302 THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS AND THEIB FOLK-LOBE 



Indians, and the Montagnais or shore Indians. The 

 last of the Jesuit missionaries to the Montagnais of 

 Tadoussac — the learned Father Labrosse, respecting 

 whose death in 1782 there is an interesting legend* 

 — had an ingenious theory of the origin of the North 

 American Indian. He maintained that when Solomon 

 decided upon the erection of his temple at Jerusalem 

 he despatched vessels to every known part of the 

 globe for artists and materials. One of these ships 

 was driven by a storm upon the coast of North 

 America, and the crew, unable, from their ignorance 

 of navigation, to trace their way back, landed, and 

 were the first inhabitants of this continent. And in 

 support of his theory the Jesuit indicated what he 

 thought the points of resemblance between Indians and 

 Israelites, by no means complimentary to the latter.j- 

 At the time of the first arrival of Europeans at Ta- 

 doussac, and before the advent of missionaries among 

 them, the Montagnais were of the lowest Algonquin 

 type. Parkman J relates that often, goaded by dead- 

 ly famine, they would subsist on roots, the bark and 

 buds of trees, or the foulest offal ; and in cases of ex- 

 tremitj'-, even cannibalism was not rare among them. 

 The Indians of the interior have continued most of 

 these practices up to quite modern times. No later 



* Translated from Abbe Casgrain in Principal Grant's Pictur- 

 esque Canada, and in Cliambers's Guide to the Saguenay and Lake 

 St. John. 



f James Mackenzie's Account of the King's Posts in Labrador 

 . with a Description of the Natives, and Journal of a Trip 

 through those Countries in 1808, published by Hon. L. R. Masson in 

 Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-ouest (Quebec, 1890). 



X In his introduction to The Jesuits inNortl\ America. 



