»4 TRANSACTIONS 1899- OO 



(i) The village plot is subdivided into small lots. Each 

 family is entitled to an area sufficient for a house, besides a width 

 of 30 feet in front and 3 feet at the back of that house. 



(2) The Common was originally, as indicated by its French 

 name "Clos des Cochons," a pasture for hogs. It still continues 

 to be owned in common b}^ the Huron community, but is now 

 used almost entirely as a hide-dressing ground by Mr. Bastien, 

 who has erected thereon sheds and drying scaffolds. 



(3) The 1600 arpents Reserve also remains undivided. It 

 was granted to the Hurons that they might obtain from it their 

 annual supplies of fuel. The greater part is still woods. Six or 

 seven families, as we have seen, have taken up their abode there 

 as farmers, but the farming is of such a primitive character, that 

 it has not been found necessary to trace any boundaries between 

 the various farms. 



(4) As for the Rocmont Reserve, it is wholly a distant 

 mountainous forest tract, provided in recent times by the Canadian 

 Government for the support of the Hiirons, but neither occupied 

 nor worked by them. However, the}' derive a small revenue 

 from it, the cut of pine and spruce being leased out every year to 

 lumbermen, and the proceeds paid over to the band in the form 

 of allowances. 



It should be observed that all of this property is held in com- 

 mon by the Hurons. With them private ownership of land does 

 not exist. Neither have they any desire, as far as I could as- 

 certain, to individually own land. I know onl}^ of one Huron to-day 

 who holds privately some land — and not in the Reserve, but adjoin- 

 ing it. In the past as well, cases of private ownership have been 

 exceedingly^ rare. 



In connection, then, with the system of property of the 

 Hurons, what strikes most the social observer, is, on the one 

 hand, the limitation and sparseness of their holdings at lyorette, 

 their place of abode ; and, on the other hand, the absence of 

 private ownership of land. 



At Caughnawaga, things are in a different way. At an earlier 

 date than the Hurons, the Iroquois had to forsake the chase 

 and to take earnestly to agriculture. As a result, they acquired 

 the notion of property, the desire to have, and the aptness to 

 hold, land collectively, or even privately. 



