DELAWARE COUNTY. 21 tory^ to inflict a salutary cliastisement in retaliation of the depredations and cruelties to wMcli the frontier settlements had been subjected for a long period before. The eminent success of this expedition^ fitted out as it was, under the fos- tering spirit of the great Washington, an-d the comparative cloak which for a time it threw around the unprotected pio- neers, occupies already, as it deserves, an eminent page in our national history. The earliest missionary to the Iroquois nation, of whom the histories I have perused give any clue, was a Frenchman, Father Simon Le Moine, who commenced, at the instigation of the French Grovernment, in 1674, a journey to their country. The real object of this visit, cloaked as it was, under the guise of propagating the standard of religion, was nevertheless to obtain a knowledge of their strength, of the situation of their strongholds, and if possible, to effect a recon- ciliation between them and the Indians. He was a Catholic priest, and first planted the standard of his faith on Lake Ontario. He was successful in his negotiations with that powerful confederacy, which, as stated in the previous part of this chapter, had carried on a bloody war against the French settlements in Canada, in retaliation of the fatal error of Champlain. A treaty of peace was concluded, and permission given to found a French settlement on the south side of Lake Ontario. In 1683, three Indians were examined by the commissioners of the British Governpaent at Albany, in relation to the Sus- quehanna country, and gave a description of it as follows : That it is one day's journey from the Mohawk castles to the Lake whence the Susquehanna river rises, and then ten days' journey to the Susquehanna castles— in all eleven days. " One and a half's journey by land from the Oneida to the Kill, which falls into the Susquehanna river, and one day unto the Susquehanna, and then seven days to the Susquehanna Castles — in all nine and a half's journey.
