246 THE IROQUOIS. [1641-42. 



scared out of their forests by the sight of an 

 Iroquois footprint; then some new terror would 

 seize them, and drive them back to seek a hiding- 

 place in the deepest thickets of the wilderness. 

 Their best hunting-grounds were beset by the 

 enemy. They starved for weeks together, sub- 

 sisting on the bark of trees or the thongs of raw 

 hide which formed the net-work of their snow- 

 shoes. The mortality among them was prodigious. 

 "Where, eight years ago," writes Father Vimont, 

 "one would see a hundred wigwams, one now sees 

 scarcely five or six. A chief who once had eight 

 hundred warriors has now but thirty or forty ; and 

 in place of fleets of three or four hundred canoes, 

 we see less than a tenth of that number." ^ 



These Canadian tribes were undergoing that pro- 

 cess of extermination, absorption, or expatriation, 

 which, as there is reason to believe, had for many 

 generations formed the gloomy and meaningless 

 history of the greater part of this continent. Three 

 or four hundred Dutch guns, in the hands of 

 the conquerors, gave an unwonted quickness and 

 decision to the work, but in no way changed its 

 essential character. The horrible nature of this 

 warfare can be known only through examples ; and 

 of these one or two will suffice. 



A band of Algonquins, late in the autumn of 

 1641, set forth from Three Rivers on their winter 

 hunt, and, fearful of the Iroquois, made their way 

 far northward, into the depths of the forests that 

 border the Ottawa. Here they thought themselves 



1 Relation, 1644, 3. 



