CHAPTER VII.
Where savage tribes pursue their game,
His blanket tied with yellow strings,
The shepherd of the forest came.
Freneau.
Before the Europeans, or, to use a more significant term, the Christians, dispossessed the original owners of the soil, all that section of country, which contains the New-England States, and those of the Middle, which lie east of the mountains, was occupied by two great nations of Indians, from whom numberless tribes had descended. But, as the original distinctions between these nations, were marked by a difference in language, as well as by repeated and bloody wars, they never were known to amalgamate, until after the power and inroads of the whites had reduced some of the tribes to a state of dependence, that rendered not only their political, but, considering the wants and habits of a savage, their animal existence also, extremely precarious.
These two great divisions consisted, on the one side, of the Five, or, as they were afterwards called, the Six Nations, and their allies; and, on the other, of the Lenni Lenape, or Delawares, with the numerous and powerful tribes, that owned that nation as their Grandfather. The former were
