the relation of the tribes to each other with reference to marriage. In this respect the Wolf, Bear, Beaver and Turtle tribes were brothers to each other, and cousins to the other four. They were not allowed to intermarry. The opposite four tribes were also brothers to each other, and were also prohibited from intermarrying; however, either of the first four could intermarry with either of the last four-the Hawk with the Bear or Beaver; Heron with Turtle, but not Beaver and Turtle, nor Deer and Deer. Whoever violated these laws of marriage incurred the deepest detestation and disgrace. The rigor of this original system in time was relaxed, and the prohibition was confined to the tribe of the individual, which among the residue of the Six Nations is still the rule. Under both the original and modern regulation, the husband and wife were of different tribes; the children still follow the tribe of the mother. However greatly the social relations of these wonderful people may interest us, we Pittsburghers are not especially concerned. For lack of space, if for no other reason, it must be left without further elucidation. It may be permitted to say that the study of these relations is of absorbing interest, and those who desire to follow it more largely are referred to the authorities who have been named.

We may well believe that before the European had planted his footsteps upon the Red Man's trail, or the Old World had knowledge of the New, these boundless solitudes had been the scene of human conflicts, and therein occurred the rise and fall of Indian sovereignties. "Isolated nations," remarks "Skenandoah" in his "Letters," "sprang up with an energetic growth, and for a season spread their dominion far and wide. After a brief period of prosperity, they were borne back by adverse fortune into their individual obscurity. The reason must be sought in the unsubstantial nature of their political structures. It was the merit of the Iroquois to rest themselves upon a more durable foundation by the establishment of their Confederacy. The alliance between their nations, they cemented by the stronger and more imperishable bands of their Tribal League. At the epoch of the Saxon occupation, they were rapidly building up an empire which threatened the whole Indian race from the chain of lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Their power had become sufficient to set at defiance all hostile invasions from contiguous nations, and to preclude the idea of subjugation. A nationality of character and a unity of interest had resulted from the relationships by which they were so blended together, and above all, the Confederacy, while it suffered no loss of numbers by emigrating bands, was endued with a capacity for indefinite expansion. At the period of discovery, the Aztecs of the South and the Iroquois in the North were the only Indian races upon the continent whose institutions promised at maturity to ripen into civilization. Such were the conditions and prospects of the Indian League when Hendrick Hudson sailed up the river which con

stituted the League's eastern boundary. This silent voyage of the navigator may be regarded as the opening event in the series which resulted in reversing the political prospects of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, and in introducing into their Long House an invader more relentless in his purposes and more invincible in arms than the Red Man against whose assaults it had been erected."

The invader was a man of white skin.

"Skenandoah" points out a singular feature in connection with Indian organizations, in that their decline and fall are sudden and usually simultaneous. "A rude shock from within," he said, "but too easily disturbs their inter-relations, and when once cast back upon the predominating sentiment of Indian life-the Hunter state-a powerful nation rapidly dissolves into a multitude of fragments, and is lost and forgotten in the undistinguished mass of lesser tribes. But the Iroquois Confederacy was subjected to a severer test. It went down before the Saxon, and not the Indian race. This Indian constellation paled only before the greater constellation of the American Confederacy. If it had been left to resist the pressure of surrounding nations (living like the Iroquois themselves, a hunter-life), there is reason to believe that it would have subsisted for ages, and perhaps having broken the spell, would have introduced civilization by an original and spontaneous movement."9

Perhaps! Great events occurred in the region about Pittsburgh that were powerful factors in the expulsion of all Indians from the region, incidentally destroying the dominion of the Iroquois. It is for this reason that the history of their League is part of the history of the region. The Seneca nation alone made more Pittsburgh history than any other in the League.

9"Letters on the Iroquois." "Olden Time;" Vol. II, p. 127. Ibid., p. 71.

CHAPTER V.

The Lenni-Lenape, alias the Delawares.

In the history of Pennsylvania, the story of the Lenape takes up many pages. From the arrival of William Penn on the River Delaware in 1682 until Wayne's victory over the western tribes in 1794, or more than a century, this nation made most of Pennsylvania's Indian history, and with this record in large degree the history of the Shawanese runs concurrent.

The tribal union of the remarkable people commonly known as the Iroquois, has received extended notice in Chapter IV. Dr. Brooks remarks that "this union was not exceeded in rude statecraft by the half mythical Aztec Confederation," and their story briefly told will indicate the general nature of other though less perfect Indian confederacies of North America.1

The less perfect confederacies that pertain to this history were of Algonquian tribes or nations. They could not say as Thayendanega, the Mohawk (Joseph Brant). "The Six Nations have no dictator among the nations of the earth. We are not the wards of the English. We are a commonwealth." We can in a softer sense refer to the Pennsylvania Algonquins as wards of the Iroquois. Historians are more apt to say vassals of the Iroquois. We may note the remark of Parkman also, that the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy were placed together by an eight-fold band, and to this hour have the slender remnants clung to one another with an invincible tenacity. The Pennsylvania Indians are among those who "have withered from the land." It is an observation of Dr. Brinton that "the League of the Iroquois was a thoroughly statesmanlike creation illustrative of the social fact of self-government; the neighbors of the Iroquois, the Lenape, had nothing resembling 'the Long House.'"

The Algonquins were the largest and most widely ranged family of North American Indians. Their tribes stretched from Labrador to the Rocky mountains, and from Hudson's Bay to the Carolinas. Many of the Indian tribes with whom our national history is most intimately associated, and their vigor and persistency of life, remarks Dr. Jenkins, have made them most familiar in our annals. Pocahontas was an Algonquin, we are to remember; and Sassacus, the Pequot, and Massasoit, and Philip of Pokanoket, and Uncas the Mohegan, and Pontiac and Tecumseh in the West, and the host of sachems and chiefs who figure in early colonial history; so, too, all who made history in Pennsylvania, not dis

1"Story of the American Indian; His Origin, Development, Decline and Destiny;" Elbridge G. Brooks; p. 98; Ibid., 100-101.