CANADA, A TYPICAL RACÉ OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 8S 



To characterize the combinai ion ett'ected among such savage tribes, as oue presenting 

 elements of wise civil institutions ; or indeed to introduce such terms as league and 

 federal system, in the sense in which they have been repeatedly employed by historians 

 of the Iroquois, as though they referred to a confederation akin to those of the ancient 

 Achœans or ^tolians, is to suggest associations altogether misleading. Though an inter- 

 esting phase of American savage life, to which its long duration gives additional signi- 

 ficance, the Iroquois league was by no means unique. The Creek confederacy embraced 

 numerous tribes between the Mobile, Alabama, and Savannah rivers, and the Grulf of 

 Mexico. At the head of it were the Muskhogees, a numerous and powerful, but wholly 

 savage, race of hunters. Like the Oneidas, Onandagas, and the still older Wyaudots, they 

 and the Choctaws claimed to be autochthones. The Muskhogees appealed to a tradition of 

 their ancestors that they issued from a cave near the Alabama River ; while the Choctaws 

 pointed to the frontier region between them and the Chicasaws, where, as they affirmed, 

 they suddenly emerged from a hole in the earth, a numerous and mighty people. The 

 system of government amongst the members of this southern confederacy seems to have 

 borne considerable resemblance to that of the Iroquois. Every village was the centre of 

 an independent tribe or nation, with its own chief; and the restraints imposed on the 

 individual members, except when cooperating in some special enterx)rise or religious 

 ceremonial, appear to have been slight. 



An ingenious philological induction of Mr. Hale has already been referred to. He 

 finds in the language of the Cherokees a grammar mainly Huron-Iroquois, and a vocabulary 

 largely recruited from some foreign source. From this he is led to infer that one portion 

 of the conquered Alligéwi, while the conflict still lasted, may have cast in their lot with 

 the conquering race, just as the Tlascalans did with the Spaniards in their war against 

 the Aztecs, and hence the origin of the great Cherokee nation. The fugitive Allio-éwi, he 

 su.rmises, may have fled down the Mississipi^i till they reached the country of the 

 Choctaws, themselves a mound-building people ; and to the alliance of the two he would 

 thus trace the difference in the language of the latter from that of their eastern kindred, the 

 Creeks or Muskhogees.' On the assumption of such a combination of ethnical elements, 

 the origin of the Creek confederacy is easily accounted for. 



The confederated members of the League of the Iroquois remained savages to the last. 

 Their agriculture, carried on solely by female labour, was simple and rude. Their arts 

 never advanced a stej) beyond that of Europe's neolithic dawn. Even the implements of 

 war and the chase consisted only of the flint-headed lance and arrow, and the hafted 

 stone for a tomahawk or battle-axe. We have to retrace our way far behind the oldest 

 of Europe's historical traditions for any parallel to such a condition of infantile barbarism. 

 Yet in one respect their progress had been great. Each nation of the Iroquois league had 

 its chief, to whom pertained the right of kindling the symbolic council fire, and of taking 

 the lead in all public assemblies. "When the representative chiefs of the nations gathered 

 in the Long House around the Common Council fire of the league, it was no less necessary 

 that they should be able and i^ersuasive speakers than brave warriors. Rhetoric was 

 cultivated in the Council House of the Iroquois no less earnestly than in the Athenian 

 ekklesia or the Roman forum. Acute reasoning and persuasive eloquence demanded all 



' Indian Migrations, p. 22. 



