8o TRANSACTIONS iSqQ-'oO 



are not as industrious as the women. They still entertain a dis- 

 like for agriculture and steady work. I inquired whether the 

 Huron villagers sought employment at Reid's paper mill near-bj'. 

 I was told they did not, the reason being principally that. ' ' In- 

 dians dislike working in factories ' ' ; they prefer working at 

 home, or in collective workshops, paid by the piece, aud left free 

 to interrupt their work at their fancy. 



The forms of labour resorted to by the Iroquois of Caughna- 

 waga, are very different from those in use by the Hurons of lyor- 

 ette. While the latter community, as we have seen, gets its liv- 

 ing almost entirely through the prosecution of a few traditional 

 manufactures which the industrial and commercial evolution has 

 revived, and in which both men and women participate ; at 

 Caughnawaga, the men are engaged principally in agriculture, 

 lumbering, quarrying and heavy day labour. It is onl}^ of recent 

 years that an industry comparable with that of the Hurons has 

 been introduced : bead work, carried on by women with material 

 imported from Venice. I^acrosses and snowshoes are also made, 

 but not extensively. The Iroquois of Caughnawaga have the 

 reputation to-day of being hard and stead}- workers, which the 

 men of lyorette, generally, have not. 



This contrast is the more striking in that originally the Iro- 

 quois — apart from a slightly superior development of agriculture 

 and a corresponding!}- inferior development of the chase — 

 possessed a labour sj-stem very similar to that of the Hurons, and 

 were broadly speaking of the same social type. 



The explanation, to ni}^ mind, lies mainly in the diversity of 

 their physical environment for the last two hundred years. See 

 the Hurons, settled at a point of the valley where the arable 

 plain is very narrow, close to a vast mountain and forest tract ; 

 the first effect of the advent of the French was to evict the In- 

 dians from the fertile belt, to drive them by degrees to the sand}- 

 terrace and rugged wilderness at the back, to turn them more 

 completely towards the chase and the industries dependent for 

 their raw material on the chase and the forest ; until the day 

 came when the evolution of commerce and industry enabled them 

 to carry on these trades independently of local resources. 



On the other hand, see the Iroquois of Caughnawaga, in the 

 centre of a wide plain tillable over its whole extent, far from any 



