n River west to the Seneca country almost to Lake Erie. In this
wide tract were their five principal towns, fortified by ditches and
log palisades. From here they carried war south clear to the Cherokees
of Tennessee, west clear into the land of the Illinois, and north to
the Algonkins at Quebec of the lower St. Lawrence River.

Twelve or fifteen thousand people they numbered. Mohawks, Senecas,
Onondagas, Oneidas and Cayugas still survive, as many as ever and
ranking high among the civilized Indians of North America.

The Hurons lived to the northwest, in a smaller country along the
shores of Georgian Bay of southeastern Lake Huron, in Canada.

"Hurons" they were called by the French, meaning "bristly" or "savage
haired," for they wore their coarse black hair in many fantastic cuts,
but the favorite fashion was that of a stiff roach or mane extending
from the forehead to the nape of the neck, like the bristles of a wild
boar's back or the comb of a rooster. By the Algonkins they were
called "serpents," also. Their own name for themselves was "Wendat,"
or "People of the Peninsula"--a word which the English wrote as
"Wyandot."

They were of the Iroquois family, but for seventy-five years and more
they had been at war with their cousins of the south. They, too, had
their principal fortified towns, and their league, of four independent
nations and four protected nations, numbering twenty thousand. Like
those of the Iroquois, some of their bark houses were five hundred feet
long, for twenty families. Yet of this powerful people there remain
today only about four hundred Hurons, near Quebec, and as many Wyandots
in Canada and the former Indian Territory of Oklahoma.

The Algonkins lived farther north, along the Ottawa River, and the St.
Lawrence to the east. "Place of spearing eel and fish from a canoe,"
is the best that we may get from the word "Algonkin." The "Raised
Hair" people did the French first term them, because they wore their
hair pompadoured. But Adirondack was a Mohawk word, "Hatirontaks,"
"Eaters of Trees," accusing the Adirondacks of being so hungry in
winter that they ate bark.

In summer the men went naked; in winter they donned a fur cape. They
were noted warriors, hunters and fishers, and skillful in making shell
ornaments. As the "Nation of the Island" also were they known to the
French explorers, because their headquarters were upon that large
island of Allumette in the Ottawa River abo