Hurons call the Neutral Nation Attiwandaronk, meaning thereby 'People of
a speech a little different.'"--_Relation_ of 1641, p. 72. Bruyas,
in his "_Iroquois Root-words_" gives _gawenda_ (or
_gawenna_), speech, and _gaRONKwestare_, confusion of
voices. ] Whether they were an offshoot from the Hurons or from the
Iroquois is uncertain. It is not unlikely that their separation from the
parent stock took place earlier than that of the Iroquois, and that they
were thus enabled for a time to avoid becoming embroiled in the quarrel
between the two great divisions of their race.




CHAPTER II.

THE LEAGUE AND ITS FOUNDERS.


How long the five kindred but independent tribes who were afterwards to
compose the Iroquois confederacy remained isolated and apart from one
another, is uncertain. That this condition endured for several
centuries is a fact which cannot be questioned. Tradition here is
confirmed by the evidence of language. We have good dictionaries of two
of their dialects, the Canienga (or Mohawk) and the Onondaga, compiled
two centuries ago by the Jesuit missionaries; and by comparing them with
vocabularies of the same dialects, as spoken at the present day, we can
ascertain the rate of change which prevails in their languages. Judging
by this test, the difference which existed between these two dialects in
1680 (when the Jesuit dictionaries were written) could hardly have
arisen in less than four hundred years; and that which exists between