HISTORY OF THE IROQUOIS.
find access to our shores, and we may anticipate
a period as nofweryremote, when original
investigations, into the most recondite topics
may be made here* with every facility of this
Character.
W H O $ f.E R E T H E E R IE S | v t
,, »Louis Hennepin, whp was a Recollect, remarks,
in the original Amsterdam edition of h|f
Travels, of that panada was first dise^
ver-ed by the Spanish, alluding doubtless to
the voyage of Cortereal, and that it received its
first missionaries under ^thp French* ;frofri the
order ojE'B ecol|ect§,, Tliese pionej^s of the cross,
according to this author, made themselves very
acceptable to the1 Humps, or Wyandots, who
occupied the banks of the-.^tr, Eawrence, and
who informed them that the. Iroquois pushed
their war parties beyond Vkginia^ and New
Sweden,* and o^her parts, remote from their
cantons.. They went, he says, in these wars,
near to a lake, which they called. Erigq or Erie,
Now, if they went “ beyond Virginia and I^ew
Sweden,” 1hey were, very remote • from Lake,
Erie, and the assertion implies a contradiction
or marked ignorance of the geography of the
country. Erie, in the Huron language, he in?
forms us, signifies the Qat, or Nation o f the C a t;
a name, he says, which the lake derived from
* T h e present area.or th e state o f Delaware: bore' this.de-
$%hatfoh^:
fe TOPICAL INQUIRIES. 287
the fact thp.t the Iroquois* in returning to their
cantons, brought the Erige, or Erïkê, , captives
through it: The French softened this word to
Erie. It would appear, then, that the Eries either
did not occupy theimmediate banks of the lake,
or else they lived on, the upper or more remote
parts of it. To be brought captives through It,
they must have been embarked at some d istance
from its lower, extremitysp This vague mode of
expression leaves a doubt as to the. actual place
of residence of this conquered and, so called,
extinct tribe. Whether extinct or hot;, is not
certain; nor, indeed; probable. The name isonly
a Wyandot name. They had others.
From inquirie&made among.the Senecas* some
believe the Eries to he the same people whom
this natitm call Kali kwahsv But we do not
, advance much by changing one term for another.
Thé inquiry returns, who were thé Kah-kwahs ?
Sfeneca tradition affirms that they lived on the
banks of LafeErie, extending eastward towards
the feenbsep ».river, and westward indefinitely ;
and that »they were finally conquered in a war,
which was glased' by a disastrous battle, the
locality of which is not fixed; after which they
were chased west, and the remnant driven down
the Alleghany river. (Sfee‘ a subsequent paper,
“ War with thé Kah-kwahs.”)
. Cusick, the Tuscqfóra archaeologist, who writes
the word Èqmwkihows, intimates that the Eries
Were an affiliated people, and that the remnant,