The term Iroquois, the exact meaning of which is in doubt, is racial in its suggestion rather than political, and included the various detached branches of the people of similar languages and habits, as well as the constituent members of the Five Nations.

These outlying members of the Iroquois race were clustered about the western end of the long-house. Those to the south were properly called the Southern Iroquois. Professor Gass, in the "Historical Register,' gives a considerable number of bands or tribes of Iroquoisan stock; these, he says, melted away from disease and ceased to have any place in history, their remnants being absorbed into other surviving tribes. Of them all, two tribes were prominent, the Andastes and the Tuscaroras. The Andastes, also know as the Susquehannocks, Connestogas, and other unpronounceable names, were later destroyed by the members of the league, while the Tuscaroras, in 1714, returned northward from their southern home and formed an alliance with the league, and are not perhaps the most progressive of all the remaining of the Iroquois stock.

The western Iroquois consisted of the Erie, Cats, or Gahquahs, living in the western end of New York and extending into Pennsylvania and Ohio. They were subdued by the league and their name is preserved as the name of the lake that formed the northern bounds of their territory. The Neutral Nation lived on both sides of the Niagara river, but mostly on the Ontario side. The Senecas called them the Attiowandaronks, or the people whose language is a little different. Further west and toward the lake of the Hurons, was the Tionnontates, or people over the mountain, also called the Petuns, Tobacco Nation. These Canadian tribes and other outlying branches whose names are lost to the historian of the present day, were sometimes called the Hurons, and the ethnologists of today, following the very opposite suggestion of the Canadians, use the term Huron-Iroquois, as embracing the entire family of tribes above named.

The Tuscaroras, coming from the south in the year of 1714, asked for admission to the league, and a council of the five tribes was held at the central fire, at the rock which marked the place of these great meetings. After due deliberation, it was decided that the sanctity of the league was such that it could not be enlarged by admitting another tribe on equal footing with its five constituent members. It was, however, determined that as the tuscaroras were of their own blood and of similar language, to whom the right of hospitality was due, it would be cruel to ignore the petition of their own kindred by an utter refusal of protection, so it was in the figurative words of the Indians, decided that the Tuscaroras might come to the west door of the long-house to the tree which by a fiction of the Indians grew at the door, and there, holding onto the tree under its branches, remain under the protection of the league, and especially under the care of the Senecas, the keepers of the west door; an officer was "raised up," who was called the holder-onto-the-tree, and his duty was forever to keep in the minds of the Tuscaroras their subordinate position in the league. To this day this condition exists, and in the councils of the league this subordinate position of the Tuscaroras is still insisted on by the other members; no Tuscarora has any voice in the general council, except on the favor of the others, and a lifted finger by any of the other councilors brings him to his seat.

After the formation of the league it is said that the members offered to each of the other tribes of like blood membership in their league; but they refused or rather ignored the invitation, and their failure to avail themselves of the offer resulted in their bring regarded as enemies of the confederacy and treated as such.

North and south, east and west of this Huron-Iroquois race were located an alien race divided into many tribes, which in later years came to be called by the name of Algonquins. This name it seems was that of a small and rather insignificant tribe of this stock also called the Adirondacks. Of these Algonquins, those at the south had early been brought into something like subjugation to the league. The principal of these, the Delawares, who called themselves the Lenni Lenapes, deserve especial attention. If the league of the Iroquois may be called the Romans of the new world, the Delawares may be called the Greeks. They were a subjugated people, but their conquerors always held them in highest esteem for their superior intelligence. They were in habits and character, as well as intelligence, superior to the other Algonquins, and their name rather than the other should have been applied to the races now called the Algonquin, as they were regarded as the fathers of their race. From their traditionary history we get the key that unlocks the mystery of that vanished people called the Mound Builders. The Indians were great visitors, and the Iroquois often visited the Delawares and from them learned many things. They were to the various other Algonquin peoples, grandfathers; and this is a term of great respect and suggests the highest honor, as ancient lineage and old age were to the Indians as proof of great wisdom.

The Delaware tradition tells of their migration from the west in which, coming to a river across which was a people numerous and powerful, their advance was stayed. These people were advanced in status, had fixed abodes, and were of a peaceful disposition; however, they objected to the advance of the Delawares through their territories, and thus matters stood when another tribe of emigration of the race, called by the Delawares the Mengwe--that being their name for the Iroquois--also came to the same river with intent of seeking a homeland beyond the river. These two races, being thus barred from further progress by the Tallegewi, or trans-river people, planned to force a way through the opposing people. Negotiations followed, and the Tallegewi was doubtful and when a portion of the forces had crossed, it was attacked by the Tallegewi and roughly handled; but the others, coming to the assistance of their people, soon routed the enemy and in the ear that followed drove them out of their territory to the southward; the Lenni Lenapes and Mengwe passed on to their future homeland. The alliance between these two, however, did not continue for a long period, and when the whites came they found the Delawares or Lenni a subject race to the Iroquois, or descendants of the ancient Mengwe of the story, who, to make use of the idiom of the Indians, had made women of them and deprived them of the right to carry warlike weapons.

The seats of the Delaware at this time was the state of Pennsylvania and westward, while the cognate tribes, or grandchildren of the Delawares, were to found in the Hudson valley, on Long Island, and in the New England states. Closely allied with the Delawares were the Shawanoes, who, if tradition may be relied on, were driven from their early home in New York by the Iroquois, and who became the Gypsies of the new world; their habits were nomadic, even more then those of the other Indians, most of whom were given to wanderlust.

