dred years before the discovery by Columbus, but his writings are not generally accepted. The tradition of the Senecas, the fifth of the Six Nations, is that the original people of their Nation broke forth from the earth, from the crest of a mountain at the head of Canandaigua Lake. The mountain which gave them birth is called Ge-nun-de-wah-gauh, or the great hill, and for this reason the Senecas are sometimes called the great hill people, and, I believe, this was their original title. The Ge-nun-de-wah-gauh has been held, by them, sacred as being their birth-place. It was for many years the place of holding the councils of this tribe, and was the hallowed place of their religious services.

As with the Senecas so with all the tribes of the Six Nations. They have no written history of their origin, nor can one now be produced.

One of the principal supports to the confederacy of the Six Nations, and one of the strongest ties which bound them together was the system of totemship. In the Six Nations there were eight totemic clans.

The Iroquois believed that Taounyawatha, the God of Waters, had descended to the earth to teach them the arts of savage life. They claimed further that this God, secing the evils by which their various tribes were beset, urged them to form a great confederacy for their common good and defence. But before the people could be collected together this Messenger took his flight, promising, however, that another should be sent to instruct them in the principles of the proposed league. "And accordingly," says the glowing pen of Francis Parkman, "as a band of Mohawk warriors were threading the funeral labyrinth of an ancient pine forest, they heard, amid its blackest depths, a hoarse voice chanting in measured cadence; and following the sound, they saw, seated among the trees, a monster of so hideous an aspect that, one and all, they stood benumbed with terror. His features were wild and frightful. He was encompassed by hissing rattlesnakes, which, Medusalike, hung writhing from his head; and on the ground, around him were strewn implements of incantation, and magic vessels formed of human skulls. Recovering from their amazement,

the warriors could perceive that in the mystic words of the chant, which he still poured forth, were couched the laws and principles of the destined confederacy. The tradition further declares that the monster being surrounded and captured, was presently transformed to human shape; that he became a chief of transcendent wisdom and prowess, and to the day of his death ruled the councils of the united tribes." The last of the presiding sachems at the councils at Onondaga inherited from him the honored name of Atotarho. Such, according to Indian tradition, is the origin of the great Iroquois confederacy. But if the reader is shocked with this preposterous legend, what must be said of their tradition regarding the epoch which preceded the auspicious event of their union. In these evil days, according to the same authority, the scattered and divided Iroquois were beset with every form of peril and disaster. Giants, cased in armor of stone, descended on them from the mountains of the north. Huge beasts trampled down their forests like fields of grass. Human heads, with streaming hair and glaring eyeballs, shot through the air like meteors, shedding pestilence and death throughout the land. The waters of Lake Ontario were troubled. From the bosom of the boisterous lake a horned serpent of mighty size rose up almost to the clouds. The people fled from before his awful presence, and would not have escaped his open jaws had not the thunder bolts of the skies driven him down into his watery home at the bottom of the lake. Around the infant Seneca village on Mount Genundewahguah, already spoken of, a twoheaded serpent coiled himself, of size so monstrous that the perishing people could not ascend his scaly sides, and perished in multitudes. At length the monster was mortally wounded by the magic arrow of a child, and, writhing in the agonies of death, he uncoiled himself from the mountain home of the Senecas, and rolled into the lake below, lashing its black waters into a bloody foam, and allowing the few remaining wretched Indians to flee from the place of their long and disastrous confinement. The serpent sank to the bottom of the lake, and disappeared forever.

According to the fancy of the Iroquois, the Spirit of Thun

der dwelt under the Falls of Niagara, and when, amid the blackening shadows of the approaching storm, or the sharp, quick flashes of the lightning, they heard his broad, deep voice peal along the heavens, they "hid themselves from the face of the angry Spirit."

These legends, although unworthy of much consideration, are grand evidences of the superior intellectual powers of the people of the Six Nations. It is true that their imaginations were assisted by the dismal voice of the wind, the unfathomable darkness of the gathering thunder storm, or the low, deep sound of the tossing lake waters; but, even in view of these mysteries, their traditions, when compared with those of other nations, grandly demonstrate the power and capacity of the Iroquois mind. But with all their intellectual superiority, the arts of life among them had made no advance from a barbarous condition. Their implements of war, and other products of their genius, were not very flattering to them. There was a rough, unfinished appearance to everything artificial around them. Their huts, pottery and the conveniences of life combined to attest their untidy inactive genius. Although behind their race in these things, they were largely in advance of it as husbandmen. Their beautiful fields of Indian corn and squashes and the ancient apple-orchards which grew around their settlements, captivated the invading army of Count Frontenac in 1696.

