Cherokee. Western Carolina, etc. Tradition and history alike point to the St. Lawrence region as the early home of this stock. Upon this point all authorities concur. Says Hale, in his paper on Indian Migrations (p. 4): "The constant tradition of the Iroquois represents their ancestors as emigrants from the region north of the Great lakes, where they dwelt in early times with their Huron brethren. This tradition is recorded with much particularity by Cadwallader Colden, surveyor-general of New York, who in the early part of the last century composed his well known 'History of the Five Nations.' It is told in a somewhat different form by David Cusick, the Tuscarora historian, in his 'Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations,' and it is repeated by Mr. L. H. Morgan in his now classical work, 'The League of the Iroquois,' for which he procured his information chiefly among the Senecas. Finally, as we learn from the narrative of the Wyandot Indian, Peter Clarke, in his book entitled 'Origin and Traditional History of the Wyandotts,' the belief of the Hurons accords in this respect with that of the Iroquois. Both point alike to the country immediately north of the St. Lawrence, and especially to that portion of it lying east of Lake Ontario, as the early home of the Huron-Iroquois nations." Nothing is known of the traditions of the Conestoga or the Nottoway, but the tradition of the Tuscarora, as given by Cusick and other authorities, makes them a direct offshoot from the northern Iroquois, with whom they afterward reunited. The traditions of the Cherokee also, as we have seen, bring them from the north, thus completing the cycle. "The striking fact has become evident that the course of migration of the Huron-Cherokee family has been from the northeast to the southwest--that is, from eastern Canada, on the Lower St. Lawrence, to the mountains of northern Alabama."--Hale, Indian Migrations, p. 11. The retirement of the northern Iroquoian tribes from the St. Lawrence region was due to the hostility of their Algonquian neighbors, by whom the Hurons and their allies were forced to take refuge about Georgian bay and the head of Lake Ontario, while the Iroquois proper retreated to central New York. In 1535 Cartier found the shores of the river from Quebec to Montreal occupied by an Iroquoian people, but on the settlement of the country seventy years later the same region was found in possession of Algonquian tribes. The confederation of the five Iroquois nations, probably about the year 1540, enabled them to check the Algonquian invasion and to assume the offensive. Linguistic and other evidence shows that the separation of the Cherokee from the parent stock must have far antedated this period.