THE HURON RACE AND ITS HEAD-FORM, 115 



actual condition of things ; but long use has thoroughly established 

 the application of the more comprehensive term. The descendants of 

 the Iroquois, now settled as a comparatively civilized people, on the 

 G-rand River, in Western Canada, are universally known as the Six 

 Nation Indians. Their overmastering fury in the sixteenth and seven- 

 teenth centuries no doubt included along with its savage elements, the 

 germ of a more enduring force. Fearless and implacable in their 

 hostility, they arrayed themselves from the first in opposition to the 

 French colonists; and as they and the rival colonists of English origin 

 were long nearly equally balanced, it is not unjustly afl&rmed that the 

 failure of the magnificent schemes of French colonization in North 

 America is directly traceable to their uncompromising antagonism. 



The name Iroquois, of French formation, is derived by Charlevoix 

 from the word hiro : I have said, with which the Indian orator was 

 wont to finish his speech, and a cry of acclamation, koue, nearly equi- 

 valent to our hear. Their own generic name was Hodenosaunee, or 

 People of the Long House, expressive of the numerous assembly in the 

 Council of the Confederacy. Thus united, the Iroquois were the great 

 aggressive nationality of the American continent, in the seventeenth 

 century. In the very beginning of that century, Captain John Smith, 

 the founder of Virginia, encountered their canoes on the upper part of 

 Chesapeake Bay, bearing a band of them to the territories of the 

 Powhattan confederacy. All the tribes whose hunting grounds brought 

 them in any degree into contact with the Iroquois, were, one after 

 another, exterminated or reduced to the condition of dependent tribes. 

 Even the Canarse or Long Island Indians found no protection from 

 them in their sea-girt home beyond the Hudson • and their power was 

 felt from the St. Lawrence to Tennessee, and from the Atlantic to the 

 Mississippi. 



The Iroquois confederacy is a remarkable feature in the history of 

 the American aborigines, for it was no temporary union, effected for a 

 special war, and stimulated by the pressure of immediate danger ; but a 

 league which for nearly two centuries made the confederates a formid- 

 able power, not only against their native foes, but in opposition to the 

 aggressive schemes of French, Dutch, and English colonists. But in 

 spite of all their sagacity and long endurance, the Iroquois were in a 

 purely savage state, and powerful only to destroy. Could they have 

 realized the full value of their confederacy, and extended it to embrace 

 neighbouring nations of kindred race, a new Cortes would have been 



