In the fall of 1755, Onondaga Indian travelers passing through Montréal mentioned to the French that the British were building two warehouses at the Oneida Carrying Place. The Marquis de Vaudreuil, the Governor-General of New France, hired Ou8atory, an Oswegatchie chief related to several Oneida clan mothers, to work as a spy, and find out what was going on at the Oneida Carrying Place. The Iroquois were a matriarchal society where the clan mothers had enormous power, and no important decision was ever made by the Iroquois without the approval of the clan mothers first, an aspect of Iroquois society that the Europeans did not understand very well, who tended to assume the Iroquois chiefs had the same power that kings did in the patriarchal society of Europe. Ou8atory returned to report that the British had built two supply-houses at the Oneida Carry, where they were stockpiling weapons, ammunition, bateaux, and other supplies for a spring offensive.