The small-pox carried off about twelve hundred souls in the year 1639. The Missionaries, principally with a view of baptizing dying children, visited at that time every village, and, with few exceptions, every cabin; and embraced the opportunity of making a complete enumeration of the whole nation. They give the general result in round numbers, seven hundred cabins, and two thousand families, which they estimate at twelve, but which could not have exceeded ten thousand souls. They were not only more warlike, but, in every respect, more advanced in civilization than the Northern Algonquins, particularly in agriculture, to which they appear, probably from their concentrated situation, to have been obliged to attend more extensively than any other Northern Indian nation. The Missionaries had at first great hardships to encounter, and found them less tractable than the Algonquins. But, whether owing to the superior talents of Father Brebeuf and his associates, or to the national character, they made ultimately more progress in converting the Hurons, and have left a more permanent impression of their labors in the remnant of that tribe, than appears to have been done by them, in any other nation without the boundaries of the French settlements.

The only communication of the Hurons, with the infant colony of Canada, was by the river Ottawa, of a difficult navigation, interrupted by portages. The Five Nations directed their attacks to that quarter, cut off the several trading parties, which were in the habit of descending and ascending the river once a year, and intercepted the communication so effectually, that, about the year 1646, the Missionaries on Lake Huron were three years without receiving any supplies from Quebec. The Hurons, who had lost several hundred warriors in those engagements, became dispirited

and careless. They indeed abandoned the smaller villages and fortified the larger. This only accelerated their ruin. In the year 1649, the Five Nations invaded the country with all their forces, attacked and carried the most considerable of those places of refuge, and massacred all the inhabitants. The destruction was completed in the course of the ensuing year. A part of the Hurons fled down the Ottawa River and sought an asylum in Canada, where they were pursued by their implacable enemies even under the walls of Quebec. The greater part of the Ahrendas and several detached bands surrendered, and were incorporated into the Five Nations. The remnant of the Tionontates took refuge among the Chippewas of Lake Superior. Others were dispersed towards Michillimacinac, or in some more remote quarters. This event was immediately followed by the dispersion of the Algonquin nations of the Ottawa River.

In 1671, the Tionontates, after an unsuccessful war with the Sioux, left Lake Superior for Michillimacinac, where they rallied around them the dispersed remnants of the other tribes of their nation, and probably of the Andastes and other kindred tribes, which had been likewise nearly exterminated by the Five Nations. Some years later they removed to Detroit, in the vicinity of their ancient seats. And, though reduced to two villages, they resumed their ascendancy over the Algonquin tribes, and acted a conspicuous part with great sagacity in the ensuing conflicts between the French and the Five Nations. Charlevoix, in 1721, writes, that they were still the soul of the councils of all the Western Indians. They claimed the sovereignty over the country between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, which was exercised by frequent grants and cessions hereafter to be mentioned. Col. John Johnston, of Piqua, the well known Indian

agent, says that their actual settlements extended from Detroit along the south shore of Lake Erie, as far east as Sandusky Bay.

2. THE DELAWARES.-This interesting tribe has been awarded a higher rank in the page of Cooper, the American novelist, and in the Memoirs of the Moravian Missionaries, than Indian tradition seems to warrant. John Heckewelder, as their annalist, and David Zeisberger, as their philologist, have contributed largely to this favorable impression. The former has preserved a Delaware tradition, that many hundred years ago, the Lenni Lenape resided in the western part of the American continent; thence by a slow emigration, they at length reached the Alleghany River, so called from a nation of giants, the Allegewi, against whom the Delawares and Iroquois (the latter also emigrants from the westward) carried on successful war; and, still proceeding eastward, settled on the Delaware, Hudson, Susquehannah and Potomac rivers, making the Delaware the center of their possessions. The Delawares, thus seated on the Atlantic, divided themselves into three tribes, distinguished by the names of the Turtle, the Turkey and the Wolf; or the Unamis, Unalachtgo and Minsi. The latter, also called Mon seys or Muncies, were considered the most warlike and active branch of the Lenape. We shall see hereafter that the latter designation was revived, with important consequences, in Ohio.

Heckewelder seeks unsuccessfully to explain the subjection of the Delawares to the Five Nations, whom they called Mengwe, as a stratagem by the latter; but there is no doubt that a tribe who, more readily than any other, accepted Christianity, found themselves unable to cope with their more warlike neighbors on the war path.3

3) Loskiel's History of the Moravian Missions in North America; Part 1,130. Heckewelder's History Indian Nations.

About 1740-50, a party of Delawares, who had been disturbed in Pennsylvania by European emigration, determined to remove west of the Alleghany Mountains, and obtained from their ancient allies and uncles, the Wyandots, the grant of a derelict tract of land lying principally on the Muskingum. Here they flourished and became a very powerful tribe. From 1765 to 1795, they were at the height of their influence, but the treaty of Greenville, and the disasters sustained by the Delawares in Wayne's campaign, were a death blow to their ascendancy.

3. THE SHAWANESE.-The conflicting testimony, relative to these Bedouins of the American wilderness, is accurately stated by Gallatin. He conjectures that the "Shawnoes,' as he writes the word, separated at an early date from the other Lenape tribes, and established themselves south of the Ohio, in what is now the State of Kentucky; that having been driven away from that Territory, probably by the Chickasaws and Cherokees, some portion found their way, during the first half of the seventeenth century, as far east as the country of the Susquehannocks, a kindred Lenape tribe; that the main body of the nation, invited by the Miamis and the Andastes, crossed the Ohio, occupied the country on and adjacent to the Scioto, and joined in the war against the Five Nations; and that, after their final defeat, and that of their allies, in the year 1672, they were again dispersed in several directions. A considerable portion made about that time a forcible settlement on the head waters of the rivers of Carolina; and these, after having been driven away by the Catawbas, found, as others had already done, an asylum in different parts of the Creek country. Another portion joined their brethren in Pennsylvania; and some may

4) Gallatin's Synopsis, 65. Drake's Life of Tecumseh, 10.

have remained in the vicinity of the Scioto and Sandusky. Those in Pennsylvania, who seem to have been the most considerable part of the nation, were not entirely subjugated and reduced to the humiliating state of women by the Six Nations. But they held their lands on the Susquehannah only as tenants at will, and were always obliged to acknowledge a kind of sovereignty or superiority in their landlords. They appear to have been more early and unanimous than the Delawares in their determination to return to the country north of the Ohio. This they effected under the auspices of the Wyandots, and on the invitation of the French, during the years 1740-55. They occupied there the Scioto country, extending to Sandusky, and westwardly towards the Great Miami, and they have also left there the names of two of their tribes, to wit: Chillicothe and Piqua. settled among the Creeks joined them; and the nation was once more reunited. Mr. Johnston, the Indian agent, says that this southern party lived on the Sawanee River, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico, and is supposed to derive its name from them; and that they returned thence, about the year 1755, to the vicinity of Sandusky, under the conduct of a chief called Black Hoof. It has been reported that Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, were sons of a Creek woman married during that migration to a Shawnoe.

Those who were

During the forty following years, the Shawanese were in an almost perpetual state of war with America, either as British colonies or as independent States. They were among the most active allies of the French during the seven years' war; and, after the conquest of Canada, continued, in concert with the Delawares, hostilities which were only terminated after the successful campaign of General Bouquet. The first permanent settlements of the Americans beyond