r question to suggest itself is whether there is any connection
between the names "Iroquet" and "Iroquois". Were they originally forms
of the same word? Or were they two related names of divisions of a
people? Certainly two closely related peoples have these closely similar
names. They were as clearly used as names of distinct tribes however,
in the seventeenth century. The derivation of "Iroquois" given by
Charlevoix from "hiro"--"I have spoken" does not seem at all likely;
but the analogy of the first syllables of the names Er-ie, Hur-ons,
Hir-oquois, Ir-oquet and Cherokee may have something in it.

The Iroquets or Hochelagans attributed their great disaster,--the
destruction of their towns and dispossession of their island,--to the
Hurons, but Charlevoix[9] records an Algonquin victory over them which
seems to have preceded, and contributed to, that event, though the
lateness of Charlevoix renders the story not so reliable in detail as
the personal recollections of the Iroquets above given: His story[10]
given "on the authority of those most versed in the old history of the
country", proceeds as follows: "Some Algonquins were at war with the
Onontcharonnons better known under the name of Tribe of Iroquet, and
whose former residence was, it is said, in the Island of Montreal. The
name they bear proclaims, they were of Huron speech; nevertheless it
is claimed that it was the Hurons who drove them from their ancient
country, and who in part destroyed them. However that may be, they were
at the time I speak of, at war with the Algonquins, who, to finish
this war at one stroke, thought of a stratagem, which succeeded". This
stratagem was an ambush placed on both sides of the River Becancour
near Three Rivers, with some pretended fishermen out in canoes as
decoys. The Iroquets attacked and pursued the fishermen, but in the
moment of victory, a hail of arrows issued from the bushes along both
shores. Their canoes being pierced, and the majority wounded, they all
perished. "The tribe of Iroquet never recovered from this disaster; and
none to day remain. The quantity of corpses in the water and on the
banks of the river so infected it, that it retains the name of Riviere
Puante"; (Stinking River).

Charlevoix[11] gives, as well supported, the story of the origin of the
war between the Iroquois and Algonquins. "The Iroquois had made with
them a sort of alliance very useful to both." They gave grain for
game and armed aid, and