74 LE FEBVRE DE LA BARRE. [1680-82. 



hour for her, the Iroquois had conquered their 

 southern neighbors, the Andastes, who had long 

 held their ground against them, and at one time 

 threatened them with ruin. The hands of the 

 confederates were now free; their arrogance was 

 redoubled by victory, and, having long before 

 destroyed all the adjacent tribes on the north 

 and west, 1 they looked for fresh victims in the 

 wilderness beyond. Their most easterly tribe, 

 the Mohawks, had not forgotten the chastise- 

 ment they had received from Tracy and Cour- 

 celle. They had learned to fear the French, and 

 were cautious in offending them ; but it was not 

 so with the remoter Iroquois. Of these, the Sen- 

 ecas at the western end of the " Long House," 

 as they called their fivefold league, were by far 

 the most powerful, for they could muster as many 

 warriors as all the four remaining tribes to- 

 gether; and they now sought to draw the con- 

 federacy into a- series of wars, which, though not 

 directed against the French, threatened soon to 

 involve them. Their first movement westward 

 was against the tribes of the Illinois. I have al- 

 ready described their bloody inroad in the summer 

 of 1680. 2 They made the valley of the Illinois a 

 desert, and returned with several hundred prison- 

 ers, of whom they burned those that were useless, 

 and incorporated the young and strong into their 

 own tribe. 



This movement of the western Iroquois had a 

 double incentive, their love of fighting and their 



1 Jesuits in North America. 2 Discovery of the Great West. 



