"Come back, ye warriors, and sit about our Council. Lend us your magic tomahawks. Lend us your arrows of flint. Lend us your knives of jade. I am the Great Chief, but ye are greater chiefs than I.
"Of old time the nations wandered and warred.
"Ye were wonderful who established the Great Peace.
"Assuredly six generations before the pale-faces appeared, ye smoked the redstone pipe together, giving white wampum to show that war would cease.
"Thenceforth ye bound the nations with a Silver Chain; ye built the Long House; ye established the Great League.
"First Hiawatha of the Onondaga nation proposed it; then Dekanawidah of the Mohawks joined him; then Atotarho, my mighty ancestor.
"First the Mohawks; then their younger brothers, the Oneidas, joined them; then the Cayugas; then the Onondagas, then the Senecas; and then the Tuscaroras were added. Victorious were the SIX NATIONS!"
With a piercing cry of triumph the chiefs sprang up and brandished their tomahawks.
"Then we took the sons of the Wyandots, the Eries, the Algonquins. Wherever we found the son of a brave man we adopted him. Wherever we found a brave man we made him a chief.
"Here is the son of a brave man, our friend. Let us adopt him. Be ye his grandsires, oh ye chiefs of old!
"He is a brave man; let us make him a chief. Our forefathers said: 'Thither shall he be led by the hand, and shall be placed on the principal seat.'
"Smoke the peace-pipe with us, chiefs of old, Hiawatha, Dekanawidah, Atotarho, us who bear your names, to-day, being descended of your blood through the line of the mother."
"Brighten the Silver Chain, extend the Long House, smoke the magic pipe, sharpen his tomahawk, for he is a son of your League, and shall sit with you in the Council for ever, bearing the name of Arahseh, 'Our Cousin,' and the totem of the Wolf.
"Smoke the peace-pipe, Arahseh, 'Our Cousin.'"
The tom-tom beat furiously and the six chiefs leaping up and circling round Germain, struck the air with their tomahawks and cried together--
"Continue to listen Ye who are braves; Ye who established the Great League, Continue to listen."
They gave the peace-pipe to Germain, and again seating themselves in semicircle, gravely passed it from lip to lip.