COUNTRY OF THE HURONS. XXV 



seems a virgin forest, the axe and plovigh bring strange 

 secrets to light : huge pits, close packed with skeletons 

 and disjointed bones, mixed with weapons, copper kettles, 

 beads, and trinkets. Not even the straggling Algon- 

 quins, wlio linger about the scene of Huron prosperity, 

 can tell their origin. Yet, on ancient worm-eaten pages, 

 between covers of begrimed parchment, the daily life of 

 this ruined community, its firesides, its festivals, its fu- 

 neral rites, are painted with a minute and vivid fidelity. 



The ancient country of the Hurons is now the north- 

 ern and eastern portion of Simcoe County, Canada West, 

 and is embraced within the peninsula formed by the 

 Nottawassaga and Matchedash Bays of Lake Huron, the 

 River Severn, and Lake Simcoe. Its area was small, — 

 its population comparatively large. In the year 1639 

 the Jesuits made an enumeration of all its villages, dwell- 

 ings, and families. The result showed thirty-two vil- 

 lages and hamlets, with seven hundred dwellings, about 

 four thousand families, and twelve thousand adult per- 

 sons, or a total population of at least twenty thousand.^ 



The region whose boundaries we have given was an 

 alternation of meadows and deep forests, interlaced with 



1 Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1640, 38 (Cramoisv). His words 

 are, "de feux enuiron deux mille, et enuiron douze mille personnes." 

 There were two families to every fire. That by "personnes" adults 

 only are meant cannot be doubted, as the Relations abound in incidental 

 evidence of a total population far exceeding twelve thousand. A Huron 

 family usually numbered from five to eight persons. The number of the 

 Huron towns changed from year to year. Champlain and Le Caron, in 

 1615, reckoned them at seventeen or eighteen, with a population of about 

 ten thousand, meaning, no doubt, adults. Brebeuf, in 1635, found twenty 

 villages, and, as he thinks, thirty thousand souls. Both Le Mercier and 

 De Quen, as well as Dollier de Casson and the anonymous author of the 

 Relation of 1660, state the population at fi*om thirty to thirty-five thousand. 

 Since the time of Champlain's visit, various kindred tribes or fragments 

 of tribes had been incorporated with the Hurons, thus more than balati- 

 cing the ravages of a pestilence which had decimated them. 



