CHAP. XXI. RECEXT HISTOEY OF THE MONTAGNAIS. 23 



by an officer of tlie Hudson's Bay Company who was 

 stationed at Ungava Bay, says : 'As to their rehgion, they 

 appear to have some crude notions of a deity, and are 

 very superstitious ; but, strange to say, there are no 

 " medicine-men " among them.' 



This may apply to one or two particular bands of 

 Nasquapees, but it is certainly not the case with those 

 who hunt on the Ashwanipi or in the country south of 

 the' Ungava chstrict. In December 1861 I applied to 

 Mr. McLean, who resided five years at Ungava, for 

 information on this point. Mi'. McLean says : ' Un- 

 doubtedly they (the Nasquapees of the Ungava district) 

 have conjurors amongst them, but they are not such adepts 

 in the art divine as their confreres in the north-west.' 



Lake St. John on the Saugenay was the great ren- 

 dezvous for the different Montagnais tribes as well as of 

 the Nasquapees and other nations who spoke dialects of 

 the Algonkin tongue. Li 1671 and 1672, Monsieur de 

 Samt-Simon made the first voyage from the St. Lawrence 

 to Hudson's Bay up the Saugenay, through Lake St. 

 John. The missionary describes Lake St. John, which 

 he had frequently visited, as being formerly the place 

 where all the nations inhabiting the country between 

 the ' two seas,' towards the east and north, assembled to 

 barter theu" furs. He states that he had seen the re- 

 presentatives of more than twenty nations assembled 

 there. But in 1671 the population of those regions had 

 greatly diminished, on account of the small-pox and the 

 wars with the Mohawks. 



After the retirement of the Jesuit missionaries to France 

 we hear little of the Montagnais until the close of the 



