The Hurons have thus, for the most part, disappeared from Canada; but it is not without interest to note that the revolution which, upwards of a century ago, severed the connection of the old colonies to the south of the St. Lawrence with the region to the north, restored to Canada its ancient Iroquois. This race of savage warriors acquired the mastery of a region equal in extent to Central Europe; and by a system of warfare, not, after all, more inherently barbarous or recklessly bloody than that of Europe’s Grand Monarch, reconstructed the social and political map of the continent east of the Mississippi. Their influence acquired a novel importance when, in the seemingly insignificant rivalries of French and English fur-traders, they practically determined the balance of power between the two foremost nations of Europe on this continent. Their indomitable pertinacity proved more than a match alike for European diplomacy and military skill; and, as they maintained an uncompromising hostility to the French at a time when the rival colonists were nearly equally balanced, the failure of the magnificent schemes of Louis XIV. and his successors to establish in North America such a supremacy as Charles V. and Philip II. had held in Mexico and Peru, is largely traceable to them. It is natural that the Anglo-American student of history should estimate highly the polity of savage warriors who thus foiled the schemes of one of the most powerful monarchies of Europe for the mastery of this continent. The late Hon. L. H. Morgan thus writes of them: “They achieved for themselves a more remarkable civil organisation, and acquired a higher degree of influence, than any other race of Indian lineage except those of Mexico and Peru. In the drama of European colonisation they stood, for nearly two centuries, with an unshaken front against the devastations of war, the blighting influence of foreign intercourse, and the still more fatal encroachments of a restless and advancing border population. Under their federal system the Iroquois flourished in independence, and capable of self-protection, long after the New England and Virginia races had surrendered their jurisdictions, and fallen into the condition of dependent nations; and they now stand forth upon the canvas of Indian history, prominent alike for the wisdom of their civil institutions, their sagacity in the administration of the league, and their courage in its defence.”[141] But in this their historian applies to the Iroquois a European standard, similar to that by which Prescott unconsciously magnified Mexican barbarism into a rivalry with the contemporary civilisation of Spain. The romance attached to the Hodenosauneega, or Kononsionni, the famous league of the Long House or United Households, more truly derives its chief interest and value from the fact that its originators remained to the last savages. It is, at any rate, important to keep this fact in