Potomac and Ohio on the south, to Canada on the north, and from the Atlantic Ocean on the east, to the Father of Waters on the west, at the time of Hudson's discovery of the great bay of New York and the magnificent river which bears his name.

Each of these three confederacies embraced numerous distinct tribes, sub-tribes, and smaller tribal divisions, or cantons, and chieftaincies, all having separate names, but united more or less closely by the bond of a common origin. Each tribe, or sub-tribe, possessed its own locality and specific region as its own property, which was never lost, except by voluntary migration or by conquest.

There also existed a distinguishing characteristic of a different nature in all these great Indian confederations. This was the clan or family distinction. Each confederacy was divided into tribes, families, or clans, designated by the name of some living creature, which they called their totem, or badge, the representation of which was painted upon their persons and upon their lodges. This tie, as members of the same confederacy, or even of the same totemic family, was not of itself sufficient to prevent them warring with each other in all cases. Like more civilized people they took up the hatchet against a tribe of the same stock, if occasion arose, as freely as against an enemy of another race. Conflicting claims to lands, disputed boundaries, and the rivalries of neighborhoods, not unfrequently gave rise to enmities and wars. Thus in 1609, the tribes on the western side of the bay of New York and the lower Hudson, and those on the eastern side, were bitter enemies,' although all were tribes and sub-tribes of the Lenni-Lenape or Delaware stock.