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On March 25 [1702] he [Tonti] returned [to Mobile] with four Choctaw chiefs and three chiefs and four other principal men of the Chickasaw. The following day presents were distributed, and with Bienville as interpreter, Iberville harangued the Indian council. By his own account, he sought to persuade the two tribes that a general peace was to their own interest. In the eight or ten years that intertribal warfare had continued at the solicitation of the English, the Chickasaw, he declared, had made over five hundred prisoners and killed more than eighteen hundred Choctaw; and the Chickasaw themselves had lost some eight hundred dead in their raids. With the Choctaw they should realise, therefore, that the ultimate aim of the English was to exhaust them by wars in order to seize their lands and send them all slaves into distant countries. The Chickasaw must expel the English trader's from their towns or he would have no peace or trade with them, but instead would arm the Choctaw, the Mobilians, the Tohomes, as he had already begun to arm the Natchez and other allies. Instead of restraining Illinois attacks, he would spur them on. But once the English were sent packing Iberville promised to build a post in the Indian country between the Choctaw and Chickasaw towns. There the French would offer them trade, not for slaves, but for the skins of deer and buffalo. It was probably Iberville's promise of trade rather than his eloquent picture of the blessings of peace that brought the Chickasaw to agree to live amicably with the Choctaw and to eject the Carolinians. Iberville then promised to forbid his allies to carry on war against them and to secure the return of captives from the Illinois. In return he demanded that they persuade the Creeks to trade at the French fort and to give no heed to the English, under threat to release the tomahawks of the Apalache, of which he claimed to be master. When Iberville had taken a census of the tribes the congress was dismissed, and the Indians returned to their towns, 'tres contens,' Iberville believed, 'et disposes a vivre tous en paix.'78 Shortly the truce was extended to other tribes, notably the Illinois and the Alabamas, nearest of the Upper Creek towns. Three Canadians were sent to the Illinois country to arrest the hatchet against the Chickasaw, and also against the Shawnee, whom Iberville, in view of overtures to Bellefeuille, hoped to draw down to the Mississippi or to Mobile. 79

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Iberville convinced Choctaw and Chickesaw to unite and expel the English

Source: The Southern Frontier #86