Their dwellings and works of defense, although rough, were, however, well adapted to their wants, and were good evidences of their great industry. But these, which were scattered along the St. Lawrence and around Lake Ontario, were leveled to the ground, never to rise again, in 1687, by De Nonville, and, nine years, later by Frontenac.

"Along the banks of the Mohawk, among the hills and hollows of Onondaga, in the forests of Oneida and Cayuga, on the romantic shores of Seneca Lake, and the rich borders of the Genesee, surrounded by waiving maize fields, and encircled from afar by the green margin of the forests, stood the ancient strongholds of the confederacy." The little villages were surrounded by palisades, and were otherwise well fortified with

magazines of stones, and with water conductors, which were efficiently used in the event of a fire.

In habits of social life the Iroquois were thoroughly savage. During the long winter evenings, men, women and children gathered near the log fires in their rude huts, and, while the cold storm was beating the lonely forest without, the storyteller of the tribe recounted the history of his nation and deeds of ancient heroism. The curious pipe was passed from hand to hand, and, by the flickering firelight, each half-naked warrior, wrought up by the superstitious narratives of the talker, seemed to pass the hours in pleasure.

The war path, the race of political ambition, and the chase, all had their votaries among the people of the Six Nations. When their assembled sachems had resolved on war, and when, from their ancient Council House a hundred light-footed messengers were sent to the distant tribes to call them to arms, in the name of their great chief, then from Quebec to the Carolinas, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, thousands of warlike hearts caught up the invitation with glad enthusiasm. By fasting and praying, by consulting dreams and omens, and by ancient usages, the warriors sought to ensure victory for their arms. When these singular performances had been concluded, they began their secret progress towards the defenseless white settlement. Soon followed the news of some bloody massacre which, exaggerated in its flight from settlement to settlement, was swiftly borne to the ears of the older New England towns. While these places were filled with excitement over the shocking tidings, the victorious warriors returned to their villages with the unfortunate captives, to celebrate their merciless triumphs. As they approach, the sound of the war-whoop is heard, and hundreds of savage women and children run out with sticks and stones to meet the company. Their hideous yelping, warns the prisoners of increasing danger, but they have no power to turn back, and, resigning themselves to an awful fate, they regard a pelting from these foolish wretches, as necessary to prepare them for the tortures that must follow. And now the black arches of the forest grow blacker as the smoke, slowly curling upward from the

fires of death, forms itself in clouds above them. With firebrand and torch the excited multitude circle round their agonizing victim, until the slow tortures have ended in death, when the charred corpse is thrown to the dogs and the cruel ceremony is ended by clamerous shouts to drive away the spirit of the captive. Such were the most exquisite enjoyments of the cruel Indians of the Six Nations.

Leaving this remarkable people, let us turn to the other members of the same great family. The Algonquin people occupied a large tract of territory surrounding the Six Nations. It was the Indians of this family who first greeted Cartier, as his little fleet ascended the St. Lawrance; it was Algonquins who welcomed the pioneer settlers of Virginia. They were Algonquins who, led on by Sassacus, Pequot and Phillip of Mount Hope, harrassed the settlements of the New England colonies; who under the great tree at Kensington, made the covenant of peace with William Penn; and when French missionaries and fur-traders explored the Wabash and the Ohio, they found"their valleys tenanted by the same far-extended race." As civilization progressed, they were driven from these eastern strongholds, until only a few remnants of their once great and powerful nation were clustered around the Strait of Mackinaw.

The Delawares were the most powerful tribe of the Algonquin family. According to their traditions, they were the parent tribe from whence sprung all the other divisions of this people. They were called Delawares, probably from the fact that, when the European Colonists first visited that section of - country, their lodges were found thickly clustered along the waters of the Delaware and its tributary streams. They were, in a small measure, an agricultural people, although they mainly depended upon fishing and the chase as a means of subsistence. As already mentioned, they had been subjected by the fierce warriors of the Six Nations, and when the Quakers first came among them, they offered but few evidences of military skill or courage. But as civilization pushed them westward, beyond the reach and power of the Iroquois, they revived their warlike spirits, and were soon found to be formidable enemies.