Whilst the fire is still burning, the women come like so many furies, with more than bacchanalian madness, making the most hideous howlings, and dancing without any order, round the fire.  Then all their apparent rage turns of a sudden against the men.  They threaten them, that if they do not supply them with scalps, they will hold them very cheap, and look on them as greatly inferior to themselves; that they will deny themselves to their most lawful pleasures; that their daughters shall be given to none but such as have signalized themselves by some military feat; that, in short, they will themselves find means to be revenged of them, which cannot but be easy to do on cowards.

The men, at this, begin to parley with one another, and order the women to withdraw, telling them, that they shall be satisfied; and that, in a little time, they may expect to have prisoners brought to them, to do what they will with them.

The next thing they agree on is to send a couple of messengers, in the nature of heralds at arms, with their hatchets, quivers, bows, and arrows, to declare war against the nation by whom they conceive themselves aggrieved.  These go directly to the village where the bulk of the nation resides, observing a sullen silence by the way, without speaking to any that may meet them.  When they draw near the village, they give the earth several strokes with their hatchets, as a signal of commencing hostilities in form; and to confirm it the more, they shoot two of their best arrows at the village, and retire with the utmost expedition.  The war is now kindled in good earnest, and it behoves each party to stand well on its guard.  The heralds, after this, return to make a report of what they have done; and to prove their having been at the place appointed, they do not fail of bringing away with them some particular marks of that spot of the country.  Then it is, that the inhabitants of each nation begin to think seriously, whether they shall maintain their ground by staying in their village, and fortifying it in their manner, or look out for a place of greater safety, or go directly in quest of the enemy.  Upon these questions they assemble, deliberate, and hold endless consultations, though withal not uncurious ones:  for it is on these occasions, that those of the greatest sagacity and eloquence display all their talents, and make themselves distinguished.  One of their most common stratagems, when there were reasons for not attacking one another, or coming to a battle directly, was for one side to make as if they had renounced all thoughts of acting offensively.  A party of those who made this feint of renunciation, would disperse itself in a wood, observing to keep near the borders of it; when, if any stragglers of the enemy’s appeared, some one would counterfeit to the life the particular cry of that animal, in the imitation of which he most excelled; and this childish decoy would, however, often succeed, in drawing in the young men of the opposite party into their ambushes.