556 REPORT— 1900. 



first sight appear to have any connection either with the previous social 

 status of the race, or with the physical features of its present habitat. 

 In a general way, with the ancient Hurons, agriculture and hunting were 

 the principal means of living ; to-day at Lorette, labour in both these 

 forms has been almost entirely given up. In their stead manufacturing 

 industries have grown — industries, besides, which do not depend for their 

 raw material on the resources of the locality, and which find in the 

 vicinity a market for only a very small portion of their output. 



However, from a perusal of the documentary evidence available, old 

 and new, and from what could be gathered in conversation with men and 

 women at Lorette, I obtained some insight into the process of evolution 

 from which the labour system of the Hurons has resulted. 



Their ancestors in Western Ontario supported themselves chiefly by 

 hunting, fishing, and agriculture. The young men were hunters and 

 warriors ; the older male members of the tribe, fishermen ; the women, 

 tillers of the soil, growers of maize, beans, pumpkins, sunflowers, and 

 tobacco. Besides, the Hurons were trained in the practice of a number 

 of home industries. The men built huts made of saplings, and which in 

 the words of Parkman ' were much like an arbor overarching a garden 

 walk.' 1 The men, as well, made their own bows and arrows, fishing 

 nets, stone axes, bark canoes, toboggans, snowshoes, and lacrosses. The 

 Hui-on women ground the corn, smoked the fish, spun the wild hemp for 

 the fishing-nets, dressed deer skins, and from them made moccasins, which 

 they embroidered handsomely, and out of the furs of the beaver, the 

 porcupine, &c., prepared various articles of clothing.^ In some of these 

 industries tlie Hurons were not found as expert as their neighbours of 

 Algonquin stock, but they surpassed these in commercial aptitudes, having 

 from time immemorial acted as middlemen between the tribes to the 

 north and those to the south in the exchange of various commodities, and, 

 after the advent of the French, becoming the purveyors and carriers of 

 their fur trade.^ 



After taking up their abode in the vicinity of Quebec, the Hurons 

 were subjected to new conditions, the result of the close neighbourhood 

 and competition of the French colonists, combined with the physical 

 features of the country. These conditions in the first place tended to 

 keep them away from agriculture. 



The traditional mode of farming of the Hurons was very imperfect. 

 It consisted in the production through female labour of supplies of 

 vegetables and maize for family needs. No live stock, no beasts of 

 burden, were kept. Thus, being without the means of manuring the land 

 or drawing fuel long distances, they had to change their location as soon 

 as the fertility of the soil and the supply of firewood within a limited 

 area were exhausted. Such had been the practice in the old Huron 

 country ; such it continued to be with the Huron refugees about Quebec. 

 But here, while the Indians were always free to desert their village site 

 for a new one farther inland, they were no longer at liberty to retrace 

 their steps. The influx of white settlers at their back prevented them 

 from moving in any but one direction. In that way the Hurons, who 

 after their arrival amongst the French colonists had been located on the 

 lowlands bordering the river St. Lawrence, receded gradually from the 



1 Jesviis in JVm'th America, Little Brown, Boston, Int. XXVI, 

 - Champlain, vol. iv. pp. 79-82, lOJ. 

 ' Phanjplain, ibid. 



