CANADA, A TYPICAL liACE OF AMKIilCAN ABORIGINES. 69 



Algonkius, and other nider tribes of North America. The story of this leag-ue has been 

 repeated by successive admiring- historians, not without rhetorical exaggerations 

 borrowed from the institutions of civilized nations, both of ancient and modern times. 

 Morgan says of this tribal union : " Under their federal system, the Iroqiiois flourished in 

 independence, and capable of sclt-protection, long after the New England and Virginia 

 races had surrendered their jurisdictions, and fallen into the condition of dependent 

 nations ; and they now stand forth upon the canvass of Indian history, prominent alike 

 for the wisdom of their civil institutions, their sagaeity in the administration of the 

 league, and their courage in its defence. When their power and sovereignty finally 

 passed away, it was through the events of peaceful intercourse, gradually iirogressing to 

 this result."' Schoolcraft in like manner refers to " their advancement in the economy 

 of living, in arms, in diplomacy, and in civil polity," as evideirce of a remote date for 

 their confederacy.- But while thus contrasting the "power and sovereignty" of the 

 Iroquois with the " dependent nations " to the south, Schoolcraft leaves it manifest that, 

 even in the seventeenth centnry, their whole numbers fell short of 12,000, and their 

 warriors or fighting men were carefully estimated in 1G77 at 2,150. The diversity of 

 dialects of the dift'erent members of the league is a source of curious interest to the 

 philologist ; but the fact that, among a people numerically so small, local dialects were 

 thus perpetuated, is a proof of the very partial inflireiice ol' the league as a bond of union. 

 It serves to illustrate the general defect of native American polity. " Nothing," says 

 Max Millier, " surprised the Jesuit missionaries so much as the immense number of 

 languages si)oken by the natives of America. But this, far from being a proof of a high 

 state of civilization, rather sliowed that tht^ various i-aces of America had never sub- 

 mitted for any length of time to a powerful political concentration.' The Iroquois were 

 undoubtedly preeminent in the highest virtues of the savage ; and could they have 

 united with their courage and persistencjr iu war some of the elements of progress in 

 civilization ascribed to them, they might have proved the regenerators of the continent, 

 and reserved it for permanent occupation by races of native origin. " AVherever they 

 went," says Schoolcraft, " they carried proofs of their energy, courage and enterprise. 

 At one period we hear the sound of their war-cry along the Straits of the St. Mary's, and 

 at the foot of Lake Superior ; at another, under the walls of Quebec, where they finally 

 defeated the Hurons under the eyes of the French." ' And after glancing at the long- 

 history of their triumphs, he adds : " Nations trembled when they heard the name of the 

 Konoshioui." 



In older centuries, while the Huron-Iroquois still constituted one united people in 

 their ancestral home to the north of the St. Lawrence, they must have been liable to 

 contact with the Eskimo, both on the north and the east ; and greatly as the two races 

 differ, the dolichocephalic type of head common to both is not only siTggestive of possible 

 intermixtirre, but also of evidence of encroachments on the Eskimo in early centuries by 

 this aggressive race. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as probably at a 

 much earlier date, when the Iroquois had parted from the Wyandots or Hurons, they 



' League of the Iroquois, p. 4. 



'^ Notes on the Iroquois, p. 51. 



■' Lectures on the Science of Language, .5tli éd., \>. 58. 



* Notes on the Iroquois, p. 52. 



