This was a true story, it seemed; and that very morning His Excellency had sent her North to Haldimand with a flag, offering her every courtesy and civility and recommendation within his power.

Which pretty history left me very thoughtful, revealing as it did to me that my own heart’s mistress was not the solitary and bright exception in a sex which, like other men, I had deemed inferior in every virile and mental virtue, and only spiritually superior to my own.  And I remembered the proud position of social and political equality enjoyed by the women of the Long House; and vaguely thought it was possible that in this matter the Iroquois Confederacy was even more advanced in civilization than the white nations, who regarded its inhabitants as debased and brutal savages.

In three months I had seen an Empire crash to the ground; already in the prophetic and visionary eyes of our ragged soldiery, a mightier empire was beginning to crumble under the blasts from the blackened muzzles of our muskets.  Soon kings would live only in the tales of yesterday, and the unending thunder of artillery would die away, and the clouds would break above the smoky field, revealing as our very own all we had battled for so long—­ the right to live our lives in freedom, self-respect, and happiness.

And I wondered whether generations not yet born would pay to us the noble tribute which the sons of the Long House so often and reverently offered to the dead who had made for them their League of Peace—­ alas! now shattered for all time.

And in my ears the deep responses seemed to sound, solemnly and low, as the uncorrupted priesthood chanted at Thendara: 

  “Continue to listen,
  Thou who wert ruler,
    Ayonhwahtha! 
  Continue to listen,
  Thou who wert ruler,
    Shatekariwate!

  This was the roll of you,
  You who have laboured,
  You who completed
  The Great League!

  Continue to listen,
  Thou who wert ruler,
    Sharenhaowane! 
  Continue to listen,
  Thou who wert ruler—­ "

And the line of their noble hymn, the “Karenna”:  “I come again to greet and thank the women!”

Lord!  A great and noble civilization died when the first cancerous contact of the lesser scratched its living Eastern Gate.

* “Hiya-thondek!  Kahiaton.  Kadi-kadon.”

[* “Listen!  It is written.  Therefore, I speak.”]

My commission as lieutenant in the 6th company of Morgan’s Rifles afforded me only mixed emotions, but became pleasurable when I understood that staff duty as interpreter and chief of Indian guides permitted me to attach to my person not only Mayaro, the Mohican Sagamore, but also my Oneidas, Grey-Feather and Tahoontowhee.

Mounted service the two Oneidas abhorred, preferring to trot along on either side of me; but the Sagamore, being a Siwanois, was a horseman, and truly he presented a superb figure as the handsome General and his staff led the New York brigade into the city of Albany, our battered old drums thundering, our fifes awaking the echoes in the old Dutch city, and our pretty faded colors floating in the primrose light of early evening.