the ear of Daganoweda, an Onondaga sachem, that the cure for their
ills lay in union. This wise counsel was followed. The five tribes
known to Englishmen as the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the
Cayugas, and the Senecas--their Indian names are different and much
longer--buried the hatchet and formed a confederacy which grew to be,
after the Aztec League in Mexico, the most powerful Indian organization
in North America. It was then known as "The Five Nations."

{28}

About 1718, one of the original branches, the Tuscaroras, which had
wandered away as far as North Carolina, pushed by white men hungry for
their land, broke up their settlements, took up the line of march,
returned northward, and rejoined the other branches of the parent stem.
From this time forth the League is known in history as "The Six
Nations," the constant foe of the French and ally of the English. The
Indian name for it was "The Long House," so called because the wide
strip of territory occupied by it was in the shape of one of those
oblong structures in which the people dwelt.

When the five tribes laid aside their strife, the fragments of the
common clans in each re-united in heartiest brotherhood and formed an
eightfold bond of union. On the other hand, the Iroquois waged fierce
and relentless war upon the Hurons and Eries, because, though they
belonged to the same stock, they refused to join the League. This
denial of the sacred tie of blood was regarded by the Iroquois as rank
treason, and they punished it with relentless ferocity, harrying and
hounding the offending tribes to destruction.

Indian government, like Indian society, was just such as had grown up
naturally out of the {29} conditions. It was not at all like
government among civilized peoples. In the first place, there were no
written laws to be administered. The place of these was taken by
public opinion and tradition, that is, by the ideas handed down from
one generation to another and constantly discussed around the camp-fire
and the council-fire. Every decent Indian was singularly obedient to
this unwritten code. He wanted always to do what he was told his
fathers had been accustomed to do, and what was expected of him. Thus
there was a certain general standard of conduct.

Again, the men who ruled, though they were formally elected to office,
had not any authority such as is possessed by our judges and
magistrates, who can say to a man, "Do thus," and comp