Chap. L] THE HURONS. 23 



mate. The Franciscans and the Jesuits were early 

 among them, and from their descriptions it is ap- 

 parent that, in legends and superstitions, manners 

 and habits, religious observances and social cus- 

 toms, they were closely assimilated to their brethren 

 of the Five Nations. Their capacious dwellings 

 of bark, and their palisaded forts, seemed copied 

 after the same model. ^ Like the Five Nations, 

 they were divided into tribes, and cross-divided into 

 totemic clans ; and, as with them, the office of 

 sachem descended in the female line. The same 

 crude materials of a political fabric were to be 

 found in both ; but, unlike the Iroquois, the Wy- 

 andots had not as yet wrought them into a system, 

 and woven them into a harmonious whole. 



Like the Five Nations, the Wyandots were in 

 some measure an agricultural people ; they bartered 

 the surplus products of their maize fields to sur- 

 rounding tribes, usually receiving fish in exchange ; 

 and this traffic was so considerable, that the Jesuits 

 styled their country the Granary of the Algon- 

 quins.^ 



Their prosperity was rudely broken by the 

 hostilities of the Five Nations ; for though the con- 

 flicting parties were not ill matched in point of 

 numbers, yet the united counsels and ferocious 

 energies of the confederacy swept all before them. 

 In the year 16^9, in the depth of winter, their 



1 See Sagard, Hurons, 115. 



2 Bancroft, in his chapter on the Indians east of the Mississippi, falls 

 into a mistake when he says that no trade was carried on by any of the 

 tribes. For an account of the traffic between the Hurons and Algonquins, 

 see Mercier, Relation des Hurons, 1637, p. 171. 



