CuAP. I.] IROQUOIS POPULATION. 21 



the hours with smokmg or sleeping, with gambling 

 or gallantry.^ 



If we seek for a single trait preeminently char- 

 acteristic of the Iroquois, we shall find it in that 

 boundless pride which impelled them to style them- 

 selves, not inaptly as regards their own race, " the 

 men surpassing all others." ^ " Must I," exclaimed 

 one of their great warriors, as he fell wounded 

 among a crowd of Algonquins, — "must I, who 

 have made the whole earth tremble, now die by 

 the hands of children ? " Their power kept pace 

 with their pride. Their war-parties roamed over 

 half America, and their name was a terror from 

 the Atlantic to the Mississippi ; but, when we ask 

 the numerical strength of the dreaded confederacy, 

 when we discover that, in the days of their greatest 

 triumphs, their united cantons could not have mus- 

 tered four thousand warriors, we stand amazed at 

 the folly and dissension which left so vast a region 

 the prey of a handful of bold marauders. Of the 

 cities and villages now so thickly scattered over the 

 lost domain of the Iroquois, a single one might 

 boast a more numerous population than all the five 

 united tribes.^ 



1 For an account of the habits and customs of the Iroquois, the follow- 

 ing works, besides those already cited, may be referred to : — 



Charlevoix, Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguieres ; Champlain, Voyages 

 de la Nouv. France ; Clark, Hist. Onondaga, I., and several volumes of the 

 Jesuit Relations, especially those of 1656-1657 and 1659-1660. 



2 This is Colden's translation of the word Ongwehonwe, one of the 

 names of the Iroquois. 



3 La Hontan estimated the Iroquois at from five thousand to seven 

 thousand fighting men ; but his means of information were very imper- 

 fect, and the same may be said of several other French writers, who 

 have overrated the force of the confederacy. In 1677, the English sent 



