The name Niagara has been so thoroughly identified with the river and the Falls that the question whether it was also the name of an Indian nation or tribe has been quite neglected. It is proposed now to give the question some consideration, assuming, at once, its affirmative to be true. This, it is believed, we shall be justified in doing by every principle of analogy. We know that it was a general practice of the Indians who occupied this region of country, so abounding in lakes and rivers, to give the name of the nation or tribe to, or to name them after, the most prominent bodies and courses of water found in their territory. Such was the fact with the Senecas, Cayugas, Oneidas, Onondagas, and Hurons, the tribal name of each being perpetuated both in a lake and a river. The Mohawks, the warrior tribe of the Six Nations, having no noted lake within their boundaries, left a perpetual memorial of themselves in the name of a beautiful river. The unwarlike Eries, too, though finally exterminated by their more powerful and aggressive neighbors, the Iroquois, are still remembered in the lake which bears their name. With the Niagaras the river and the cataract were the most notable and impressive features of their territory. Their principal village bore the same name; and when we recall the proverbial vanity of the race, we can hardly doubt that this must also have been their tribal name. That it should have been perpetuated in reference to the village, the river, and the falls, and that the use of it, in reference to the tribe, should have lapsed, can be readily understood when we recollect that they had two substitutes for the tribal name. One of these substitutes is explained at page 70 of the "Relations" of 1641, in a passage which we translate as follows: "Our Hurons call the Neuter Nation _Attouanderonks_, as though they would say a people of a little different language: for as to those nations that speak a language of which they understand nothing, they call them _Attouankes_, whatever nation they may be, or as though they spoke of strangers. They of the Neuter Nation in turn, and for the same reason, call our Hurons _Attouanderonks_."