THE HURON RACE A.ND ITS HEAD-FORM. 123 



In addition to the detailed narrations of Indian history and manners 

 derived from the Jesuit Relations, the Hurons present some specialties 

 that suggest the probable deduction of more trustworthy results from 

 a study of their remains, than from those of other tribes displaced or 

 exterminated during the brief historic period of the American conti- 

 nent. They were first visited by Champlain in 1615. In 1649, their 

 country was desolated by the Iroquois, and the miserable remnant 

 finally dispersed. No survivor remained within their ancient territory. 

 Some found refuge among the kindred Petuns, Neuters, and Eries, 

 and shared in their subsequent fate. The fortunes of another body of 

 the fugitives curiously illustrates the Indian practice of adoption. The 

 survivors of two of the Huron towns opened negotiations with their 

 Seneca foes, 'whose country lay nearest of all the Five Nations to their 

 own. The victors adopted them into the Seneca Nation ; and, joined 

 by a few other Huron refugees, they founded a town of their own iu 

 the Seneca country, on one of the small lakes of Western New York, 

 to which they gave the name of Gandougarae. Thenceforth they were 

 identified with the Iroquois, and disappear, as a separate people, from 

 the ranks of the Aborigines. Another band, under the conduct of 

 the Jesuit Missionaries, made their way to Quebec ; and there, after 

 various vicissitudes, they were at length settled at Lorette, on the 

 St. Charles river, where their lineal descendants still preserve some 

 living memorial of the lost nation of the Hurons. But their native 

 language has been exchanged for a French patois, and their blood so 

 intermingled with that of the European colonists, that but for the 

 interest they inherit In the division of certain Indian funds, they 

 would long since have merged into the general population, and ceased 

 to be distinguished from the French habitans by whom they are 

 surrounded. 



The admixture of blood which has thus nearly efi"aced the genuine 

 characteristics of the Hurons of Lorette, has more or less affected the 

 descendants of the Iroquois, and of all the aboriginal native tribes of 

 Canada and the region to the south of the great lakes. The remains, 

 therefore recovered from the ancient cemeteries of the Huron country, 

 which was finally abandoned in the first half of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, have a special value for ethnological purposes. They are free 

 from the vitiating infiuences afi"ecting tribes long in contact with 

 European colonists; and may be assumed to exhibit whatever charac- 

 teristics specially marked this isolated people. Nevertheless it has to 



