IXVi INTRODUCTION. 



conservatists of barbarism, and in ferocity and cruelty 

 they matched the worst of their race. Nor did the power 

 of expansion apparently belonging to their system ever 

 produce much result. Between the years 1712 and 1715, 

 the Tuscaroras, a kindred people, were admitted into the 

 league as a sixth nation ; but they were never admitted 

 on equal terms. Long after, in the period of their decline, 

 several other tribes were announced as new members of 

 the league ; but these admissions never took effect. The 

 Iroquois were always reluctant to receive other tribes, or 

 parts of tribes, collectively, into the precincts of the 

 " Long House." Yet they constantly practised a system 

 of adoptions, from which, though cruel and savage, they 

 drew great advantages. Their prisoners of war, when 

 they had burned and butchered as many of them as would 

 serve to sate their own ire and that of their women, were 

 divided, man by man, woman by woman, and child by 

 child, adopted into different families and clans, and thus 

 incorporated into the nation. It was by this means, and 

 this alone, that they could offset the losses of their inces- 

 sant wars. Early in the eighteenth century, and even 

 long before, a vast proportion of their population con- 

 sisted of adopted prisoners.^ 



1 Relation, 1660, 7 (anonymous). The Iroquois were at the height of 

 their prosperity about the year 1650. Morgan reckons their number at 

 this time at 25,000 souls ; but this is far too high an estimate. The 

 author of the Relation of 1660 makes their whole number of warriors 2,200. 

 Le Mercier, in the Relation of 1665, says 2,350. In the Journal of Green- 

 halgh, an Englishman who visited them in 1677, their warriors are set 

 down at 2,150. Du Chesneau, in 1681, estimates them at 2,000; De la 

 Barre, in 1684, at 2,600, they having been strengthened by adoptions. 

 A memoir addressed to the Marquis de Seignelay, in 1687, again makes 

 them 2,000. (See N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 162, 196, 321.) These estimates 

 imply a total population of ten or twelve thousand. 



The anonymous writer of the Relation of 1660 may well remark : 

 " It is marvellous that so few should make so great a havoc, and strike 

 such terror into so many tribes." 



