264 



NATURE 



\Aug. I, 1872 



THE HURON RACE AND ITS HEAD 

 FORM " 



THE tribe of North American Indians known by the 

 name of Hurons appears, when first brought to the 

 knowledge of the intruding French, to have been settled 

 in palisaded villages around Lake Simcoe, in Western 

 Canada. They called themselves Ouandots or Wyan- 

 dots. They consisted of four septs or nations ; the At- 

 tignaouentans, or Nation of the Bear, the chief member 

 of the league, the Attignenonghaes, the Ahrendarr- 

 honons, and the Tohotaenrals. They occupied thirty-two 

 villages when visited by the Jesuit missionaries in 1639. 

 Brebeuf reckoned them in all in 1635 at 30,000, and they 

 were stated in Xhc Relalion of 1660 at 35,000. The Hurons 

 with other tribes dwelling at this time in Canada, were 

 fully acquainted with agriculture, as Dr. Wilson shows, 

 wholly independent of any European influences. The 

 Hurons became known to the civilised world only in their 

 decline, and immediately before their extirpation. They 

 were then in alliance with the Adirondacks and other 

 Algonquins, against their common Iroquois enemy. This 

 latter is the name of a league of tribes often designated 

 the Indians of the Five or of the Six Nations. This con- 

 federation of tribes during the seventeenth century was 

 the great aggressive nationality of the American Con- 

 tinent, which subdued, exterminated, or incorporated the 

 other tribes with which they came into contact. Cartier 

 discovered Canada in 1535. Champlain explored and 

 settled it subsequently. He visited the Huron countiyin 

 1615, and appears to have found the whole district be- 

 tween the river Ottawa and Lake Simcoe to have been 

 almost depopulated, which is to be attributed to the im- 

 placable enmity of the Iroquois. This region, "in the 

 latter part of the seventeenth century became the scene of 

 the indefatigable operations of a succession of missionary 

 fathers, some of whom divided their self-denying labours I 

 between them and their Iroquois foes, and several suffered i 

 martyrdom at the hands of the savage nations whose con- 

 version they aimed at. Minutely detailed maps and nar- 

 ratives of exploration and missionary labours, record the 

 progress of discovery in the region around the Georgian 

 Bay, and illustrate the topography of tlie Huron villages 

 so accurately, that most of their sites have been identi- 

 fied in recent years. Dr. J. C. Tache devoted such leisure 

 as he could command during a period of five years, prior 

 to 1865, to a minute exploration of the Huron country. 

 Following in the steps of early writers whose accounts 

 arc preserved in the Rclathvis of the Jesuit Fathers, com- 

 municated to the Provincial of the Order at Paris, from 

 161 1 to 1672, he was able to determine the sites of their 

 principal villages, and to explore their cemeteries, abound- 

 ing with implements, weapons, and numerous other 

 archaeological records of native arts and habits. 



The sepulchral rites of the Hurons were of a peculiar 

 character. Their dead were primarily exposed on raised 

 biers, as is still done by the Cowlitz, Columbia River, and 

 other tribes ; and around them were hung implements 

 and personal ornaments of the deceased, with the tributes 

 of affection of the survivors. In the case of death on a 

 journey, or on the war-path, the body was temporarily 

 interred. But the place of sepulture was carefully noted 

 for future transfer of the bones to the general cemetery of 

 the tribe. At intervals of ten or twelve years the great 

 " Feast of the Dead " was celebrated by each nation of 

 the Huron confederacy. One of these grand ceremonies, 

 performed at Ossosane, the chief town of the Bear nation, 

 on Nottawasaga Bay, was witnessed by the Jesuit mis- 

 sionaries in 1636. Skeletons were gathered from old 

 scaffoldings, or disinterred from distant graves, by the 

 relations of the deceased. The bones of those more 

 recently dead were cleansed of the remaining fiesh, and 

 then wrapped carefully in skins, and adorned with prized 

 ■■The Huron Race and its Head Form. l!y D.miel WiUon, LL.D. 3 plates. 



