The Indian tribes which at the time of the first European discoveries occupied that part of North America east of the Mississippi, and between Hudson's Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, were embraced, with some few exceptions, in two generic divisions - the Algonquins and the Iroquois.  These two great families were separated from each other by radical differences of language, rather than by any special racial or physical characteristics.  To the Iroquois linguistic stock belonged the Eries, who inhabited the country immediately south of Lake Erie; the Hurons, or Wyandots, whose home lay between Lakes Ontario and Huron; the Andastes or Conestogas and the Susquehannocks, of the lower Susquehanna; the Cherokees, who were found on the upper Tennessee; the Tuscaroras of Virginia and North Carolina; the Neutral Nation, who lived to the west of the Niagara river; the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Senecas, and Cayugas, who occupied almost the entire area of New York, except the lower Hudson.  Of the five tribes last named, the Mohawks occupied the Mohawk valley and the vicinity of Lakes George and Champlain, while the other four tribes were found in the region south of Lake Oontario.

THE IROQUOIS.

     The name Iroquois, though French in form, is said to have been derived from "Hiro" (I have spoken) - the conclusion of all their harangues - and "Koue' an exclamation of sorrow when it was prolonged, and of joy when pronounced shortly.  the Iroquois were an inland people, whose original home was probably in the district between the lower St. Lawrence and Hudson's Bay.  They possessed an intelligence superior to that of most of the Indian tribes.  This was exemplified in the famous league or confederation between the five tribes of New York, above mentioned (long known as the Five Nations), which was effected about the middle of the Fifteenth century by Hiawatha, a sagacious chief of the Onondagas, and the subject of Longfellow's poem of that name.  Says Horatio Hale, in his work entitled "The Iroquois Book of Rites,''  "The system he devised was not to be a loose or transitory' league, but a permanent government.  While each nation was to retain its own council and management of local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives to be elected by each nation, holding office during good behavior,

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and acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the whole confederacy.  Still further, and more remarkably, the federation was not to be a limited one.  It was to be indefinitely expansible.  The avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war altogether.  That this beneficent and farsighted plan failed of its ultimate object was due less to any inherent defects than to the fact that that object was too far advanced for the comprehension of those for whose benefit it was designed.  Though retaining its governmental value in the regulation of tribal affairs, the league was soon perverted into a means of conquest and aggression until the name of Iroquois became a terror to all the surrounding nations.  It included, besides the five New York tribes above mentioned, some portions of the Neutral Nation, and, at a later date, the Tuscaroras, who, about 1712, were driven from North Carolina by the British, the confederation after this date being known as the Six Nations.  It was to these tribes only that the name Iroquois was applied by the early French and English settlers.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

     The Iroquois called themselves in general Ho-de-no-saunee, "The people of the long house," each tribe living in a separate village of long houses, large enough to hold from five to twenty families each.  "Each family was a clan or kin resembling the gens of the Romans - a group of males and females, whose kinship was reckoned only through females - the universal custom in archaic times in America."  As the marriage tie was loosely regarded, all rank, titles, and property were based upon the rights of the woman alone.  The child belonged to the clan, not of the father, but of the mother.  Each of the long houses was occupied by related families, the mothers and their children belonging to the same clan, while the husbands and fathers belonged to other clans; consequequently the clan or kin of the mother predominated in the household.  Every clan had a name, derived from the animal world, as a rule, which was represented in the "totem," or coat of-arms, of the kin or gens, found over the door of a long house, or tattooed on the arms or bodies of its members.  Being originally a nation of one stock and each tribe containing parts of the original clans, "all the members of the same clan, whatever tribe they belonged to, were brothers or sisters to each other in virtue of their descent from the same common female ancestor."  No marriage could take place between members of the same clan or kin.  Yet while the Iroquois woman had so much importance in the household and in the regulation of inheritance, as well as a voice in the councils of the tribe, she was almost as much a drudge as the squaw of the savage Micmacs of Acadia.
     Besides building better cabins and strong holds than other tribes the Iroquois also cultivated more maize.  Although they had devised no method of recording history, they had many myths and legends, which were handed down with great minuteness from generation to generation.  In remembering them they were aided by the wampum belts and strings, which served by the arrangement and design of the beads to fix certain facts and expressions in their memory.  "The Iroquois myths," says Brinton, "refer to the struggle of the first two brothers, the dark twin and the white, a familiar symbolism, in which we see the personification of the light and darkness, and the struggle of day and night."

