Until the Revolutionary War the Iroquois had been friends of our fathers against the French in Canada, with whom the Algonquin Indians had acted as allies. How did it come to pass that the Iroquois turned to be our enemies? Lifting up the hatchet and scalping knife against us, they left at Cherry Valley, and Wyoming, great blood spots, and along the frontier a line of fire and death. To answer this question, we must go back more than a century and a half. At that time the North American continent was divided between two quite different sorts of Indians, the Five Nations of the Iroquois, who were united in a confederacy, and the much more numerous Algonquins, who lived all around them. In 1609, two men, each representing a different civilization, penetrated the inland waters of America. Henry Hudson, an English captain in a Dutch ship and with a Dutch crew, sailed up the river that now bears his name and made the friendly acquaintance of the tribes of Northern New York. Samuel Champlain, from France, came down the lake that bears his name, acting not only as friend, but as ally to the Algonquins, who were ever at war with the Iroquois. The boundary line between these two kinds of Indians was drawn at Rock Regio, in Lake Champlain, near Burlington, Vermont. It happened at this time that hostile parties from the North and South were out seeking each other. Dressed in bark armor, with bows and arrows, and stone hatchets, they met in combat, not in ambush, but in the open field. The Frenchmen, taking sides with the Algonquins, killed several Iroquois with their firearms. Forthwith, vowing vengeance against these white men who had interfered, the Indians of the South resolved to seek Dutch aid. A few years later they appeared at Fort Orange, near Albany, bringing their beaver and other skins in exchange for arms and ammunition. Thus armed, they were able to go forth on equal terms with the Algonquins to the slaughter of the French and their allies. With them the age of stone was over and the new era of iron and gunpowder had come.