This noted confederacy consisted of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The name given them, by the French writers, is the Iroquois. Each nation was divided into three tribes or families, distinguished by their ensigns, as the Tortoise, the Bear, and the Wolf. Their original seat was the island of Montreal and its vicinity. Many years before the French discovered Canada, they employed themselves in the peaceful pursuits of agriculture. The Adirondacks, who then dwelt about 300 miles from Trois Rivières, where the Ottawas afterwards lived, pursued hunting, and exchanged their venison for the corn raised by the Five Nations. The Adirondacks, or, as they are more frequently called by the French, the Algonquins, despised the Five Nations, as a weak people, occupied with business fit only for women. But on a certain occasion, their game failed, and they employed some of the young men of the Five Nations to assist them in hunting. These soon became expert and capable of enduring fatigue beyond the Adirondacks themselves. The latter consequently became jealous of them, and, fearing that they would throw off the yoke to which they were subjected, murdered them in cold blood. Not having any serious fears of the resentment of so unwarlike a people, they ordered a small compensation to be paid to the Five Nations, whom they looked upon as incapable of avenging the atrocity which had been perpetrated. These were, however, greatly exasperated, and resolved to be revenged. The Adirondacks, when informed of this, deemed it a good occasion to subject them to their sway, and accordingly attacked them. The Five Nations at first defended themselves faintly against their fierce and warlike assailants, and were forced to leave their own country, and fly to the shores of the Lakes. This occurred about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Here they applied themselves to the exercise of arms, and became daily more and more expert in the use of them. Their sachems, to remove the dread of the Adirondacks, entertained by their people, and to inspire them with some degree of confidence, first led them against the Satanas, who then occupied what are now the central parts of the State of New York. They subdued these, and drove them out of the country, to the banks of the Mississippi.