugar but your heart of gall; in truth, the moment you begin we are on our guard.
2 - Brothers, We tell you that we seek not war, we ask nothing better than to be quiet, and it depends, Brothers, only on you English, to have peace with us.
3 - We have not yet sold the lands we inhabit, we wish to keep the possession of them. Our elders have been willing to tolerate you, brothers Englishmen, on the seaboard as far as Sawakwato; as that has been so decided, we wish it to be so.
4 - But we will not cede one single inch of the lands we inhabit beyond what has been decided formerly by our fathers.
5 - You have the sea for your share from the place where you reside ; you can trade there; but we expressly forbid you to kill a single Beaver, or to take a single stick of timber on the lands we inhabit; if you want timber we'll sell you some, but you shall not take it without our permission.
6 - Brothers, Who hath authorized you to have those lands surveyed ? We request our brother, the Governor of Boston, to have these Surveyors punished, as we cannot imagine that they have acted by his authority.
7 - Brother, You are therefore masters of the peace that we are to have with you; on condition that you will not encroach on those lands we will be at peace, as the King of France is with the King of Great Britian.
8 - By a Belt.
I repeat to you, Brothers, by this Belt, that it depends on yourselves to be at peace with the Abenakis.
9 - Our Father who is here present has nothing to do with what we say to you; we speak to you of our own accord, and in the name of all our allies; we regard our father, in this instance, only as a witness of our words.
10 - We acknowledge no other boundaries of yours than your settlements whereon you have built, and we will not, under any pretext whatsoever, that you pass beyond them. The lands we possess have been given us by the Master of Life. We acknowledge to hold only from him.
11 - We are entirely free ; we are allies of the King of France, from whom we have received the Faith and all sorts of assistance to our necessities ; we love that Monarch, and we are strongly attached to his interests.
12 - Let us have an answer to the propositions we address you, as soon as possible; take this message in writing to give to your Governor; we, also, shall keep a copy of it to use in case of need.
Without stirring a step it is easy for your Governor to transmit his answer to us; he will have merely too address it to our Father who will have the goodness to send it to us.
13 - Brothers, I shall report your Message to my Governor, and in order that it may not suffer alteration I shall take it in writing. He will transmit his answer to the Baron de Longueuil as you desire.
The English demand of the Abenakis
1 - Brothers Abenakis, I ask you if the attack which your Nation has made these two years, on the English is in consequence of encroachments by the later on your lands ?
2 - Are you satisfied with the death of your people on account of your attacks on the English ?
3 - I know that it is not permitted to go on your lands; those who have been there are young fools, without any character.
The Answer of the Abenakis
1 - Brothers, When peace was concluded we hoped to enjoy it, like the French, but we learned at the same time, that you, English, had killed one of our people, and had hid him under the ice.
We asked you wherefore you killed us ? You answered that you would give us satisfaction, but your ill-will having been sensibly indicated by your inaction, pending seven months, we resolved to avenge ourselves, and to pull down one house.
Since then we have missed one man and one woman belonging to our village; we learned their sad fate only from an Englishwoman, who is at present at our place, who assured us that that man and woman were killed in her presence by Englishmen, and in order to afford us a convincing proof thereof, she gave us a bag which we perfectly recognized as having belonged to those unfortunate people. We felt, as we ought to do, this murder, and avenged it last year.
The two Englishmen that we killed this year on the head waters of our river, and the two others that we have taken prisoners, must attribute their misfortunes to themselves, because they hunted Beaver on our lands, and on this point we repeat to you, with all the firmness we are capable of, that we will kill all the Englishmen we shall find on the lands in our possession.
2 - Our heart is good, and since we struck the blow our thirst for vengeance is extinguished.
3 - Listen, Brothers Englishmen, to what is our Indian custom among ourselves, with persons we would find on the lands we possess ; we should take their game, and if they made any resistance, we would knock them on the head.
How can you suppose, Brothers, that we should suffer you on those lands?
You have only to excite fear in your houses. We are not capable of offering the least insult, but should any of you be found on our lands, they shall die.
The Iroquois to the Abenakis
We have heard, with pleasure, what you said to the English deputy; we are charmed that you have vigorously maintained your rights. We exhort you to keep your word with the English ; should the case require it, we oblige ourselves to aid you with all our might.
We, Pierre Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, Commander of the Royal and Military Order of St. Louis, Governor and Lieutenant-General for the King throughout the entire of New France, the territories and countries of Louisiana,
Certify that the present transcript is conformable to the original remaining in our Secretary's office ; in testimony whereof we have signed these presents, caused the same to be sealed with the seal of our Arms and to be countersigned by your Secretary.
Done at Montreal the 15th of February, 1752.
Signature of the
MARQUIS DE VAUDREUIL.
By my Lord,
SAINT SAUVEUR.
