CANADA, A TYPICAL RACE OF AMEIUCAN ABORIGIJSTES. 81 



the expulsion of the Wyaudots, or Hiirons, from their aucieut home iu eastern Canada, to 

 the Algonkins. This, as already shown, is irreconcilable with the fact that Champlain 

 found them, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, in friendly alliance with the 

 latter against their common foe, the Iroquois. If, however, the "Wyandot tradition of the 

 expulsion of the Hurons from the island of Montreal by the Senecas be accepted as an 

 historical fact, it is in no degree inconsistent with the circumstances svrbsequently reported 

 by Champlain ; but rather serves to account for some of them, if it is assumed that the 

 Senecas were, in their turn, driven out by the Algonkins, and then finally withdrew 

 beyond the St. Lawrence. 



But there is anothel- kind of evidence bearing on the question of the affinities of the 

 people first met with by Cartier in 1535, which also has its value here. I have carefully 

 compared the skulls found on the ancient site of Hochelaga, and now preserved in the 

 Museum of McGill University, wath some of the most characteristic Huron skulls in Laval 

 University, and find that the two correspond closely. Again, the description of the palisaded 

 towns of the Hurons on the Georgian Bay very accurately reproduces that which Cartier 

 gives of Hochelaga. Ephemeral as such fortifications necessarily were, the construction of 

 a rampart formed of a triple row of trunks of trees, surmounted with galleries, from 

 whence to hvarl stones and other missiles on their assailants, was a formidable undertaking 

 for builders provided with no better tools than stone hatchets ; and with no other means 

 of transport than their united labour supplied. But the design had the advantage of 

 furnishing a self-supporting wall, and so of saving the greater labour of digging a trench, 

 with such inadequate tools, in soil penetrated everywhere with the roots of forest trees. 

 It was the Huron-Iroquois system of military engineering, in which they contrasted 

 favorably with the Algonkins, among whom the absence of such evidence of settled 

 habits as those secure defences supplied, was characteristic of these ruder nomads. But 

 such urban fortifications no less strikingly contrast with the elaborate and enduring 

 military earthworks to the south of the great lakes. The pottery and implements found 

 on the site of Hochelaga are also of the same character as many examples recovered 

 from the Huron ossuaries. On the other hand the peculiar rites, of which those ossuaries 

 are the enduring memorials, appear to have distinguished the western Hurons from the 

 older settlers on the St. Lawrence. The great Feast of the Dead, with its recixrrent solemni- 

 ties, when after the lapse of years the remains of their dead were exhumed, or removed 

 from their scatfold biers, was the most characteristic religions ceremonial of the 

 Hurons ; and was practised with still more revolting rites by the kindred Attiwendaronks. 

 Festering dead bodies were kept in their dwellings, preparatory to scraping the flesh from 

 their bones ; and the decaying remains of recently buried corpses were exhumed for 

 reinterment in the great trench, which was prepared with enormous labour, and furnished 

 with the most lavish expenditure of their prized furs, wampum, and other possessions. 



In all ages and states of society unaA^ailing sorrow has tempted the survivors to extrava- 

 gant excesses in the effort to do honour to the loved dead ; and sumptuary laws have been 

 repeatedly enacted to restrain such demonstrations within reasonable bounds. " The Book 

 of Kites " sufiices to show that the Iroquois had, in ancient times, funeral rites, no doubt 

 of the same revolting and wasteful character, until their mythic reformer, Hiawatha, super- 

 seded them with a simpler symbolical funeral service. " I have spoken of the solemn event 



Sec. II., 1884. 11. 



