Except the Iroquois, antiquarians describe all other northern tribes as Algonquin, which term, though generic, was the special designation of a nation living on the St. Lawrence River, where also was the seat of the Utawawas or Ottowas. The leading tribe of the Algonquins, however, were the Lenno Lenapees or Delawares, who were found by the first colonists about the waters of the Delaware and its tributary streams, within the present limits of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. Their traditions declare them to be the parent stem whence other Algonquin tribes have sprung-a claim recognized by the latter, who accord to the ancient Lenapees the title of Grandfather. The Lenapees, on their part, call the other Algonquin tribes Children, Grandchildren, Nephews, or Younger Brothers; but they confess the superiority of the Wyandots and the Five Nations by yielding them the title of Uncles, while they, in return, call the Lenapees Nephews, or more frequently Cousins.2

"Except the detached nation of the Tuscaroras, and a few smaller tribes adhering to them," to quote from the accomplished historian of Pontiac's Conspiracy, "the Iroquois family were confined to the region south of the Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the peninsula east of Lake Huron. They formed, as it were, an island in the vast expanse of Algonquin population, extending from Hudson's Bay on the north to the Carolinas on the south; from the Atlantic on the east to the Mississippi and Lake Winnipeg on the west. They were Algonquins who greeted Jacques Cartier as his ships ascended the St. Lawrence. The first British colonists found savages of the same race hunting and fishing along the coasts. and inlets of Virginia; and it was the daughter of an Algonquin chief who interceded with her father for the life of the

2) Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac, 26.

adventurous Englishman. They were Algonquins who, under Sassacus the Pequot and Phillip of Mount Hope, waged deadly war against the Puritans of New England; who dwelt at Penacook under the rule of the great magician Passaconaway, and trembled before the evil spirits of the Crystal Hills; and who sang Aves and told their beads in the forest chapel of Father Rasles by the banks of the Kennebec. They were Algonquins who, under the great tree at Kensington, made the covenant of peace with William Penn; and when the French Jesuits and fur traders explored the Wabash and the Ohio, they found their valleys tenanted by the same farextended race. At the present day, the traveler, perchance, may find them pitching their bark lodges along the beach at Mackinaw, spearing fish among the boiling rapids of St. Marys, or skimming the waves of Lake Superior in their birch canoes."

Bancroft, in a map of aboriginal America, concurs with Parkman, but limits the Algonquins to the thirty-sixth degree of north latitude, and gives four-fifths of the country south of that parallel to the Mobilian race. The other southern races were the Cherokees, who were mountaineers, and occupied the upper valley of the Tennessee River, as far west as Muscle Shoals, and the highlands of Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, the Switzerland of the south; the Uchees and Catawbas, who occupied small areas adjacent to the Cherokee country on the south and east; and the Natchez, residing in scarcely more than four or five villages, of which the largest was near the site of the city thus called. Bancroft has a general classification of Dacotah for the numerous tribes west of the Mississippi, and within the valleys of the Arkansas and the Missouri. These distinctions have little other foundation than language, of which eight radically different

varieties are said to have been spoken east of the Mississippi.3

To return to the kindred but hostile Iroquois tribes. About the middle of the seventeenth century, the Five Nations of New York, grown arrogant by fifty years of confederation, invaded the territory of the Hurons or Wyandots. The ancient seats of this nation were on the eastern shores of the lake which now bears their name, and thither the enemy penetrated, undisturbed by the Neutral Nation, who occupied the eastern portion of the peninsula adjacent to Lake Ontario, and probably extended beyond the Niagara River. The Hurons were driven with great slaughter to the Manitouline islands of the lake. They next occupied the island of Michillimacinac, thinking its isolated position and precipitous cliffs would prove a shelter. But the enraged enemy drove them thence. They fled into the territories of the Odjibwas, in Lake Superior. But even there their enemies attempted to follow them, until they were defeated by the Chippewas, in a battle fought at the foot of the south cape of its outlet; at a prominent elevation, which, in allusion to this incident, is still called Point Iroquois.

