26 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
reached that number. Precarious subsistence and incessant warfare re- 
pressed numbers in all the aboriginal tribes, including the Village Indians 
as well. The Iroquois were enshrouded in the great forests which then 
overspread New York, against which they had no power to contend. They 
were first discovered A. D. 1608. About 1675 they attained their culmi- 
nating point, when their dominion reached over an area remarkably large, 
covering the greater parts of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio,* and 
portions of Canada north of Lake Ontario. At the time of their discovery 
they were the highest representatives of the red race north of New Mexico 
in intelligence and advancement, though perhaps inferior to some of the 
Gulf tribes in the arts of life. In the extent and quality of their mental 
endowments they must be ranked among the highest Indians in America. 
There are over six thousand Iroquois in New York, besides scattered bands 
in other parts of the United States, and a still larger number in Canada; 
thus illustrating the efficiency as well as persistency of the arts of barba- 
rous life in sustaining existence — It is, moreover, now ascertained that they 
are slowly increasing. 
When the confederacy was formed, about A. D. 1400-1450,+ the con- 
ditions previously named were present. The Lroquois were in five inde- 
pendent tribes, occupied territories contiguous to each other, and spoke 
dialects of the same language which were mutually intelligible. Beside 
these facts, certain gentes were common in the several tribes, as has been 
shown. In their relations to each other, as separated parts of the same 
gens, these common gentes afforded a natural and enduring basis for a con- 
federacy. With these elements existing, the formation of a confederacy 
became a question of intelligence and skill. Other tribes in large numbers 
were standing in precisely the same relations in different parts of the conti- 
nent without confederating. The fact that the Iroquois tribes accomplished 
the work affords evidence of their superior capacity. Moreover, as the 
* About 165155 they expelled their kindred tribes, the Eries, from the region between the Gene- 
see River and Lake Erie, and shortly afterwards the Neutral Nations from the Niagara River, and thus 
came into possession of the remainder of New York, with the exception of the Lower Hudson and Long 
Island. 
t The Iroquois claimed that it had existed from one hundred and fifty to two hundred years when 
they first saw Europeans. The generations of sachems in the history by David Cusick (a Tusearora) 
would make it more ancient. Schooleraft’s History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes, 
5, p. 631. 
