CHAP. XXI. INDIAN WARS. 9 



settler. From these rude and almost illegible memorials 

 we turn to the accounts which have been handed down 

 since the first settlement of the country respecting the 

 wild Montagnais tribes, wdio appear always to ha\'e 

 preserved their savage nomadic character. 



THE MONTAGNAIS, OR TSHE-TSI-UETIN-EUERNO. 



At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Cham- 

 plain was an eye-witness to an Indian dance near the 

 mouth of the Saugenay in celebration of a great victory 

 over the Mohawks. The Montagnais had alhed them- 

 selves with the Etchemins and Algonkins to the num- 

 ber of 1,000, and went up the St. Lawrence as far as the 

 Iroquois or Mohawk Kiver below Montreal, in the country 

 of the Mohawks. 



In those days Indian warfare on the St. Lawrence was 

 prosecuted on a large scale, and armies moved in canoes 

 for many hundred miles. 



Two hundred and fifty years ago, the Montagnais 

 Indians, in communication with the early French Jesuits, 

 were roughly estimated at not less than 1,000 strong, 

 within easy reach of Quebec. Their country at that 

 period was supposed to extend from the St. Lawrence, 

 near the island of Orleans or Quebec, to Anticosti, on the 

 north shore of the river and gulf of St. Lawrence, a 

 distance of about 600 miles ; thence back towards the 

 north-east, as far as the dividing ridge between the 

 valley of the St. Lawrence and Hudson's Bay. 



The actual extent of the area they occupied was 

 probably much greater, and reached from the St. Maurice 