THE ALGONQUINS.

     The Algonquin stock was both more numerous and more widely scattered than that of the Iroquois.  Their various tribes, according to linguistic identification, were distributed as follows: Abnakis, in Nova Scotia and on the south bank of the St. Lawrence; Arapahoes, head waters of Kansas river; Blackfeet, head waters of the Missouri river; Cheyennes, upper waters of Arkansas river; Chippeways, shores of Lake Superior; Crees or Sauteux, southern shores of Hudson's Bay; Delawares or Lenapes, on the Delaware river; Illinois, on the Illinois river; Kaskaskias, on the Mississippi below the Illinois river; Kickapoos, on the upper Illinois river; Meliseets, in Nova Scotia

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and New Brunswick; Miamis, between the Miami and Wabash rivers; Micmacs, in Nova Scotia; Menominees, near Green Bay; Mohegans, on lower Hudson river; Manhattans, about New York bay; Nanticoke, on Chesapeake bay; Ottawas, on the Ottawa river and south of Lake Huron; Pampticokes, near Cape Hatteras; Passamaquoddies, on the Schoodic river; Piankishaws, on the middle Ohio river;  Pottawattomies, south of Lake Michigan; Sacs and Foxes, on the Sac river; Secoffies, in Labrador;  Shawnees. on Tennessee river; Weas, near the Piankishaws.  The Crees, one of the most important tribes, retained the original language of the stock in its purest form; while the Nanticokes of Maryland, the Powhatans of Virginia, and the Pamticokes of the Carolinas spoke dialects which diverged more or less widely from it.  The traditions, customs, and language of these tribes seem to point to some spot north of the St. Lawrence, and east of Lake Ontario, as the original home of the stock. The totemic system prevailed among the Algonquins, as also, descent in the female line, but not the same communal life as among the Iroquois.  "Only rarely do we meet with the 'long house' occupied by a number of kindred families."  Most of the tribes manufactured pottery, though of a coarse and heavy kind.  They employed copper in the manufacture of ornaments, knives and chisels, though their arrowheads and axes were usually of stone.  They also carried on an extensive commerce in various articles with very distant parts, their trading operations extending even as far as Vancouver Island, whence they obtained the black slate, ornamented pipes of the Haidah Indians.  Some tribes, as the Lenapes and the Chippeways, had developed the art of picture writing from the representative to the symbolic stage, as had been done by the Aztecs and kindred races of Mexico; it was employed to preserve the national history and the rites of the secret societies.  The religion of the Algonquins "was based upon the worship of light, especially in its concrete manifestations, as the sun and fire; of the four winds as typical of the cardinal points, and as the rain-bringers and of the totemic animal."  They also, like the Iroquois, had numerous myths, which in the case of the Lenapes had been partially preserved, and present the outlines common to the stock.

INDIAN WARFARE.

     The Algonquin and Huron-Iroquois nations had many customs in common.  Though a general war could only be engaged in on the approval of the council, yet any number of warriors might go on the war path at any time against the enemies of the tribe.  Their favorite method of fighting was by a surprise or sudden onslaught.  A siege soon exhausted their patience and resources.  "To steal stealthily at night through the maze of the woods, tamahawk their sleeping foes, and take many scalps, was the height of an Indian's bliss.  Curious to say, the Indians took little precaution to guard against such surprises, but thought they were protected by their manitous or guardian spirits."  It was a general Indian belief that after death all men passed to the land of Shades - a land where trees, flowers, animals, and men were spirits.

IROQUOIS CONQUESTS.

     The league formed by the Iroquois (using the name in its limited application to the five tribes of New York), excited the jealousy and fear of all the surrounding nations, and their apprehensions were subsequently justified in the career of conquests and aggression pursued by the Iroquois.  The Adirondacks, Hurons, Eries, Andastes, Shawnees, Illinois, Miamis, Delawares, Susquehannocks. Uamis, Nanticokes, and Minsi, in turn fell victims to their prowess, some of them, like the Adirondacks and Eries, being practically annihiliated.  At last they claimed by right of conquest, the whole of the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the Lakes to the Carolinas.

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EXTERMINATION OF THE ERIES.

