THE TOBACCO NATION. xliii 



ble family of tribes occur the fullest developments of 

 Indian character, and the most conspicuous examples 

 of Indian intelligence. If the higher traits popularly 

 ascribed to the race are not to be found here, they 

 are to be found nowhere. A palpable proof of the 

 superiority of this stock is afforded in the size of the 

 Iroquois and Huron brains. In average internal ca- 

 pacity of the cranium, they surpass, with few and doubt- 

 ful exceptions, all other aborigines of North and South 

 America, not excepting the civilized races of Mexico and 

 Peru.i 



In the woody valleys of the Blue Mountains, south of 

 the Nottawassaga Bay of Lake Huron, and two days' 

 journey west of the frontier Huron towns, lay the nine 

 villages of the Tobacco Nation, or Tionnontates. ^ In 

 manners, as in language, they closely resembled the 

 Hurons. Of old they were their enemies, but were now 

 at peace with them, and about the year 1640 became their 

 close confederates. Indeed, in the ruin which befell that 

 hapless people, the Tionnontates alone retained a tribal 

 organization ; and their descendants, with a trifling ex- 

 ception, are to this day the sole inheritors of the Huron 

 or Wyandot name. Expatriated and wandering, they 

 held for generations a paramount influence among the 



1 " On comparing five Iroquois heads, I find that they give an aver- 

 age internal capacity of eighty-eight cubic inches, which is within two 

 inches of the Caucasian mean." — Morton, Crania Americana, 195, — It is 

 remarkable that the internal capacity of the skulls of the barbarous Amer- 

 ican tribes is greater than that of either tlie Mexicans or the Peruvians. 

 " The difierence in volume is chiefly confined to the occipital and basal 

 portions," — in other words, to tlie region of the animal propensities ; and 

 hence, it is argued, the ferocious, brutal, and uncivilizable cliaracter of the 

 wild tribes. — See J. S. Phillips, Admeasurements of Crania of the Principal 

 Gi'oups of Indians in the United States. 



2 Synonymes: Tionnontates, Etionontates, Tuinontatek, Dionondadies, 

 Khionontaterrhonons, Petuneux or Nation du Petun (Tobacco). 



