Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/238

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APPENDIX.

which he had made a few weeks before, up the Rappahanoc, and in which he had a skirmish with a party of the Manahòacs, and taken a brother of one of their chiefs prisoner, he first heard of this nation. For when he asked the prisoner, why his nation attacked the English? the prisoner said, because his nation had heard that the English came from under the world to take their world from them. Being asked how many worlds he knew? he said, he knew but one, which was under the sky that covered him, and which consisted of the Powhatàns, the Mànakins, and the Massawòmacs. Being questioned concerning the latter, he said, they dwelt on a great water to the North, that they had many boats, and so many men that they waged war with all the rest of the world. The Mingo confederacy then consisted of five tribes; three who are called the elder, to wit, the Senecas, who live to the West, the Mohawks to the East, and the Onondagas between them; and two who are called the younger tribes, namely, the Cayugas and Oneidas. All these tribes speak one language, and were then united in a close confederacy, and occupied the tract of country from the East end of lake Erie to lake Champlain, and from the Kittatinney and Highlands to the lake Ontario and the river Cadaraqui, or St. Laurence. They had, for some time before that, carried on a war with a nation, who lived beyond the lakes, and were called Adirondacs. In this war they were worsted: but having made a peace with them through the intercession of the French, who were then settling Canada, they turned their arms against the Lenopi, and as this war was long and doubtful, they, in the course of it, not only exerted their whole force, but put in practice every measure which prudence or policy could devise to bring it to a successful issue. For this purpose they bent their course down the Susquehanna, warring with the Indians in their way, and having penetrated as far as the mouth of it, they, by the terror or their arms, engaged a nation, now known by the name of Nanticocks, Conoys, and Tùteloes, and who lived between Chesapeak and Delaware bays, and bordering on the tribe of Chihohocki, to enter into an alliance with them. They also formed an alliance with the Mònacans, and stimulated them to a war with the Lenopi and their confederates. At the same time the Mohawks carried on a furious war down the Hudson against the Mohiccons and River Indians, and compelled them to purchase a temporary and precarious peace, by acknowledging them to be their superiors, and paying an annual tribute. The Lenopi being surrounded with enemies, and hard pressed, and having lost many of their warriors,