     Their battle with the Eries, which has been often told, was perhaps the most desperately contested of any in their war-like and blood stained history.  It is said by some writers to have taken place in 1656, at a point about half way between Canandaigua Lake and the Genesee river.  The Eries, who were known also as Erries, Erigas, or Errieonons, and who, as we have seen, were of the same blood, and spoke a dialect of the same language as the Iroquois, occupied the region lying immediately south of Lake Erie, and their claims doubtless extended over all of northeastern Ohio and a part of western New York.  Their tribal seat was on the Sandusky plains.  They are described as being a most powerful and war like tribe.  Their jealousy of the Iroquois it is said was brought to a culmination by a gymnastic contest in which they had invited the latter to participate with them.  The invitation, after being given and declined several times was finally accepted, a place of meeting appointed, and one hundred young Iroquois braves were selected to maintain the honor of their respected tribes.  Each side deposited a valuable stake.  The game of ball, which bad been proposed, was won by the Iroquois, who thereupon took possession of their prizes and prepared to take their leave.  But the Eries, dissatisfied with the result of the game, proposed a running match, to be contested by ten men on a side.  This was agreed to, and the Iroquois were again victorious.  The chief of the Eries now proposed a wrestling match, also between ten contestants on a side, to which he attached the bloody condition that each victor should dispatch his adversary on the spot, by braining him with a tomahawk, and bearing off his scalp as a trophy.  This challenge was reluctantly agreed to by the Iroquois, who privately resolved, perhaps from motives of prudence, not to execute the sanguinary part of the proposition.  Victory again inclined to the champions of the Five Nations.  As the first victorious Iroquois stepped back, declining to execute his defeated adversary, the chief of the Eries, now furious with rage and shame, himself seized the tomahawk and at a single blow scattered the brains of his vanquished warrior on the ground.  A second and third Erie warrior after a similar defeat met the same fate.  The chief of the Iroquois, seeing the terrible excitement which agitated the multitude, now gave the signal to retreat, and soon every member of the party was lost to in the depths of the forest.  The long slumbering hatred of the Eries for the Iroquois was now thoroughly aroused.  Though they felt that they were no match for the Five Nations collectively, they formed a plan to accomplish the destruction of the tribes by attacking them suddenly and in detail.  To this end they made quick and secret preparations, selecting the Senecas as the objects of their first onslaught.  But the Senecas had received timely warning from a woman of their tribe, who was the widow of an Erie warrior, and it was with the united Five Nations that the Eries, soon after beginning the assault, found that they had to cope.  Nerved to desperation by the knowledge that the loss of the battle meant their utter destruction, they performed terrific feats of valor, and the result was long in doubt.  But after one side and then the other had been several times successively driven back, and both parties were beginning to tire, the Iroquois brought up a reserve of one thousand young men, who had never been in battle, and who had been lying in ambush.  These rushed upon the now almost exhausted Eries with such fury that the latter, unable any longer to sustain the contest, gave way and fled, to bear the news of their terrible defeat to the old men, women and children of the tribe.  The Iroquois long kept up the pursuit, and five months elapsed before their last scalp-laden warriors returned to join in celebrating their victory over their last and most powerful enemies, the Eries.  It is said that many years after, a powerful war party of the descendants of the Eries came from beyond the Mississippi and attacked the Senecas, who were then in possession of the Erie's former territory, but were utterly defeated and slain to a man.

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THE CHAHTA-MUSKOKI STOCK.

     With the other Indian tribes inhabiting the extensive region referred to at the beginning of this chapter, this history has little to do.  They included the Seminoles, in Florida; the Apalaches, on Apalache bay; the Chickasaws on the head waters of Mobile river; the Choctaws, between the Mobile and Mississippi rivers, and the Yemassees, around Port Royal Bar, South Carolina.  They all belonged to the Chahta-Muskoki stock, some branches of which were found west of the Mississippi river.  De Sota and other early European explorers, describe some of these tribes as being extensively engaged in agriculture, dwelling in permanent towns and well-constructed wooden edifices, many of which were situated on high mounds of artificial construction, and using for weapons and utensils stone implements of great beauty of workmanship.  They manufactured tasteful ornaments of gold, which metal they obtained from the auriferous sands of the Macooche and other streams by which they re sided.  Says Dr. Brinton, "Their artistic development was strikingly similar to that of the Mound Builders, who have left such interesting remains in the Ohio valley, and there is, to say the least, a strong probability that they are the descendants of the constructors of those ancient works, driven to the South by the irruptions of the wild tribes of the north.

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