Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: . CHAPTER II. Early History of the German Tribes ? This Name first Applied by Julius Caesar ?Their Authentic History commences with the Christian Era ? Early Habits and Stature ? Confederation of Tribes ? Severe Laws of Conversion to Christianity ? The Reformation ? Luther and Dr. Eck ? Lower Palatinate of the Rhine ? Religious Wars ? Frederick Prince Palatine ? Theidelburgh Library ? The Palatinate Devastated ? Continental Wars of Europe ? Manheim ? Characteristics of these People ? A Legend. The reader having been introduced to the aboriginal possessors of the soil of Herkimer county, so far as can now be defined, will have the goodness to indulge me a few moments, while I give a brief historical outline of a people of known European origin, who first planted themselves in the upper Mohawk valley. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon race are of German descent, and whoever claims a Teutonic ancestry, traced through an English channel, will have some of the blood of a Saxon or Dane on which to rest that claim. Our design in this chapter is to set out, as far as needful, the origin of a race who are losing every distinct national characteristic, which they maintained more than one hundred years upon the American continent. The Germans were believed, by the Romans, to be an aboriginal, pure and unmixed race of people. Th% primitive language of tne inhabitants of Germany is the Teutonic, called High Dutch, and has no affinity with the Celtic tongue. The name Germanum, when applied to the tribes collectively, was first used, it is said, by Julius Ceesar; but German historians assert the aboriginal name of these people is what they bear at this time. It can not be very remarkable that the original collective name of a people inhabiting a particular district of country, so much divided int...