S8 DANIEL WILSON ON THE IIUEON-IROQUOIS OP 



uorihern foiitiuent of America presents a striking contrast to this. An isosceles tri- 

 angle with its base within the Arctic circle, it tapers to a narrow isthmus towards the 

 equator. Its great mountain chain runs from north to south, and in near proximity to 

 the Pacific coast ; and its chief navigable river, rising within our own Canadian Dominion, 

 and receiving as its tributaries other rivers draining vast regions on either hand, traverses 

 twenty degrees of latitude before it reaches the Grulf of Mexico. Another range ot 

 highlands rises towards the Atlantic sea-board, and forms the eastern boundary of the 

 great interior plain. But the Alleghanies or Appalachian system of mountains, though 

 they may be said to extend from the St. Lawrence to the Mexican Gulf, rise only at a few 

 points, as in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, to any great elevation. They 

 form rather a long plateau, intersected by wide valleys ; and so diversify the landscape, 

 without constituting strongly defined barriers or lines of demarkation. As a whole, the 

 continent of North America, eastward from the Eocky Mountains, may be described as a 

 level area," so slightly modified by any elevated regions throughout its whole extent, from 

 the Arctic circle to the Gulf of Mexico, as to present no impediment to the wanderings 

 of nomadic tribes. It is interlaced with rivers, and diversified everywhere with lakes, 

 alike available for navigation and for fishing ; and, until the intrusion of European immi- 

 grants, its forests and prairies abounded with game far iu excess of the wants of its 

 poi^ulation. Everything thus tended to perpetuate the condition of nomadic hunter 

 tribes. This stage of native American history inevitably drew to a close under the 

 influence of European institutions and civilization ; but it is interesting to note, that 

 the same absence of any well defined geographical limitations of area, which tended to 

 perpetuate the nomadic habits of the savage, has aided iu consolidating the great con- 

 federacy of the United States, and maintaining an ethnical and political conformity 

 throughout the North American continent in striking contrast to the diversities in race 

 and political institutions in Europe. 



History and native traditions alike confirm the idea that the valley of the St. Lawrence 

 was the habitat of the Huron-Iroquois stock as far back as evidence can be appealed to. The 

 Huron traditions tell of a timie when the Province of Quebec was the home of the race 

 eastward to the sea ; while those of three at least of the members of the Iroquois confederacy 

 in legendary fashion claimed their birth from the soil south of the great river. When the 

 French explorers, under the leadership of Jacques Cartier, first entered the St. Lawrence, 

 in 1535, they found at Stadaconé and Hochelaga — the old native civic sites now occupied 

 by the cities of Quebec and Montreal, — a population apparently of the Hirron-Iroqirois stock ; 

 and, in so far as reliance may be placed on their traditions, Canada was then popixlous through- 

 out the whole valley of the St. Lawrence with industrious native tribes, the representatives 

 of a race that had occupied the same region for unnumbered centuries. " Some fanciful 

 tales of a sui^ernatural origin from the heart of a mountain ; of a migration to the eastern 

 sea-board ; and of a subseqiient return to the country of the lakes and rivers, where 

 they finally settled, comprise," says Brownell,' " most that is noticeable in the native 

 traditions of the Six Nations prior to the grand confederation." But the value 

 of such traditionary transmission of national history among unlettered tribes has 

 received repeated confirmation ; and the incidents of their own famous league, perpe- 



' The Indian Eaces of North and South America, p. 286. 



