"When the Algonquins were a great nation they claimed," says the author of the "Pioneer Priests of North America," "as their own, almost all the upper regions of the North American continent, and even out in the Atlantic there was no one to dispute Newfoundland with them, except an inconsiderable and now forgotten people, known as the Beothuken. Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, and all the country from Labrador to Alaska was theirs, except where the Esquimaux lived in the East, the Kitunabaus in the far Northwest, and the Hurons, Petuns and Neutrals in the region near Georgian Bay. In what is now the United States, New England was counted as their country, and though their deadly enemy, the Iroquois, had somehow or other seized the greater portion of New York, yet the strip along the Hudson belonged to the Algonquins, as also New Jersey, a part of Virginia, and North Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois and Wisconsin."
Algonquin is the generic name, but its many subdivisions and tribes have their specific names such as those set down in ethnological tables as the Abenaakis, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Crees, Delawares, Foxes, Illinois, Kickapoos, Mohicans, Massachusetts, Menominees, Montagnais, Mohawks, Narragansetts, Nepinues, Ojibways, Ottawas, Powhattans, Sacs, Shawnees, Wampanoags, Wappingers, etc.
IROQUOIS
The Iroquois were descendants of the Indians whom Jacques Cartier had met on the banks of the St. Lawrence, in 1634. But at this time they had drifted mysteriously to what is now New York territory, their central seat, that of their confederacy or league of five nations, being at Onondaga.
They were never numerous but they were very warlike. Although they lost many in war, by disease and drunkenness, for they were filthy and immoral in their habits, they recruited their strength by adopting captives seized in their raids.
They lived in palisaded towns and were more intelligent than the other races. Their houses, unsanitary and overrun with vermin, were arched constructions, sometimes of 120 feet in length and were covered with bark. In the centre of the lodge were the fires of the separate families, who were divided into stalls. The smoke escaped as best it could. They did not cultivate the land because they were so often on the warpath, neither did they devote much energy in cultivating the textile arts; hence they wore the skins of animals.
They had very vague notions of a Supreme Being, their chief object of worship being Agreskoué, the God of War, who had to be propitiated with gifts and even by human sacrifices. Theirs has been described by General Clark as literally "devil worship." They had no priesthood as such, but each brave had his oki or manitou, adopted after a protracted period of seclusion and fasting. They had their medicine men, who seemed to the missionaries to use diabolical arts in their incantations, spells and dances. Many of their sorcerers, however, were childish charlatans. They were immoral, thieves, liars, gamblers; they allowed their children to run wild, their women to grow up depraved and corrupt from girlhood. They were cruel and cannibals. The orgies of the dream feasts were unspeakably atrocious, especially after the introduction of "fire water."
They were called by the French collectively "Iroquois," by the English the "Five Nations," whereas they styled themselves the Hodenosaunee, a People of the Long House, because of the shape of their lodges. They were joined by the Tuscaroras about 1721 and from then on they were called by the English the "Six Nations."
As to their name the Bureau of American Ethnology derives it from an Algonquin word, "Iriakhoué," meaning "real adders." Charlevoix gives a descriptive derivation from hero, or hiro, meaning "I have spoken," with which they terminated their discourses with the suffix que, or some equivalent gutteral sound which expressed pain or pleasures, according to the intonation. Thus the French called them "Iroquois."