he only Iroquois who fought for the Americans in the
War of Independence. As a consequence they were attacked by
others of the Iroquois under Joseph Brant and took refuge within
the American settlements till the war ended, when the majority
returned to their former home, while some migrated to the Thames
River district, Ontario. Early in the 19th century they sold
their lands, and most of them settled on a reservation at Green
Bay, Wis., some few remaining in N.Y. State. The tribe now
numbers more than 3,000, of whom about two-thirds are in
Wisconsin, a few hundred in N.Y. State and about 800 in Ontario.
They are civilized and prosperous.

[Illustration: Samuel de Champlain

Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635), born at the little port Brouage
in the Bay of Biscay, made his first trip to Canada in 1603, and
five years later established the first white settlement at Quebec.
In the spring he joined a war party of Algonquins and Hurons,
discovered the great lake that bears his name, and with his
arquebus took an important part in the victory which his savage
friends obtained over the Iroquois. In 1615, with another
expedition of Indians, he crossed the eastern ends of Lakes Huron
and Ontario and made a fierce but unsuccessful attack on an
Onondaga town near Lake Oneida. Parkman says: "In Champlain alone
was the life of New France. By instinct and temperament he was
more impelled to the adventurous toils of exploration than to the
duller task of building colonies. The profits of trade had value
in his eyes only as a means to these ends, and settlements were
important chiefly as a base of discovery. Two great objects
eclipsed all others--to find a route to the Indies and to bring
the heathen tribes into the embrace of the Church, since, while he
cared little for their bodies, his solicitude for their souls knew
no bounds."]

The history of the modern city of Oneida goes back to 1829, when the
present site was purchased by Sands Higinbotham, who is regarded as the
founder of the town and in honor of whom one of the municipal parks is
named. In the southeastern part of the city is the headquarters of the
Oneida Community, originally a communistic society but now a business
corporation, which controls important industries here, at Niagara Falls
and elsewhere.

The Oneida Community was founded in 1847 by Jo