The Daemon of the World

to the tribe-The Niagaras a superior rac

know that it was a general practice of the Indians who occupied this region of country, so abounding in lakes and rivers, to give the name of the nation or tribe to, or to name them after, the most prominent bodies and courses of water found in their territory. Such was the fact with the Senecas, Cayugas, Oneidas, Onondagas, and Hurons, the tribal name of each being perpetu

e river, and the falls, and that the use of it, in reference to the tribe, should have lapsed, can be readily understood when we recollect that they had two substitutes for the tribal name. One of these substitutes is explained at page 70 of the "Relations" of 1641, in a passage which we translate as follows: "Our Hurons call the Neuter Nation

r Nation, as the Niagaras were called by the Hurons on the north and the Iroquois on the south of them, learning it, as they did, from the French. The letter says: "Our French, who first discovered this people, named them the Neuter Nation, and not without reason, for their country being the ordinary passage by land, between some of the Iroquois nations and the Hurons, who are sworn enemies, they remained at peace with both; so that in times past the Hurons and the Iroquois, meeting in the sam

n, or of the relation in which it stood to the hostile tribes living to the north and south of it. The Indians, it is needless to say, were not philo

elling the name, thirty-nine of which are given in the index volume of the Colonial History of New York, and the fortieth, the most pertinent to our presen

Michilimakinak; joined

ned nothing by the union." Later, he says they were destroyed about the year 1643. But we have before observed that Father Raugeneau states that their destruction occurred in 1651. The tribe mentioned by Drake was probably a remnant that escaped in the final overthrow of their nation in this last-named year, and sought refuge at Mackinaw, among the Hurons, who had previously retreated to this almost inaccessible locality, in order, also, to escape from the all-conquering Iroquois. After the lapse of nearly three-quarters of a century, when the hostility of the l

ngest I

d in Paris in 1688, it crystallizes into Niagara. There is also on this map a village located on or near the site of Buffalo, designated as follows: "Kah-kou-a-go-gah, a destroyed nation." This

youthful ears were charmed with the flowing cadences of the better class of Indians, as they intoned rather than

gah; G-E-N-E-S-E-E was Gen-e-se-e; C-A-N-A-N-D-A-I-G-U-A

; the accent on the second syllable, the vowel in the first pronounced as in the word nigh; the a in the third and fou