her from
within, pressed upon these tribes. The Mohegans, or Mohicans, a powerful
Algonquin people, whose settlements stretched along the Hudson river,
south of the Mohawks, and extended thence eastward into New England,
waged a desperate war against them. In this war the most easterly of the
Iroquois, the Mohawks and Oneidas, bore the brunt and were the greatest
sufferers. On the other hand, the two westerly nations, the Senecas and
Cayugas, had a peril of their own to encounter. The central nation, the
Onondagas, were then under the control of a dreaded chief, whose name is
variously given, Atotarho, Watatotahlo, Tododaho, according to the
dialect of the speaker and the orthography of the writer. He was a man
of great force of character and of formidable qualities,--haughty,
ambitious, crafty and bold,--a determined and successful warrior, and at
home, so far as the constitution of an Indian tribe would allow, a stern
and remorseless tyrant. He tolerated no equal. The chiefs who ventured
to oppose him were taken off one after another by secret means, or were
compelled to flee for safety to other tribes. His subtlety and artifices
had acquired for him the reputation of a wizard. He knew, they say, what
was going on at a distance as well as if he were present; and he could
destroy his enemies by some magical art, while he himself was far away.
In spite of the fear which he inspired, his domination would probably not
have been endured by an Indian community, but for his success in war. He
had made himself and his people a terror to the Cayugas and the Senecas.
According to one account, he had subdued both of those tribes; but the
record-keepers of the present day do not confirm this statement, which
indeed is not consistent with the subsequent history of the confederation.

The name Atotarho signifies "entangled." The usual process by which
mythology, after a few generations, makes fables out of names, has not
been wanting here. In the legends which the Indian story-tellers recount
in winter about their cabin fires, Atotarho figures as a being of
preterhuman nature, whose head, in lieu of hair, is adorned with living
snakes. A rude pictorial representation shows him seated and giving
audience, in horrible state, with the upper part of his person enveloped
by these writhing and entangled reptiles. But the grave Councillors of
the Canadian Reservation, who recite his history as they have heard it
from their fa