CHAP. XXI. HISTORY OF THE ALGOXKINS. 7 



the Hurons bad destroyed the village, that people having 

 formerly been hostile to the Algonkins, though then at 

 peace with them. 



In the time of Cartier, the Algonkins of Montreal and 

 its vicinity were gi\ang way before the Ii'oquois and 

 Hurons, and shortly after lost possession finally of the 

 Island of Montreal. The statement of the two Indians 

 in 1642 implies that at a more ancient period the Al- 

 gonkins had extended themselves far to the south and 

 west of Montreal. This tradition strikingly resembles 

 that of the Delawares, that their ancestors, allied with 

 the Iroquois, had driven before them the Allegewe, a 

 people dwelling, like the Algonkins, in wooden-walled 

 villages, though the Iroquois had subsequently quarrelled 

 with the Delawares as with the Hurons. The two his- 

 tories are strictly parallel, if not parts of the same great 

 movement of population. We further learn from the 

 Jesuit missionaries that portions of the displaced Algonkin 

 population were absorbed by the Hurons and Iroquois — 

 an important fact to students of the relative physical and 

 social traits of these races. 



' The displacement of the Algonkins tended to reduce 

 them to a lower state of barbarism. Cartier evidently 

 regards the people of Hochelaga as more stationary and 

 agricultural than those farther to the east ; and it is 

 natural that a semi-civilised people, when unable to live 

 in security and driven into a less favourable chmate, 

 should betake themselves to a ruder and more migratory 

 life, as the descendants of these people are recorded by 

 the Jesuits to have actually done. If Hochelaga, with 

 its well-cultivated fields and stationary and apparently 



