When Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence nearly four hundred years ago the Indians whom he met were of the Algonquin nation, one of the four great divisions of Indians east of the Rocky Mountains in North America. The others were the Iroquois, the Maskoki or Southern, and the Siouan of the West. The Algonquin country extended from Tennessee to Hudsons Bay and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and included the Delawares, Miamis, Ojibways, Ottawas, Sacs, Foxes, Pottawatomies, and Illinois. They lived in wigwams covered with bark or skins and were a warlike nation, subsisting on hunting and fishing. There were probably 100,000 in number when at the height of their prosperity. The Iroquois occupied the territory now known as Pennsylvania, New York, the south shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and on the Upper St. Lawrence. They were known as the Five Nations, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Ononadagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, to which were added in 1715 the Tuscaroras, who came north from Carolina and whose speech even to this day differs much from the other Iroquois tongue. These made up what we know so well as the Six Nations. They never numbered more than 40,000, but they were mobile and made forays from their towns in New York, sweeping over the country like a scourge and returning to their villages for feasting. A Jesuit, describing the raids of the Iroquois, said “They approach like foxes, they attack like tigers, disappear like birds.” Algonquin was the general name for the tribes enumerated, but there was no bond of union except a likeness of language, while, on the other hand, the tribes of the Iroquois were in a real confederacy, which enabled them to join together against a common enemy. It was this power of organized and sustained warfare that made them so formidable. Even as early as the time of the coming of the white man they had reached a comparatively high stage of social development and government, so that they lived in villages, and the Long House or community dwelling in which many families lived under one roof, indeed in one room, was being displaced by the separate hut. In the centre of the village was the Council House, the place of meeting, of ceremonials and of trade, just as the Town Hall and Market are to-day in many a town. We are given an interesting picture of the Council in a Mohawk village in New York: “Sixty old men sat on a circle of mats smoking around the central fire. Before them stood the captives.... After passing the Council pipe from hand to hand in solemn silence, the Sachems prepared to give their views. One arose, and offering the smoke of incense to the four winds of heaven, to invoke witness to the justice of the trial, gave his opinion on the matter of life and death. Each of the chiefs in succession spoke. Without any warning whatever one chief rose and tomahawked three of the captives. That had been the sentence. The rest were driven to lifelong slavery.”