1909] The Ottawa Naturalist 101 



Embowered in the solemn grandeur of a mighty forest of 

 gloom}- pine, old Lac Chaudiere our Lake Deschenes was a 

 fitting theatre for that weird ceremonial, the Huron Feast of the 

 Dead. Resting on the old Algonkin camping ground at Pointe 

 aux Pins now the Queen's Park some roving coureur de bois 

 might have seen this great sheet of water fading away into the 

 vast green ocean of foliage to the south, and witnessed from his 

 point of vantage the uncanny incidents of the savage drama. 

 From various points on the lake he might have seen, converging 

 on the island, great war canoes, freighted with the living and 

 the dead, the sad remnants of a passing race. He might have 

 heard the long drawn out waiHng cries of the living, as they 

 floated in unison across the water, outrivalling the call of the 

 loon or the dismal and prolonged howl of the wolf, as they echoed 

 through the arches of the forest, and as the island rose before 

 his vision, tenanted with its grotesque assemblage of dusky forms, 

 engaged in the final rite of sepulture-, he might have mvised upon 

 the mutability of human life, in its application to the red denizens 

 of the wilderness, whether in the dissolution of a clan, a tribe 

 or a nation. 



We have now reviewed three distinct sets of evidence, 

 which \'erify one another and sustain, collectively, the hypothesis 

 of Huron occupation of the Ottawa Valley. We have Huron 

 arrowheads and slate implements on Algonkin cainping grounds, 

 we have Huron pottery from ash-beds that smouldered, possibly, 

 in Huron long-houses, for considerable periods of time, and lastly, 

 we have ossuaries or com.munal graves, a mode of sepulture 

 characteristic of the Huron people, and one which would indicate 

 a permanent and somewhat lengthened period of occupation. 



Of course, it will be urged that no l)and of Hurons would 

 have built a village so near the river as the site of the old ash-beds 

 at Gilmour's Mill, in Hull, but, as the Algonkins lived, sometimes, 

 in the Huron country and adopted, to some extent, the customs 

 of their confederates, might not the Hurons, if they came to 

 live with the Algonkins on the Ottawa, have followed the usage 

 of the latter in the selection of their dwelling places. 



The evidence, so far obtained, seems to have given us fairly 

 conclusive proofs of Huron occupation of the Ottawa Valley, 

 and the beginning of a new chapter in the history of one of the 

 great native races of Canada, but, as yet, we have no data that 

 gives us a clue to the time of this period of occupation. Our two 

 ossuaries, already referred to, yielded nothing that could be traced 

 to the white trader; yet this is not negative evidence that the 

 interments were made before European contact. The Wellington 

 Street ossuary held quite a number of implements, while that on 

 Avlmer Island had none. As Dr. David Boyle remarks: "The 



