Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 14, 2025
From lip to lip the story of his lone trail was repeated through the bark lodges of the Algonkins, and the long houses of the fierce Hurons, and even among the gentle nuns and gaunt priests of the brave mission settlements upon the lower St. Lawrence River. But the nuns and priests did not favor such bloody deeds, which led only to more.
The several tribes of Algonkins found by the French in Canada were only a small portion of those American Indians speaking in the Algonquian tongue. The immense Algonquian family covered North America from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and reached even to the Rocky Mountains.
Accordingly in the bright morning the Hurons and Algonkins advanced against the circular stockade of the Iroquois, and the Iroquois marched out to fight in great pomp, their leaders wearing plumed headdresses. With this exception both parties fought quite naked, and armed only with bows and arrows.
Peace seemed to have come to the forests. The Piskaret party might well consider that they had opened the way. The happy priests gave thanks to Heaven that their prayers had been answered, and that the hearts of the Iroquois, the Algonkins and the Hurons were soft to the teachings of Christianity. Now, would the peace last? Yes for twelve months, with the Mohawks alone.
The seven Mohawks were now in the water; but the water was shallow, and splashing through, they bored right in, like bulldogs. The Piskaret Algonkins had need to shoot fast and true. The Mohawks feared nothing, and despised Algonkins. Besides, they now knew that Piskaret was before them, and his scalp they considered a great prize. The Mohawks lost this battle.
Algonkins and Hurons were cruel, too, and crafty; but they were being beaten by greater craft and better arms. So now we come again to Piskaret, of the Adirondacks, whose home was upon that large island of Allumette, governed by the haughty Algonkin chief Le Borgne, or The One-Eye.
At first the Adirondacks had driven the Mohawks out of lower Canada and into northern New York; but of late all the Algonkins, all the Hurons, and the French garrisons their allies, had been unable to stem the tide of the fierce Iroquois, rolling back into Canada again. "Iri-a-khoiw" was the Algonkin name for them, meaning "adder."
The burden of these reflections was lightened when he approached Fort Frontenac. "Never was reception more solemn. The Nipissings and Algonkins, who were going on a war-party with Monsieur Belêtre, formed a line of their own accord, and saluted us with three volleys of musketry, and cries of joy without end. All our little bark vessels replied in the same way.
Like those of the Iroquois, some of their bark houses were five hundred feet long, for twenty families. Yet of this powerful people there remain today only about four hundred Hurons, near Quebec, and as many Wyandots in Canada and the former Indian Territory of Oklahoma. The Algonkins lived farther north, along the Ottawa River, and the St. Lawrence to the east.
South of the tundra, the Great Northern Woodland encircles the planet, interrupted only by the treeless sea. Here too we hunt, and trap, and eat berries of the undergrowth, like Algonkins or Tacitean Germans, many of whom had no more skill in cattle than Algonkins. But we have not the place to ourselves, like the tundra folk and the Algonkins.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking