More than one attempt to answer it has been made. Mr. Lewis H. Morgan thought there was evidence to show that the valley of the Columbia river, Oregon, "was the initial point from which the Algonkin stock emigrated to the great lake region and thence to the Atlantic coast."[1] This is in direct conflict with the evidence of language, as the Blackfoot or Satsika is the most corrupt and altered of the Algonkin dialects. Basing his argument on this evidence, Mr. Horatio Hale reaches a conclusion precisely the reverse of that of Morgan. "The course of migration of the Indian tribes," writes Mr. Hale, "has been from the Atlantic coast westward and southward. The traditions of the Algonkins seem to point to Hudson's Bay and the coast of Labrador."[2] This latter view is certainly that which accords best with the testimony of language and of history.
We know that both Chipeways and Crees have been steadily pressing westward since their country was first explored, driving before them the Blackfeet and Dakotas.[3]
The Cree language is built up on a few simple, unchangeable radicals and elementary words, denoting being, relation, energy, etc.; it has extreme regularity of construction, a single negative, is almost wholly verbal and markedly incorporative, has its grammatical elements better defined than its neighbors, and a more consistent phonetic system.[4] For these and similar reasons we are justified in considering it the nearest representative we possess of the pristine Algonkin tongue, and unless strong grounds to the contrary are advanced, it is proper to assume that the purest dialect is found nearest the primeval home of the stock.
§ 2. The Iroquois Stock.
Surrounded on all sides by the Algonkins were the Iroquois, once called the Five or Six Nations. When first discovered they were on the St. Lawrence, near Montreal, and in the Lake Region of Central New York. Various other, tribes, not in their confederacy, and generally at war with them, spoke dialects of the same language. Such were the Hurons or Wyandots, between the Georgian Bay and Lake Erie, the Neutral Nation on the Niagara river, the Eries on the southern shore of the lake of that name, the Nottoways in Virginia, and the Tuscaroras in North Carolina. The Cherokees, found by the whites in East Tennessee, but whose national legend, carefully preserved for generations, located them originally on the head waters of the Ohio, were a remote offshoot of this same stem.
The Susquehannocks.
The valley of the Susquehanna river was occupied by a tribe of Iroquois lineage and language, known as the Susquehannocks, Conestogas and Andastes. The last name is Iroquois, from andasta, a cabin pole. By some, "Susquehannock" has also been explained as an Iroquois word, but its form is certainly Algonkin. The terminal k is the place-sign, hanna denotes a flowing stream, while the adjectival prefix has been identified by Heckewelder with schachage, straight, from the direct course of the river near its mouth, and by Mr. Guss with woski, new, which, he thinks, referred to fresh or spring water.
Of these the former will appear the preferable, if we allow for the softening of the gutturals, which was a phonetic trait of the Unami dialect of the Lenape.
The Susquehannocks were always at deadly feud with the Iroquois, and between wars, the smallpox and the whites, they were finally exterminated. The particulars of their short and sad history have been presented with his characteristic thoroughness by Dr. John G. Shea,[5] and later by Prof. N. L. Guss.[6] They were usually called by the Delawares Mengwe, which was the term they applied to all the Iroquois-speaking tribes.[7] The English corrupted it to Minqua and Mingo, and as the eastern trail of the Susquehannocks lay up the Conestoga Creek, and down the Christina, both those streams were called "Mingo Creek" by the early settlers.
It is important for the ethnology of Pennsylvania, to understand that at the time of the first settlement the whole of the Susquehanna Valley, from the Chesapeake to the New York lakes, was owned and controlled by Iroquois-speaking tribes. A different and erroneous opinion was expressed by Heckewelder, and has been generally received. He speaks of the Lenape Minsi as occupying the head waters of the Susquehanna. This was not so in the historic period.