52 FOSSIL MEN. 



cut off from the copper mines of the north and the 

 fisheries of the great lakes, probably decayed rapidly, 

 and the old trees growing on their earthworks when 

 the first European explorers visited their country, 

 testify to the lapse of centuries since their destruction 

 or expatriation. 



Originally these Alleghans were bounded on the 

 north by the Algonquins, but the earlier waves of 

 conquest from the north and west severed this con- 

 nection. These earlier migrations, however, in time 

 became partially absorbed and civilized, and formed 

 a belt of semi-Alleghan and semi-Algonquin territory 

 along the great lakes and the St. Lawrence, the 

 people inhabiting which had borrowed some of the 

 arts and modes of life of the Alleghans. To this 

 probably belonged such nations of agricultural and 

 village-dwelling Indians as the Eries, the Neutrals, 

 the Hurons, and the Hochelagans, which eventually 

 cultivated friendly relations with their neighbours on 

 the south, and with the Algonquins on the north, 

 and carried on to some extent the copper-mining and 

 agriculture of their civilized predecessors. But other 

 waves of migration from the west followed, and at 

 the time of the early French discoveries the Iroquois 

 and other fierce and warlike tribes were inserting 

 themselves like a wedge between the remains of the 

 Alleghans on the south, and the Eries, the Hurons, and 

 the Hochelagans on the north. 



Such is the history as its general features present 

 hemselves to my mind, after long study of the frag- 



