Hale.} 6 [March 2, 
ments of broken tribes were now congregated—Conoys, Nanticokes, Del- 
awares, Tuteloes, and others. 
In September, 1745, the missionary, David Brainerd, visited Shamokin. 
He describes it in his diary as containing upwards of fifty houses and 
nearly three hundred persons. ‘They are,’’ he says, ‘‘of three different 
tribes of Indians, speaking three languages wholly unintelligible to each 
other, About one half of its inhabitants are Delawares, the others Senekas 
and Tutelas.’’* Three years later, in the summer of 1748, an exploring 
party of Moravian missionaries passed through the same region. The 
celebrated Zeisberger, who was one of them, has left a record of their 
travels. From this we gather that the whole of the Tuteloes were not 
congregated in Shamokin. Before reaching that town, they passed through 
Skogari, in what is now Columbia county, In Zeisberger’s biography the 
impression formed of this town by the travelers is expressed in brief but 
emphatic terms. It was ‘‘the only town on the continent inhabited by 
Tuteloes, a degenerate remnant of thieves and drunkards,’’} This dis- 
paraging description was perhaps not unmerited. Yet some regard must be 
paid to a fact of which the good missionary could not be aware, namely, 
that the Indians who are characterized in these unsavory terms belonged 
to a stock distinguished from the other Indians whom he knew by certain 
marked traits of character. Those who are familiar with the various 
branches of the Indian race are aware that every tribe, and still more 
every main stock, or ethnic family, has certain special characteristics, both 
physical and mental. The Mohawk differs in look and character decidedly 
from the Onondaga, the Delaware from the Shawanese, the Sioux from 
the Mandan ; and between the great divisions to which these tribes belong, 
the differences are much more strongly marked. The Iroquois have been 
styled ‘‘the Romans of the West.’’ The designation is more just than is 
usual in such comparisons. Indeed, the resemblance between these great, 
conquering communities is strikingly marked. The same politic fore. 
thought in council, the same respect for laws and treaties, the same love 
of conquest, the same relentless determination in war, the same clemency 
to the utterly vanquished, a like readiness to strengthen their power by 
the admission of strangers to the citizenship, an equal reliance on strong 
fortifications, similar customs of forming outlying colonies, and of ruling 
subject nations by proconsular deputies, a similar admixture of aristocracy 
and democracy in their constitution, a like taste for agriculture, even a 
notable similarity in the strong and heavy mould of figure and the bold 
and massive features, marked the two peoples who, on widely distant 
theatres of action, achieved not dissimilar destinies. 
Pursuing thesame classical comparison, we might liken the nearest neigh- 
bors of the Iroquois, the tribes of the Algonkin stock, whose natural traits 
are exemplified in their renowned sachems, Powhatan, Philip of Pokano- 
* Life of Brainerd, p. 167, Am. Tract Soo. edition, Quoted in the “ Life of Zeis- 
berger,’ by De Schweinitz, p. 71. 
+ Lito of Zeisberger, by De Schweinitz, p. 149, 
AG 
