116 THE HURON RACE AND ITS HEAD-FORM. 



needed to wia the regions of Canada and Western New York for their 

 modern occupants. But so far as arts are any test of native progress, 

 they had not yet emerged from the primitive stage of forest life. Of 

 working in metals they knew nothing ; and only supplemented their 

 weapons and implements of stone, flint, horn, bone, or wood, by barter 

 with the European intruders ; and chiefly with the Dutch settlers at 

 Bensellaerswyck, as Albany was then called. By rare chance they 

 acquired copper axes and lance-heads, through indirect agency, from 

 Lake Superior ; but when the competition among the fur-traders on 

 the Hudson became great, they readily obtained from them, not only 

 knives, iron axes, copper kettles, beads, and cloth, but guns and 

 powder ; and thus achieved enormous superiority over all native anta- 

 gonists. 



The antagonism between the Iroquois and the Adirondacks, of 

 Algonquin lineage, is not difficult to account for. Their languages 

 indicate a wide divergence of race ; and Iroquois traditions told that 

 while they were still comparatively few in number, they had been 

 subjected to cruel oppression, and finally driven from ancient hunting 

 grounds on the Eiver St. Lawrence, by their Algonquin foes. But 

 with the Indian nations around Lakes Ontario and Erie it was other- 

 .wise. Hurons, Petuns, Neuters, and Eries, appear from such evidence 

 as we possess, to have been kindred nations, speaking closely allied 

 languages, and altogether greatly outnumbering the Five Nations of 

 the Iroquois. A league which embraced them all might have long set 

 both France and England at defiance ; but their diplomacy was directed 

 by no wise foresight, and the lust of conquest and revenge alone stim- 

 ulated them to action. It is indeed a striking illustration of the 

 unstable condition of savage life, that we can trace to native wars of so 

 recent a date as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the depopu- 

 lation of the whole country between Montreal and the Georgian Bay j 

 while far to the southward of the great lakes, the aggressive Iro- 

 quois had eradicated ancient nations long before European colonists 

 intruded on their conquests. The mountain chain of the Alleghanies 

 perpetuates the name of the oldest tribe within the area of the United 

 States of which there is a distinct tradition. But the name alone 

 remained when the present occupants entered on their ancient inheri- 

 tance. The traditions of the Delawares told that the Alleghans were a 

 powerful nation reaching to the eastern bank of the Mississippi, when 

 they themselves first came from the far west into the great valley 



