Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 97 



that the Algonquins were so closely related in cus- 

 toms and language; indeed, there was constant in- 

 termarriage between the different tribes. On the 

 whole, however, there is no question that, in strik- 

 ing contrast to the Southern or Appalachian Indians, 

 these Northwestern tribes have suffered a terrible 

 diminution in numbers. 



With many of them we did not come into direct 

 contact for long years after our birth as a nation. 

 Perhaps those tribes with all or part of whose war- 

 riors we were brought into collision at some time 

 during or immediately succeeding the Revolutionary 

 War may have amounted to thirty thousand souls. 7 

 But though they acknowledged kinship with one 

 another, and though they all alike hated the Ameri- 

 cans, and though, moreover, all at times met in the 

 great councils, to smoke the calumet of peace and 

 brighten the chain of friendship 8 among themselves, 

 and to take up the tomahawk 9 against the white 

 foes, yet the tie that bound them together was so 

 loose, and they were so fickle and so split up by jar- 

 ring interests and small jealousies, that never more 

 than half of them went to war at the same time. 



7 I base this number on a careful examination of the tribes 

 named above, discarding such of the northern bands of the 

 Chippewas, for instance, as were unlikely at that time to have 

 been drawn into war with us. 



8 The expressions generally used by them in sending their 

 war talks and peace talks to one another or the whites. 

 Hundreds of copies of these "talks" are preserved at Wash- 

 ington. 



9 Do. 



E VOL. V. 



