DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 295
country. Still, Seneca war parties from their villages two hundred miles still farther east devastated the country of the Illinois, operating through a much greater distance. The distance, therefore, does not preclude the possibility of the Kankakee site being of Neuter origin.
An equally sound theory, and withal a most interesting one, is that the Kankakee site marks a stop in the eastward migration of one of the members of the Iroquoian family. Mr. Langford mentions this possi- bility. If it be shown to be at least possible, it opens up a very interesting field of research in the country lying between the Kankakee and the Detroit; and every fact known about the migrations of the Iroquoian nations seems to strengthen this theory.
That the Iroquoian nations of Canada, New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia migrated to these places at some comparatively recent time is well recognized; and that they drove away and dispossessed earlier inhabitants of different stock is equally well known. The migrations of some of these nations have been studied, and have been proved to be from the westward.
Systematic study of the Neuter sites by the writer has shown that these at least migrated eastward from the Detroit river. The Neuter villages west of the Grand river are all pre-European. The first evidences of contact with Europeans, which took place in the decade of 1615-1625, are to be found in the sites east of the Grand river; and all the sites on both sides of the Niagara river show evidences of much European in- fluence. These villages were inhabited in the decade of 1640-1650. In 1651 they were overwhelmed by the Senecas and their allies; were driven back toward the west; and eventually united with broken frag- ments of the Hurons and others to form the Wyandottes.
Allied to these Neuters and probably an off-shoot of that nation were the Wenroes. These had pushed eastward across the Niagara ahead of the main body of Neuters, and had established themselves in three village groups, the most advanced of which was at Oakfield, only thirty miles west of the Genesee river, and thus almost in touch with the Senecas. In 1639 after a period of constant warfare with the Senecas, the Wenroes abandoned their villages and emigrated to the Huron country for protection from their ferocious kindred.
Amongst the nations speaking a dialect of the Iroquois tongue the Jesuit Fathers listed in 1635 a nation known to them as the Eries. This nation lived south of Lake Erie. Like the Neuters on the north of that lake they seem to have been slowly pushing eastward. Their latest village was at Ripley, New York, in the graves of which a few
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