8 THE LABRADOR PENINSULA. chap xxi. 



unwarlike population,* was only a remnant of multitudes 

 of similar villages once scattered through the great plain 

 of Lower Canada, but destroyed long before the occupation 

 of the country by the French, then we have here an actual 

 historical instance of that displacement of settled and 

 peaceful tribes, which is supposed to have taken place so 

 extensively in America.' 



In an ancient Indian burying-ground near BrockviUe, 

 on the banks of the River St. Lawrence, were recently 

 discovered two skeletons in a sitting posture, on a floor 

 of clay supposed to be artificial. Underneath three flat 

 stones, placed on edge and converging at the top, copper 

 rings were placed, together with a sea-shell. Further 

 discoveries will probably throw additional light on the 

 ancient connnerce of the earlier sedentary tribes of the 

 St. Lawrence, whose curious and most interesting relics 

 are every day turned up by the plough of the back- 

 woodsman, or whose burying-places and village sites are 

 revealed as tlie forest disappears before the axe of the 



* Our primitive Algoukins of Montreal may thus claim to have been a 

 remnant of one of those old semi-civilised races whose remains, scattered 

 over various parts of North America, have excited so much speculation. 

 Had C artier arrived a few years later, he would have found no Hochelaga. 

 Had he arrived a century earlier, he might have seen many similar villages 

 scattered over a country occupied in his time by hostile races. 



These views are, perhaps, little more than mere speculation, but they 

 open up paths of profitable enquiry. To what extent was the civilisation of 

 the Iroquois and Hurons derived from the races they displaced ? "^^^lat are 

 the actual differences between such remains as those foimd at IMoutreal and 

 those of the Hurons in Upper Canada ? Are there any remains of villages- 

 in Lower Canada which might confirm the statements of the two old 

 Indians in 1G42 ? ' 



' Notes on Aboriginal Antiquities recently discovered in the Island of 

 Montreal, by Dr. Dawson. 



