ANCIENT SHIPWRECK ON THE COAST.
Whilst the northern tribes lived under the
ancient confederacy: before named, on the banks
of the St. Lawrence and its waters;'; and before
they had yet known white mén, it is affirmed by
Cusiek, that a foreign ship came on the northern
coasts, but being driven by Stress of Weather;;..
passed southward, and was wrecked in that
quarter. Most of the .crew perished,, but a .few
of them, dressed in leather, reached the .shore,
and were saved with some of their implements.
They were received by a people called the Falcons,*
1 who conducted them to a mountain,
where, however, they remained but a short time,
for their allies, the Falcons,-disclosed an unfriendly
and jealous spirit, and threatened them. In
consequence they immediately sëlected another
location, which they fortified. Here they lived
many years, became numerous and extended
their settlements, but in the.end, they were destroyed
by fiuibus nations.
This tradition is divested of some of the symbolic
traits which it possesses in the original,
and by which the narrators may be supposed to
have concealed their own acts of hostility ©r
cruelty, in the extirpation of the descendants of
the Europeans thus, cast on their shores. To
this end, they represent in the original, the
* One of the totems and clans of the Iroquois, is the hawk,
or falcon.
saving of the crew to have been done through
the instrumentality of carnivorous birds, and
attribute the final destruction of the colony to
fierce animals. It is one of the well known facts
of histbry that none of the vessels of Columbus,
T^'abot; Aerrizarii, Sir Walter Raleigh, or Hudson,
were wrecked on the American coasts; and there
is hence a bare presumption that some earlier
voyage or adventure from the old world is alluded
<tD. ' ’ ' '
- Gan we-suppose that in this dim tradition there
-is. ligh'tr'cast on the IpisfceOlony of "Virginia, which
was first left on the.-island of Roanoke | The
-Tuscaroras,* Who preserve the tradition, came
to ‘Western. Ispew York from-that quarter. • They
were a fierce; powerful and warlike nation,
having in 1712 resolved on the. massacre, on a
.certain day,- of ail the* whites in the Carolines.
What -is' once dorte by natives,* barbarous or
-civilized, 4s often the reproduction of some prior
national act,'and especially if that act had been
attended with success! and it is by no means
improbable that in this desperate and bloody
resolve of 1712, the Tuscaroras meant to repeat
the prior tragedy of . Croatan.f Whether, however,
the incident bo of Ante-Oolumbian or Post-
Columbian date, it is worthy preservation, and
may bei assigned its place and proper importance
when we have gleaned more facts from the dark
abyss of American antiquity.
* This'tribe have also theclaii of the hawk or falcon.
f Vide Hackluit.