26 Inasmuch 



tenth report of the Geographic Board of Canada. 

 Character of Of the Iroquois it says: &quot;The Northern 

 Nations Iroquois tribes, especially the Five Nations, so 



called, were second to no other Indian people 

 north of Mexico in political organization, state 

 craft and military prowess. Their leaders were 

 astute diplomats, as the wily French and English 

 Statesmen with whom they treated, soon dis 

 covered. In war they practiced ferocious cruelty 

 towards their prisoners, burning even their un 

 adopted women and infant prisoners; but, far 

 from being a race of rude and savage warriors, 

 they were a kindly and affectionate people, full 

 of keen sympathy for friends in distress, kind and 

 deferential to their women, exceedingly fond of 

 their children, anxiously striving for peace and 

 good will among men, and profoundly imbued 

 with a just reverence for the constitution of their 

 commonwealth and for its founders. Their wars 

 were waged primarily to secure and perpetuate 

 their political life and independence. The funda 

 mental principles of their confederation, persis 

 tently maintained for centuries by force of arms 

 and by compacts with other peoples, were based 

 primarily on blood relationship, and they shaped 

 and directed their foreign and internal polity in 

 consonance with these principles. The under 

 lying motive for the institution of the Iroquois 

 league was to secure universal peace and welfare 

 among men by the recognition and enforcement 

 of the forms of civil government through the 

 direction arid regulation of personal and public 



