SECT. II.] ALGONKIN-LENAPE AND IROQUOIS NATIONS. 79 their numbers. It is still astonishing, that they could, in 1756, have been reduced to twelve hundred warriors, as they are estimated in Smith's " History of New York." Whatever may have been the fact in that respect, with the expulsion of the French from Canada their importance ceased ; it became the interest of Great Britain to preserve peace with the other Indian nations, and the thirst for war of the Six Nations had no longer any aliment. With the exception of the Oneidas, they took arms against America during the war of Independence. But the Mohawks were obliged (1780) to abandon their seats and to take refuge in Canada. Those who remained in the United States have been perfectly peaceable since the treaty of peace of 1783. They were estimated in 1796 at three thousand three hundred souls;* and those in Canada, at about seven hundred. But according to the late estimate of the War Department, those in the State of New York amount to four thousand seven hundred and sixteen, at Green Bay to seven hundred and twenty-five, beyond the Mississippi to four hundred and sixty- five, in all about five thousand nine hundred ; which, deducting the Nanticokes, Mohicans, and Shawnoes mixed with them, would leave five thousand. If to these we add the Wyandots and those in Canada, the remnant of all the Iroquois tribes cannot much exceed seven thousand souls. They amounted in the beginning of the seventeentli century to forty thousand. Their destruction has been almost exclusively the result of wars among themselves, or against other Indian nations. With the single exception of the Mohawks, no encroachment had been made on the native possessions of the Five Nations before the year 1783 ; and their number has not been diminished since that time. The history of the Five Nations is calculated to give a favorable opinion of the intelligence of the Red Man. But they may be ranked amongst the worst of conquerors. They conquered only in order to destroy, and, it would seem, solely for the purpose of gratifying their thirst for blood. Towards the south and the west, they made a perfect desert of the whole country within five hundred miles of their seats. A much greater number of those Indians, who, since the commencement
- Report of Commissioners of the Missionary Society, 1 Mass. Hist
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