305 
the aequisition of firearms ti'om the Dutch, who beji’an to settle in 
Pennsylvania about 1015, turned the tide in favour of the Mohawk 
and other members of the Jrociuois League, who gradually over- 
whelmed their enemies one after another aiul extended their sway 
over all the territory from Tennessee to the Ottawa river and from 
the Kennebec river in Maine to the southern sliore of lake Michigan. 
During the seventeenth century the French, through their mission- 
aries. made numerous attempts to win the goodwill of the con- 
federacy. and succeeded in inducing a large numbei' of the Indians, 
mainly Onondaga and Mohawk, to move into French Canada, accept 
Cdiristianity, and join their fortunes with the French and Algonkians. 
The league then outlawed these ])roselytes, but some of their descen- 
dants survive to-day at Caughnawaga, 8t. Regis, and Oka in the 
])rovince of Quebec, while ot tiers, whose forefathers manned the 
canoes of the fur-trading conqninies during the eighteenth and early 
nineteentli centuries, occiijiy a small reserve not far from Edmonton 
m Alberta. 
It may have been the numerous ups and downs of fortune they 
endured, ami the high ]n‘ 0 ]K)rtion of foreign elements in the tribe, 
that made the Mohawk of the seventeenth century the most aggres- 
sive nation in the confederacy and, at the same time, perhaps the 
most savage.^ Its war iiarties raided Ontario and (^ueliec almost to 
the shores of James bay, so that even to-day the mere mention of its 
name causes a .shudder of fear and liatred in the hearts of many 
Ojibwa, Cree. and Montagnais.- Although the rules of the con- 
federacy strictly prohibited cannilailism. we find records of several 
cases in which the Mohawk cruelly sacrificed a prisoner to their war- 
god Aireskoi and divided uji the body to be devoured in the different 
villages. We should arid perhaps, in common justice, that among 
themselves the Mohawk were as hospitable and charitable as the 
other Iroquois, or indeed as any tribe in Canada; and that they 
never abandoned the aged and infirm, as was the custom among the 
Algonkians. Moreover, tliese outbursts of superstitious savagery 
occurred only when they were depressed by a great calamity; in the 
later wars of the eighteenth century they and all other Iroquois con- 
1 Although the Jesuit missionary Burgess considered that the Oneitla were tlie most cruel. “ Jesuit 
Relations,” vol. 57, p. 193. 
-The ne.arne.ss of the Mohawk to European .settlemenls magnified tlieir importance in tlie eyes 
of the early writers. Probably there were few or no real Mohawks in many of the Iroquois war parties 
that raided tiorth of the St, Lawrence. 
