suggested to the assembled councillors a method of effecting--or at
least of announcing--the desired accommodation, and of paying at the
same time a happy compliment to their reverend visitors. By common
consent the affair was referred to the arbitrament of the Father
Superior, by whom the difference was promptly settled. [Footnote: On
the: Grand conseil le 24 du mois de Juillet, ou toutes les Nations
remisent entre les mains d'Achiendase qui est nostre Pere Superieur le
diffrend Centre les Sonnontoueeronnons et les Agnieronnons, qui fait
bien et termine.--_Relation of_ 1657, p. 16.] It was not necessary
for the politic senators to inform their gratified visitors that the
performance in which they thus took part was merely a formality which
ratified, or rather proclaimed, a foregone conclusion. The
reconciliation which was prescribed by their constitution had
undoubtedly been arranged by previous conferences, after their custom in
such matters, before the meeting of the Council. [Footnote: For a
curious instance of the manner in which questions to be apparently
decided by a Council were previously settled between the parties, see
the _Life of Zeisberger_, p. 190: "Gietterowane was the speaker on
one side, Zeisberger on the other. These two consulted together
privately,--Zeisberger unfolding the import of the strings [of wampum
which he had brought as ambassador] and Gietterowane committing to
memory what he said."] So effective was this provision of their
constitution that for more than three centuries this main cause of
Indian wars was rendered innocuous, and the "Great Peace" remained
undisturbed. This proud averment of their annalists, confirmed as it is
for more than half the period by the evidence of their white neighbors,
cannot reasonably be questioned. What nation or confederacy of
civilized Europe can show an exemption from domestic strife for so long
a term?