There are reasons for believing that attempts were made during this period to combine the tribes, or some of them, in a federal alliance. But if such connections were formed, they proved only temporary leagues, which were dissolved when the dangers that had called them into being had passed away. A leader of peculiar qualities, aided by favoring circumstances, was able at last to bring about a more permanent union. There is no exact chronology by which the date of this important event can be ascertained; but the weight of evidence fixes it at about the middle of the fifteenth century. [Footnote: The evidence on this point is given in the Appendix, note C. It should be mentioned that some portion of the following narrative formed part of a paper entitled "A Lawgiver of the Stone Age," which was read at the Cincinnati meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in August, 1882, and was published in the Proceedings of the meeting. The particulars comprised in it were drawn chiefly from notes gathered during many visits to the Reserve of the Six Nations, on the Grand River, in Ontario, supplemented by information obtained in two visits to the Onondaga Reservation, in the State of New York, near Syracuse. My informants were the most experienced councillors, and especially the "wampum-keepers," the official annalists of their people. Their names, and some account of them, will be given in a subsequent chapter. It should be mentioned that while the histories received at the two localities were generally in close accord, thus furnishing a strong proof of the correctness with which they have been handed down, there were circumstances remembered at each place which had not been preserved at the other. The Onondagas, as was natural, retained a fuller recollection of the events which took place before the flight of Hiawatha to the Caniengas; while the annalists of the latter tribe were better versed in the subsequent occurrences attending the formation of the League. These facts should be borne in mind by any inquirer who may undertake to repeat or continue these investigations. When the narratives varied, as they sometimes did in minor particulars, I have followed that which seemed most in accordance with the general tenor of the history and with the evidence furnished by the Book of Rites.]