1891-92. ] CHARACTERISTICS AND MIGRATIONS OF THE HURONS. 227 
villages, and the pits made during the conflicts mentioned in the last 
paragraph. 
There is a deficiency in regard to ossuaries in the Iroquois and Neuter 
territories in comparison with the Huron district. Squier,in his exam- 
ination of the Iroquois country of Central New York in the volume 
already referred to, records but two in Jefferson County, and in Erie 
County but four or five. In three townships of North Simcoe—Tiny, 
Tay and Medonte—the three which include the afflicted district described 
above, more than sixty to our knowledge have been found. The location 
of sites upon high peninsular points of land, especially along the brows 
of lake terraces, sand ridges, or bluffs, seems to have been extensively 
followed by all three nations. 
Since the year 1820, when Simcoe County first began to receive Euro- 
pean settlers, discoveries of Huron ossuaries have been constantly taking 
place. In order to preserve a record of Huron occupation, we have 
catalogued 140 of these ossuaries ; and from the scanty facilities enjoyed. 
in the accomplishment of this task, it is clear that many more still re- 
main unrecorded in our list. In these 140 ossuaries there was buried a 
population that from a careful estimate may be set down approximately 
as 25,000. The ossuary of average size, in the district, contains about 
200 skeletons. From these figures it will be seen that the Jesuits’ 
estimates of the Huron population were by no means exaggerated. 
The proportion of ossuaries to village sites is much greater in the 
Huron district than seems to be the case in other parts of the province. 
It is not an unnatural inference from this fact, that those who occupied 
the other parts to the south and east, perished in North Simcoe and 
were buried there. In other words, it became the cemetery of Central 
Ontario at that period. It is not difficult to understand the cause of 
this, viz., the persecution of the Hurons by the Iroquois and the conse- 
quent retreat of the former toward the north. 
Two or three additional facts may also be stated in support of the 
view just given. The most southerly towns of the Huron district were 
the largest, indicating a migration from the south. Champlain’s map 
shows that in 1615 the Hurons extended southward to Lake Ontario as 
well as into the counties east of Lake Simcoe, and were not confined to 
North Simcoe alone as they became at a later date. This has been con- 
firmed by the finding in South Simcoe, and in York, Ontario, Victoria, 
Peterborough, Durham and other counties, of many village sites and 
ossuaries of Huron origin. Ina valuable paper by Mr. George E. Laidlaw, 
published in Mr. Boyle’s Fourth Annual Report (1890), he suggests that 
