300 
ducted themselves in fairly close accord with the rules that were 
prevalent among European nations at that time. In any case extreme 
torture of i>risoners was an exceptional event, by far the larger num- 
ber being adopted into the various families and incorporated into one 
or otlier of the tribes as members of full standing. 
The League of the Iroriuois did not function as a unit during the 
American revolutionary war, but permitted its tribes to act indejien- 
dently according to the wishes of the members. The Oneida and a 
l^ortion of the Tuscarora (an Irocpioian tribe that was driven out of 
North Carolina and accepted into the confederacy about 1722, trans- 
forming it lienceforth into the “ League of tlie Six Nations”) espoused 
the cause of the Americans, while the remainder joined the British 
side. Wlien peace was concluded, the majority of the pro-Bi’itish 
Iroquois settled in Ontario on lands assigned to them by tlic Crown. 
Others joined them in later years, so tliat to-day more than two- 
thirds of the Indians officially classed as Irofiuois reside in Canada. 
At no period in their history wore the Iroquois a numerous 
people: Lloyd estimates that at the coming of Europeans tlieir 
total population (excluding the Tuscarora) was only 16,000, dis- 
tributed among the tribes as follows: Mohawk, 3,000; Oneida, 1,000; 
Onondaga, 3,000; Cayuga, 2,000; and Heneca, 7,000.^ From 1642 
until the close of the seventeenth century the league suffered tremen- 
dous losses through wars, diseases, and defection to Frencli Canada, 
losses that were only partly repaired by the continuous adoption of 
captives. In 1668, indeed, Huron and Algonkian ex-captives made up 
two-thirds of the Oneida tribe;- and about the same time the Seneca 
became a medley of Neutral, Erie, and (foncstoga remnants with only 
a small inlying stratum of the original Iroquois. In the eighteenth 
century all five tribes absorbed an appreciable number of Euroi:»eans, 
and ever since, the two races have slowly intermingled. Conse- 
quently, tliough the number of “ Iroquois ” living on reserves in 
Canada and the United States to-day approximates 16,000, very few 
of them, if any, can lay claim to pure Indian descent, and in all 
probability many have no real Iroquois blood at all in their veins. 
No small percentage has broken away from the reserves and merged 
1 Morgan, L. H.; League of the Iroquois, p. 227. Estimates of the population during Die seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries vary greatly, and we have no real means of checking their accuracy. 
2 “ Jesuit Relations,” vol. 51, p. 123. 
