INTEODUCTION. 



NATIVE TRIBES. 



Divisions. — The Algonquins. — The Hukons. — Their Houses. 

 — Fortifications. — Habits. — Arts. — Women. — Trade. — 

 Festivities. — Medicine. — The Tobacco Nation. — The Nec- 

 TRALS. — The Eries. — The Andastes. — The Iroquois. — So- 

 cial AND Political Organization. — Iroquois Institutions, 

 Customs, and Character. — Indian Keligion and Supersti- 

 tions. — The Indian Mind. 



America, when it became known to Europeans, was, 

 as it had long been, a scene of wide-spread revolution. 

 North and South, tribe was giving place to tribe, lan- 

 guage to language ; for the Indian, hopelessly unchang- 

 ing in respect to individual and social development, was, 

 as regarded tribal relations and local haunts, mutable as 

 the wind. In Canada and the northern section of the 

 United States, the elements of change were especially 

 active. The Indian population which, in 1535, Cartier 

 found at Montreal and Quebec, had disappeared at the 

 opening of the next century, and another race had sue- 

 ceeded, in language and customs widely different ; while, 

 in the region now forming the State of New York, a 

 power was rising to a ferocious vitality, which, but for 

 the presence of Europeans, would probably have sub- 

 jected, absorbed, or exterminated every other Indian 



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