528 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Sagard, who went to the Huron country as a missionary in 1623, 

 in his interesting Histoire du Canada, 1636, has also some notes 

 bearing on the Eries. 



Relation of the Eries to other Iroquoian tribes. The Eries be- 

 longed to the Huron-Iroquois linguistic stock as is patent from a 

 review of the records. William M. Beauchamp, the distinguished 

 authority on New York archeology, suggests that the Eries wer.e 

 the parent stock of the Huron-Iroquois family and further suggests 

 that the Senecas were derived from them, possibly within historic 

 times. There seems to be some good base in history for this opinion 

 and the argument can not be better stated than in Dr Beauchamp's 

 own words, quoted from his address on The Origin and Early Life 

 of the Nevu York Iroquois, delivered before the Oneida Historical 

 Society in 1886. 



The Senecas had a conspicuous place in the Iroquois league, 

 though the last to enter it, forming the west door, as the Mohawks 

 were the east. On the Dutch maps of 1614 and 1616, the Mohawks 

 and the Senecas are alone designated, and for 50 years more the 

 Dutch hardly mentioned any but these. That they were kindred to 

 the Eries is conceded. In 161 5 Champlain spoke of the Iroquois 

 and the Entouhonoronons, whom some have thought the Senecas. 

 In the explanation of his map it is said that " The Iroquois and the 

 Antouhonorons make war together against other nations except 

 the Neutral nation." They had 15 strong villages, too many for 

 the Senecas, unless the Eries were included. That the Senecas 

 differed from the other Iroquois in religious observances, totems and 

 clans, habits of life and other things is very clear. A marked dis- 

 tinction appears in their language and they were not very brotherly 

 to the rest. Long after the League was formed they were some- 

 times at swords points with the Mohawks, and the French Mohawks 

 did not hesitate to go against the Senecas, when they refused to 

 fight against the other nations. 



There is good reason for thinking them part of the Massawo- 

 mekes of Captain John Smith's narrative. Early writers made these 

 any part of the Five Nations, but later students, to identify them, 

 as in the case of the Entouhonorons, with both Eries and Senecas, 

 these being firm friends until 1653. Captain John Smith met these 

 fierce enemies of Powhatan in their bark canoes on Chesapeake Bay 

 in 1608. The general description is that of an Iroquois war party, 

 though the name of course is Algonquin. That he did not under- 

 stand their language makes this almost certain. He bought some 

 of their weaoons and increased his reputation by showing these, the 

 Virginia tribes supposing he had taken them by force. But a Mary- 

 land trader went to the Massawomekes in 1632, and there remains 

 no doubt that this name included the Eries and the Senecas, then 

 or previously allied. They had palisades of great trees about their 

 villages with galleries at the top. . . 



