> Cheroki, Gatschet, Creek Mig. Legend, I, 34, 1884. Gatschet in Science, 413, April 29, 1887.
= Huron-Cherokee, Hale in Am. Antiq., 20, Jan., 1883 (proposed as a family name instead of Huron-Iroquois; relationship to Iroquois affirmed).
Derivation: French, adaptation of the Iroquois word hiro, used to conclude a speech, and koué, an exclamation (Charlevoix). Hale gives as possible derivations ierokwa, the indeterminate form of the verb to smoke, signifying “they who smoke;” also the Cayuga form of bear, iakwai.[39] Mr. Hewitt[40] suggests the Algonkin words īrīn, true, or real; ako, snake; with the French termination ois, the word becomes Irinakois.
With reference to this family it is of interest to note that as early as 1798 Barton[41] compared the Cheroki language with that of the Iroquois and stated his belief that there was a connection between them. Gallatin, in the Archæologia Americana, refers to the opinion expressed by Barton, and although he states that he is inclined to agree with that author, yet he does not formally refer Cheroki to that family, concluding that “We have not a sufficient knowledge of the grammar, and generally of the language of the Five Nations, or of the Wyandots, to decide that question.”[42]
Mr. Hale was the first to give formal expression to his belief in the affinity of the Cheroki to Iroquois.[43] Recently extensive Cheroki vocabularies have come into possession of the Bureau of Ethnology, and a careful comparison of them with ample Iroquois material has been made by Mr. Hewitt. The result is convincing proof of the relationship of the two languages as affirmed by Barton so long ago.
[GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION.]
Unlike most linguistic stocks, the Iroquoian tribes did not occupy a continuous area, but when first known to Europeans were settled in three distinct regions, separated from each other by tribes of other lineage. The northern group was surrounded by tribes of Algonquian stock, while the more southern groups bordered upon the Catawba and Maskoki.
A tradition of the Iroquois points to the St. Lawrence region as the early home of the Iroquoian tribes, whence they gradually moved down to the southwest along the shores of the Great Lakes.
When Cartier, in 1534, first explored the bays and inlets of the Gulf of St. Lawrence he met a Huron-Iroquoian people on the shores of the Bay of Gaspé, who also visited the northern coast of the gulf. In the following year when he sailed up the St. Lawrence River he found the banks of the river from Quebec to Montreal occupied by an Iroquoian people. From statements of Champlain and other early explorers it seems probable that the Wyandot once occupied the country along the northern shore of Lake Ontario.
The Conestoga, and perhaps some allied tribes, occupied the country about the Lower Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and have commonly been regarded as an isolated body, but it seems probable that their territory was contiguous to that of the Five Nations on the north before the Delaware began their westward movement.