y historian who
has referred to the League,--treat of the Five Nations as _always
having been one people_. A very different view, based principally on
archaeology, has however been recently accepted by at least several of
the leading authorities on the subject,--the view that the Iroquois
League was a _compound of two distinct peoples_, the Mohawks, in the
east, including the Oneidas; and the Senecas, in the west, including the
Onondagas and Cayugas. Rev. W.M. Beauchamp, of Baldwinsville, the most
thorough living student of the matter, first suggested a late date for
the coming of the Mohawks and formation of the League. He had noticed
that the three Seneca dialects differed very greatly from the two
Mohawk, and that while the local relics of the former showed they had
been long settled in their country, those of the latter evidenced a very
recent occupation. He had several battles with Hale on the subject,
the latter arguing chiefly from tradition and change of language. "The
probability," writes Mr. Beauchamp--privately to the writer--"is that a
division took place at Lake Erie, or perhaps further west; some passed
on the north side and became the Neutrals and Hurons; _the vanguard
becoming the Mohawks or Hochelagans, afterwards Mohawks and Oneidas_.
Part went far south, as the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, and a more
northern branch, the Andastes; part followed the south shore and became
the Eries, Senecas and Cayugas; part went to the east of Lake Ontario,
removing and becoming the Onondagas, when the Huron war began."

It is noticeable that the earliest accounts of the Five Nations speak of
them as of two kinds--Mohawks and "Sinnekes," or as termed by the French
the Inferior and Superior Iroquois. For example Antony Van Corlear's
_Journal_, edited by Gen. James Grant Wilson, also certain of the
New York documents. The most thorough local student of early Mohawk
town-sites, Mr. S.L. Frey, of Palatine Bridge, N.Y., supports Mr.
Beauchamp in his view of the late coming of the Mohawks into the Mohawk
River Valley, where they have always been settled in historic times.
According to him, although these people changed their sites every 25 or
30 years from failure of the wood supply and other causes, only four
prehistoric sites have been discovered in that district, all the others
containing relics of European origin. Mr. Beauchamp believes even this
number too large. Both put forward the idea that the Mohawks were the
ancient