82 TRANSACTIONS l899-'oO 



the soil of the champaign region, no doubt facihtated their passage 

 from the chase to agriculture. 



The physical features of Caughnawaga favoured the develop- 

 ment of still other means of living among our Iroquois. The 

 nearness of the River St. L,awrence and of the Machine rapids en- 

 abled them to preserve their old-time expertness in paddling bark 

 canoes through narrow, precipitous, river channels. That, in 

 turn, led them to take employment as carriers for the fur trade 

 companies, at the beginning of this nineteenth century and 

 later on, when the lumber trade set in, to become drivers of 

 rafts and to engage in the lumber camps. 



Then again, the outcrops of good building stone on their 

 reserve and the construction, in the vicinity, of railways and 

 bridges, afforded them opportunities for earning good wages at 

 heavy work, and broke them into steady labour. At present 

 about ICO Iroquois get regular employment at various ta.sks on 

 the works of the Dominion Bridge Company, at lyachine. 



While thus acquiring to a great extent the white working- 

 man's ability for heavy labour, the Iroquois of Caughnawaga 

 appear to have lost some of their old aptness for protacted running 

 and marching. Not man}' years ago after taking a crib down the 

 lyachine rapids and leaving it at the "foot of the current," op- 

 posite Montreal, a part}' of fifteen or sixteen Iroquois would 

 walk back to their village, some nine or ten miles away. 

 Nowadays they wait for the next train. Much the greater part 

 of their travelling is done by rail. 



In short, while the conditions of ph3'sical and social environ- 

 ment at lyOrette both tended to keep the Huron away from 

 agriculture, enabling him up to quite recent times to support him- 

 self by hunting, kindred forms of mere gathering labour and 

 small manufacturing industries dependent on these ; at Caugh- 

 nawaga, owing to a very different physical environment, the 

 Iroquois was forced to change, to give up the chase, to break him- 

 self into farming and like forms of heavj' extractive labour. 



To-day, if we consider onlj' the forms of labour b}' which 

 they support themselves and their fitness for steady work, the 

 Iroquois have come nearer to us, have remained less primitive, 

 less savage, than the Hurons, 



