On the next day they reached a village of Iroquois under a female chief, called Queen Alequippa by the English, to whom she was devoted.  Both Queen and subjects had fled; but among the deserted wigwams were six more Englishmen, whom Celoron warned off like the others, and who, like them, pretended to obey.  At a neighboring town they found only two withered ancients, male and female, whose united ages, in the judgment of the chaplain, were full two centuries.  They passed the site of the future Pittsburg; and some seventeen miles below approached Chininguee, called Logstown by the English, one of the chief places on the river.[7] Both English and French flags were flying over the town, and the inhabitants, lining the shore, greeted their visitors with a salute of musketry,—­not wholly welcome, as the guns were charged will ball.  Celoron threatened to fire on them if they did not cease.  The French climbed the steep bank, and encamped on the plateau above, betwixt the forest and the village, which consisted of some fifty cabins and wigwams, grouped in picturesque squalor, and tenanted by a mixed population, chiefly of Delawares, Shawanoes, and Mingoes.  Here, too, were gathered many fugitives from the deserted towns above.  Celoron feared a night attack.  The camp was encircled by a ring of sentries; the officers walked the rounds till morning; a part of the men were kept under arms, and the rest ordered to sleep in their clothes.  Joncaire discovered through some women of his acquaintance that an attack was intended.  Whatever the danger may have been, the precautions of the French averted it; and instead of a battle, there was a council.  Celoron delivered to the assembled chiefs a message from the Governor more conciliatory than the former, “Through the love I bear you, my children, I send you Monsieur de Celoron to open your eyes to the designs of the English against your lands.  The establishments they mean to make, and of which you are certainly ignorant, tend to your complete ruin.  They hide from you their plans, which are to settle here and drive you away, if I let them.  As a good father who tenderly loves his children, and though far away from them bears them always in his heart, I must warn you of the danger that threatens you.  The English intend to rob you of your country; and that they may succeed, they begin by corrupting your minds.  As they mean to seize the Ohio, which belongs to me, I send to warn them to retire.”

[Footnote 7:  There was another Chiningue, the Shenango of the English, on the Alleghany.]

The reply of the chiefs, though sufficiently humble, was not all that could be wished.  They begged that the intruders might stay a little longer, since the goods they brought were necessary to them.  It was in fact, these goods, cheap, excellent, and abundant as they were, which formed the only true bond between the English and the Western tribes.  Logstown was one of the chief resorts of the English traders; and at this moment there were ten of them in the place.  Celoron warned them off.  “They agreed,” says the chaplain, “to all that was demanded, well resolved, no doubt, to do the contrary as soon as our backs were turned.”