after their defeat, were incorporated with the
Senecas.
Golden states that after the war with'the Adi-
rondacks broke out,; say at the end of the* sixteenth
century, the Iroquois, to try thej^ courage,
Went to war against a nation called- Satanas,*
who lived on the hanks of the lakes, whom they
defeated and conquered, which raised, their spirits
so much, .that th e r afterwards renewed the-war
against the Adirondack’s and Huronsf on the; St.
Lawrence, and finally1 prevailed against fhem^*
Satanas, it appears from the^ame author; isca
name for the Shaouanons, Shawandes^Or Shawnee
», as the term is variously written y a tribe, it
may he further remarked* who are called Chat
by the modem Canadian French. 'Stilly we'
must guard against mere etymologies^ There
is no reason to suppose The Satanas and Eries,
hy any means, the same peopfei
A letter -of the: missionary Le Moyne, puhr
lished in the Missionary Relmions, and hereto
appended, proves that the war with the Eries;
whatever may have been its origin or former state,
* This word appears* to be an English sobriquet,
from the Dutch language, and is from Saftan, a syhon^me for
Duivel. (See Jansen’s new Pocket Dictionary, 'Portrachl,
1831;) The plural inflection in a, if this derivation.be correct,
is duplicated in- its meatiing,rfby the, corresponding English
inflection ip s, a practice quite conformable to English orthoepy,
which puts its'vernacular pi Ural tofdreign plurals, as Cheru-
bims for Cherubim, &c.
t Called Quatoghies by the Irdquois.
X Hist. Five Nations* p. 23, London £<3. 1767.-
had newly broken out in 1653, and there are
references of a subsequent date to denote that
by the year 1655, this war had terminated in
the disastrous overthrow of this people. They
appear to have been then located where the existing
traditions of the Senecas place them,
namely, west of Genesee river, reaching to or
near Buffalo, We may suppose that up to this
period, The Senecas were limited to the eastern
hanks of the G enesee. And it was probably the
results of this war that transferred their council
fire from the present site of Geneva gt Canandaigua
to the Genesee valley* g
When La Salle reached ,the. Niagara river in
1679, but/ Twenty-four years after the close of
this Erie war, fie found the entire country on its
eastern or American banks in the possession of
the Senecas. The history and fate of the Eries
yras then a tradition. Let it be remembered,
that the early French missionaries included the
Eries in the Iroquois family.
We may here drop the inquiry to be resumed
at a future period.
BUILPING OF THE FIRST VESSEL ON THE UPPER
LAKES.
The enterprise of La Salle, in constructing a
vessel above the falls of Niagara, in 1679, to
facilitate his voyage to the Illinois and the Mississippi,
is well known; hut while the fact of his
having thus been the pioneer of naval architecture
on the upper lakes, is familiar to historical
38