n the soil they then
occupied. To conceal the fact of their title being held by right of
conquest, or to supply the actual want of history, one tribe, the
Oneidas, asserted that they had sprung from a rock. Another, the
Wyandots, alleged that they came out of the ground by the fiat of the
great spirit. [Oneota.] None of them acknowledged a _foreign origin_
beyond seas. None of them acknowledged, at first, that they knew aught
of the ancient mound-builders and people who built the old
fortifications in the West, or in their own country; but they
subsequently connected, or accommodated these mounds, to their war with
the Alleghans. This is in accordance with Indian policy, and suspicious
foresight. When closely questioned, they told Gov. Clinton that these
old works were by an _earlier_ people, and that their oldest traditions
related to their wars with the Cherokees, and the people of the extreme
south. That they originally dwelt in those latitudes--that they migrated
north through the Ohio valley, around the Alleghanies, and came into
Western New-York from the borders of the Lakes and the St. Lawrence, are
points very well denoted by their languages, vestiges of arts,
geographical nomenclature and history, so far as we have had the means
of recording it.

Cartier, in 1535, found them seated at Hochelaga, the present site of
Montreal. They had an ancient station, as low down the Connecticut at
least, as Northfield. Towards the north of lakes Ontario and Erie, they
extended to the chain of lakes which stretches through from the northern
shores of the former to lake Huron. It is seen from Le Jeune, that they
ordered the Wyandots of the ancient Hochelaga Canton, who had formed an
alliance with the French and with the Algonquins, to quit that spot, and
remove into the territory south of the lakes. And in default of this,
they warred against them, and drove them west, through the great chain
of lakes to Michilimackinac, and even to the western extremity of lake
Superior.

The period of the settlement of Canada, ripened causes of hostility to
the entire Algonquin, or as they called them, Adirondak race, into
maturity. The Wyandot alliance with the French gave an edge to this
contest, and having soon been supplied with guns and ammunition by the
Dutch, they defeated this race in several sanguinary battles between
Montreal and Quebec, and drove them out of this valley, by the way of
the Ontario river, and pursued them to their