312 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



popular form some of the main features of a story that is lone of the 

 most thrilling when studied in its details, a story that fills a unique 

 place in the history of Canada, and one which we may revive even if we 

 add nothing new or original. 



The history and do^v^lfall of the Hurons may be studied in three 

 sources. 



1st. The traditions of the Indians themselves. 



2nd. The letters of the Jesuit Fathers, the written records com- 

 monly called The Jesuit Eelations. 



3rd, Modern archaeological researches and ethnological investig- 

 ations. 



These three contributers to a common story are widely different 

 in method, and when they verify one another we are bound! ta accept 

 the conclusions as facts of history. The dispersion of the Hurons by 

 the Iroquois in 1649 is the first authentic chapter in the history of 

 Ontario, and yet the main features of that story are as well established 

 as any historical event in Canadian history. Indian traditions, the 

 witness of the Jesuit Fathers, and the researches of archgeologists 

 during the past fifty years are gradually being brought into harmiony 

 in the working out of the details of this history. 



When Jacques Cartier sailed into the St. Lawrence in 1535 he 

 found Indians of the Huron-Iroquois stock at Quebec and Montrea^^ 

 or as the settlements were then called Stadacona and Hochelaga, and 

 even an adventurous band of Huron fishermen as far east as Gaspé. 

 When Champlain came eighty years la)ter, he found that the valley of 

 the St. Lawrence was occupied by Algonquins, and that the Hurons 

 and the Iroquois had moved westward. We may go to the Indian 

 traditions for an explanation. Peter Dooyentate Clarke, a Wyandott of 

 the Detroit Eiver, has left us a book of Wjyandott traditions and Mr. 

 Wm. E. Connelly of Kansas has for twenty years studied the language, 

 the myths and legends of the Wyandotts of the Indian Terxitiory. 



According to Connelly the traditional home of tribal origin was in 

 Northern Quebec, or in the region between James Bay and Labrador, 

 where the Wyandotts were near neighbours to the Eskimo. They grad- 

 ually moved southward to the St. Lawrence, where Cartier found thera. 

 On the south bank were the Senecas or Iroquois, another branch of a 

 parent stock. Hochelaga was a Seneca village. From choice or 

 necessity the Wyandotts migrated westward along the south shore ol 

 Lake Ontario. They crossed the Niagara and, moving eastward, made 

 a settlement on a bay which they called " Toronto." This word Toronto 

 in the Wyandott language means " the land of plenty." Probably 

 through pressure from the Iroquois, who had followed and settled in New 



