Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/113

 SECT. II.] ALGONKIN-LENAPE AND IROQUOIS NATIONS. 77 pened in 1651. The war against the Eries appears to have begun in 1653, and to have ended in their destruction in 1655. That with the Andastes is first mentioned under the date of 1656, and was not terminated by their final ruin before 1672. During the same period the Five Nations were, with but short intervals of doubtful peace, at war not only with the northern Algonkins and the French, but also with the Mahingans. And they had carried their arms against the Miamis and the Ottawas of Michigan as early as the year 1657.* The acquisition of New York by the British in a short time gave peace to the Lenape tribes of that province, and generally to those who were under the immediate protection of any of the British Colonies. But the destruction of the Susque- hannocks, and probably that of the more remote western tribes of Virginia, alluded to at the conferences of Lancaster in 1744, took place before the end of the seventeenth century. It appeals from Lawson, that, in 1701, the excursions of the Senecas extended southwardly to the upper waters of Cape Fear River. And from that time they had continual wars with the Cherokees and the Catawbas. Their hatred against this last nation was most inveterate and mutual. The only condition in the arrangement of Lancaster with Virginia, in the year 1744, on which the Five Nations absolutely insisted, was the continued privilege of a war path through the ceded territory to the Catawba coun- try. The most insulting messages of defiance passed between those two nations, at the conferences of Carlisle of 1753; and to that war the ultimate annihilation of the Catawbas may be principally ascribed. The Five Nations continued their warfare, during the same period, against the Illinois, the Miamis, and the other western nations in alliance with the French. But they followed there the same policy which they had pursued in other quarters ; and, in the same manner as they had formed alliances with the Sokokies,the Mississagues, and the Nanticokes, they seized the opportunities, offered by collisions between the French and the Twightees or Miamis, occasionally to detach these from their connexion. The occupation of the intervening territory by the Shawnoes and the Delawares, which defeated those plans, was which is given by Charlevoix, all the other dates in this paragraph are taken from the Relations of New France.
 * 1) With the exception of the subjugation of the Andastes, in 1672,