132 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. ix. 



the possession of their meagre belongings ; often at war, even 

 among themselves, and their very slumbers hnunted with im 

 ever present shadow of dread ; yet, withal, knowing no better 

 state to envy, dimly looking forward to some distant future 

 perfection, rudely imagined, in the " Happy hunting grounds " ; 

 regarding their own exploits in defence or retaliation — which 

 had not yet paled before the greater '' medicine " of the whites — 

 as the highest expression of good. 



The Iroquois, the Hurons and their congeners had raised 

 themselves a little higher in the scale, adding to the uncertain 

 pursuit of the chase the surer product of the field : they 

 sometimes cultivated the ground, it would appear, on a pretty 

 extensive scale, preserved their corn in granaries, and lived 

 in permanent walled villages, situated with reference to the 

 fertility of the soil. The Hurons alone, inhabiting, in this w.iy 

 the shores of Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe, were, as we have 

 already seen, estimated by Father Sagard at between 30,000 and 

 40,000 souls. Pictures of the same mode of life are found in 

 the account of the Canadian expedition of the winter of 1666 

 against the Mohawks, to the south of Lake Champlain, and in 

 Cartier's quaint and simple narrative of his first visit to Hoche- 

 laga (now the city of Montreal), which he says was surround* d 

 with "goodly and large cultivated fields, full of such corn as tne 

 country yieldeth. It is even as the millet of Brazil, us great 

 and somewhat bigger than small peason, wherewith they live 

 even as we do with our wheat." The Iroquois, though thus more 

 advanced, were in customs and modes of thought e.-seuti liy one 

 with the other Indians, and u.sed their greater re^ourcrs as a 

 means of waging more s.iVage and efi"ectual war. They were 

 a scourge to the surrounding nations, and more especially hostile 

 to their relatives the Hurons, the Iroqucts — as the indi .ns 

 found by Cartier inhabiting tlie binks of the St. liwwrence were 

 afterwards called — and the whole race of the Algonkins. These 

 peoples found themselves, at the time of the arrival of the Euro- 

 peans, cruelly oppressed by the wars of the Iroquois, scircciy 

 able to hold their own, and would, in the natural course of events, 

 have been absorbed or destroyed by them, or gradually forced to 

 retreat into the hyperborean region. The French, with whom 

 we have more particularly to deal, like the Spaniards, constantly 

 used the christianization and civilization of the natives as a 

 powerful argument in favour of their exploring enterprises, and 



