84 DANIEL WILSON ON THE HUEON-IEOQUOTS OF 



Mississippi. Their inlhience acqiiiivd a novol importance when, in the seemiug-ly insig- 

 niiicant rivalries of French and English fur-traders, they 'practically determined the 

 balance of power between the two foremost nations of Europe on this continent. Their 

 indomitable pertinacity proved more than a match alike for European dijjlomacy and 

 military skill ; and, as they maintained an uncompromising hostility to the French at a 

 time when the rival colonists were nearly equally balanced, the failure of the magnificent 

 schemes of Louis XIV and his siiccessors, to establish in North America such a supremacy 

 as Charles V and Philip II had held in Mexico and Peru, is largely traceable to them. 

 It is natural that the Anglo-American student of history should estimate highly the 

 polity of savage warriors who thus foiled the schemes of one of the most powerful 

 monarchies of Europe for the mastery of this continent. The late Hon. L. H. Morgan thus 

 writes of them : " They achieved for themselves a more remarkable civil organization, 

 and acquired a higher degree of influence, than any other race of Indian lineage except 

 those of Mexico and Peru. In the drama of European colonization, they stood, for nearly 

 two centuries, with an unshaken front, against the devastations of vs^ar, the blighting 

 influence of foreign intercourse, and the still more fatal encroachments of a restless and 

 advancing border poj)ulation. Under their federal system, the Iroqiiois flourished in 

 independence, and capable of self-jirotection, 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 uj)on the cauA'as of Indian history, prominent alike 

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

 league, and their courage in its defence." ' But in this the historian applies to the 

 Iroquois an European standard, similar to that by which Prescott unconsciously magnified 

 Mexican barbarism into a rivalry with the contemporary civilization of Spain. The 

 romance attached to the Hodeuosauneega, or Kononsionni, the famous league of the Long 

 House, or United Households, may perhaps, in one sense derive an increased value from 

 the fact that its originators remained to the last mere savages. Birt it is, at any rate, 

 important to keep the fact in view, and to interpret, its significance in that light. When 

 the treaty which initiated the league was entered into by the Caniengas or people of 

 the flint, and the Oncidas, they were both in that primitive stage of unsophisticated 

 barbarism to which the term "stone ]>eriod" has been applied. In the absence of all 

 knowledge of metallurgy, their implements and weapons were, alike, simple and rude. 

 Agriculture, under such conditions, must have been equally primitive ; and as for their 

 wars, when they were not defensive, they appear to have had no higher aim than revenge- 

 Gallatin, no unappreciative witness, says of them : "The history of the Five Nations is 

 calculated to give a favourable opinion of the intelligence of the Red Man. But they may 

 be ranked among the worst of conqnerors. They conquered only in order to destroy ; 

 and, it would seem, solely for the purpose of gratifying their thirst for lilood. Towards 

 the south and the west they made a perfect desert of the whole country within five 

 hundred miles of their seats. A much greater number of those Indians, who since the 

 commencement of the seventeenth century, have perished by the sword in Canada and 

 the United States, have been destroyed by that single nation, than in all their wars with 

 the Europeans." ^ 



' The League of the Iroquois, p. 2. 

 ^Archseologia Americana, vol. ii, p. 79. 



