76 DANIEL WILSON ON THE HUEON-IEOQUOIS OP 



alike disappeared, before Champlain visited tlie scene of Cartier's earlier exploration. 

 The Attiwendaronks, who dwelt to the soiith of the later home of the Hurous, on the 

 shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, may have formed another of the nations of the "Wyandot 

 stock expelled from the valley of the St. Lawrence. Situated as they were in their later 

 home, midway between the Hnrons and Iroquois, they strove in vain to maintain a friendly 

 neutrality. Charlevoix assigns the year 1635 as the date of their destruction by the 

 latter. Certain it is that between that date and the middle of the century their towns 

 were utterly destroyed ; and such of the survivors as lingered in the vicinity were 

 incorporated into the nation of the Senecas, who lay nearest to them. 



The Eries were another Huron-Iroquois nation, who ajjpear to have persistently held 

 aloof from the league. They were seemingly a fiercer and more warlike people than 

 the Attiwendaronks ; they fought with poisoned arrows, and were esteemed or dreaded 

 as warriors. Their numbers must have been considerable, since they were an object 

 of apprehension to the nations of the league, whose western frontiers marched with theii 

 own. They are affirmed by the native historian, Cusick, to have sprung from the Senecas ; 

 but, if so, their sei^aration was probably of remote date, as they were both numerous and 

 powerful. The country which they occupied was noted among the French coureurs des bois 

 for its lynx furs ; and they gave accordingly to its people the name of " La Nation du 

 Chat." Their ancient home is still indicated in the name of the great lake beside which 

 they dwelt. But, for same imknown reason they refused all alliance with the Senecas 

 and the league of their Irocinois kin, and perished by their violence within seven years 

 after the Huron country was laid waste. " To the Eries, and to the Neuter nation," or 

 Attiwendaronks, says Schoolcraft, "according to tradition, the Iroquois offered the alter- 

 native of admission into the league, or extermination ; and the strangeness of this propo- 

 sition will disappear, when it is remembered that an Indian nation regards itself as at M'ar 

 with all others not in actual alliance." ' Peace, he adds, was the ultimate aim of the 

 founders of the IroqiTois oligarchy ; and, for lovers of peace on such terms of supremacy, 

 the casus belli would not be more diificult to find than it has proved to be among the most 

 Christian of kings. In the case of the Eries, as of the elder Wyandots of Hoch(>laga, the 

 final rupture is ascribed to a woman's implacable wrath. 



Father Le Moyne, while on a mission to the Onondagas in 1654, learned that the 

 Iroquois confederacy were excited to firry against the Eries. A captive Onondaga chief is 

 said to have been burnt at the stake after he had been offered, according to Indian cus- 

 tom, to one of the Erie women, to take the place of her brother who had been murdered 

 while on a visit to the Senecas. It is a characteristic illustration of how the feuds of 

 ages were perpetuated. The traditions of the Iroquois preserved little more than the fact 

 that the Eries had perished by their fury. But a story told to Mr. Parkman by a 

 Cayuga Indian, only too aptly illustrates the hideous ferocity of their assailants. It 

 represented that the night after the great battle in which the Eries suffered their final 

 defeat, the forest was lighted up with more than a thousand fires, at each of which an 

 Erie was being tortured at the stake.^ The number is probably exaggerated. But it is 

 only thus, as it were in the lurid glare of its torturing fires, that we catch a glimpse of 



' League of the Iroquois, p. 7G. 



• The Jesuits in N. America, p. 441. Note, 



