| The Huron Iroquois. |
The Hurons or Wyandots and the Iroquois were distinct from the Algonquins and akin to each other. When Cartier visited the St. Lawrence, the native towns which he found on the sites of Quebec and Montreal seem to have been inhabited by Indians of this race; but by Champlain's time the towns had disappeared, and those who dwelt in them had sought other strongholds. Though related in blood and speech, these two groups of tribes were deadly foes of each other. The Hurons, like the Algonquins, were allied to the French; the Iroquois, guided partly by policy and partly by antipathy to the European intruders into Canada and their Indian friends, were as a rule to be found in amity with the English. The region of the upper St. Lawrence and of Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, was the home of the Huron Iroquois race. The Huron country lay between Georgian Bay of Lake Huron and Lake Simcoe. South of the Hurons, the northern shore of Lake Erie and both sides of the Niagara river were held by the Neutral Nation, neutral as between the Iroquois and the Hurons, and akin to both. The Eries on the southern side of Lake Erie, and the Andastes on the lower Susquehanna, were also of Huron Iroquois stock; but the foremost group of the race, the strongest by far, though not the most numerous, of all the North American Indians, were the Iroquois themselves, the celebrated Five Nations of Canadian story.
| The country of the Five Nations. |
The Erie canal, which, in its 352 miles of length, connects Lake Erie at Buffalo with the Hudson river at West Troy and Albany, runs through the country of the Five Nations. That country extended along the southern side of Lake Ontario from the Genesee river on the west to the Hudson on the east, while due north of the Hudson, the outlet of Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence, the Richelieu river, was in old days known as the river of the Iroquois. The Mohawk river, along which the Erie canal is now carried, was, on the Atlantic side, the highway to the land of the Iroquois, and it bore the name of the best known of the Five Nations, the whole confederacy being sometimes spoken or written of as Mohawks.9 The route up the river provided nearly continuous communication by water between the Hudson and Lake Ontario. From its confluence with the Hudson the Mohawk was followed to the head of its navigation, whence there was a short portage of about four miles to Wood Creek, a stream running into the Oneida lake, and the Oneida lake was linked to Lake Ontario by the Oswego river. All this line was under Iroquois control; and the westernmost of the Five Nations, the Senecas, commanded also the trade route to Lake Erie.
9 The Mohawks, however, were not the strongest of the five in number. They were outnumbered by the Senecas.
| The Five Nations. |
The name 'Iroquois' is said to be of French origin: the true title of the Five Nations was an Indian word,10 signifying 'people of the long house.' Their dwellings were oblong in form, often of great length; and, as were their dwellings, so also was their dwelling-place. Side by side the Five Nations stretched in line from west to east, as may be told by lakes and rivers in New York State, which to this day bear their names. Farthest to the west were the Senecas; next came the Cayugas, the people of the marsh. The third in line, the central people of the league, within whose borders was the federal Council house, were the Onondagas, the mountaineers; the Oneidas followed; and easternmost of all were the Mohawks.11
10 Hodenosaunee.
11 In a report of a committee of the Council held at New York, Nov. 6, 1724, on the subject of a petition of the London merchants against the Act of 1720, given in Colden's History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada (3rd ed., London, 1755), p. 226, the Five Nations are placed as follows: the Mohawks but 40 miles due west of Albany, and within the English settlements; the Oneidas about 100 miles west of Albany, and near the head of the Mohawk river; the Onondagas about 130 miles west of Albany; the Cayugas 160; and the Senecas 240.
| Small numbers of the Iroquois. Their geographical position. They held the border line between French and English. |