He had an able and efficient assistant in Tayoga, who was devoted to the alliance with the English and the Americans, and who was constantly talking with the sachems and chiefs.  Willet, too, who had a long acquaintance with all the nations of the Hodenosaunee, and who had many friends among them, used all his arts of persuasion, which were by no means small, and thus the battle for the favor of the Iroquois went on.  The night before the council was to be held, Tayoga, his black eyes flashing, came to Robert and the hunter and they talked together for a long time.

The great council was held the next day in the grove devoted to that purpose, the entire ceremony being Greek in its simplicity and dignity, and in its surroundings.  The fifty sachems, arrayed in their finest robes, sat once more in a half circle, save that Tododaho, the Onondaga, was slightly in front of the others, with Tonessaah at his elbow.  The nine Mohawk chiefs, fierce and implacable, sat close together, and long before the appeals of England and France were begun Robert knew how they would vote.

The effort that he would make had already taken definite shape in his mind.  He would be moderate, he would not ask the Hodenosaunee to fight for the English and Americans, he would merely ask the great nations to refuse the alliance of the French, and if they could not find it in their hearts to take up the tomahawk for their old friends then to remain at peace in their villages, while English and French fought for the continent.

Spring was now far advanced.  Robert had never seen the forest in deeper green and he had never looked up to a bluer sky than the one that bent over them, as they walked toward the council grove.  His heart was beating hard, but it was with excitement, not with fear.  He knew that a great test was before him, but his mind responded to it, in truth sprang forward to meet it.  The breeze that came down from the hills seemed to whisper encouragement in his ears, and the words that he would speak were already leaping to his lips.

A great crowd, men, women and children, was gathered about the grove, and like the sachems they were clothed in their best.  Brilliant red, blue or yellow blankets gleamed in the sun’s rays, and the beads on leggings and moccasins of the softest tanned deerskin, flashed and glittered.  Robert, with his memories of the Albany school still fresh, thought once more of the great Greek and Roman assemblies, where all the people came to hear their orators discuss the causes that meant most.  And then his pulse leaped again and his confidence grew.

Tododaho spoke first, and when he rose there was a respectful silence broken only by the murmurs of the wind or the heavy breathing of the multitude.  In a spirit of love and exhortation he addressed his people, all of the six great nations.  He told them that the mighty powers beyond the sea, England and France, who with their children divided nearly the whole world between them, were about to begin war with each other.  The lands occupied by both bordered upon the lands of the Hodenosaunee, and the storm of battle would hover over all their castles and over the vale of Onondaga.  It was well for them to take long and anxious thought, and to listen with attention to what the orators of the English and the French would have to say.