OP THE NATIVE EACES OF AMERICA. 27 



.0- 



by David Cusick, also a Tnscarora. These works were written in English, but a proda 

 tion has just been given to the world, under the editorial care of Mr. Horatio Hale, which 

 is the most speaking testimony to the literary ability of the race. 



Of all the tribes that peopled this continent at the time when the colonial annals of 

 Canada began, there is no group in which we have so much cause to feel an interest as 

 the Huron-Iroquois federation. " In the great valley of the St. Lawrence," writes Dr. 

 Wilson, " at the period of earliest European contact with its native tribes, we iind this con- 

 federacy of Indian Nations in the most primitive condition as to all knowledge of pro- 

 gressive arts ; but full of energy, delighting in military enterprise and amply endowed 

 with the qualities requisite for effecting permanent conquests over a civilized but unwar- 

 like people. Nor did the primitive arts of the Iroquois prevent the development of inci- 

 pient germs of civilization amongst them. Agriculture was systematically practised ; 

 and their famous league, wisely established, and maintained unbroken through very 

 diversified periods of their history, exhibits a people advancing in many ways towards 

 the initiation of a self-originated civilization, when the intrusion of Europeans abruptly 

 arrested its progress, and brought them in contact with elements of foreign progress preg- 

 nant for them only with the sources of degradation and final destruction." It would 

 take too long, in a paper like this, to tell by what events and motives such a league in that 

 distant day was brought to pass. The whole story is related by Mr. Hale in the " Iroquois 

 Book of Rites," the second volume in Dr. Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Lite- 

 rature. It may suffice to say that, when the Huron-Iroquois first became known to Euro- 

 peans, they occupied the valley and uplands of what is now northern New York, in the 

 region that stretches westward from the head waters of the Hudson to the G-enesee. In 

 the same order they siicceeded each other under the names of the Caniengas or Mohawks, 

 the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas and the Senecas. Subsequently (about 1*715), 

 the Tuscaroras of the Roanoke valley were added, thus making six allied nations, 

 instead of five. Though living so far south, the Tuscaroras were of the same stock as 

 the nations with which they united. That stock primarily included the Wyandots or 

 Hurons, the Attiwandaronks, the Eries or Neutrals, and the Conestogas or Andastes, 

 besides the original constituents of the league. That in the course of time the timbers of 

 their " long house " should have been riven apart and the severed portions have become 

 hostile to each other, is not to be wondered at. Sirch breaches occur in civilization as well 

 as barbarism. But longa est injuria ; loiigœ ambages. Enough to say that a common danger 

 from the powerful Mohicans prompted the eastern Caniengas and Oneidas to unite. The 

 w*esteru Senecas and Cayugas were also drawn together by a common fear of Atotarho, 

 the tyrant of the Onondagas. In this last community, however, it was destined that the 

 deliverer should arise. We know him chiefly as a legendary personage. Mr. Hale 

 claims for him a complete flesh-and-blood reality. At all events, Hiawatha (who is also 

 known by less musical and less pronounceable names), after long thinking, devised a plan 

 by which his own and the neighbour nations should be j)ermanently protected against 

 outside and inside perils. The machinations of Atotarho proved too much for him among 

 the Onondagas. So he passed beyond the limits of his canton and people, and made his 

 way to the dwellers on the Mohawk. There his wisdom and eloquence prevailed and 

 ultimately, by a course of negotiation which I cannot now linger to describe, the con- 

 federacy was formed. But, as in nearly all such cases, success was the issue of comjaro- 



