the dream feast, and the loathsome festival of the exhumation of the dead. Yet in the intervals of war and hunting, these resources would often fail; and, while the women were toiling in the cornfields, the lazy warriors beguiled the hours with smoking or sleeping, with gambling or gallantry.1

If we seek for a single trait pre-eminently characteristic of the Iroquois, we shall find it in that boundless pride which impelled them to style themselves, not inaptly as regards their own race, "the men surpassing all others."2 "Must I," exclaimed one of their great warriors, as he fell wounded among a crowd of Algonquins, — "must I, who have made the whole earth tremble, now die by the hands of children?" Their power kept pace with their pride. Their war-parties roamed over half America, and their name was a terror from the Atlantic to the Mississippi; but, when we ask the numerical strength of the dreaded confederacy, when we discover that, in the days of their greatest triumphs, their united cantons could not have mustered four thousand warriors, we stand amazed at the folly and dissension which left so vast a region the prey of a handful of bold marauders. Of the cities and villages now so

1 For an account of the habits and customs of the Iroquois, the following works, besides those already cited, may be referred to:

Charlevoix, Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguières; Champlain, Voyages de la Nouv. France; Clark, Hist. Onondaga, i., and several volumes of the Jesuit Relations, especially those of 1656-1657 and 1659-1660.

2 This is Colden's translation of the word Ongwehonwe, one of the names of the Iroquois.

thickly scattered over the lost domain of the Iroquois, a single one might boast a more numerous population than all the five united tribes.1

From this remarkable people, who with all the ferocity of their race blended heroic virtues and marked endowments of intellect, I pass to other members of the same great family, whose different fortunes may perhaps be ascribed rather to the force of circumstance than to any intrinsic inferiority.

The peninsula between the Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario was occupied by two distinct peoples, speaking dialects of the Iroquois tongue. The Hurons or Wyandots, including the tribe called by the French the Dionondadies, or Tobacco Nation,2 dwelt among the forests which bordered the eastern shores of the fresh-water sea, to which they have left

1 La Hontan estimated the Iroquois at from five thousand to seven thousand fighting men; but his means of information were very imperfect, and the same may be said of several other French writers, who have overrated the force of the confederacy. In 1677, the English sent one Greenhalgh to ascertain their numbers. He visited all their towns and villages, and reported their aggregate force at two thousand one hundred and fifty fighting men. The report of Colonel Coursey, agent from Virginia, at about the same period, closely corresponds with this statement. Greenhalgh's Journal will be found in Chalmers's Political Annals, and in the Documentary History of New York. Subsequent estimates, up to the period of the Revolution, when their strength had much declined, vary from twelve hundred to two thousand one hundred and twenty. Most of these estimates are given by Clinton, in his Discourse on the Five Nations, and several by Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia.

2 Hurons, Wyandots, Yendots, Ouendaets, Quatogies.

The Dionondadies are also designated by the following names: Tionontatez, Petuneux-Nation of Tobacco.

their name; while the Neutral Nation, so called from their neutrality in the war between the Hurons and the Five Nations, inhabited the northern shores of Lake Erie, and even extended their eastern flank across the strait of Niagara.

The population of the Hurons has been variously stated at from ten thousand to thirty thousand souls, but probably did not exceed the former estimate. The Franciscans and the Jesuits were early among them, and from their descriptions it is apparent that, in legends and superstitions, manners and habits, religious observances and social customs, they were closely assimilated to their brethren of the Five Nations. Their capacious dwellings of bark, and their palisaded forts, seemed copied after the same model.1 Like the Five Nations, they were divided into tribes, and cross-divided into totemic clans; and, as with them, the office of sachem descended in the female line. The same crude materials of a political fabric were to be found in both; but, unlike the Iroquois, the Wyandots had not as yet wrought them into a system, and woven them into a harmonious whole.

Like the Five Nations, the Wyandots were in some measure an agricultural people; they bartered the surplus products of their maize fields to surrounding tribes, usually receiving fish in exchange; and this traffic was so considerable that the Jesuits styled their country the Granary of the Algonquins.2

1 See Sagard, Hurons, 115.

2 Bancroft, in his chapter on the Indians east of the Mississippi, falls into a mistake when he says that no trade was carried on by

Their prosperity was rudely broken by the hostilities of the Five Nations; for though the conflicting parties were not ill matched in point of numbers, yet the united counsels and ferocious energies of the confederacy swept all before them. In the year 1649, in the depth of winter, their warriors invaded the country of the Wyandots, stormed their largest villages, and involved all within in indiscriminate slaughter. The survivors fled in panic terror, and the whole nation was broken and dispersed.

Some found refuge among the French of Canada, where, at the village of Lorette, near Quebec, their descendants still remain; others were incorporated with their conquerors; while others again fled northward, beyond Lake Superior, and sought an asylum among the wastes which bordered on the northeastern bands of the Dahcotah. Driven back by those fierce bison-hunters, they next established themselves about the outlet of Lake Superior, and the shores and islands in the northern parts of Lake Huron. Thence, about the year 1680, they descended to Detroit, where they formed a permanent settlement, and where, by their superior valor, capacity, and address they soon acquired an ascendency over the surrounding Algonquins.

The ruin of the Neutral Nation followed close on that of the Wyandots, to whom, according to Jesuit

any of the tribes. For an account of the traffic between the Hurons and Algonquins, see Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, 171. 1 See "Jesuits in North America."

authority, they bore an exact resemblance in character and manners.1 The Senecas soon found means to pick a quarrel with them; they were assailed by all the strength of the insatiable confederacy, and within a few years their destruction as a nation was complete.

South of Lake Erie dwelt two members of the Iroquois family. The Andastes built their fortified villages along the valley of the Lower Susquehanna; while the Erigas, or Eries, occupied the borders of the lake which still retains their name. Of these two nations little is known, for the Jesuits had no missions among them, and few traces of them survive beyond their names and the record of their destruction. The war with the Wyandots was scarcely over, when the Five Nations turned their arms against their Erie brethren.

In the year 1655, using their canoes as scaling ladders, they stormed the Erie stronghold, leaped down like tigers among the defenders, and butchered them without mercy. The greater part of the nation was involved in the massacre, and the remnant was incorporated with the conquerors, or with other tribes, to which they fled for refuge. The ruin of the

1 According to Lalemant, the population of the Neutral Nation amounted to at least twelve thousand; but the estimate is probably exaggerated. — Relation des Hurons, 1641, 50.

2 The Iroquois traditions on this subject, as related to the writer by a chief of the Cayugas, do not agree with the narratives of the Jesuits. It is not certain that the Eries were of the Iroquois family. There is some reason to believe them Algonquins, and possibly identical with the Shawanoes.