The location of the ancient tribe of the Parisii is typical of many other weak riverine folk who seek in the islands of a river a protected position to compensate for their paucity of number.  The Parisii, one of the smallest of the Gallic tribes, ill-matched against their populous neighbors, took refuge on ten islands and sandbars of the Seine and there established themselves.[715] Stanley found an island in the Congo near the second cataract of Stanley Falls occupied by five villages of the Baswa, who had taken refuge there from the attacks of the bloodthirsty Bakuma.[716] During the Tartar invasions of Russia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, bands of refugees from the surrounding country gathered for mutual defense on the islands of the Dnieper River, and became the nucleus of the Dnieper Cossacks.[717] The Huron tribe of American Indians, reduced to a mere fragment by repeated Iroquois attacks, fled first to the islands of St. Joseph and Michilimackinac in Lake Huron, and in 1856 to the Isle of Orleans in the St. Lawrence.  But even this location under the guns of their French allies in Quebec failed to protect them, for the St. Lawrence was a highway for the war fleets of their implacable foe.[718]

[Sidenote:  River and lake islands as robber strongholds.]

A river island not only confers the negative benefit of protection, but affords a coign of vantage for raids on the surrounding country, being to some extent proof against punitive attacks.  It offers special facilities for depredations on parties crossing the river; here the divided current, losing something of its force, is less of an obstacle, and the island serves as a resting place on the passage.  Immunity from punishment breeds lawlessness.  The Ba Toka who, fifty years ago, inhabited the islands in the great southern bend of the Zambesi, utilized their location to lure wandering tribes on to their islands, under the pretext of ferrying them across, and then to rob them, till Sebituane, the great Makololo chief, cleaned out their fastnesses and opened the river for trade.[719] The islands in the wide stretches of the Lualaba River in the Babemba country were described to Livingstone as harboring a population of marauders and robbers, who felt themselves safe from attack.[720] The same unenviable reputation attaches to the Budumas of the Lake Chad islands.  A weak, timid, displaced people, they nevertheless lose no chance of raiding the herds of the Sudanese tribes inhabiting the shores of the Lake, and carrying off the stolen cattle on their wretched rafts to their island retreats.[721]

[Sidenote:  River peninsulas as protected sites.]