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MICHIGAN AS A PROVINCE 1 - 5
AT the beginning of the historical epoch the Indian race occupying the widest extent of territory in North America was the Algonquin. It spread over the entire country east of the Mississippi river, from the line of the Kentucky river and Chesapeake bay as far north as Hudson's bay and westward beyond Lake Winnepeg. In the midst of this great race was the family known as the Iroquois, or later as the Five Nations. It is understood that the Iroquois were ethnologically of Algonquin stock. This family was composed of three main divisions—the Wyandots or Hurons, the Iroquois and the Monocans. The first named ranged through the northernmost territory above described. The Iroquois occupied the country extending through western Pennsylvania from the Alleghanies to near the western limit of Ohio, western New York, the whole of the Lake Erie and Lake Ontario region, the St. Lawrence region from the neighborhood of Montreal westward to the northern reaches of Georgian bay.
The Iroquois were the most intelligent of all the savages. They had the astuteness to organize a confederacy and to preserve its autonomy. They possessed great mental and physical vigor. They fomented discord among their weaker neighbors; they prosecuted great wars against rival combinations and they terrorized the tribes of half the continent.
Westward of the great Algonquin race were the Dakotas or Sioux, a race of warlike and savage nature,
spreading over a vast extent of country from the Mississippi to the Rocky mountains. They touched the shores of Lake Michigan in northern Wisconsin, and the point of contact with the alien Algonquin was a storm center of conflict and bloodshed. Their direct influence upon the latter tribes was small, except in the way of watchfulness and hurried migrations to avoid unpleasantness.
MICHIGAN
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