1889-90.] THE HURONS. 89 



Mr. Maisonneuve, the then Governor of New France, to the summit of the 

 Montreal mountain " Mount Royal," and calling his attention to the mag- 

 nificent country that lay before him, said, " All those lands and waters 

 were once ours ; we were a number of people in those days, but the Hurons 

 drove out our ancestors. Of those they expelled, one portion took refuge 

 with the Abenaquis, another got shelter from the Iroquois, and the rest 

 remained in subjection to the conquerors." 



Golden says that according to a tradition among the Iroquois, their ances- 

 tors once inhabited the environs of Montreal. 



Garneau, remarking on the meeting between Maisonneuve and the two 

 aged Indians, and what they discussed, says, " An idea strikes the mind 

 while reflecting on the above incident, that those aged men may have been 

 survivors of the aborigines found in quiet possession of Hochelaga more 

 than a century before." 



There is much to support the idea that the numerous people referred to 

 by the old Indians were Iroquois-Hurons. 



The Iroquois tongue was the mother tongue of the Hurons ; their langu- 

 age, their customs, their observances were the same. No matter how much 

 a nation may be divided up, or by what name the component parts may 

 be called, or how distant they may be from each other, if they possess a 

 common language, they are of the common stock. A nation may be 

 composed of many tribes, and the tribes each have an idiom different 

 from the other, yet if they have a common mother tongue, they are tribes 

 of that nation. These tribes will be able to communicate with each other, 

 though they could not communicate with an alien nation. The very fact 

 that the Indians expelled from Montreal, took refuge with the Abenaquis 

 and the Iroquois tends to prove that they were Iroquois-Huron , and when 

 driven out made way to tribes speaking their language and of kin to 

 themselves. The territory of the Abenaquis Indians was in the vicinity of 

 the Iroquois ; their hunting grounds were in the now Province of New 

 Brunswick, between the Iroquois and the Micmacs. The names Iroquois 

 and Huron were the French names of these famous tribes of Abenaquis 

 natives. Before the French came into the Province the Iroquois passed 

 under the name " Agonnousionsi," signifying a " constructor of wigwams." 

 The name Iroquois, given by the French, arose from the fact that in their 

 discourses or talk they usually ended with the word " hiro," which means 

 either "I say," or, "I have said," or as we would say, "that is the end of 

 it." This word "hiro" was combined, as an aflSx with the word " kou^," 

 hence we have "hiro-koue," Iroquois. The Indian names of the tribes 

 composing the confederacy were " Agniers " or "Mohawks,^' " Onon- 



