XX INTEODUCTION. 



community east of the Mississippi and noith of the 

 Ohio. 



The vast tract of wilderness from the Mississippi to 

 the Atlantic, and from the Carolinas to Hudson's Bay, 

 was divided between two great families of tribes, distin- 

 guished by a radical difference of language. A part of 

 Virginia and of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Southeastern 

 New York, New England, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, 

 and Lower Canada were occupied, so far as occupied 

 at all, by tribes speaking various Algonquin languages 

 and dialects. They extended, moreover, along the shores 

 of the Upper Lakes, and into the dreary Northern wastes 

 beyond. They held Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and 

 Lidiana, and detached bands ranged the lonely hunting- 

 ground of Kentucky.^ 



Like a great island in the midst of the Algonquins lay 

 the country of tribes speaking the generic tongue of the 

 Iroquois. The true Iroquois, or Five Nations, extended 

 through Central New York, from the Hudson to the 

 Genesee. Southward lay the Andastes, on and near the 

 Susquehanna; westward, the Eries, along the southern 

 shore of Lake Erie, and the Neutral Nation, along its 

 northern shore from Niagara towards the Detroit ; while 

 the towns of the Huron s lay near the lake to which they 

 have left their name.^ 



• The word Algonquin is here used in its broadest signification. It 

 was originally appHed to a group of tribes north of the River St. Law- 

 rence. The difference of language between the original Algonquins and 

 the Abenaquis of New England, the Ojibwas of the Great Lakes, or the 

 Llinois of the West, corresponded to the diflerence between French and 

 Italian, or Italian and Spanish. Each of these languages, again, had its 

 dialects, like those of different provinces of France. 



2 To the above general statements there was, in the first half of 

 the seventeenth century, but one exception worth notice. A detached 

 branch of the Dahcotah stock, the Winnebago, was established south of 

 Green Bay, on Lake Michigan, in the midst of Algonquins ; and small 



