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public confinuatioii at the green corn and mid-winter festivals; but 
at adolescence, or a little later, tlie child discai'ded this name at the 
same two festivals and assumed another name which it generally 
retained through life. 
The largest tribe among the Iroquois was the Seneca, the most 
aggressive the Alohawk. Being the two flank members, they often 
encountered rlifferent enemies, and owing to the loose organization 
of the confederacy were forced to act independently. So it was the 
Seneca who were cliiefly responsible for the destruction of the Huron, 
Tobacco, and Neuti-al nations, and the IMohawk who principally 
harassed the Algonkins and Montagnais north of the St. Lawrence, 
and the Abenaki and other Algonkian tribes in the Maritime 
Provinces, New Hanqisliire. and Maine. The Oneida, Onondaga, and 
Cayuga generally provided contingents for all major operations, but 
complications freciuently arose through one tribe in the confederacy 
concluding a peace, which the others ignorerl or refused to accept. 
This lack of cohesion was a constant source of weakness to the league, 
even though it sometimes caused almost as much embarrassment to 
its enemies. Thus in the seventeenth century, when the French were 
congratulating themselves on the establishment of a hard-won truce 
with the Mohawks, and. breathing a new sense of security, were 
moving freely up and down the 8t. Lawrence, they found themselves 
unexpectedly assailed by parties of Onondaga or Seneca who recog- 
nized no cessation of the warfare, but slaughtered or carrietl away 
cajnive every unfortunate Frencliman they encountered. 
The aid that Champlain rendered the Montagnais in IbOt) when 
he defeated the Mohawk on lake Champlain began that bitter feud 
between the Iroquois confederacy and the French that blocked the 
latter’s expansion southward and made the Iroquois staunch allies 
of the English down to the caj^ture of Quebec by Wolfe. For in 
Champlain’s day the Iroquois were still unacquainted with firearms, 
and, lacking any superiority in weapons, fought with their neighbours 
on nearly equal terms. Tlie Mohawk, who occupied the most vul- 
nerable position on the eastern fiank. suffered more heavily than the 
other tribes in these conflicts, being almost annihilated by the Algon- 
kians in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and again by the 
Conestoga, an Iroquoian tribe on their southern border, at the begin- 
ning of the seventeenth. The wholesale adoption of captives, and 
