Aboriginal Antiquities found at Montreal. 365 



this respect very strongly with No. 4. Either the cranial type of the 

 Hochelaga tribe presented within itself much greater diversities 

 than those indicated by Prof. Wilson's averages, or the individuals 

 whose remains have been found, belonged to more than one tribe. 

 In either case a much larger number of skulls would be required 

 to give satisfactory data for comparison ; and it would then per- 

 haps be possible to eliminate abnormal forms and those which 

 mio'ht be of foreisfn orio-in. Nor must the consideration be 

 omitted, that in a central locality, at the confluence of two great 

 rivers, and at a time when Hochelaga may have been the point 

 of union of various tribes, giving way before the inroads of the 

 Iroquois and Hurons, its population may have been of a very 

 mixed character. 



The following remarks on the deformed skull noticed above, 

 are from a paper by Dr. Wilson, in the Canadian Journal of 

 September : 



" In an interesting paper on " Aboriginal Antiquities recently 

 discovered in the Island of Montreal," published by Dr. Dawson 

 in the " Canadian Naiuralint^'^ he has given a description of one 

 female and two male skulls, found along with many human bones, 

 at the base of the Montreal Mountain, on a site which he identifies 

 with much probability, as that of the ancient Hochelaga, an Indian 

 Village visited by Cartier in 1535 ; and which he assigns on less 

 satisfactory evidence to an Algonquin tribe. Since the publica- 

 tion of that paper, my attention has been directed by Dr. Dawson 

 to two other skulls, a male and female, discovered ( n the same 

 spot, both of which are now in the Museum of McGill College? 

 Montreal. One of these furnishes a still more striking example of 

 a cranium greatly altered from its original shape subsequent to 

 interment. It is the skull of a man about forty years of age, ap- 

 proximating to the common proportions of the Iroquois and Al- 

 gonquin cranium, but with very marked lateral distortion, accom- 

 panied with flattening on the left, and bulging out on the right 

 side. There is also an abnormal configuration of the occiput, 

 suo'gestive at first sight, of the effects produced by the familiar 

 native process of artificial malformation. This tends to add, in 

 no slio-ht deizree, to the interest which attaches to the investio;a- 

 tion of such illustrations of abnormal craniology ; as the occur- 

 rence of well established examples of posthumous deformation 

 among crania purposely modified by artificial means exhibits in a 

 striking manner the peculiar difficulties which complicate the 



