28 INDIAN TRIBES. [Chap. I. 



that of .all the Indians with -whom he was conver- 

 sant, they alone held it disgraceful to turn from the 

 face of an enemy when the fortunes of the fight 

 were adverse.^ 



Besides these inherent qualities, the tribes of the 

 Iroquois race derived great advantages from their 

 superior social organization. They were all, more 

 or less, tillers of the soil, and were thus enabled 

 to concentrate a more numerous population than 

 the scattered tribes who live by the chase alone. In 

 their well-peopled and well-constructed villages, 

 they dwelt together the greater part of the year; 

 and thence the religious rites and social and po- 

 litical usages, which elsewhere existed only in the 

 germ, attained among them a full development. 

 Yet these advantages were not without alloy, and 

 the Jesuits were not slow to remark that the sta- 

 tionary and thriving Iroquois were more loose in 

 their observance of social ties, than the wandering 

 and starving savages of the north.^ 



THE ALGONQUIN FAMH^Y. 



Except the detached nation of the Tuscaroras, 

 and a few smaller tribes adhering to them, the Iro- 

 quois family was confined to the region south of 

 the Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the peninsula east 



1 William Henry Harrison, Discourse on the Aborigines of the Ohio. See 

 Ohio Hist. Trans. Part Second, I. 257. 



2 " Here y^^ Indyans were very desirous to see us ride our horses, w^h 

 wee did : they made great feasts and dancing, and invited us y* when all 

 y« maides were together, both wee and our Indyans might choose such as 

 lyked us to ly with." — Greenhalgh, Journal. 



