86 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. I. 



THE HURONS. 

 By D. B. Read, Q. C. 



{Read 3rd July. 1890.) 



The very able Report of the Canadian Institute, made in the Session of 

 1888-1889, in which Mr. David Boyle, Curator of the Institute, has given 

 an interesting and instructive account of the archaeology of that part of 

 the Province of Ontario in the neighbourhood of Lake Huron, suggested 

 to my mind the opportuneness of the present occasion for drawing atten- 

 tion to the history of that great Indian Nation after whom Lake Huron is 

 named. What fitter place to discuss this question than on the margin of 

 Huron's sister Lake, Ontario, in Indian, "Skandario," — in English, "the 

 beautiful lake?" 



Like Ontario, Huron in the 17th century, had another Indian name. 

 On Sanson's map, 1656, Lake Huron is called "Lake Karegnondi." In 

 the same map, Lake Michigan is called "Lac-de-Puans." 



The Huron nation which occupied all the territory forming the Penin- 

 sula between Lake Ontario and Lakes Huron and Erie was a nation within 

 a nation. The great Algonquin family of Abenaquis claimed all the 

 territory extending from the St. Lawrence to the Rocky Mountains. Mr. 

 Schoolcraft, the distinguished American ethnologist, has classified the 

 North American Indians as follows : — 1st, Northern, extending from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. 2nd, East of the Mississippi and the Rocky 

 Mountains. 3rd, West of the Mississippi and Rocky Mountains. 4th, 

 West of the Rocky Mountains. These embrace altogether thirty-seven 

 families under which there are numerous sub-divisions. He gives the name 

 of the Iroquois as one of the sub-divisions, but does not name the Hurons? 

 which goes to establish that he considered the Hurons as a branch of the 

 Iroquois. 



Parkman, after stating that the Algonquin population extended from 

 Hudson's Bay on the north to the Carolinas on the south, and that the 

 Iroquois family was confined to the region south of the Lakes Erie and 

 Ontario, forming as it were an island in the vast expanse of Algonquin 

 population, goes on to say, " Of all the members of the Algonquin family, 

 those called by the English the Delawares, by the French the Loups, and 

 by themselves, 'Lenni Lenap^,' or <?^'^^^/^aZ mati, hold the first claim to 



