124 THE HURON RACE AND ITS HEAD-FORM. 



be borne in remembrance that the system of adopting members of 

 other tribes, by which, as has been seen, they profited to escape utter 

 extermination by their Iroquois foe, was also a practice of their own ; 

 though on a much less extensive scale. The Iroquois, throughout the 

 whole period in which their history is known to us, were a warlike, 

 aggressive race, constantly encroaching on their neighbours, and glad 

 to recruit their numbers by the adoption, not merely of captives, but 

 by admitting both friendly and conquered nations of widely different 

 origin, into their confederacy. The Hurons, on the contrary, occupied 

 a comparatively isolated region ; acted mainly on the defensive ; and 

 within the period of definite Indian history, were augmented at most 

 by the adoption of occasional captives, at the will of individuals, who 

 thus chose, according to native custom, to supply the place of some 

 lost member of a family. Both indeed were actuated by the same 

 idea, and aimed at recruiting their numbers, diminished by the waste 

 of war, by adopting prisoners, after their revenge had been sated by 

 the torture of a sufiicient number of selected victims ; nor did even 

 such extreme ethnical diversity as that of the European constitute an 

 insurmountable impediment to such af&liation. But the motives which 

 tempted weaker nations to join the Iroquois were wanting in the ease 

 of the Hurons. There are, therefore, strong grounds for anticipating 

 an approximation to purity of race among the Hurons of the well- 

 defined period illustrated by the contents of their cemeteries on the 

 Georgian Bay, which it would be rash to assume in reference to similar 

 evidence derived from any Iroquois ossuary. So little did differences 

 of race interfere with afiiliation among the latter, that an aged squaw 

 of pure white blood, reputed to be nearly a century old, survived till 

 recently, — if she does not still live, — as a member of the Mohawk tribe 

 on the Bay of Quinte. Her Indian name is Ste-nah, which is supposed 

 to be a contraction of the name Christina. She is described to me, by 

 an educated Mohawk Indian, as a full blood Sko-ha-ra, or Dutchwoman. 

 She was taken by the Mohawks when a child, during the Revolutionary 

 war, and when I heard of her last, in 1868, was living with her grand- 

 daughter, the wife of a Mohawk chief. To this ready adoption of 

 foreigners into their tribes may be due in part the occurrence of very 

 diversified head- forms among the crania recovered from Iroquois and 

 Huron ossuaries. Keeping in view the facts thus indicated, I proceed 

 to record some results derived from a study of the examples submitted 

 to examination. 



