The territory now called Canada, and most of the northern portion of the United States, from Lake Superior and the Mississippi to the mouth of the St. Lawrence and Chesapeake bay were, when discovered by Europeans, occupied by two families of tribes, the Algonquin and the Huron Iroquois. The former which included all the New England tribes, the Micmacs, Mohegans, Delawares, Illinois, Chippewas, Ottawas, Pottawatamies, Sacs, Foxes, Miamis, and many of the Maryland and Virginian tribes surrounded the more powerful and civilized tribes who have been called Huron Iroquois, from the names of the two most powerful nations of the group, the Hurons or Wyandots of Upper Canada, and the Iroquois or Five Nations of New York. Besides these the group included the Neuters on the Niagara, the Dinondadies in Upper Canada, the Eries south of the lake of that name, the Andastogués or Susquehannas on that river, the Nottaways and some other Virginian tribes, and finally the Tuscaroras in North Carolina and perhaps the Cherokees, whose language presents many striking points of similarity. Both these groups of tribes claimed a western origin, and seem, in their progress east, to have driven out of Ohio the Quappas, called by the Algonquins, Alkansas or Allegewi, who retreated down the Ohio and Mississippi to the district which has preserved the name given them by the Algonquins. After planting themselves on the Atlantic border, the various tribes seem to have soon divided and become embroiled in war. The Iroquois, at first inferior to the Algonquins were driven out of the valley of the St. Lawrence into the lake region of New York, where by greater cultivation, valor and union they soon became superior to the Algonquins of Canada and New York, as the Susquehannas who settled on the Susquehanna did over the tribes in New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia. (_Du Ponceau’s Campanius_, p. 158.) Prior to 1600 the Susquehannas and the Mohawks, the most eastern Iroquois tribe, came into collision, and the Susquehannas nearly exterminated the Mohawks in a war which lasted ten years. (_Relation de la Nouv. France_, 1659–60, p. 28.) In 1608 Captain Smith, in exploring the Chesapeake and its tributaries, met a party of sixty of these Sasquesahanocks as he calls them (I, p. 120–1), and he states that they were still at war with the Massawomekes or Mohawks. (_De Laet Novus Orbis_, p. 79.)