The Indians to the south of the Delawares were the Powhatans of Virginia, the small tribes, the Corees, Pamlicos, Mattamskeets, Pasquotanks, along the North Carolina coast, all of Algonquin stock, and it is even claimed that the Sioux, or Dakotas, were represented near Cape Fear, by name the Catawbas, Waxaws, Waterees, Tutelos, Soponis, and Manahoaes. Wedged in among these Sioux, if they were Sioux, were the Tuscaroras, Iroquois emigrants from the northland. South were various tribes consisting of the members of the Mobilian family, but of these southern Indians, the Cherokees, whose ancestors are supposed to have been the once numerous Tallegewi, of the Delaware tradition, driven from their former country along the Tallegewi Sipu, as the Delawares called the Ohio river and Allegheny river from the headwaters of the latter, to the entry into the Mississippi. These are probably the present representatives of the ancient Mound Builders so called, whose remains are found along this river of the Tallegewi, especially at Marietta, Ohio, Moundsville, West Virginia, and other places along that river.

The more southern Indians are for the most part known only historically. Their tribes have ceased to have any political existence, and their names are preserved only by the chronicler and in various geographic names that commemorate their former localities and suggest their former power.

Two exceptions to this rule are worthy of mention. The Tuscaroras and Cherokees,. who were of northern origin, showed exceptional vitality and to this day have their own reservations and to some extent keep up their tribal traditions.

Along the valley of the Hudson river were bands of Algonquins, the most notable being the Mohicans and the less known Wappingers, Waranawaukongs, Tappans, Tachami, Sintsinks, Kitchawauks, Makinames and, on Long Island, the Matonwaks. In New England were the Naragansetts, the Pequods, the Wampangoags and the Micamacs. In the extreme north of the New England states were the Wabenaki. All these were of Algonquin stock.

To the north of the Huron-Iroquois were the Adirondacks and the Ottawas, and the far northern forests sheltered the men of the puckered blankets, the Ojibways, destined to break through the barrier, and, like the Goths of old, to find a more congenial homeland toward the south. These northern people were not closely united by any political bond and many of them belonged to a lower stratum in the scale of advancement toward civilization; they had not learned the art of making pottery, and in derision the people of the confederated Iroquois referred to them as the men-who-boiled-stones, referring to their habit of cooking meat by placing it in a skin sunk into a hole in the ground, and after pouring in water to drop hot stones on it.

For the sake of classification it is well here to divide the Indians into three classes; the first, the confederated Iroquois of new York, calling themselves Wis-nyeh-goin-sa-geh, or the five peoples bound together by an oath, whose territory was poetically called the Ho-den-o-saw-nee, or the house that has grown out to form a home for more than one family; the second, the various members of the Huron-Iroquois races, forming a fringe about the western end of the long-house, with some branches in the far south, all of similar language to the Five nations, but who failed to attach themselves to the league when the opportunity offered, and who may be called the unconfederated Huron-Iroquois; the third, the Algonquins, north, south, east and west of the Huron-Iroquois, confederated and unconfederated, whose principal and typical member was the Delaware nation, and whose lowest type were probably the men-who-boiled-stones, in the far north. Of the second division, most were conquered by the confederated Iroquois, within the historical period, losing their tribal identity, except the Tuscaroras, who came back north and took the subordinate position in the confederacy. The loss of tribal identity in the history of the redmen, however, does not mean the loss of all its members. The habit of adoption, which prevailed among the Iroquois especially, suggests that the members of a subjugated tribe were largely incorporated into the tribe of the conquerors, so increasing its numbers and adding to its prestige and power. This custom of adoption was an ancient one and had its ritual sanctified by ancient usage, which carried with it a sacred obligation on the part of the person adopted and the tribe adopting. These ancient ceremonies meant much to the Indian, who by nature was given to formalities, especially when those rites were sanctioned by ancient usage. To Illustrate, a few years ago there was still living on the Mohawk reservation neat Brantford, Ontario, on John Key, who was the last survivor of the progeny of the Tutelos, who had, before the War of the Revolution, fled from their home on the Rapahannock river and became incorporated into the tribe of the Mohawks; likely many others of various other tribes had in the same manner found refuge in adoption and incorporation into the various other members of the confederacy. The wife of King Tandy, a Seneca friend of the writer, admitted herself to be an Abenaki, and when she was bantered for her alliance with the enemies of her race, she suggested that it was to get even with one of them that she married him--this with a twinkle in her expressive black eyes.

When the white man came, the confederated Iroquois had established their military superiority over the Algonquins to the south and east, so that all fear of invasion from either of these points, had ceased. Nor did they have any fear of the unconfederated Huron-Iroquois. To them they were bound by ties of blood and a common language. Among them there was no power that could stand before the warriors of the league. Traffic was carried on between these various peoples; an aged Seneca informed the writer that, according to the traditions of his forefathers, the trail to Canada, whither they went for materials for arrow points, led under the falls of Niagara; that one could then walk dry shod from the American side down under the falling waters and come up again on the Canadian side, but that falling rocks in later times had obliterated and destroyed the old trail and forced them to resort to the canoe in crossing.