1615.--They are probably the Carantouans of Champlain. ]

On the Lower Susquehanna dwelt the formidable tribe called by the French
Andastes. Little is known of them, beyond their general resemblance to
their kindred, in language, habits, and character. Fierce and resolute
warriors, they long made head against the Iroquois of New York, and were
vanquished at last more by disease than by the tomahawk.

[ Gallatin erroneously places the Andastes on the Alleghany, Bancroft and
others adopting the error. The research of Mr. Shea has shown their
identity with the Susquehannocks of the English, and the Minquas of the
Dutch.--See Hist. Mag., II. 294.

Synonymes: Andastes, Andastracronnons, Andastaeronnons, Andastaguez,
Antastoui (French), Susquehannocks (English), Mengwe, Minquas (Dutch),
Conestogas, Conessetagoes (English). ]

In Central New York, stretching east and west from the Hudson to the
Genesee, lay that redoubted people who have lent their name to the tribal
family of the Iroquois, and stamped it indelibly on the early pages of
American history. Among all the barbarous nations of the continent,
the Iroquois of New York stand paramount. Elements which among other
tribes were crude, confused, and embryotic, were among them systematized
and concreted into an established polity. The Iroquois was the Indian of
Indians. A thorough savage, yet a finished and developed savage, he is
perhaps an example of the highest elevation which man can reach without
emerging from his primitive condition of the hunter. A geographical
position, commanding on one hand the portal of the Great Lakes, and on
the other the sources of the streams flowing both to the Atlantic and the
Mississippi, gave the ambitious and aggressive confederates advantages