[ganong] stone medallion OF LAKE UTOPIA 99 



ground of the Island seems opposed by its shape and the absence 

 of the conventional symbols for memorial stones. 



As to how and why the stone, if thus produced, reached Lake 

 Utopia, we can well believe that it was taken there in later, perhaps 

 comparatively recent times, by the Indians, to be used, in imitation 

 of the custom of their white neighbours, as the headstone at the grave 

 of a chief,^ — their statements to this effect being thus explained. 

 If one thinks the French carver may have made it for this purpose, 

 as a present to the Indians or his own tribute to a friendly chief, it 

 is to be recalled that in such case he would have carved the head of 

 an Indian, which this assurdly is not. There is, however, another 

 possible reason for its pre>sence at Utopia, more consistent with the 

 fact that the place where it was found, amid rocky debris, seems an 

 unlikely situation for a grave,^ — viz., the place is close to the abrupt 

 cliffs rising into the prominent Porcupine Mountain, a somewhat 

 uncanny repellant and dangerous-looking place, unlike any other 

 around the Lake. It was at such places of uncanny suggestion that 

 the Indians were accustomed to leave votive offerings, as abundant 

 references in our early literature attest. It is therefore possible 

 that this stone, so unlike anything familiar to the Indians, and there- 

 fore presumably in their view an especially potent "big medicine," 

 was brought here from the Island, where they found it, as a votive 

 or propitiatory offering to the spirits of this place. Its position, 

 leaning, when found, against the ledge, suppprts this assumption. 

 Its transportation offers no difficulty, for the canoe route from Island 

 to Lake is all deep still water, except for a short portage at St. George. 



Finally, one may well ask how so hard a stone, carved only a 

 little over two and a half centuries before it was found in 1863, could 

 have become weathered so greatly in the interval. This might well 

 occur through exposure to the waves of the sea for a century or two 

 before its removal from the Island. As shown in the afore-cited 

 Monograph, much of the soil of the Island has been washed away 

 since Champlain mapped the place in 1604-5, thus providing a way 

 whereby the stone could have dropped from the upland to the ex- 

 posed beach. In this connection one cannot but recall the statement 

 of Jackson that the stone of 1606, likewise much weathered, was 

 found "partly covered with sand and lying on the shore." It would 

 seem reasonable that the stone may have been placed over the door- 

 way of one of the larger buildings, — its thinness, oval form, and 

 general character being conformable more to that than any other 

 obvious use. The records show that only a part of the buildings on 

 the Island were removed to Port Royal, the remainder being burnt 



