200 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



source from which all the other Iroquois dialects are derived. Cusick 

 states positively that the other families, as lie styles them, of the Iroquois 

 household, leaving the Mohawks in their original abode, proceeded step 

 by step to the westward. The Oneidas halted at their creek, the Onondagas 

 at their mountain, the Cayugas at their lake and the Senecas or Sonon- 

 towans, the great hill people, at a lofty eminence which rises south of 

 the Canandaigua Lake." Hale appeals also to the Wyatadot tradition 

 recorded b}' Peter Dooyentate Clark, that the Hurons originally lived 

 about Montreal near the "Senecas," until war broke out and drove them 

 westward. He sets the formation of the League of the Long House as 

 far back as the fourteenth century. 



All these authors, it will be seen, together with every historian who 

 has referred to the League, — treat of the Five Nations as always having 

 been one people. A very ditferent view, based principally on archoeology, 

 has however been recently accepted by at least several of the leading 

 authorities on the subject, — the view that the Iroquois League was a 

 compound of tivo distinct peoples, the Mohawks, in the east, including the 

 Oneidas ; and the Senecas, in the west, including the Onondagas and 

 Cayugas. Eev. W. M. Beauchamp, of Baldwinsville, the most thorough 

 living student of the matter, first suggested a late date for the coming of 

 the Mohawks and formation of the League. He had noticed that the three 

 Seneca dialects dittered very greatly from the two Mohawk, and that 

 while the local relics of the former showed they had been long settled in 

 their country, those of the latter evidenced a very recent occupation. 

 He had several battles with Hale on the subject, the latter arguing chiefly 

 from tradition and change of language. "The probability," writes Mr. 

 Beauchamp — privately to the writer — " is that a division took place 

 at Lake Erie, or perhaps further west ; some passed on the north side 

 and became the Neutrals and Hurons, the vanguard becoming the Mohawks 

 or Jfochelagans, afterwards Mohawks and Oneidas. Part went far south, 

 as the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, and a more northern branch, the 

 Andastes; part followed the south shore and became the Eriés, Senecas 

 and Cayugas ; part wont to the east of Lake Ontario, removing and 

 becoming the Onondagas, when the Huron war began.'' 



It is noticeable that the earliest accounts of the Five Nations speak 

 of them as of two kinds — Mohawks and "Sinnekes," or as termed by the 

 French the Inferior and Superior Iroquois. For example Anton}' Van 

 Corlear's Journal, edited by Gen. James G-rant Wilson, also certain of the 

 New York documents. The most thorough local student of early Mo- 

 hawk town-sites, Mr. S. L. Frcy, of Palatine Bridge, N.Y., supports 

 Mr. Beauchamp in his view of the late coming of the Mohawks into 

 the Mohawk River Valley, where they have always been settled in 

 historic times. According to him, although these peo])le changed their sites 

 every 25 or 30 years from failure of the wood supply and other causes, 



