of conquest over some barbarian chief of Mexican or more northern tribes, of whom the flint-edged sword-blade was the most typical characteristic. Nevertheless, there is a singular interest in the simple chain of evidence, thus confirmatory of the Aztec traditions of original migration, and the subjugation of the elder civilised race of Anahuac by northern warriors: which leads us, step by step, from such rude arts as those of the Iroquois, and relics of other barbarous tribes in western sepulchral mounds, to the Mexican armature of the era of the conquest, and artistic records of the lettered architects of Yucatan. The history of the Iroquois and their simple arts, illustrates with peculiar aptness the unwritten chronicles of the New World. In their rude state they achieved a remarkable civil and military organisation, and acquired more extensive and enduring influence than any nation of native American lineage, excepting the civilised Mexicans and Peruvians. Their own traditions pointed to an era when they migrated from the northern shores of the St. Lawrence into that region to the south and east of Lake Ontario, where they dwelt through all the period of their authentic history; though two members of the league, the Senecas and Onondagas, claimed to be autochthones, sprung from the soil of that Iroquois territory. The league embraced the Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Mohawks, all united in a strictly federal union; and to this the Tuscaroras were admitted, on their expulsion from North Carolina in 1715. The claim of a common origin advanced by a people occupying territory so far to the south, throws an interesting light on the migrations of Indian tribes. It is confirmed by the character of their language, and received practical recognition in the assignment of a portion of the Oneida territory for their occupation. In the seventeenth century the Iroquois were the great aggressive nationality of the continent to the north of Mexico. In the very beginning of that century, Captain John Smith, the founder of Virginia, encountered their canoes on the upper part of the Chesapeake Bay, bearing a band of them to the territories of the Powhattan confederacy. The Shawnees, Susquehannocks, Nanticokes, Miamis, Delawares, and Minsi, were, one after another, reduced by them to the condition of dependent tribes. Even the Canarse or Long-Island Indians found no protection from them in their sea-girt home beyond the Hudson; and their power was felt from the St. Lawrence to Tennessee, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.