94 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 
of the roof let in the light and let out some of the 
smoke from the row of fires kindled on the ground 
beneath. A rude scaffolding ran along each side 
some three feet from the ground, and on this the 
inmates slept while their firewood was piled under- 
neath. In this way from twenty to thirty families 
might be lodged in a single wigwam. By a very 
picturesque metaphor the Iroquois of New York 
called their great confederacy the Long House. The 
Mohawks, at the Hudson River, kept the eastern door 
of the Long House, and the Senecas, at the Genesee, 
guarded the western door, while the central council fire 
burned in the valley of Onondaga, and was flanked to 
the right by the Oneidas, and to the left by the Cayugas. 
The ferocity of these New York Indians was as 
conspicuous as their courage, and their confederated 
strength made them more than a match for all their 
rivals —so that at the time of the first French and 
English settlements they were rapidly becoming the 
terror of the whole country. Turning their arms first 
against their own kindred, in 1649 they overwhelmed 
and nearly destroyed the tribe of Hurons, putting the 
Jesuit missionaries to death with frightful tortures. 
Next they exterminated the Neutral Nation. In 1655 
they massacred most of the Eries, and incorporated the 
rest among their own numbers; and in 1672, after a 
terrible war of twenty years, they completed the ruin 
of the Susquehannocks. At the same time they made 
much easier work of their Algonquin enemies. They 
drove the Ottawas from Canada into Michigan. They 
allied themselves with the Miamis, and overthrew the 
power of the Illinois in 1680, at the time when La 
Salle was making his adventurous journeys. They 
