or Sonontowans, the great hill people, at a lofty eminence which rises
south of the Canandaigua Lake." Hale appeals also to the Wyandot
tradition recorded by Peter Dooyentate Clark, that the Huron originally
lived about Montreal near the "Senecas," until war broke out and drove
them westward. He sets the formation of the League of the Long House as
far back as the fourteenth century.

All these authors, it will be seen, together with every historian who
has referred to the League,--treat of the Five Nations as _always
having been one people_. A very different view, based principally on
archæology, has however been recently accepted by at least several of
the leading authorities on the subject,--the view that the Iroquois
League was a _compound of two distinct peoples_, the Mohawks, in the
east, including the Oneidas; and the Senecas, in the west, including the
Onondagas and Cayugas. Rev. W.M. Beauchamp, of Baldwinsville, the most
thorough living student of the matter, first suggested a late date for
the coming of the Mohawks and formation of the League. He had noticed
that the three Seneca dialects differed very greatly from the two
Mohawk, and that while the local relics of the former showed they had
been long settled in their country, those of the latter evidenced a very
recent occupation. He had several battles with Hale on the subject,
the latter arguing chiefly from tradition and change of language. "The
probability," writes Mr. Beauchamp--privately to the writer--"is that a
division took place at Lake Erie, or perhaps further west; some passed
on the north side and became the Neutrals and Hurons; _the vanguard
becoming the Mohawks or Hochelagans, afterwards Mohawks and Oneidas_.
Part went far south, as the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, and a more
northern branch, the Andastes; part followed the south shore and became
the Eries, Senecas and Cayugas; part went to the east of Lake Ontario,
removing and becoming the Onondagas, when the Huron war began."