114 THE HURON RACE AND ITS HEAD-FORM. 



an Indian race, the type of one great division of the American abori- 

 gines, which, in its various subdivisions, occupied extensive regions of 

 the Northern continent, and for fully two centuries affected the course 

 of events by which its later history has been determined, may help 

 as a slight contribution to the materials for future classification. 



The history of the aboriginal tribes originally found in occupation of 

 the St. Lawrence valley and Western Canada strikingly illustrates the 

 instability of savage nations. There is little doubt that the Indians 

 found by Cartier at Quebec and Montreal, in 1535, belonged to the 

 Iroquois stock. But the early French Missionaries learned from them 

 traditions of the ancient superiority of the Algonquins ; and before the 

 close of the sixteenth century the latter had displaced them on the 

 island of Montreal and in the lower valley of the St. Lawrence. 

 Thenceforth their hunting grounds lay to the south of that river; and 

 the country of the Five Nations, into which they vi^ere divided, 

 extended between the Hudson and the Genesee rivers, along the 

 southern shore of Lake Ontario ; Lake Champlain was commanded by 

 them j and the French were compelled to erect a strong fort at the 

 mouth of the Richelieu to cheek their hostile expeditions into the 

 St. Lawrence. 



There is reason, however, for assuming that the Iroquois of Lower 

 Canada on retiring to Western New York, did not. thereby occupy for 

 the first time the country of their later home ; but only joined them- 

 selves to another branch of the same stock. The traditions of three 

 of the members of their later confederacy recognised no precursors in 

 the occupancy of their territory. According to the settled faith both 

 of the Onondagas and the Senecas, they were autochthones, sprung 

 from the soil on which they then dwelt j while the Oneidas cherished 

 a sacred legend, connected with their own Caaba, or Holy Stone, which 

 told that the Onondagas and Oneidas sprang together out of the 

 ground, on the banks of the Oswego river. 



In the region thus claimed as the mother earth of three of the 

 Iroquois nations, they dwelt through all the period of their authentic 

 history, yniting in a remarkable federal league, Oneidas, Onondagas, 

 Cayugas, Senecas, and Mohawks. To this a sixth nation : the Tusca- 

 roras; was admitted, on their expulsion from North Carolina in 1715, 

 The term nation, as thus applied to the subdivisions of the Iroquois. 

 Hurons, and other Indian races, is apt to suggest an exaggerated idea 

 of numbers. The word sept, clan, or tribe, would better express the 



