the white peddle came into the country.”* He
gives the following as the names'of the sachemt
of the Five Nations, who met and forrHed the
alliance: Togammta, for the Mohawks; Otats-
chechta, for the Oneidas; iTatotarhb, for the On-
ondagas; Togahayon, for-the' Cayugas; Ganicctario
and Satagaruyes, for the' Senecas. |
The name of Tharmawage is given as the first
proposer of'sudh an alliance. He was an aged
Mohawk sachem. It was decided that these
names should forever he kept in remembrance,
by naming a person in each nation, through
succeeding generations, after them.
Taking 1609, the era of the Dutch discovery,
and^siimating “ aman’slife£ by the patriarchal
and scriptural rule, we' should not at'the utmost
have a more remote date than 1539,f as the
origin of the confederacy. This would place
the event eighteen years after the taking of
Mexico by Cortes, and -forty-seven years after
the first voyage of Columbus. Cartier, who ascended
the St. Lawrence to Hochelaga, the present
site of Montreal, in 1 5 ^ demdnstratg^
clearly, by his vocabulary of, words, thaLa/peo-
ple who spoke a branch of the Iroquois language,
was then at the place. This pepple is usually
supposed to have been the Wyandots or Ilurons.
* Trans. Hist, and Lit. Com. Am.. Philo. S^c-.,'’vdl. i., -page
36.
f For other data 6n this tQ^ic, S-ee tbe: stifeqij'enf paper; in
relation to the Onondagas, in which an earlier d^te irs assigned.
See also the article Oral Trad itiqjis.
EPOCH AND PRINCIPLES OF THE LEAGUE. 119
But hè makes no remark on a confederacy. He
only denotes the attachment of the people to an
old and paralytic sachem, or head chief, who
wore a frontlet Of dyed porcupine’s skin.
■^Curious to obtain someuelue to this erator
test of fhepreceding data, I made it a topic of
inquiry. - The Onondagas, the Tusearoras, and
the several band's,:, qinite in a general tradition
of The event of a confederacy, at the head
of which they place Atotarho,;:.(the same doubtless
whose name is spelt Tatotarho above,) but
amongst neither of these tribes is the era fixed.
The dates employed by Cusick, the Tuscarora
legendary, giving an extravagant antiquity to
tfie confederation, are more entitled to the syrn-
pathy of the poet, than the attention of :%e; historian,
although other traditions stated by him
debarring the dates, may be regarded us the actual
traditions of his tribe. Were the dates
moderate, which hë generally .employs to confer
antiquity on his nation, they might inspire respect;
But, like the Chinese astronomers, he
loses no little as a native archaeologist, by aspiring
after too much. t..,
Atotarho, who by these traditions was an Onondaga,
is thé: great embodiment of Iroquois
courage, wisdom and heroism, and in their narrations
he is invested with allegoric traits, which
exalt him to a kind of superhuman character.
Unequalled in war and arts, his fame had spread
abroad, and exalted the Onondaga nation to the
highest pitch. He was placed at the head of