their decline, several other tribes were announced as new members of the
league; but these admissions never took effect. The Iroquois were always
reluctant to receive other tribes, or parts of tribes, collectively,
into the precincts of the "Long House." Yet they constantly practised a
system of adoptions, from which, though cruel and savage, they drew great
advantages. Their prisoners of war, when they had burned and butchered
as many of them as would serve to sate their own ire and that of their
women, were divided, man by man, woman by woman, and child by child,
adopted into different families and clans, and thus incorporated into the
nation. It was by this means, and this alone, that they could offset the
losses of their incessant wars. Early in the eighteenth century, and
ever-long before, a vast proportion of their population consisted of
adopted prisoners.

[ Relation, 1660, 7 (anonymous). The Iroquois were at the height of
their prosperity about the year 1650. Morgan reckons their number at
this time at 25,000 souls; but this is far too high an estimate. The
author of the Relation of 1660 makes their whole number of warriors
2,200. Le Mercier, in the Relation of 1665, says 2,350. In the Journal
of Greenhalgh, an Englishman who visited them in 1677, their warriors are
set down at 2,150. Du Chesneau, in 1681, estimates them at 2,000; De la
Barre, in 1684, at 2,600, they having been strengthened by adoptions.
A memoir addressed to the Marquis de Seignelay, in 1687, again makes them
2,000. (See N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 162, 196, 321.) These estimates imply
a total population of ten or twelve thousand.

The anonymous writer of the Relation of 1660 may well remark: "It is
marvellous that so few should make so great a havoc, and strike such
terror into so many tribes." ]