CHAPTER III. 



GLIMPSES OF FEE-HISTORIC TIMES. 



WHAT were the ethnic relations of the old Hochelagans, 

 whose reception of Cartier was noticed in our last 

 chapter ? The answer furnishes a strange illustration 

 of the evanescent nature of the history of tribes with- 

 out written records; but when pursued to the end casts 

 a flood of light on the pre-Columbian history of North 

 America. Dr. Wilson has shown that notwithstanding 

 a general physical resemblance of the primitive North 

 Americans, they present distinct types of skull cor- 

 responding to the long and short-headed forms 

 (Dolichocephalic and Brachycephalic) of European 

 races. Now the skulls obtained from the cemeteries 

 of the ancient Hochelaga are of the long-headed form 

 characteristic of the Iroquois and Huron nations, that 

 is, of the historical enemies, not of the later political 

 allies, of this ancient people. We shall find also that 

 the patterns of their pottery and tobacco-pipes corre- 

 spond with those prevalent among the other tribes 

 in the neighbourhood of the St. Lawrence, but more 

 especially resemble those of the ancient Eries, a tribe 

 also hostile to the Iroquois, though allied to them by 

 language. The language of Hochelaga, in so far as 

 can be judged from the short vocabulary preserved by 

 Cartier, was not Algonquin, or like that of the tribes 



