CANADA, A TYPICAL BACK OF AMBEICAN ABOEIGINES. 7S 



palisade of crossed and intersecting trunks, and the same long lodges of bark, each con- 

 taining many households. Here, within an area of sixty or seventy miles, was the seat 

 of one of the most remarkable savage communities of the continent." ' The Hurons, thus 

 settled in their latter home, consisted of several " nations," including their kinsmen to the 

 south, as far as Lake Erie and the Niagara river. They had their own tribal divisions, 

 still perpetuated among their descendants. The Rev. Prosper Vincent SaSatannen, a native 

 Huron, and the first of his race admitted to the priesthood, informs me that the Hurons 

 of Lorette still perpetuate their ancient classification into four " grandes compagnies," 

 each of which has its five tribal divisions or clans, by which of old all intermarriage was 

 rea-ulated. The members of the same clan regarded themselves as brothers and sisters, 

 and so were precluded from marriage with one another. The small number of the whole 

 band at La Jeune Lorette renders the literal enforcement of this rule impossible ; but the 

 children are still regarded as belonging to the mother's clan. The five clans into which 

 each of the four companies is divided are : — 1. The Deer, Oskanonlon ; 2. The Bear, 

 Anniolen ; 3. The AYolf, AnnenarisISa ; 4. The Tortoise, Anc/iaèik ; 5. The Beaver, Tsolai. 

 There were two, if not more dialects spoken by the old Hurons, or Wyandots ; and that of 

 Hochtlaga probably varied from any form of the language now surviving. This has to 

 be kept in view, in estimating the value of the lists of words furnished by Jacques 

 Cartier of •' le langage des pays et Royaulmes de Hochelaga et Canada, aultrement 

 apiîellée par nous la noirvelle France." 



Of the condition of the region to the west of the Ottawa prior to the seventeenth 

 century nothing is known from direct observation. Before Champlain had an oppor- 

 tunity of visiting it, the whole region westward to Lake Huron had been depopulated 

 and reduced to a desert. The fact that the few natives found by Champlain occupying 

 the once populous region of the Hochelaga Indians were Algonkins, has been the chief 

 ground for the assumption that the expulsion of that old Wyandot stock was due to their 

 hostility. But such au idea is irreconcilable with the fact that the latter, instead of 

 retreating southward to their Huron-Iroquois kinsmen, took refuge among Algonkiù 

 tribe's. According to the narrative of their own "Wyandot historian, Peter Dooyentate, 

 gathered, as he tells us, from traditions that lived in the memory of a few among the 

 older members of his tribe, the island of Montreal was occupied in the sixteenth century 

 by Wyandots or Hurons, and Senecas, sojoiirniug peaceably in separate villages. The 

 tradition is vague which traces the cause of their hostility to the wrath of a Seneca 

 maiden, who had been wronged in the object of her affections, and gave her hand to a 

 young Wyandot warrior on the condition of his slaying the Seneca chief, to whose influ- 

 ence she ascribed the desertion of her former lover. Whatever probability may attach to 

 this romance of the Indian lovers, the tradition that the Hurons were driven from their 

 ancient homes on the St. Lawrence by their Seneca kinsmen is consistent with ascertained 

 facts ; as well as with the later history of the Senecas, who are found playing the same 

 part to the Eries under a somewhat similar incentive to revenge, and appear to have 

 taken the lead in the destruction of the Attiwendarouks. The native tradition is of 

 value in so far as it shows that the fatal enmity of the Iroquois to the Hurons was not 

 originally due to the alliance of the latter with the French ; but Senecas and Hurons had 



' Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 2C7. 



