Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/160

 148 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 22, 1920

sedentary, with numerous towns and settlements throughout the designated territory. For many years preceding 1650 they had been frequently at war with neighboring tribes, particularly with the Iroquois proper, and a few years later, at their principal strong- hold near the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, they suffered a crushing defeat, amounting practically to annihilation, at the hands of the Iroquois warriors. Minor reverses at about the same time, and the overrunning of their territory by the victorious enemy, ended the career of the Erie as a people. Of the remnant who escaped death, some were taken prisoners by their conquerors and others found refuge with friendly tribes. All that remains -to attest the greatness of the once powerful Erie is their name, as given to the great lake along which their territory lay, to the Ohio county of Erie and to the city and county of that name in Pennsylvania.

The completeness of the ruin of the Erie cannot but be taken as significant of what befell other native Ohio tribes which came in the path of the unbridled ambitions of the resistless Iroquois league. While history does not specify the names of the several Algonquian tribes displaced and scattered by the Iroquoian invaders, it may safely be surmised that they were mainly of the great Central division of the Algonquian family, occupying in a general way the country of the old Northwest Territory, and comprising, among others, the so-called Miami group of Peoria, Cahokia, and Kaskaskia, and the Piankashaw, Wea, and Miami proper. It is possible that the related Shawnee, the western group of which, even thus early, had found its way northward to the vicinity of the Ohio river, may have felt the force of the confederated invasion.

While none of these groups is identified with the authors of the Ohio mounds, nor is it known that they were at the time accus- tomed to erect mounds, the bare fact of their dispersal, aside from its historic interest, is significant. It is generally known that while many tumuli of the general mound area were made and used within the historic period, particularly in the Southern states and in the country to the north and west of Ohio, the mound-building trait had become obsolete in the Ohio area prior to contact between its tribesmen and white men. Apparently no authentic instances are

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