l899-'00 TRANSACTIONS 8 1 



extensive mountain or forest area : the advent of the white settler 

 had not the effect of depriving these Iroquois of arable land ( abun- 

 dant in the vicinity), but it had the effect of cutting them off from 

 their hunting grounds (inex-tensiv; and far distant) at the back. 

 Caughnawaga was at an early date encircled by a belt of farm 

 settlements which isolated it from all mountain tracts and restrict- 

 ed the run of the Iroquois. The latter were thus at the outset 

 forced out of the chase, and, at the same time, out of those in- 

 dustries dependent on the chase and the forest. When, many 

 years later, the progress of mechanical arts and transportation 

 agencies made it practicable to carry on manufacturing by means 

 of raw material imported from distant lands, the very tradition of 

 the most important industries (save bead work) no longer sub- 

 sisted among the Iroquois. Meanwhile the men had been con- 

 strained to find other means of living ; they had taken to 

 agriculture. 



The social observer who visits Caughnawaga is deeply im- 

 pressed at seeing still attached to almost ever}^ home in that ex- 

 tensive village, a plot on which are grown the very crops describ- 

 ed by Champlain, Br^beuf and the early explorers as characteristic 

 of the old Huron-Iroquois agriculture : Indian corn, or maize, 

 pumpkins, beans, tobacco and sunflowers, to which potatoes are 

 added. 



About one fourth of the population of Caughnawaga, say 

 ICG families, depend mainly on agriculture for a living. Several 

 of these have under cultivation loo arpents ; some thirty families 

 work as much as 200 or 300 arpents. 



These modern Iroquois, as is here seen, are very different 

 from the primitive type, with whom agriculture did not de- 

 velop beyond mere garden work carried on by the women folk. 



Primitive communities, accustomed to support themselves 

 through forms of labour which consist in the mere gathering of 

 natural products (through hunting for instance), do not 

 willingly give these up for the more arduous pursuits of agri- 

 culture. Some sort of constraint is necessary to bring about the 

 change. In the case of the Iroquois of Caughnawaga, it was the 

 deprivation of their hunting grounds which made agriculture a 

 necessity. At the same time, the depth and general fertility of 



