CHAPTER VII 
THE INDIANS 
By Wiuu1AmM B. Casot 
Tue Indians of Labrador are all of the family stock 
known to ethnology as the Algonquian, which in its day 
occupied a vast area of the continent. From the Carolinas 
to the Eskimo shores of Hudson’s Strait and from the 
Atlantic to the Mississippi and far to the northwest, the 
maps of the present day are dotted with the place-names 
of one group or another of this vanishing family. These 
names, one of the chief legacies of the Algic tribes, remain 
a sign-manual of their occupation of the soil. Their great 
territory was shared by almost none but the Iroquoian 
tribes, and these in limited numbers. 
Beyond the Mississippi were the various and generally 
unfriendly races of the plains. Westward from Hudson 
Bay and to the far north were the Athabascans, different 
in physiognomy and of another linguistic system. South- 
ward were various tribes, chiefly Muskogean, although 
names of the Aigonquian form are not wholly wanting 
over most of the southern area to the Gulf. 
The northern groups are closely related. The Montagnais, 
or Mountaineers, of the southern Labrador talk easily with 
the Nascaupees of the northern and eastern Crees; these 
latter in turn with others to the west, and so on to the Rocky 
Mountains. The differences are only of dialect. To the 
southward it is otherwise; the St. Lawrence marks so 
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