SW_GH1804_128

war with another powerful nation of Indians, who lived to the north of them, between the Kittatinny mountains, or highlands, and Lake Ontario, and who call themselves Mingoes, and are called by the French writers, Iroquois, by the English, Five Nations, and by the Indians to the southward, with whom they were at war, Massawomic; this war was carrying on in its greatest fury, when Captain Smith first arrived in Virginia. The Mingo warriors had pene-trated down the Susquehanna to the mouth of it. The Mingo nation consisted of five tribes; three, who are called the Elder, to wit: the Senecas, who live to the west, the Mohawks, to the east, and the Onondagoes between them; and two, who are called the younger tribes, namely, the Cayugas and Oneidas. All these tribes spoke one language, and were thus united in a close confederacy, and occupied that tract of country from the last end of Lake Erie to Lake Champlain, and from the Kittatinny and highlands to the Lake Ontario and the river St. Lawrence. This nation turned their arms against the Lenapi, and as this war was long and doubtful, they, in the course of it, not only exerted their whole force, but put in practice every measure which prudence or policy could devise to bring it to a successful issue. For this purpose they bent their course down the Susquehanna, warring with the Indians in their way, and having penetrated as far as the mouth