166 FOSSIL MEN. 



succeeded it. Again, at the destruction of Hoche- 

 laga, its treasures may have been thoroughly plun- 

 dered by the conquerors, a fate which has no doubt 

 befallen many of the old haunts of primitive men in 

 the Old World. 



I fear such considerations are too often overlooked 

 by observers who study such remains, and who may 

 reach the most opposite results from the investigation 

 of different localities occupied contemporaneously by 

 tribes precisely in the same stage of civilization. 

 Thus of three or four sites occupied by different sec- 

 tions of a tribe, simultaneously or at times not very 

 remote from each other, one may have been destroyed 

 and plundered by an enemy ; another may have wit- 

 nessed the hurried manufacture of a quantity of rough 

 weapons for an emergency ; another may have been 

 only abandoned from slow decay. Each of these 

 would be so dissimilar from the others that it might 

 be regarded as having belonged to times remotely 

 distant. 



But a careless or too enthusiastic antiquary might 

 commit still graver errors of this kind. A village like 

 Stadacona or Hochelaga had its outlying stations. 

 Its pottery would be made at some clay-bed, probably 

 distant from the town. It must have had its mines 

 or quarries of flint and other useful stones, perhaps 

 far away within the confines of friendly tribes on the 

 Ottawa. Its hunting and fishing parties had their 

 places of resort, where in spring, autumn, or winter, 

 they may have spent weeks together in the pursuit of 



