90 TRANSACTIONS iSqQ-'oO 



cleanliness about them, and they nearly all appear to be as well 

 kept as the tidiest French Canadian farmer's or mechanic's home. 



The old Huron style of dress has been abandoned. I was 

 able to discover only one member of the tribe, a Huron lady in 

 the nineties, who still retained the traditional costume of the last 

 century, the short skirt with the "mitasses," "leggings" and the 

 moccasins. 



At Caughnawaga, also there has been much admixture of 

 foreign blood. Although the physical type of the Huron -Iroquois 

 is more commonly met with and more strongly marked here than 

 at lyorette, I am assured that there are not more than two 

 families of pure Iroquois extraction. In olden times, a good 

 many children captured by war parties of Iroquois raiding the 

 New England settlements, were taken to Caughnawaga and 

 adopted by the tribe. Numbers of the Caughnawagans trace 

 their origin to the Williams, the Rices, the Hills, &c., of 

 Yankee stock. At various times and under various pretences, 

 outsiders, French, Scotch and others, and even negroes, filtered 

 into the Reserve and intermarried with the Iroquois. But most 

 of these foreign elements sooner or later were absorbed by the 

 community and their descendants to-day — though in some cases 

 their physique may tell — socially speaking cannot be distinguished 

 from the other members of the band. The Iroquois of Caughna- 

 waga, in contrast with the Hurons of Lorette, instead of being 

 weakened by foreign intrusion, have been strengthened by it. 



Iroquois is still the tongue generally spoken here. About 

 one fourth of the population cannot even speak or understand 

 any other. As you leave the train at Adirondack Junction, half 

 an hour after emerging from the noisy thoroughfares of Montreal, 

 with their flow of French and English physiognomies and their 

 clatter of French. and English sounds, you are surprised to find 

 yourself suddenly amid people, in physique and language, quite 

 strange. 



You are met by massive, swaithy workmen who salute as 

 they pass with a guttural "Sego. Sego." You proceed up the 

 long rows of small, wooden houses, interspersed with massive 

 stone ones, and a few of a somewhat more modern and decorative 

 style. Some of these are very neat, but as a rule the homes at 

 Caughnawaga did not seem to me as well kept as those I saw at 



