rtions of
their larger neighbors. Often, also, separate bands, which would vaguely
regard themselves as all one nation in one generation, would in the next
have lost even this sense of loose tribal unity.

The chief tribes, however, were well known and occupied tolerably
definite locations. The Delawares or Leni-Lenappe, dwelt farthest east,
lying northwest of the upper Ohio, their lands adjoining those of the
Senecas, the largest and most westernmost of the Six Nations. The
Iroquois had been their most relentless foes and oppressors in time gone
by; but on the eve of the Revolution all the border tribes were
forgetting their past differences and were drawing together to make a
stand against the common foe. Thus it came about that parties of young
Seneca braves fought with the Delawares in all their wars against us.

Westward of the Delawares lay the Shawnee villages, along the Scioto and
on the Pickaway plains; but it must be remembered that the Shawnees,
Delawares, and Wyandots were closely united and their villages were
often mixed in together. Still farther to the west, the Miamis or
Twigtees lived between the Miami and the Wabash, together with other
associated tribes, the Piankeshaws and the Weas or Ouatinous. Farther
still, around the French villages, dwelt those scattered survivors of
the Illinois who had escaped the dire fate which befell their
fellow-tribesmen because they murdered Pontiac. Northward of this scanty
people lived the Sacs and Foxes, and around the upper Great Lakes the
numerous and powerful Pottawattamies, Ottawas, and Chippewas; fierce and
treacherous warriors, who did not till the soil, and were hunters and
fishers only, more savage even than the tribes that lay southeast of
them.[1] In the works of the early travellers we read the names of many
other Indian nations; but whether these were indeed separate peoples, or
branches of some of those already mentioned, or whether the different
travellers spelled the Indian names in widely different ways, we cannot
say. All that is certain is that there were many tribes and sub-tribes,
who roamed and warred and hunted over the fair lands now forming the
heart of our mighty nation, that to some of these tribes the whites gave
names and to some they did not, and that the named and the nameless
alike were swept down to the same inevitable doom.

Moreover, there were bands of renegades or discontented Indians, who for
some cause had severed their tribal