were accustomed to march, has little significance when we consider that, within the immense area eastward of the Mississippi, the entire Indian population, two hundred years ago, is estimated by Bancroft at only one hundred and eighty thousand; and that skill in eluding a foe, until the moment chosen for a blow, has always been a favorite portion of Indian tactics.

2. So far as the Lake region is concerned, the map of La Hontan, above described, indicates that the "Illinese" were as ready to make inroads upon the "Irroquese" as the latter were to make westward incursions.

3. We have already shown that the Iroquois were repulsed by the Chippewas from the pursuit of the Hurons (a circumstance unnoticed by Clinton); and Schoolcraft's narrative of the successful reprisal, in 1680, by the Illinois and Miamis, on the banks of the Maumee River, should not be forgotten.

4. In this connection, we should not overlook the relations of the New York Indians, and their Canadian neighbors, the French. Prior to 1663, their intercourse had been very precarious, but in that year a deputation from the Iroquois cantons, who proposed an errand of pacification to Montreal, were surprised, and most of them killed by a party of Algonquins, allies of the French. Of course, all prospects of peace vanished, and a furious war raged along the Canadian frontier. At the first outbreak, these hostilities were most disastrous to the French; but the Canadian Governors, at the head of disciplined troops, more than retaliated on their savage enemies during the thirty years' war which followed. Courcelles, Tracy, De la Barre, and De Nonville, invaded by turns, with various success, the country of the Confederates; and at length, in the year 1696, the veteran Count

Frontenac, who was then, for the second time, Governor of Canada, marched upon their cantons with all the force of the province. He burned their deserted villages, and devastated their maize fields. Even the fierce courage of the Iroquois began to quail before these repeated attacks, while the gradual growth of the colony, and the arrival of troops from France, at length convinced them that they could not destroy Canada. In 1700 a pacification was effected, and the numerous prisoners on both sides were allowed to return. In the year 1726, the French succeeded in erecting a permanent military post at the important pass of Niagara, within the limits of the Confederacy. On the 14th of September, in the same year, the Six Nations made the well known cession of their lands to England, in "trust to be protected and defended by his Majesty, to and for the use of the grantors and their heirs." The fact that the haughty Iroquois submitted to such a measure, is a proof that their power was on the wane, and that they had ceased to occupy the arrogant position of conquering tribes.

It will be remembered that the conquest of the Eries was in 1655, only eight years before the commencement of the war between the French and the Iroquois; and the resistance of the Andastes was prolonged until 1672, seven years after the massacre of the Indian deputation to Montreal. Our inference is, that before the removal of the Eries and Andastes from the path to the Mississippi, Iroquois excursions against the Miamis and Illinois were of course impracticable; and afterwards, all the energies of the New York tribes were summoned to resist the French, by whom their country was frequently invaded and their villages destroyed. It is evident, therefore, that they could have no leisure or force

3) Parkman's Pontiac, 61, 63.

for western expeditions while these desperate hostilities were in progress at home; and after the peace of 1700, and especially after the French occupation of Niagara, in 1726, the denizens of Ohio had no ground to apprehend any disturbance in their possession.

Upon the whole, we are willing to compromise between the positions respectively assumed by Clinton and Harrison. We admit that the Indians of Pennsylvania and New England were tributary to the Five Nations, made so by conquest, and that the country on both sides of Lake Erie-the seats of the Hurons and Neutrals in Canada, and the Eries, Andastes and Shawanese in Ohio-were swept of their aboriginal occupants by their merciless enemies, but beyond the Potomac, the Ohio and the Miamis, it seems to us that there was a drawn battle, constantly renewing, and variable in results. It may be that the Miamis and their Illinois confederates were more frequently repulsed, but they cannot be said to have been subjugated, nor even conquered. Very likely, on the conclusion of peace with Western and Southern tribes, there may have been stipulations in the nature of quit claim, but these did not necessarily imply the previous relation of victor and vanquished, no more than a bill to quiet title recognizes that alleged by a claimant to be paramount.

After 1663, however, when the long war with the Canadian colonists broke out, and until the peace of 1700, the dominion of the Five Nations over the territory of Ohio was nominal, never enforced to the exclusion of other Indian tribes, who hastened to occupy the beautiful and vacant realm.

CHAPTER III.

INDIAN OCCUPATION OF OHIO IN 1750.

THIS chapter will be devoted to a brief sketch of the Indian tribes, who, during the interval between the inroads of the Iroquois (vacating forcibly the region between the Ohio and Lake Erie) and the earliest settlement by Europeans in 1750, gradually occupied the country. The reader may expect some unavoidable repetition, especially in a sketch of the Wyandots, for the materials of which we are greatly indebted to the ethnological and historical labors of Albert Gallatin.1

Four tribes were prominent within the limits of Ohio a century since the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanese and Ottawas.

1. THE WYANDOTS OR HURONS.-When Champlain arrived in Canada, the Wyandots were the head and principal support of the Algonquin tribes against the Five Nations. In our first chapter we have given their geographical position, and their relations with the Neutral Nation, or Attiouandarons, north, and the Eries and Andastes or Guandastogues (Guyandots,) south of Lake Erie. The extent of their influence and of the consideration in which they were held, may be found in the fact, that even the Delawares, who claimed to be the elder branch of the Lenape Nation, and

1) Gallatin's Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions of North America; in Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, II, 68, 72.

called themselves the grandfathers of their kindred tribes, recognized the superiority of the Wyandots, whom to this day they call their uncles. And though reduced to a very small number, the right of the Wyandots, derived either from ancient sovereignty, or from the incorporation of the remnants of the three extinct tribes, to the country between Lake Erie and the Ohio, from the Alleghany to the Great Miami, has never been disputed by any other than the Five Nations.

Their real name Yendots, was well known to the French, who gave them the nickname of Hurons. They were called Quatoghee by the Five Nations, and one of their tribes Dionondadies or Tuinontatek. They were visited in 1615 by Champlain, and in 1624 by Father Sigard; and the Jesuits, who subsequently established missions among them, have given, in the "Relations of New France," some account of their language, and ample information of their means of subsistence, manners and religious superstitions. They had, probably on account of their wars with the Five Nations, concentrated their settlements in thirty-one villages, not extending more altogether than twenty leagues either way, and situated along or in the vicinity of Lake Huron, about one hundred miles southwardly of the mouth of the French River. They consisted of five confederated tribes, viz: the Ataronch-ronons, four villages; the Attiquenongnahai, three villages; the Attignaouentan or "Nation de l'Ours," twelve villages; the Ahrendah-ronons, the most northeastern tribe, and with which Champlain resided, three villages; and the Tionontate, or "Nation of the Petun," the most southwesterly, which formerly had been at war with the other tribes, and had entered the confederation recently, nine villages.2

2) Father Lallemand, 1640; Relations, &c.