1909] The Ottawa Naturalist. 65 



same sources of information are available in studying the question 

 of Algonkin and Huron occupation of the Ottawa Valley. We 

 have already considered the value of the Jesuit writings, let us 

 now examine some of the traditions of the Indians themselves. 



Life on the old Ottawa, during the greater part of the seven- 

 teenth century, was always strenuous and frequently dangerous. 

 On this rugged old trade route, during the French regime, the 

 fur-traders from the interior, both white and red, experienced 

 many vicissitudes while conveying the products of the chase to 

 the trading posts on the St. Lawrence. Shadowy traditions of 

 those days of racial attrition, have been transmitted from father 

 to son, from the old coureurs de bois and their Indian confreres, 

 to their half-breed descendants of the present dav. These 

 traditions account for the human bones washed out some vears 

 ago at the foot of the old Indian portage at the Chats, and those 

 that are scattered in great profusion at Big Sand Point, lower 

 down the river ; also, for quite a number of brass kettles found at 

 one time near the mouth of Constance Creek, for the Indian 

 burials on Aylmer Island, as well as for the presence of arrow- 

 heads, stone celts, flint knives and other native implements in 

 the gravel beds at the foot of the Chaudiere, and, without pausing 

 to consider whether these relics of a departed people are not the 

 ordinary litter of Indian camp-sites, or the disinterred bones 

 from Indian burial places, tradition, as usual, takes charge of 

 them as the ominous tokens of a period of violence. 



At Big Sand Point there is a sand mound or hillock, fringed 

 with scrubby trees, which has the uncanny reputation of having 

 been once the home of a family of Wendigoes. These Wendigoes, 

 as is usual with this species of manitou, were a source of constant 

 annoyance to the native dwellers on the shores of Lake Deschenes 

 but more particularly to an Algonkin camp on Sand Ba>', quite 

 close to the headquarters of these malignant spirits. The old 

 man, who possessed the gigantic proportions of his class, was 

 frequently seen wading about in the waters of the bay, when on 

 foraging expeditions after Indian children of whose flesh, it is 

 said, he and his family were particularly fond. The family 

 consisted of the father, the mother and one son. The bravest 

 Indian warriors had, on several occasions, ambushed and shot 

 at the old man and woman without injuring either of them, but, 

 by means of sorcerv, they succeeded in kidnapping the boy, 

 when his parents were away from home. Holding the young 

 hopeful as a hostage, they managed to dictate terms to his father 

 and mother and finally got rid of the whole family. 



The writer heard this story one night while camping at the 

 Chats and, though far from believing than any sane Indian of 

 the old school would have laid violent hands on even a young 



