Notes on Aboriginal Antiquities, 449 



people when unable to live in security and driven into a less 

 favourable climate, should betake themselves to a ruder and more 

 migratory life, as the descendants of these people are recorded 

 by the Jesuits to have actually done. If Hoche'laga with its well 

 cultivated fields, and stationary and apparently unwarlike popu- 

 lation, 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. Our primitive Algonquins of Mon- 

 treal may thus claim to have been a remnant of one of those old 

 semi-civilized races, whose remains scattered over various parts 

 of North America, have excited so much speculation. Had Car- 

 tier arrived a few years later, he would have found no Hoche- 

 laga. 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 inquiry. To what extent was 

 the civilization of the Iroquois and Hurons derived from the races 

 they displaced ? What are the actual differences between such 

 remains as those found at Montreal, 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 In- 

 dians in 1642 ? 



Into these questions I do not purpose to enter, contenting my- 

 self with directing attention to the remains recently discovered 

 in my own vicinity, and which I trust will be collected and pre- 

 served with that care which their interest as historical memorials 

 demands. My belief of their importance in this respect, and the 

 desire to rescue from oblivion the last relics of an extinct tribe, 

 must be my excuse for entering on a subject not closely con- 

 nected with my ordinary studies, but which as an ethnological 

 inquiry, is quite within the sphere of this Journal. j. w. d. 



Note. — With respect to the great cucumbers and beans mentioned by 

 Cartier, it may be remarked that in the opinion of the late Dr. Harris 

 and of Professor Gray, both of whom have given attention to this sub- 

 ject, the aborigines of Eastern America certainly possessed and cul- 

 tivated the common pumpkin, some species of squash, and probably two 

 species of beans (^Phaseolus communis and lunatus), though these plants 

 are not indigenous north of Mexico. Their culture like that of corn and 

 tobacco must have been transmitted to thenorthern regions from the south. 



