14 INDIAN TRIBES. [Chap. I. 



Onondaga inherits from him the honored name of 

 Atotarho.^ 



The traditional epoch which preceded the auspi- 

 cious event of the confederacy, though wrapped in 

 clovids and darkness, and defying historic scrutiny, 

 has yet a character and meaning of its own. The 

 gloom is peopled thick with phantoms ; with mon- 

 sters and prodigies, shapes of wild enormity, yet 

 offering, in the Teutonic strength of their concep- 

 tion, the evidence of a robustness of mind unpar- 

 alleled among tribes of a different lineage. In 

 these evil days, the scattered and divided Iroquois 

 were beset with every form of peril and disaster. 

 Giants, cased in armor of stone, descended on them 

 from the mountains of the north. Huge beasts 

 trampled down their forests like fields of grass. 

 Human heads, with streaming hair and glaring eye- 

 balls, shot through the air like meteors, shedding 

 pestilence ai^d death throughout the land. A great 

 horned serpent rose from Lake Ontario ; and only 

 the thunder-bolts of the skies could stay his rava- 

 ges, and drive him back to his native deeps. The 

 skeletons of men, victims of some monster of the 

 forest, were seen swdmming in the Lake of Teungk- 

 too ; and around the Seneca village on the Hill of 

 Genundewah, a two-headed serpent coiled himself, 

 of size so monstrous that the wretched people were 

 unable to ascend his scaly sides, and perished in 



1 This preposterous legend was first briefly related in the pamphlet of 

 Cusick, the Tuscarora, and after him by Mr. Schoolcraft, in his Notes 

 The cm-ious work of Cusick will again be referred to. 



