MORGAN.) THE IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY. 25 
federacy of tribes organized in gentes, and advance to a general supremacy, 
unless their numbers were developed from their own stock. The multitude 
of stock languages is a standing explanation of the failure. There was no 
possible way of becoming connected on equal terms with a confederacy 
excepting through membership in a gens and tribe and a common speech. 
The Iroquois have furnished an excellent illustration of the manner 
in which a confederacy is formed by natural growth assisted by skillful 
legislation. Originally emigrants from beyond the Mississippi, and possi- 
bly a branch of the Dakota stock, they first made their way to the valley 
of the St. Lawrence and settled themselves near Montreal. Forced to 
leave this region by the hostility of surrounding tribes, they sought the 
central region of New York. Coasting the eastern shore of Lake Ontario 
in canoes, for their numbers were small, they made their first settlement at 
the mouth of the Oswego River, where, according to their traditions, they 
remained for a long period of time. They were then in at least three dis- 
tinct tribes, the Mohawks, the Onondagas, and the Senecas. One tribe sub- 
sequently established themselves at the head of the Canandaigua Lake and 
became the Senecas. Another tribe occupied the Onondaga Valley and 
became the Onondagas. The third passed eastward and settled first at 
Oneida, near the site of Utica, from which place the main portion removed 
to the Mohawk Valley and became the Mohawks. ‘Those who remained 
became the Oneidas. A portion of the Onondagas or Senecas settled along 
the eastern shore of the Cayuga Lake and became the Cayugas New 
York, before its occupation by the Iroquois, seems to have been a part of 
the area of the Algonkin tribes. According to Iroquois traditions, they 
displaced its anterior inhabitants as they gradually extended their settle- 
ments eastward to the Hudson and westward to the Genesee. Their tra- 
ditions further declare that a long period of time elapsed after their settle- 
ment in New York before the confederacy was formed, during which they 
made common cause against their enemies, and thus experienced the advan- 
tages of the federal principle both for aggression and defense. They 
resided in villages, which were usually surrounded with stockades, and 
subsisted upon fish and game and the products of a limited horticulture. 
In numbers they did not at any time exceed 20,000 souls, if they ever 
