384 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Iroquoian family was completely enclosed by Algonquian tribes, 

 so that it formed a great ethnical island, which itself completely 

 enclosed Lakes Erie and Ontario, extended along both banks 

 of the St Lawrence nearly to the head of the estuary 1 , and also 

 comprised the whole of the present State of New York, with a 

 great part of Pennsylvania and Maryland, here terminating at the 

 head of Chesapeake Bay. These limits, which scarcely anywhere 

 coincided with the geographical features of the land, were subject 

 to continual fluctuations, first during the inter-tribal wars of these 

 two rival nations, and then during the protracted struggles of the 

 French and English for supremacy, in which struggles the Algon- 

 quians generally sided with the former, the Iroquoians with the 

 latter. 



Although greatly reduced, broken up, dispersed or brought 

 into reservations chiefly about the United States and Dominion 

 borderlands, the Algonquians still greatly outnumber all other 

 North American family groups. In fact over one-fourth of all 

 the aborigines belong to this division, which has a total popula- 

 tion of at least 95,000 (60,000 in Canada, 35,000 in the States). 

 Of the particular Algonquian tribe, whence the family takes its 

 name, less than 5000 still survive, all located in the provinces 

 of Ontario and Quebec. But of the Ojibwas (Chippewas) there 

 remain as many as 32,000 round about all the Great Lakes, while 

 of the Crees, the next most numerous, there are reckoned over 

 17,000, all in Manitoba and the region between Lake Winnipeg 

 and Hudson Bay. The Cree language is a typical Algonquian 

 idiom, perhaps approaching nearer to the original mother tongue 

 than any other, whence it has been inferred that the cradle of the 

 race lay north of the Laurentian basin, probably round about the 

 shores of Lake Winnipeg. Against this assumption, however, 



1 The estuary, the islands of the Gulf, and surrounding land all formed part 

 of the Algonquian area, except the Labrador coast and the northern extremity 

 of Newfoundland, which were still occupied by the Eskimos, and a considerable 

 district in central Newfoundland, which was originally held by the long-extinct 

 Beothukans. These are shown by A. S. Gatschet to have been a people of 

 unknown origin, but of non- Algonquian speech. (The Beothnk Indians, Proc. 

 Anier. Philos. Soc. June 19, 1885, and May 7, 1886.) All the rest of the 

 island belonged to, or was constantly visited by the Algonquian Micmacs of 

 New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. 



