Father Sagard estimated the Huron tribes at the close of their national history, when they had been greatly reduced in numbers, as still between thirty and forty thousand. But besides these there lay between them and the shores of Lake Erie and the Niagara river the Tiontonones and the Attiwendaronks, and to the south of the Great Lake the Eries, all of the same stock, and all sharers in the same fate. Tradition points to the kindling of the council-fire of peace among the Attiwendaronks before the organisation of the Iroquois confederacy. Father Joseph de la Roche d’Allyon, who passed through their country when seeking to discover the source of the Niagara river, speaks of twenty-eight towns and villages under the rule of its chief Sachem, and of their extensive cultivation of maize, beans, and tobacco. They had won, moreover, the strange character of being lovers of peace, and were styled by the French the Neuters, from the desire they manifested to maintain a friendly neutrality alike with the Hurons and the Iroquois. Of the Eries we know less. In the French maps of the seventeenth century the very existence of the great lake which perpetuates their name was unknown; but the French fur-traders were aware of a tribe existing to the west of the Iroquois, whose country abounded with the lynx or wild cat, the fur of which was specially prized, and they designated it “La Nation du Chat.” To their artistic skill are ascribed several remains of aboriginal art, among which a pictorial inscription on Cunningham’s Island is described as by far the most elaborate work of its class hitherto found on the continent.[68] From the partial glimpses thus recovered of both nations we are tempted to ascribe to them an aptitude for civilisation fully equal to that of which the boasted federal league of the Iroquois gave evidence. But they perished by the violence of kindred nations before either the French or English could establish intercourse with them; and their fate doubtless reveals to us glimpses of history such as must have found frequent repetition in older centuries throughout the whole North American continent. The legend of the peace-pipe, Longfellow’s poetic version of the Red Indian Edda, founded on traditions of the Iroquois narrated by an Onondaga chief, represents Gitche Manito, the Master of Life, descending on the crag of the red pipestone quarry at the Côteau des Prairies, and calling all the tribes together:— And they stood there on the meadow With their weapons and their war gear, Wildly glaring at each other. In their faces stern defiance, In their hearts the feuds of ages, The hereditary hatred, The ancestral thirst of vengeance.