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52 was it filled with Indians, but there came to it from far distant homes, as if chosen by fate, three of the most desperate Indian nations on the continent, each having been made ready, seemingly, by long years of oppression and tyranny, for the bloody work of holding this West from the white man. The three nations found by the first explorers in the abandoned hunting-grounds of the Iroquois had been fugitives on the face of the earth for half a century, bandied about between the stronger confederacies like outcasts, denied refuge everywhere, pursued, persecuted, half destroyed. The story of any one of them is the story of the other two—a sad, desperate tale.

These nations were the Shawanese, Delawares, and Wyandots. The centers of population which they formed were on the Scioto, Muskingum, and Sandusky rivers, respectively. And, with the fierce Miamis and the remnants of the Iroquois, these tribes fought the longest and most successful war ever waged by the red race in the history of the continent. From their lairs on the Allegheny, Scioto, and Muskingum they defied the white man for half a cen-