Iroquois Indians; Mohawk language -- Texts; Onondaga language -- Texts
To conclude this review of the Huron-Iroquois group, something further
should be said about the fortunes of the parent tribe, or rather
congeries of tribes,--for the Huron household, like the Iroquois, had
become divided into several septs. Like the Iroquois, also, they have
not lacked an annalist of their own race. A Wyandot Indian, Peter
Doyentate Clarke, who emigrated with the main body of his people to the
Indian Territory, and afterwards returned for a time to the remnant of
his tribe dwelling near Amherstburg, in Canada, published in 1870 a
small volume entitled "Origin and Traditional History of the Wyandots."
[Footnote: Printed by Hunter, Rose & Co., of Toronto.] The English
education of the writer, like that of the Tuscarora historian, was
defective; and it is evident that his people, in their many wanderings,
had lost much of their legendary lore. But the fact that they resided in
ancient times near the present site of Montreal, in close vicinity to
the Iroquois (whom he styles, after their largest tribe, the Senecas),
is recorded as a well-remembered portion of their history. The flight of
the Wyandots to the northwest is declared to have been caused by a war
which broke out between them and the Iroquois. This statement is opposed
to the common opinion, which ascribes the expulsion of the Hurons from
their eastern abode to the hostility of the Algonkins. It is, however,
probably correct; for the Hurons retreated into the midst of the
Algonkin tribes, with whom they were found by Champlain to be on terms
of amity and even of alliance, while they were engaged in a deadly war
with the Iroquois. The place to which they withdrew was a nook in the
Georgian Bay, where their strongly palisaded towns and well-cultivated
fields excited the admiration of the great French explorer. Their object
evidently was to place as wide a space as possible between themselves
and their inveterate enemies. Unfortunately, as is well known, this
precaution, and even the aid of their Algonkin and French allies, proved
inadequate to save them. The story of their disastrous overthrow, traced
by the masterly hand of Parkman, is one of the most dismal passages of
aboriginal history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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