484 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



been said, be that of the formation of the Iroquois confederacy. 

 This date was fixed by the estimates severally made at different 

 times by my friend the Hon. L. H. Morgan and myself, in ac- 

 cordance with the testimony of the leading Iroquois chiefs, at 

 about the middle of the fifteenth century, or, more precisely, 

 about the year 1459. Other investigators, whose views are en- 

 titled to respectful consideration, including the Rev. Dr. Beau- 

 champ and Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, have been inclined to place the 

 formation of the league at a later time. But their conclusions 

 differ considerably, and fail to account for many important facts. 

 I am therefore compelled to adhere to my original estimate. I 

 fully accept Mr. Hewitt's identification of the "Trudamani" or 

 " Toudamani," of whom Jacques Cartier heard from the Hurons 

 in 1535, with the well-known " Tsonnontowanen " of later writers. 

 These " great mountain people," or Senecas, were the most power- 

 ful of the Iroquois nations, and their name was commonly used 

 by the Hurons or Wyandots from ancient times as the general 

 name of all the Iroquois confederates. This we learn from the 

 little book entitled Origin and Traditional History of the Wyan- 

 dots, published at Toronto in 1870 by Peter Dooyentate Clarke, 

 a half-breed Wyandot, and giving much important information 

 concerning the traditions of his people. He speaks particularly 

 of the war which occurred " in the first quarter of the sixteenth 

 century," between the Hurons and the Senecas (or Iroquois), who 

 had previously lived on friendly terms, though in separate vil- 

 lages, on the St. Lawrence River, near what is now Montreal, but 

 was then the site of the Huron capital town of Hochelaga. The 

 result was that the Hurons, later in the same century, broke up 

 their villages near Montreal, and journeyed westward, and after- 

 ward northward, until they reached Lake Huron. Meanwhile 

 the warfare between the two leading branches of the Huron- 

 Iroquois stock continued through the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries. All this is simply historical, and accords in the main 

 with the narratives of the French explorers, from Cartier to 

 Champlain and Charlevoix, and with the traditions of both 

 branches of the Huron-Iroquois family. 



Between the year 1459 and that of Cartier's arrival at Hoche- 

 laga, in 1535, there was ample time for the Hurons to become 

 familiar with the new art of making wampum belts. In fact, we 

 learn from Cartier's narrative that they were then proficient in 

 it. When he kidnapped Donnaconna, the chief of Stadacon^ 

 (now Quebec), to carry him to France, the terrified people, in the 

 hope of redeeming him, presented to the captain no less than 

 twenty-four " collars of porcelain," or wampum belts, which, the 

 writer tells us, " is the greatest treasure they have in the world, 

 for they prize it above gold and silver." 



