Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/58

29 A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. been in full possession of a portion of the country on the east side of the river, at least as high up as the 45th degree of lat- tude. And the Winnebagoes, another distinct Sioux tribe, were, when the French made their settlements in Canada, already established in the vicinity of Lake Michigan. The Iroquois nations consisted of two distinct groups, both embraced within those boundaries, but which, when they were first known to the Europeans, were separated from each other by several intervening, but now extinct Lenape tribes. The northern group or division was on all sides surrounded by Algonkin-Lenape tribes. When Jaques Cartier entered and ascended the river St. Lawrence in 1535, he found the site of Montreal, then called Hochegala, occupied by an Iroquois tribe, as evidently appears by his vocabulary, an extract from which, taken from De Laet, is annexed. We have no further account till the year 1608, when Champlain founded Quebec ; and the island of Montreal was then inhabited by the Algon- kins. The boundaries of the Northern Iroquois appear, at that time, to have been as follows : On the north, the height of land which separates the waters of the Ottawa River, from those which fall into Lakes Huron and Ontario and the River St. Lawrence. But the country north of the lakes was a debatable ground, on which the Iroquois had no permanent establishment, and at least one Algonquin tribe, called " Mississagues," was settled. On the west, Lake Huron and, south of Lake Erie, a line not far from the Scioto, extending to the Ohio, which was the boundary between the Wyandots, or other now extinct Iro- quois tribes, and the Miamis and Illinois. On the east, Lake Champlain and, farther south, the Hud- son River as low down as the Katskill Mountains, which separ- ated the Mohawks from the Lenape Wappingers of Esopus. The southern boundary cannot be accurately defined. The Five Nations were then carrying on their war of subjugation and extermination against all the Lenape tribes west of the River Delaware. Their war parties were already seen in 1608 at the mouth of the Susquehannah ; and it is impossible to distin- guish between what they held in consequence of recent con- quests and their original limits. These did not probably ex- tend beyond the range of mountains, which form southwest- wardly the continuation of the Katskill chain. West of the Alleghany Mountains they are not known to have had any settlement south of the Ohio ; though the Wyandots have left