CHAPTER VII 



THE INDIANS 

 BY WILLIAM B. CABOT 



THE Indians of Labrador are all of the family stock 

 known to ethnology as the Algonquian, which in its day 

 occupied a vast area of the continent. From the Carolinas 

 to the Eskimo shores of Hudson's Strait and from the 

 Atlantic to the Mississippi and far to the northwest, the 

 maps of the present day are dotted with the place-names 

 of one group or another of this vanishing family. These 

 names, one of the chief legacies of the Algic tribes, remain 

 a sign-manual of their occupation of the soil. Their great 

 territory was shared by almost none but the Iroquoian 

 tribes, and these in limited numbers. 



Beyond the Mississippi were the various and generally 

 unfriendly races of the plains. Westward from Hudson 

 Bay and to the far north were the Athabascans, different 

 in physiognomy and of another linguistic system. South- 

 ward were various tribes, chiefly Muskogean, although 

 names of the Algonquian form are not wholly wanting 

 over most of the southern area to the Gulf. 



The northern groups are closely related. The Montagnais, 

 or Mountaineers, of the southern Labrador talk easily with 

 the Nascaupees of the northern and eastern Crees; these 

 latter in turn with others to the west, and so on to the Rocky 

 Mountains. The differences are only of dialect. To the 

 southward it is otherwise; the St. Lawrence marks so 



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