74 A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. The confederacy known generally by the name of " Five Nations," called by the French " Iroquois," by the Lenape tribes Maquas or Menque (Mingos), in Virginia Massawometcs, in various places by the names more or less corrupted of their respective tribes, consisted, as the name imports, of five nations, seated south of the River St. Lawrence and of Lake Ontario, and extending from the Hudson to the upper branch- es oi' the river Alleghany and to Lake Erie. It has been doubted whether llochelaga now Montreal, which Cartier found, in 1535, inhabited by Indians speaking a dialect of the Iroquois language, was occupied by the Hurons, or by the Five Nations. Independent of the much greater proximity of these, the question seems to be definitively settled by the declarations of the St. Lawrence Algonkins, who cultivated nothing, to Father Le Jeune. In the course of his excursions between Quebec and the site of Montreal, they pointed out to him several old fields, and informed him that they had formerly been planted in maize by the Iroquois.* It is therefore certain, that, within less than seventy years before the arrival of Cham- plain in Canada, the Five Nations either were driven from settlements they previously had on the St. Lawrence, or vol- untarily abandoned them in order to concentrate their forces and to be less exposed to the attacks of their enemies. Their five tribes were, from east to west, the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas. The time when the confederacy was formed is not known, but was presumed to be of a recent date, and the Oneidas and Cayugas are said to have been compelled to join it. Although the fact has been questioned, it is proved by the speeches of the several orators at the treaty of Easton of 1758, that those two tribes were the younger, and the three others the elder members of the confederacy. The residue of the Tuscaro- ras of North Carolina were, after their decisive defeat in 1712-13, admitted as a sixth nation. And at the treaty of Easton it was announced to the British, that the confedera- tion now consisted of eight nations, the three elder as already stated, and the five younger viz. the Cayugas, the Oneidas, the
- Relations of New France, 1G36. The word " Iroquois " is used
in this essay as a generic term, embracing- all the nations speaking dialects of the same language, and applicable to all those dialects. It is confined by the French to the Five Nations.
