Iroquois prosperous settlements in the 19th century, supporting themselves via farming and the sale of sleds, snowshoes, boats, and baskets. In 1884, about 100 Canadian Iroquois were hired by the British government to serve as river pilots and boatmen for the relief expedition for the besieged General Charles Gordon in Khartoum in the Sudan, taking the force commanded by Field Marshal Wolsely up the Nile from Cairo to Khartoum. On their way back to Canada, the Canadian Iroquois river pilots and boatmen stopped in London, where they were personally thanked by Queen Victoria for their services to Queen and Country. In
Ardian (given name) in Bosnia and Herzegovina situated in the wider Neretva valley region (the original homeland of ancient Illyrian people of "Ardiaei") called Čapljina and its name derives from "čaplja", which in former Serbo-Croatian language (nowadays divided into Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin and Serbian) precisely means 'heron'. The Latin word for heron is "ardea", a word that bears striking similarity with the name of "Ardiaei", and it might possibly be its cognate. This theory opens up many possibilities for the interpretation of the original homeland of the Ardiaei and the etymology of their name. For example, heron might have had totemic pagan value among local