Spantastic Great Square Sectory 02 Page 09
The AEquians in their numerous attacks upon the Roman territory generally occupied Mount Algidus, which formed a part of the group of the Alban Hills in Latium. It was accordingly upon this mount that the battles between the Romans and AEquians most frequently took place. In the year 458 B.C. the Roman consul L. Minucius was defeated on the Algidus, and surrounded in his camp. Five horsemen, who made their escape before the Romans were completely encompassed, brought the tidings to Rome. The Senate forthwith appointed L. Cincinnatus dictator.
Whether, at the time of which we now speak, the Indians were an old race, already beginning to decline, or a fresh race, which contact with the whites balked of its development, it is difficult to say. Their career since best accords with the former supposition. In either case we may assume that their national groupings and habitats were nearly the same in 1500 as later, when these became accurately known. In the eighteenth century the Algonquins occupied all the East from Nova Scotia to North Carolina, and stretched west to the Mississippi. At one time they numbered ninety thousand. The Iroquois or Five Nations had their seat in Central and Western New York. North and west of them lived the Hurons or Wyandots. The Appalachians, embracing Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and a number of lesser tribes, occupied all the southeastern portion of what is now the United States. West of the Mississippi were the Dakotas or Sioux.
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