Five
Nations, who then resided near the present locality of
Montreal, were at war with the powerful Adirondacks, who at
that time lived three hundred miles above the Three Rivers, in
Canada. The Iroquois found it difficult to withstand the
vigorous attacks of their enemies, whose superior hardihood was
to be attributed to their constant devotion to the chase, while
the Iroquois had been chiefly engaged in the more peaceful
occupation of planting corn. Compelled to give way before their
haughty foes, the confederates had recourse to the exercise of
arms, in order, if possible, to retrieve their martial
character and prowess. To raise the spirits of their people,
the Iroquois leaders turned their warriors against the Satanas
or Shawanoes, 'who then,' says Colden, 'lived on the banks of
the lakes,'--or, as other historians assert, in Western New
York, and south of Lake Erie,--and soon subdued and drove them
out of the country. The Shawanoes then retired to the Ohio,
along which and its tributaries they planted numerous
settlements. Some of them, however, when driven from Western
New York, seem to have located somewhere on the Delaware, for
De Laet, in 1624, speaks of _Sawanoos_ residing on that river.

"The _Jesuit Relations_ of 1661-62, allude to their residence
in the West under the name of Ontouagannha or Chaoueanons; they
seem to have been the same as were called Tongorias, Erighecks,
Erieehonons, Eries, or Cats, by the early missionaries and
historians; and the same, moreover, known in the traditions of
the Senecas as Gah-kwahs, who resided on Eighteen Mile Creek, a
few miles southwest of Buffalo, in Western New York, which the
Senecas still call Gah-kwah-gig-a-ah Creek, which means _the
place where the Gah-kwahs lived_. In 1672, the Shawanoes and
their confederates in the Ohio Valley met with a disastrous
overthrow by the Five Nations at Sandy Island, just below the
Falls of Ohio, where large numbers of human bones were still to
be seen at the first settlement of the country. The surviving
Shawanoes must then have retired still farther down the Ohio,
and settled probably in the western part of Kentucky; and
Marquette, in 1673, speaks of their having twenty-three