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PRE-ARYAN AMERICAN MAN. 63 
sive use: the Catawba, the Cherokee, and that which he assumed to include in a common 
origin, both the Muskhogee and the Choctaw. * But besides those, six well ascertained 
languages of smaller tribes, including those of the Uchees and the Natchez, appear to 
demand separate recognition. Their region differs essentially from those over which the 
Algonquin and Iroquois war-parties ranged at will. It is broken up by broad river chan- 
nels, and intersected by impenetrable swamps; and has thus afforded refuge for the rem- 
nants of conquered tribes, and for the preservation of distinct languages among small bands 
of refugees. 
When the Ohio valley was first explored it was uninhabited ; and in the latter part 
of the seventeenth century the whole region extending from Lake Erie to the Tennessee 
river was an unpeopled desert. But the Cherokees were in the occupation of their territory 
when first visited by De Soto in 1540; and they are described by Bertram in 1773, with 
their great council house, capable of accommodating several hundreds, erected on the 
summit of one of the large mounds, in their town of Cowe, on the Tanase river, in Florida. 
But Bertram adds: “This mound on which the rotunda stands, is of a much ancienter 
date than the building, and perhaps was raised for another purpose. The Cherokees 
themselves are as ignorant as we are, by what people, or for what purpose, these artificial 
hills were raised.” + It would, indeed, no more occur to those wanderers into the deserted 
regions of the Mound-builders to inquire into the origin of their mounds, than into that of 
the Alleghany mountains. 
If then it is probable that we thus recover some clue to the identity of the vanished 
race of the Ohio valley: the very designation of the river is a memorial of their supplanters. 
The Ohio is an Iroquois name given to the river of the Alleghans by that indomitable race 
of savage warriors who effectually counteracted the plans of France, under her greatest 
monarchs, for the settlement of the new world. Their historian, the late Hon. L. H. 
Morgan, remarks of the Iroquois: “They achgeved for themselves a more remarkable civil 
organisation, 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 war, 
the blighting influence of foreign intercourse, and the still more fatal encroachments of a 
restless and advancing border population. Under their federal system, the Iroquois flourished 
in independence, and capable of self-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 canyas 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 to characterise the elements of combined action among the 
Six Nation Indians as wise civilinstitutions ; or to use such terms as league and federal system 
in the sense in which they are employed by the historian of the Iroquois; is to suggest 
associations that are illusory. With all the romance attached to the League of the Hodeno- 
sauneega, they were to the last mere savages. When the treaty which initiated the great 
league was entered into by its two oldest members, the Mohawks and the Oneidas, the 

* Archæologia Americana, vol. ii. 
+ Bertram’s Travels through N. and $. Carolina, Georgia, &c., 1791, p. 367. 
{ The League of the Iroqnois, p. 2. 
