When the palisaded or stockaded village life was abandoned for the freer, more independent life of the great village, the location was generally upon the banks of a stream so that there might be a plentiful supply of water, and in many cases easier transportation. While not an agricultural people they had always enough women and captives to provide the means of living, for the warriors and the hunters returning with game. Fields of corn, pumpkins, and squashes, orchards of plum and apple, and small herds of hogs and cattle were to be found in these villages; for the handling of the fruit and water, baskets and pots were made with great skill by the women. The Iroquois were great travellers, and a thousand mile journey was little to them if the object to be attained seemed worth while. They were intelligent in the making of trails so as to get the shortest and easiest route, an illustration of which may be seen to-day in the fact that the New York Central Railway from Lake Erie to the Hudson River follows an Iroquois trail. Their principal ceremonies were in honour of the season, the Maple Sugar Festival at the going of the snows of winter, and the Green Corn Dance, and the Harvest Home Festival of the autumn. The legend of Hiawatha, the most popular of all poems relating to Indian life, was told by Longfellow as if Hiawatha were an Ojibway, whereas it is likely that the story in its original form was from the Ononadaga nation of the Iroquois, and Hiawatha is the very wise man who formed a plan of universal peace among the nations of the Iroquois. However, it may have been because the Iroquois and the Ojibways were very friendly up to the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Ojibways sympathized with the Hurons whom the Iroquois had driven from Huronia on the Georgian Bay. They afterwards made peace and became as brothers. So much so indeed that when many, many years afterward the Mississagas, a band of the Ojibways, were forced to give up their reserved lands on the River Credit, near Toronto, the Iroquois on the Grand River Reservation took them in and gave them a tract of valuable land. Longfellow took many phases of the legend and grouped them so as to give the atmosphere of Indian life and interpret the meaning of its ceremonies. The leading thought in all the legends is: “How he prayed and how he fasted, How he lived, and toiled, and suffered. That the tribes of men might prosper, That he might advance his people!” This is the great legend of the Indians of New France told in every winter lodge, and told in a somewhat different form among different tribes. It gets local colour from the traditions of the particular tribe.