72 DANIEL WILSON ON THE HURON-IROQUOlS OF 



The ])iili8:ided Indiau town of Hoe-lielagii, one of the rhief urban centres of the Hiiron- 

 Iroqnois tribes in the older home of the race, and a samjjle of the hiter Huron defences on 

 the Georgian Ba)^ stood, in the sixteenth century, at the foot of Moixnt Royal, whence the 

 city of Montïeal takes its name ; and some of the typical skulls of its old occupants, as well 

 as flint implements and pottery from its site, are now preserved in the miiseum of McGrill 

 University. The latter relics reveal no more than had long been familiar in the remains 

 which abound within the area of the Iroquois confederacy, and elsewhere throughout the 

 eastern states of North America. Their earthenware vessels were decorated with herring- 

 bone and other incised patterns ; and their tobacco-pipes and the handles of their clay 

 bowls were, at times, rudely modelled into hviman and animal forms. Their implements 

 of flint and stone were equally rude. They had inherited no more than the most infantile 

 savage arts ; and when those were at length superseded, in some degree, by implements 

 and weapons of European manufacture, they prized the more eff"ective weapon, but 

 manifested no desire for mastering the arts to which it was due. To all appearance, 

 through unnumbered centuries, the tide of human life has ebbed and flowed in the valley 

 of the St. Lawrence as uuprogressively as on the great steppes of Asia. Such footprints as 

 the wanderers have left on the sands of time tell only of the unchanging recurrence of 

 generations of men as years and centuries came and passed away. Illustrations of native 

 art are now very familiar to us. The ancient flint-pits have been explored ; and the flint- 

 cores and rough-hewn nodules recovered. The implements of war and the chase were the 

 work of the Indian brave. His spears and arrowheads, his knives, chisels, celts and ham- 

 mers, in flint and stone, abound. Fish-hooks, lances or spears, awls, bodkins, and other 

 implements of bone and deer's horn, are little less common. The highest efforts of artistic 

 skill were expended on the carving of his stone pipe, and fashioning the pipe-stem. The 

 pottery, the work of female hands, is usually in the simplest stage of coarse, hand-made, 

 fictile ware. The patterns, incised on the soft clay, are the conventional rejiroductions of 

 the grass or straw plaiting ; or, at times, the actual impressions of the cordage or wicker- 

 work by which the larger clay vessels were held in shape, to be dried in the sun before 

 they were imperfectly burned in the primitive kiln. But the potter also indulged her 

 fancy at times in modelling artistic devices of men and anipials, as the handles of the 

 smaller ware, or the forms in which the clay tobacco-pipe was wrought. Nevertheless the 

 Northern continent lingered to the last in its primitive stage of neolithic art ; and its most 

 northern AA^ere its nxdest tribes, until Ave i^ass within the Arctic circle, and come in contact 

 Avith the ingenious handiwork of the Eskimo. Southward beyond the great lakes, and 

 especially Avithin the area of the Mound-Builders, a manifest improvement is noticeable. 

 Alike in their stone carA'ings and their modelling in clay, the more artistic design and 

 better finish of industrious settled communities are apparent. Still further to the south, 

 the diA'ersified ingenuity of fancy, especially in the pottery, is suggestive of an influence 

 derived from Mexican and Periivian art. The carved Avork of some western tribes Avas 

 also of a higher character. But taking siich work at its best, it cannot compare in skill 

 or practical utility, with the industrial arts of Europe's neolithic age. This region has 

 l)een visited and explored by Europeans for fully three centuries and a half, during a 

 large i^ortion of which time they haA'e been permanent settlers. Its soil has been turned 

 up over areas of such Avide extent that the results may be accepted, with little hesitation, 

 as illustrations of the arts and social life subsequent to the occultation of the continent by 



