Hochelagans and Mohawks: A Link in Iroquois History

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Hochelagans and Mohawks, by W. D. Lighthall
(Presented by John Reade and read May 26, 1899.)
All these authors, it will be seen, together with every historian who has referred to the League,—treat of the Five Nations as always having been one people . A very different view, based principally on archæology, has however been recently accepted by at least several of the leading authorities on the subject,—the view that the Iroquois League was a compound of two distinct peoples , the Mohawks, in the east, including the Oneidas; and the Senecas, in the west, including the Onondagas and Cayugas. Rev. W.M. Beauchamp, of Baldwinsville, the most thorough living student of the matter, first suggested a late date for the coming of the Mohawks and formation of the League. He had noticed that the three Seneca dialects differed very greatly from the two Mohawk, and that while the local relics of the former showed they had been long settled in their country, those of the latter evidenced a very recent occupation. He had several battles with Hale on the subject, the latter arguing chiefly from tradition and change of language. The probability, writes Mr. Beauchamp—privately to the writer— is that a division took place at Lake Erie, or perhaps further west; some passed on the north side and became the Neutrals and Hurons; the vanguard becoming the Mohawks or Hochelagans, afterwards Mohawks and Oneidas . Part went far south, as the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, and a more northern branch, the Andastes; part followed the south shore and became the Eries, Senecas and Cayugas; part went to the east of Lake Ontario, removing and becoming the Onondagas, when the Huron war began.
It is noticeable that the earliest accounts of the Five Nations speak of them as of two kinds—Mohawks and Sinnekes, or as termed by the French the Inferior and Superior Iroquois. For example Antony Van Corlear's Journal , edited by Gen. James Grant Wilson, also certain of the New York documents. The most thorough local student of early Mohawk town-sites, Mr. S.L. Frey, of Palatine Bridge, N.Y., supports Mr. Beauchamp in his view of the late coming of the Mohawks into the Mohawk River Valley, where they have always been settled in historic times. According to him, although these people changed their sites every 25 or 30 years from failure of the wood supply and other causes, only four prehistoric sites have been discovered in that district, all the others containing relics of European origin. Mr. Beauchamp believes even this number too large. Both put forward the idea that the Mohawks were the ancient race of Hochelaga, whose town on the island of Montreal was visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535, and had disappeared completely in 1608 when Champlain founded Quebec. What had become of these people? writes Mr. Frey, in his pamphlet The Mohawks. An overwhelming force of wandering Algonquins had destroyed their towns. To what new land had they gone? I think we shall find them seated in the impregnable strongholds among the hills and in the dense forests of the Mohawk Valley.