The extinction of the Neutral Nation soon followed, and then the victorious Iroquois turned against their Erie brethren. In the year 1655, using their canoes as scaling ladders, they stormed the Erie strongholds, 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.

3) History of the United States, vol. iii., p. 235.

4) We accede to what seems the weight of tradition, that the Neutral Nation were a distinct tribe, and so called from their neutrality in the contest between the Iroquois and the Hurons; but Schoolcraft, in speaking of

The Andastes shared the same fate, but their resistance postponed their dispersion until 1672, when their ruin was also accomplished. It seems likely that a tribe called by the Iroquois, Satanas, by the French, Chaouanons, and whom we suppose to have been the Shawanese, were, about this period, driven from the valley of the Ohio to the vicinity of the Mexican Gulf. Thus, at the commencement of the eighterritory now Ohio was derelict, except as the indomitable confederates of the North made it a trail for further hostilities, or roamed its hunting grounds.

teenth century, the

Attached to "Baron La Hontan's Voyages and Adventures in North America between 1683 and 1694," is a map, upon which, near the source and mouth of the Sandusky River, are indices of "savage villages destroyed by ye Iroquese." The latter would be the site of Sandusky, or the vicinity near the outlet of the Bay and River. Parallel with the southern shore of "Errie or Conti Lake," and apparently at an average distance of thirty miles, is a line drawn connecting the Mississippi with Western New York, which, according to the map, "represents ye way that ye Illinese march through a vast tract of ground to make War against ye Iroquese: The same being ye Passage of ye Iroquese in their incursions upon ye other Savages, as far as the river Missisipi." Upon the Maumee River a tribe of "Errieronons" are put down, and in the country south of the source of the Sandusky river, "Andastognerons" are mentioned, probably remnants of the Eries and Andastes.5

the Eries, remarks, that "there can be no question, from the early accounts of the French missionaries, that they were at the head of that singular confederation of tribes called the Neutral Nation, which extended from the extreme west to the extreme eastern shores of Lake Erie, including the Niagara."

5) The outline of Lake Erie on La Hontan's map is curious enough. It

This incidental reference to detachments of the Eries and Andastes, which we presume that La Hontan here makes, confirms the belief that they were not exterminated by the war of 1655. Like the conquered Hurons, they were fugitives from their villages on the borders of the lake, but it is quite likely that they became the allies of the formidable Miamis or Twahtwahs, whose residence was on the Miami of the Lakes and the Miami of the Ohio. According to the French missionary authors, cited by Schoolcraft, the Iroquois fell on the Miamis and Chic taghicks or Illinois (enraged, we may suppose, at their friendly reception of the vanquished Indians) who were encamped together on the banks of the Maumee River in the year 1680, being twentyfive years after the final defeat of the Eries. In this attack they killed thirty and took three hundred prisoners. But the Illinois and Miamis rallied, and by a dexterous movement, got ahead of the retreating Iroquois, waylaid their path, and recovered their prisoners, killing many of the

enemy.

The future fate of the Eries is involved in obscurity. General Lewis Cass has expressed the opinion that the Kickapoos and Shawanese are remnants of the Eries, and adds that the Canadians, to this day, term the Shawanese the Nation of the Cat or Raccoon, which is well known to be the

is made broader at the eastern extremity than elsewhere, the shore running due south from the mouth of Niagara River to the southeast corner, where is the mouth of a "Conde River"-as if the line from Buffalo to Erie was due south. Thence at right angles, but slightly indented now and then, we have the southern shore, without any streams until the Sandusky and Maumee Rivers are noted with a fair degree of accuracy, except that Sandusky Bay is not put down otherwise than as the mouth of the river. There is a liberal allowance of islands opposite, and the river itself is represented as rising at a distance of 100 miles (according to the scale given) in a circular lake of at least 15 miles in diameter.