246 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [aBUL. 43

 the real author of the massacre of the French, but St. COme had wished to
 throw the fault on another. They appeared at the moment when preparations
 were making to attack the fort during the coming night.
 Mr. Perrier sent soldiers to meet them and conduct them to his quarters.
 The Sun told the general that he was charmed to treat with him, and that lie
 came to repeat to him what he had told him through the envoy, that it was not
 he who had killed the French, that he was then too young to speak, and that it
 was the ancients who had formed this criminal project. I am well aware," he
 added, "that it will always be ascribed to me, because I am the sovereign of
 my nation, yet I am quite innocent." In fact, it has always been believed ill the
 colony that his whole crime was in not daring to resist his nation or notify the
 French of what was plotting against them. Up to that time, and especially
 before he had attained the dignity of Sun, he had never given any grounds to
 distrust him. St. Cmne, who was likewise not hostile to the French, also
 cleared him as well as he could; but the other chief merely said that lie re-
 gretted deeply all that had happened. We had no sense," he continued, but
 hereafter we shall have." As they stood in the rain, which became more
 violent, Perrier told them to take shelter in a neighboring cabin, and as soon as
 they entered he placed four sentinels there and appointed three officers to watch
 it by turns.
 He then summoned the head chief of the Tonicas and a Natche chief, called
 the Tattooed-serpent, to endeavor by these means to extract some light frio
 his prisoners, but it seems that these two men could elicit nothing new. My
 authorities do not state whether the Tattooed-serpent was then in our canmp as
 a friend or as a prisoner, but toward the close of 1721, while I was at the
 Natchez, I saw that he was regarded as the best friend we had in that nation,
 and he was said to be a very close relation of the Sun. The commission con-
 fided to him by Perrier induces me to believe that he had always remained
 strongly attached to us.a
 To return to those who had been arrested: Le Sueur, who was one of the
 three officers to whom they had been committed, and who understood their
 language very well, wished to converse with them, but they made hil no reply,
 and he left them to rest, while the other two officers reposed. Half an hour
 later these awoke, and he in his turn went to sleep. About 3 o'clock lie was
 awakened by a loud noise. He sprang to his two pocket pistols, and perceived
 St. Come and the Sun in the posture of men who are on the point of escaping.
 He told them that lie would blow out the brains of the first who stirred. and, as
 he was alone, the sentinels and other two officers being in pursuit of the Flour
 chief, whom they had by their negligence allowed to escape, he called for help.
 Perrier was the first to run up, and gave new orders to pursue the fugitive, but
 all in vain.
S Early in the morning of the 25th a Natch6 approached the camp. 1oe was
led into the cabin where the Sun was, and informed him that the Flour chief
had come into the fort; that having awaked his nephew and 8 or 10 of the oldest
warriors, he had told them that the French intended to burn them all: that
for his part he was sternly resolved no longer to remain exposed to fall into
their hands, and that he advised them to seek safety with him; that they had
followed his advice and escaped with their wives and children; that all the
others had deliberated whether to do the same, but had deferred too long
coming to a resolution, and day breaking, they saw that escape was impossible.
On this, the head chief told Mm1 le Sueur that the Flour chief was a usurper,
who although not noble, had seized the place he occupied, which nmae himii the

 aThis was not the same man; the one Charlevoix learned of in 1721 died in 1725.
 Tattooed-serpent was probably a hereditary title.