HEWITT] 



INTRODUCTION 455 



It is learned from the writings of Champlain that in 1622 the 

 Montagnais, the Etchemin, and the Hurons had been engaged for a 

 long period of time in an effort to establish peace between themselves 

 and the five tribes of the Iroquois, and that previously to that time 

 there had always been some serious obstacle to the consummation 

 of such an agreement on account of the fixed distrust which each 

 side had of the good faith of the other. They importuned Champlain 

 himself to aid them in establishing a firm and durable peace, and they 

 insistently begged him to give them his advice on this matter, which 

 they promised faithfully to follow. Champlain was assured by them 

 that they were then exhausted and weary of the wars which they had 

 waged against each other for more than 50 years, and that on account 

 of their strong desire for revenge for the murder of their kin and 

 friends their ancestors had never previously thought of establishing 

 peace. This last statement, it may be, fixes approximately the epoch 

 of that historic feud mentioned in the Jesuit Relation for 1660 (Chap, 

 ii) and by Perrot, in which the five Iroquois tribes on one side, 

 and the Huron and Algonquian tribes on the Ottawa and St. Lawrence 

 Rivers on the other, were inveterate enemies, although this period 

 of strife may have been but a renewal and a widening of a still earlier 

 quarrel. 



Cartier learned from the two Iroquoian tribes and their allies 

 dwelling on the St. Lawrence in 1535 that they had been continually 

 tormented by enemies dwelling to the southward, called Toudamani, 

 etc., probabty identical with the Tsonnontouan or the Seneca, a 

 name then meaning "upper Iroquois," who continually waged war 

 on them. 



The Onondaga sent in September, 1055, a delegation of IS persons 

 to Quebec for the purpose of conferring with Governor de Lauson 

 and with the Algonkin and the Hurons. At this conference the 

 Onondaga spokesman employed 24 wampum belts in his address. 

 The first 8 were delivered to the Hm-ons and the Algonkin, whose 

 leading chiefs were there, as presents; each wampum belt had its own 

 jiarticular name on such an occasion. The Onondaga delegates 

 professed to speak for the "four upper Iroquois nations," namely, 

 the Seneca, the Cayuga, the Oneida, and the Onondaga, thus leaving 

 only the Mohawk, the "lower Iroquois," out of this peace conference; 

 nevertheless the Onondaga speaker promised to urge the Mohawk 

 to change their attitude and to join in the establishment of peace. 

 The Onondaga also asked for priests to dwell among them and for 

 French soldiers to aid them in their war against the Erie. The 

 Onondaga in May, 1657, nearly 10 years after the expulsion of the 

 Hurons from their motherland, sought by the giving of numerous 

 presents and by covert threats of war to induce the Hurons, who 

 had fled to the vicinity of Quebec, to remove from their country and 



