ntry in contrast to the endless and sombre forests where were the
homes of the Iroquois. Their history abounds in great men, whose
ambitious plans were foiled by the levity of their allies and their want
of persistence. They it was who under King Philip fought the Puritan
fathers; who at the instigation of Pontiac doomed to death every white
trespasser on their soil; who led by Tecumseh and Black Hawk gathered
the clans of the forest and mountain for the last pitched battle of the
races in the Mississippi valley. To them belonged the mild mannered
Lenni Lenape, who little foreboded the hand of iron that grasped their
own so softly under the elm tree of Shackamaxon, to them the restless
Shawnee, the gypsy of the wilderness, the Chipeways of Lake Superior,
and also to them the Indian girl Pocahontas, who in the legend averted
from the head of the white man the blow which, rebounding, swept away
her father and all his tribe.[27-1]

Between their southernmost outposts and the Gulf of Mexico were a number
of clans, mostly speaking the Muscogee tongue, Creeks, Choctaws,
Chikasaws, and others, in later times summed up as Apalachian Indians,
but by early writers sometimes referred to as "The Empire of the
Natchez." For tradition says that long ago this small tribe, whose home
was in the Big Black country, was at the head of a loose confederation
embracing most of the nations from the Atlantic coast quite into Texas;
and adds that the expedition of De Soto severed its lax bonds and shook
it irremediably into fragments. Whether this is worth our credence or
not, the comparative civilization of the Natchez, and the analogy their
language bears to that of the Mayas of Yucatan, the builders of those
ruined cities which Stephens and Catherwood have made so familiar to the
world, attach to them a peculiar interest.[27-2]

North of the Arkansas River on the right bank of the Mississippi, quite
to its source, stretching over to Lake Michigan at Green Bay, and up the
valley of the Missouri west to the mountains, resided the Dakotas, an
erratic folk, averse to agriculture, but daring hunters and bold
warriors, tall and strong of body.[28-1] Their religious notions have
been carefully studied, and as they are remarkably primitive and
transparent, they will often be referred to. The Sioux and the
Winnebagoes are well-known branches of this family.

We have seen that Dr. Richardson assigned to a portion of the Athapascas
the lowest place a