Both Algonquins and Iroquois were to be classed as barbarians rather than savages. The former have been described as having generally "found locations in permanent villages surrounded by extensive cornfields. They were primarily agriculturists or fishermen, to whom hunting was hardly more than a pastime and who followed the chase as a serious business only in the interval between the gathering of one crop and the sowing of the next." The Iroquois, who found their highest development in their confederacy of the Five Nations of the Long House in central New York (the Massawomecks so dreaded by the Powhattans and Manahoacs of Smith's narratives) were even further advanced. Described by historians as the Romans of America, they led all other Indians of what is now the United States in their powers of organization and extraordinary political development. They lived in cleverly and strongly palisaded villages and their agricultural activities, falling to the women's share of tribal work, were probably further advanced than those of any other Indians north of Mexico. Our earliest knowledge places them on the banks of the St. Lawrence, in the neighborhood of the present Montreal, whence they were driven by the neighboring Algonquins. Their defeat and expulsion to the south bred in them a deep determination for revenge. In the New York wilderness they developed and cultivated a passion for ruthless warfare and forming their famous Confederation somewhere about the year 1570, they rapidly became the most powerful Indian military force east of the Mississippi and a sombre threat and terror to the other Indian tribes far and wide.