ticle fully explained by Wayne himself, he then asked, "You Chippewas, do you approve of these articles and are you prepared to sign them?" (A unanimous answer, "Yes".) He then asked the same question, in turn, of every nation there present. As each was called upon by name it gave the same answer. All having agreed, and the treaty being signed, a copy was given to the representative of each nation, after which gifts were distributed among them, and the council broke up, with every mark of mutual good feeling.

By this treaty the Indians had been pushed back from the Ohio, nearly to the divide separating the waters flowing to the Ohio from those running to Lake Erie. Or, if the Western Reserve be included, more than two-thirds. of the State of Ohio was now thrown open to settlement. Wayne had done his part equally well as soldier or diplomat.

THIRD EPOCH

PROGRESS

"The strongest nation is that which counts the most robust men, ested in its defence, animated by its spirit, and possessing the feeling of its destiny."-Buret.

inter

HA

FALL OF THE IROQUOIS, 1779

AVING now seen why westward emigration first followed the Ohio Valley, even though mountains stood in the way, it is found that, with the return of peace, travel immediately flowed back into its natural channels again. War had forced the opening of a new route; peace gave us back the old again, in this way.

Before the Revolution, there were no thoroughfares through middle and western New York, save the old, well-beaten Iroquois trails-from village to village. White settlements extended no farther West than Rome, where all travel turned aside to reach the lake at Oswego. This was the great route to the West; and it also was the route by which the infant commerce of the West reached tide-water. It had only been established by leave of the Iroquois.

The Revolution changed all that. Among other results it brought about the utter downfall of the great Iroquois confederacy itself, in a way no one had foreseen or expected.

It so happened that when the colonies went to war with England, these Iroquois took sides against them, as rebels against their lawful king; and so throughout all that long contest the colonies had no worse foes than their old-time friends of the great league, who nearly depopulated the Mohawk Valley, and quite desolated that of the Upper Susquehanna.

Their many cruelties had, in turn, provoked the invasion and conquest of their own country by an American