Of all the tribes the Mohawks were, or at least in England and the colonies were believed to be, the fiercest warriors. It was after them that the roughs in London in the early part of the eighteenth century were named, and the term was long used as a synonym with ferocious men. The tea-destroyers in Boston Harbor in 1774 also took this name. Next westward were the Oneidas, inhabiting the region from Little Falls to Oneida Lake. The Onondagas at the centre of the Long House, in the region between the Susquehanna and the eastern end of Lake Ontario, had the fireplace or centre of the confederacy. The Cayugas lived between the lake named after them and the Genesee Valley. The Senecas occupied the country between Rochester and Niagara. The evidence left by the chips on the floors of their workshops, show that their most ancient habitations were on the river-flats and at the edges of streams. Later, as game became scarcer, they occupied the hills and ledges farther back. On these points of vantage their still later elaborate fortifications of wood were built. As the rocks of New York make the Old Testament of geology, so the river-strands and the quarries are the most ancient chronicles of unwritten history, in times of war and peace. How long the tribes of the Long House lived together under the forms of a federated republic, experts are unable to tell. It is believed that they were originally one large Dakota tribe, which became separated by overgrowth and dissensions, and later united, not as a unity, but as a confederation. The work of Dr. Cadwallader Colden, who in 1727 published his “History of the Five Nations,” has been too much relied upon by American and English writers. It was one of the very first works in English on local history published in the province of New York. Utterly ignoring the excellent writing of the Dutch scholars, Domine Megapolensis, De Vries, and the lawyer, Van der Donck, who wrote as men familiar with their subject at first hand; ignoring also the personal work of Arendt Van Curler,—Colden compiled most of his historic matter from French authors. According to the tradition of the Algonkin Indians of Canada, which Colden gives at length, the Iroquois were at first mainly occupied in agriculture, and the Algonkins in hunting. The various wars had developed in the Iroquois the spirit of war and great powers of resistance, so that they held their own against their enemies. Another of the many bloody campaigns was to open on the shores of the lake named after Champlain, when Europeans appeared on the scene, and trustworthy history begins. Champlain, it seems, did not desire to join in the Indian feuds, but was compelled to do so in order to retain the friendship of the Hurons. This first use of fire-arms in Indian warfare meant nothing less than revolution in politics, in methods of war, in the influence of chiefs, and in other elements of Indian civilization. What gunpowder began, alcohol completed.