and from the Carolinas to Hudson's Bay, was divided between two great
families of tribes, distinguished by a radical difference of language.
A part of Virginia and of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Southeastern New York,
New England, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Lower Canada were occupied,
so far as occupied at all, by tribes speaking various Algonquin languages
and dialects. They extended, moreover, along the shores of the Upper
Lakes, and into the dreary Northern wastes beyond. They held Wisconsin,
Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana, and detached bands ranged the lonely
hunting-round of Kentucky.

[ The word Algonquin is here used in its broadest signification. It was
originally applied to a group of tribes north of the River St. Lawrence.
The difference of language between the original Algonquins and the
Abenaquis of New England, the Ojibwas of the Great Lakes, or the Illinois
of the West, corresponded to the difference between French and Italian,
or Italian and Spanish. Each of these languages, again, had its dialects,
like those of different provinces of France. ]

Like a great island in the midst of the Algonquins lay the country of
tribes speaking the generic tongue of the Iroquois. The true Iroquois,
or Five Nations, extended through Central New York, from the Hudson to
the Genesee. Southward lay the Andastes, on and near the Susquehanna;
westward, the Eries, along the southern shore of Lake Erie, and the
Neutral Nation, along its northern shore from Niagara towards the
Detroit; while the towns of the Hurons lay near the lake to which they
have left their name.

[ To the above general statements there was, in the first half of the
seventeenth century, but one exception worth notice. A detached branch
of the Dahcotah stock, the Winnebago, was established south of Green Bay,