decorations. The old wampum-belts, pipes, kettles, bows, 

 arrows, axes, beads, and shells, which had been hung 

 around the bier, or deposited in the grave, were anew 

 gathered together, and the whole were brought to the 

 appointed cemetery. There a great trench was dug, and 

 carefully lined with beaver skins and other furs, and after 

 a funeral-feast, with lamentations by the women, and 

 orations by some of the chiefs in praise of the dead, the 

 relics of mortality were cast into the trench, along with 

 the funeral offerings. Only in cases of recent death were 

 the corpses wrapped in furs and deposited entire ; and 

 then, amid the shrieks and wails of the mourners, the 

 earth was thrown in, logs and stones piled over the 

 cemetery, and with a closing funeral chant, the great 

 " Feast of the Dead" was brought to a close. 



Owing to the systematic practice of thus gathering 

 together the remains of the Huron dead, one or more 

 ossuaries were to be looked for in the vicinity of each village. 

 Dr. Tache explored sixteen of them in all, containing from 

 600 to 1.200 skeletons in each. From the same deposi- 

 tories he also recovered numerous specimens of native art, 

 and illustrations of the various customs of that people. 

 From the same cemeteries. Dr. Tache selected upwards 

 of eighty skulls, most of which with the accompanying 

 relics he deposited in the museum of the Laval University, 

 at Quebec. Another inquirer, Mr. John Langton, a writer 

 " On the Early Discoveries of the French in North 

 America," conceived the same idea of tracing the villages 

 of the Hurons. He succeeded in tracing out the sites of 

 fourteen villages, in many of which the remains of houses 

 and stockades could still be recognised. He even suc- 

 ceeded in identifying St. Ignace, a village at which 

 the principal chief and nearly 100 of the Iroquois warriors 

 fell before the Hurons were overpowered, and the miserable 

 remnant bound to stakes to perish in the relics of their 

 blazing settlement. St. Ignace was finally destroyed in 

 1649. Some few Hurons found refuge among the Petuns, 

 Neutrcs, and Eries, and shared in the subsequent fate of 

 these tribes. The fortunes of another body of the fugitives 

 illustrate the Indian practice of adoption into another 

 tribe. The survivors of two Huron towns opened negotia- 

 tions with their Seneca foes, and were adopted into the 

 Seneca nation. And another band, under the conduct of 

 the Jesuit missionaries, made their way to Quebec, then 

 subsequently settled at Lorette, on St. Charles's river, 

 where their lineal descendants remain, theirblood mingled 

 with that of European colonists, and speaking a French 

 patois, and where they still share in certain Indian funds 

 distributed to them by the Canadian Government. 



The admixture of blood has nearly eflaced the genuine 

 characteristics of the Hurons of Lorette, although this 

 tribe originally does not appear to have been exposed in 

 the same degree to the adoption of prisoners of other tribes 

 as that of the Iroquois Confederacy. Hence the remains 

 recovered from the ancient cemeteries of the Huron coun- 

 try have a special value for ethnological purposes ; they 

 are the most authentic relics of the pure Hurons. As an 

 instance of the readiness with which the aggressive Iro- 

 quois received those of other races into their tribe. Dr. 

 Wilson speaks of an old squaw of pure white blood, reputed 

 to be nearly a century old, who survived till recently, if 

 she be not still living, as a member of the Mohawk tribe, 

 of the Bay of (Juinte. Her Indian name is Ste-nah, sup- 

 posed to be a contraction of Christiana, and she is described 

 as a full-blood .Sko-ha-ra, or Dutchwoman. When the 

 author last heard of her, in 1S68, she was living with her 

 granddaughter, the wife of a Mohawk chief. 



The learned author is probably the solitary instance of 

 a well-instructed British Craniologist being transferred to 

 American soil, who has continued his favourite pursuit in 

 the new field with perseverance. Dr. Daniel Wilson has 

 given numerous and valuable proofs of his abiding taste 

 for, and persistent investigation in, this fundamental 

 branch of anthropological inquiry. In his compre- 



