who obeyed respectively the sceptre of th$ Incas,
and of th7e princes of Anahuac, have Jpdeed
enlisted a wider sympathy and risen to higher
fame in the world’s history, but it lias been the
famé earned by the tabors and arts of subdued
multitudes, and the sympathy consequent on
overwhelming national misfortune; this isHhe s
difference between*tjije. .empires qf Peru and
Mexico, and thé high-toned Iroquois republic ;
but neither letters,Christianity, nor liberty, have
cause to lament the fall of the two formeif’em-
ppfes; Æ wisdom by which the;
Iroquois met and resisted'ihévinröads of European
power, and prevented thè. ovett-ùrning Of
their-institutions* furnishes the highest evidence
of their superiority as an active, thinking race ©f
men. They yjatched,^ witlf eagle glance, encroachments
upon their «national rights. They
kept their central council fire at Onondaga bright,
and off en met from all the Cantons* from the
east and west, to deliberate On their affairs ; and
when*à war was resolved on against a trespassing
or impinging foe* of their own race, they
concentrated every effort to carry it on, and flew
to the contest to root up, and tear out their riâfne
and placé among -men. '‘Ko leading event, in
fine, in thè history of the. colonies, has beétt
consummated without the power, in peace or war,
of the Iroquois. They were present under the
British, standard, at the siege of Niagara, at the
overthrow of Baron Dei'skau, at Lake George,
arid at the fall of Montcalm at Quebec. The
colonies of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania,
felt the strong influence of the policy of their
Confederacy. In any political scheme of the
colonics; the course of the Iroquois, in the question
at issue, was èver one of the deepest moment,
and he must be a careless, reader of history, who
dóes not perceive how vital âù element they
fecame in all the interior transactions, between
A. D, 1600, at the general period of the settlement
of the colonies^ and the close of the war
of American, Independence.
The. stirring events offtheir wars are mingled,
more or less, with the^hisfbry of each of th%colo-
nies, and impart to them much of their interest.
To extract them and set them in order, as a
branch of American history, would constitute a
theme of no ordinary attraction.* But the task
I haé%takeri in hand did not contemplate a his-
I' It is fö be regretted,,that Colden, who viewed the subject
•iö"thisrIighqr:dTops.his' excellent outlines, (soessential to all
who wish, ta study the Iroquois history), with the antique date
of the^peaeç of Ryswick, A. D. 1697, a period, when, indeed,
their republic had hardly cuhninated.