inhabitants of Connecticut purchased of them a large tract of land west of the Delaware River, and from thence spreading over the east and west branches of the Susquehannah River. In 1768 they gave a deed to William Trent and others, for land between the Ohio and Monongahela. They claimed and sold the land on the north side of the Kentucky River.”

This is a skillful statement of the grounds for the Iroquois claim, and was doubtless compiled by the learned writer from the archives of the colonies, and whatever of the diplomatic correspondence between the English and French governments had then transpired. The provincial authorities took early measures to obtain transfer of whatever rights the New York confederates had obtained. As early as 1684, Lord Howard, governor of Virginia, held a treaty with the Six Nations, at Albany, when, at the request of Colonel Dungan, the Governor of New York, they placed themselves under the protection of the mother country. This was again done in 1701; and, upon the 14th of September, 1726, a formal deed was drawn up, and signed by the chiefs, by which their lands were conveyed to England, in trust, "to be protected and defended by his majesty to and for the use of the grantors and their heirs."1

Without repeating the French argument in the premises, it may be mentioned as an interesting coincidence, that Gen. William H. Harrison, as recently as 1837, responded with intelligent zeal to the exaggerated narrative of Clinton, and vindicated the warlike qualities of the Western Indians, by a denial that the Miami Confederacy of Illinois and Ohio could have been conquered by the Iroquois. He cites nu

1) Writings of James H. Perkins, Vol. II, p. 186. Pownall's Administration of the Colonies, 4th Ed., London, 1768, p. 269.

merous evidences that in 1700 the Miami nation was very numerous; and, even within the memory of those living in 1837, that the Illinois tribes could bring into the field four thousand warriors. "In the year 1734," he adds, “M. de Vincennes, a captain in the French army, found them in possession of the whole of the Wabash, and their principal town occupying the place of Fort Wayne, which was actually the key of the country below. This officer was the first Frenchman who followed the route of the Miami of the Lake and the Wabash, in passing from Canada to their western settlements. Long before this period, the French must have known of the shorter and easier route, and no reason can be assigned for their never having used it, but from its being formerly the seat of war on some portion of it between the Wyandots and Iroquois. De Vincennes found the Miamis in the possession of the entire Wabash."

Briefly, Gen. Harrison admits the subjection of the Delawares, in Pennsylvania, the dispersion of the Hurons, Eries and Andastes, and that the Iroquois advanced as far west as Sandusky; but denies that there is any tradition among the Miamis of their ever having been conquered by the Iroquois. He remarks that, at the treaty of Greenville, there was no allusion to a claim, on the part of the Five Nations, to any right of property in the soil, or jurisdiction over the territory of the Miamis.2

Upon a careful review of all the evidence, we think the hypothesis of Gen. Harrison deserves to be adopted in preference to that of Colden and Clinton; and for the following reasons, in addition to those already adduced:

1. The distance from their homes to which war parties

2) Harrison's Discourse before the Ohio Historical Society. See Transactions, Vol. I, p. 257.

were accustomed to march, has little significance when we consider that, within the immense area eastward of the Mississippi, the entire Indian population, two hundred years ago, is estimated by Bancroft at only one hundred and eighty thousand; and that skill in eluding a foe, until the moment chosen for a blow, has always been a favorite portion of Indian tactics.

2. So far as the Lake region is concerned, the map of La Hontan, above described, indicates that the "Illinese" were as ready to make inroads upon the "Irroquese" as the latter were to make westward incursions.

3. We have already shown that the Iroquois were repulsed by the Chippewas from the pursuit of the Hurons (a circumstance unnoticed by Clinton); and Schoolcraft's narrative of the successful reprisal, in 1680, by the Illinois and Miamis, on the banks of the Maumee River, should not be forgotten.

4. In this connection, we should not overlook the relations. of the New York Indians, and their Canadian neighbors, the French. Prior to 1663, their intercourse had been very precarious, but in that year a deputation from the Iroquois cantons, who proposed an errand of pacification to Montreal, were surprised, and most of them killed by a party of Algonquins, allies of the French. Of course, all prospects of peace vanished, and a furious war raged along the Canadian frontier. At the first outbreak, these hostilities were most disastrous to the French; but the Canadian Governors, at the head of disciplined troops, more than retaliated on their savage enemies during the thirty years' war which followed. Courcelles, Tracy, De la Barre, and De Nonville, invaded by turns, with various success, the country of the Confederates; and at length, in the year 1696, the veteran Count

Frontenac, who was then, for the second time, Governor of Canada, marched upon their cantons with all the force of the province. He burned their deserted villages, and devastated their maize fields. Even the fierce courage of the Iroquois began to quail before these repeated attacks, while the gradual growth of the colony, and the arrival of troops from France, at length convinced them that they could not destroy Canada. In 1700 a pacification was effected, and the numerous prisoners on both sides were allowed to return. In the year 1726, the French succeeded in erecting a permanent military post at the important pass of Niagara, within the limits of the Confederacy. On the 14th of September, in the same year, the Six Nations made the well known cession of their lands to England, in "trust to be protected and defended by his Majesty, to and for the use of the grantors and their heirs." The fact that the haughty Iroquois submitted to such a measure, is a proof that their power was on the wane, and that they had ceased to occupy the arrogant position of conquering tribes.

It will be remembered that the conquest of the Eries was in 1655, only eight years before the commencement of the war between the French and the Iroquois; and the resistance of the Andastes was prolonged until 1672, seven years after the massacre of the Indian deputation to Montreal. Our inference is, that before the removal of the Eries and Andastes from the path to the Mississippi, Iroquois excursions against the Miamis and Illinois were of course impracticable; and afterwards, all the energies of the New York tribes were summoned to resist the French, by whom their country was frequently invaded and their villages destroyed. It is evident, therefore, that they could have no leisure or force

3) Parkman's Pontiac, 61, 63.

for western-expeditions while these desperate hostilities were in progress at home; and after the peace of 1700, and especially after the French occupation of Niagara, in 1726, the denizens of Ohio had no ground to apprehend any disturbance in their possession.

Upon the whole, we are willing to compromise between the positions respectively assumed by Clinton and Harrison. We admit that the Indians of Pennsylvania and New England were tributary to the Five Nations, made so by conquest, and that the country on both sides of Lake Erie-the seats of the Hurons and Neutrals in Canada, and the Eries, Andastes and Shawanese in Ohio-were swept of their aboriginal occupants by their merciless enemies, but beyond the Potomac, the Ohio and the Miamis, it seems to us that there was a drawn battle, constantly renewing, and variable in results. It may be that the Miamis and their Illinois confederates were more frequently repulsed, but they cannot be said to have been subjugated, nor even conquered. Very likely, on the conclusion of peace with Western and Southern tribes, there may have been stipulations in the nature of quit claim, but these did not necessarily imply the previous relation of victor and vanquished, no more than a bill to quiet title recognizes that alleged by a claimant to be paramount.

After 1663, however, when the long war with the Canadian colonists broke out, and until the peace of 1700, the dominion of the Five Nations over the territory of Ohio was nominal, never enforced to the exclusion of other Indian tribes, who hastened to occupy the beautiful and vacant realm.