288 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vor. VI. 
Colonel Cody’s Wild West Show. We will see that the red man and 
the pale-face are not far apart in human passions, pleasures and instincts, 
As the Jewish Samuel and Joseph had visions by night, so the young 
Indian sought through dreams to know the will of the Great Spirit. The 
sun was by some worshipped, the moon, the Pleiades, and other stars of 
our Western hemisphere were personified, and every Laurentian hill, 
lake and island had its Algic lore that lived in the imagination and 
memory as do the tales of fairies, pixies and warlocks in Wales and 
Ireland. We are accustomed to hear of Masonic and other mystic 
orders, but the Algic Wahbahnoowin was a pagan society of ancient, 
origin and wide ramifications, whose priests turned to the east, the rising 
sun, for inspiration, and claimed supernatural powers. The society 
called Medaowin had secret signs, rites and passwords. 
Much has been written of the Iroquois and more southern Indians. 
Some noted Algonquins now claim our attention, loyal Canadians and 
brave men, of whom it may be said, “there were giants in those days.” 
\ 
MIssISSAUGA CHIEFS.—It is but right that the leading men of the Mis- 
sissaugas, a branch of the Ojibways who, one hundred years ago, occupied 
the land on which we dwell, should be referred to. The present site of 
Toronto was included in an agreement made between Sir John Johnson 
and the Mississaugas, on September 23rd, 1787, confirmed by another, 
negotiated by Colonel William Claus, on behalf of the Crown, August 
Ist, 1805. The tract so peacefully handed over contained more than two 
hundred and fifty thousand acres. In the time of Champlain and the 
Jesuit-Huron missions, this was in the central territory of the Neutrals, 
or Attiwondaronk, allies of their northern neighbours, the Hurons. The 
Jesuit relation of 1641 estimated the Neutral population at 12,000, with 
forty villages scattered southward as far as Niagara, and westward to 
Detroit. The remains of their ancient stronghold, the Southwold Earth- 
work, with its moat and ditches, are yet to be seen between St. Thomas 
and Lake Erie. Iroquois torches had, a century and a half before Sir 
John Johnson’s treaty, destroyed their villages, and their lands were now 
mostly occupied by Mohawks and Mississaugas. History does not tell 
us who were the predecessors of the Hurons and the Neutrals, but the 
archeologist and geologist come to our aid. They are not confined to 
records of the stylus and pen or the modern printer’s art, but read the 
story of archaic ages in the rings of ancient trees and in the strata of the 
earth. They tell us that in the fair valleys of the Don and Humber 
were, not only contemporaries of the dwellers in Atlantis and of the 
Mound-builders, whose reindeer browsed on these hills, but, ages before 
