1760-1763.] NATIVE POPULATION. 149 



but many more of degeneracy and decay. To 

 commence with the Iroquois, for to them with jus- 

 tice the priority belongs : Onondaga, the ancient 

 capital of their confederacy, where their council- 

 fire had burned from immemorial time, was now 

 no longer what it had been in the days of its great- 

 ness, when Count Frontenac had mustered all 

 Canada to assail it. The thickly clustered dwell- 

 ings, with their triple rows of palisades, had van- 

 ished. A little stream, twisting along the valley, 

 choked up with logs and driftwood, and half hid- 

 den by woods and thickets, some forty houses of 

 bark, scattered along its banks, amid rank grass, 

 neglected clumps of bushes, and ragged patches 

 of corn and peas, — such was Onondaga when 

 Bartram saw it, and such, no doubt, it remained at 

 the time of w^hich I write. ^ Conspicuous among 

 the other structures, and distinguished only by its 

 superior size, stood the great council-house, whose 

 bark walls had often sheltered the congregated 

 wisdom of the confederacy, and heard the highest 

 efforts of forest eloquence. The other villages of 

 the Iroquois resembled Onondaga ; for though sev- 

 eral were of larger size, yet none retained those 

 defensive stockades which had once protected them.^ 

 From their European neighbors the Iroquois had 

 borrowed many appliances of comfort and subsist- 

 ence. Horses, swine, and in some instances cattle, 



1 Bartram, Observations, 41. 



'^ I am indebted to the kindness of Rev. S. K. Lothrop for a copy of 

 the journal of Mr. Kirkland on his missionary tour among the Iroquois 

 in 1765. The journal contains much information respecting their man- 

 ners and condition at this period. 



