70 DANIEL WILSON ON TUE HUEON-IEOQUOIS OP 



bt'came iiuqiiestiouably the aggressive race of the Northern continent ; and were an 

 object of dread to widely severed nations. Their earliest foes were probably the Algon- 

 kins, whose original home appears to have been between Lake Superior and Hudson 

 B.iy. Nevertheless, there was a time, according to the traditions of both, apparently in 

 some old pre-Columbian century, -when Iroquois and Algonkins combined their forces 

 against the Alligéwi, a long extinct stock, whose name survives in that of the Alleghany 

 mountains and river. If the growing belief is well founded that they were the so-called 

 " Mound-Builders " of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys, they must have been a numerous 

 people, occupying a territory of great extent, and carrying on agriculture on a large scale. 

 So far as metallurgy — that crucial test of civilization, — is concerned, they had not advanced 

 beyond the stage of Iroquois progress. But their pottery was greatly superior to any cer- 

 amic art of the region around the great lakes ; their ingenious carvings in stone have 

 been objects of wide-spread interest ; whik their singular geometrical earthworks still 

 puzzle the American archteologist, from the evidence they show of skill in a people still 

 practically in their stone period. The only conceivable solution of the mystery, as it 

 seems to me, must be looked for in the assumption that some " Druidic " or Braminical 

 cast, distinct from the true native Alligéwi stock, ruled in those great northern river- 

 valleys, as in Peru ; and, like the mythic Quetzalcoatl of the Aztecs, taiight them agricul- 

 ture, and directed the construction of the marvellous earthworks to which they owe their 

 later distinctive name. But for some unknown reason they provoked the united fury of 

 Iroquois and Algonkins ; and after long-protracted strife were driven out, or exterminated. 

 A curious phase of incipient native civilization thus perished ; and, notwithstanding all the 

 romance attached to the league of the Six Nations, it is impossible to credit them at any 

 stage of their known history with the achievement of such a progress in agriculture or 

 primitivi' arts as we must ascribe to this ancient people of the Ohio valley. To the 

 triumph of the Iroquois in this long-protracted warfare may have been due the 

 haughty spirit which thenceforth demanded a recognition of their supremacy from all 

 surrounding nations. Their partial historians ascribe to them a spirit of magnanimity 

 in the use of their power, and a mediatorial interposition among the weaker nations that 

 acknowledged their supremacjr. They appear, indeed, to have again entered into alliance 

 with an Algonkin nation in the early period of their league. Their annalists have trans- 

 mitted the memory of a treaty effected with the Ojibways, when the latter dwelt on the 

 shores of Lake Superior ; and the meeting place of the two powerful races was at the great 

 fishing-ground of the Sault Ste. Marie rapids, within reach of the coiiper-beariug rocks 

 of the Keweenaw peninsula. The league then established is believed to have been 

 faithfully maintained on both sides for upwards of two hi\ndred years. But if so, it had 

 been displaced by bitter feud in the interval between the visits of Cartier and Champlain 

 to the St. Lawrence. 



The historical significance given to the legend of Hiawatha by the coherent narrative 

 so ingeniously deduced by Mr. Horatio Hale from the " Iroquois Book of Eites " seems to 

 point to a long past era of beneficent rule and social progress among the Huron-Iroquois. 

 But the era is pre-Columbian and mythic. The pipe of peace had been long extinguished, 

 and the buried tomahawk recovered, when the early French explorers were brought into 

 contact [with the Iroquois and Hurous. The history of their deeds, as recorded by the 

 Jesuit Fathers from personal observation, is replete with the relentless ferocity of the 



