816 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



The question might now be asked as to why the Hurons had located 

 on the shores of Georgian Bay. Perhaps we can suggest an answer. 

 If it be correct that they were gradually pushed out or driven across 

 the Niagara and Lake Ontario by the Iroquois, we can readily under- 

 stand that they would seek refuge in a locality where they could most 

 effectively defend themselves, and Would probably limit their retreat 

 only by their necessities of living. The Hurons were a sedentary not 

 a migratory tribe; they were growers of crops rather than hunters. 

 They stopped when they came to the borders of the non-arable Muskoka 

 and they took up territory that was in part protected by water. 



A study of the traditions of the Huron-Iroquois people does not 

 give us any information as to their intercourse with the Eskimo. We 

 learn that in the far off days they crossed a great river and we know 

 that about the beginning of the sixteenth century they came away from 

 the valley of the St. Lawrence. But this great river that they crossed 

 may have been the Ohio or the Mississippi. 



The question now becomes a subject for investigation by archaeolo- 

 gists and ethnologists. 



I have had the opportunity of reading a most interesting and well 

 worked out paper by Dr. David Boyle, Archœologist to the Ontario 

 Government, on the origin of the Iroquois and kindred nations. It will 

 appear in the forth coming report on Ontario Archaeology.^ Mr. Boyle 

 argues for a southern origin of these people beyond the Ohio, if noi 

 beyond the Mississippi, instead of beyond the St. Lawrence in Quebec. 

 He brings them from the south until they come into neighbourhoiod with 

 the Micmacs of New Brunswick, thus accounting for the traditions of 

 that people recorded by Dr. Rand. Thence they came up the St. 

 Lawrence. After many years swarm after swarm moved off to occupy 

 the territories in which they were found at the time of Champlain. The 

 fact that the Hurons and Petuns were skilled in the cultivation of corn, 

 tobacco, beans, sunflowers and hemp is better explained by a southern 

 origin than by tracing them away to the Labrador home of the Eskimo. 

 I cannot too strongly urge you to read and study this paper when it 

 appears in print. 



We come now to the Huron Nation as it was in the early part of 

 the 17th Century, when the French first visited them. Their old village 

 sites can be traced through York County up into Simcoe, becoming more 

 and more numerous as they were crowded by the limitations of the land. 

 Only in the north are relics of French manufacture to be found, hence 

 we conclude that tlie northern towns were the more recently occupied. 



^ See Annual Archaeological Report 1905 (Toronto 1906) pp. 146-158. 



