448 Notes on Aboriginal Antiquities. 



1. The aborigines of Montreal were of the Algonquin race.* 

 Cartier evidently represents the languages spoken at Stadacona 

 or Quebec and Ilochelaga as identical. Many words which he 

 mentions incidentally are the same or only slightly varied, and 

 he gives one vocabulary for the language of both places. This 

 accords perfectly with the direct statement of the Jesuits' mem- 

 oirs, that the tribe whose tradition maintained that their an- 

 cestors had inhabited Montreal, spoke the Algonquin language 

 both in the time of Cartier and in 1642. These people were also 

 politically and socially connected with the Algonquins of the 

 lower St. Lawrence. Farther the people of Hochelaga informed 

 Cartier that the country to the south-west was inhabited by hos- 

 tile people, formidable to them in war. These must have been 

 the Hurons or Iroquois, or both. In agreement with this, the 

 Jesuits were informed in 1642, that the Hurons had destroyed 

 the village: that people having formerly been hostile to the Al- 

 gonquins though then at peace with them. 



2. In the time of Cartier the Algonquins of Montreal and its 

 vicinity, were giving way before the Iroquois 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 Algonquins 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 Iro- 

 quois had driven before them the Alligewe, a people dwelling 

 like the Algonquins in wooden-walled villages, though the Iro- 

 quois had subsequently quarrelled with the Delawares as with 

 the Hurons. The two histories 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 Algon- 

 quin population were absorbed by the Hurons and Iroquois, an 

 important fact to students of the relative physical and social traits 

 of these races. 



3. The displacement of the Algonquins 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-civilized 



* They have usually been regarded as Hurons or Iroquois, apparently 

 for no other reason than their settled and agricultural habits. 



t The Delawares are themselves regarded as allied to the Algonquin, 

 rather than to the Iroquois race. 



