FRENCH IN NORTH AMERICA. 405 



with which one race supplants another over large areas. When Car- 

 tier arrived- in the St. Lawrence he described large and permanent In- 

 dian villages at Stadacona and Hochelaga ; but little more than half a 

 century afterwards, when Champlain visited the same localities, he 

 apparently found few Indians about Quebec, and none permanently 

 settled at Montreal. There may have been some exaggeration in Car- 

 tier's account, but the main fact remains, aud it may probably be ac- 

 counted for by the increasing power of the Iroquois, which made those 

 places dangerous abodes, and compelled the tribes, which formerly 

 occupied them, to retreat into the interior. Again, the country north 

 of Lake Ontario is described by Champlain as affording signs of having 

 been formerly extensively cultivated and thickly inhabited, but in his 

 day it was entirely deserted, and only used as a hunting ground by the 

 neighbouring tribes. But the country of the Ottawa, and across to 

 the Northern shore of Lake Huron, as also the Western Peuinsula, is 

 described as full of Hurons, and of Algonquin, Ottawa, Nipissin°- and 

 other allied tribes. Amongst the Hurons alone, in the limited area 

 between Matchedash Bay and Lake Simcoe, he reckons 18 walled vil- 

 lages, numbering 2,000 fighting men, and Sagard puts the whole popu- 

 lation down at 30 or 40,000 souls.* Yet, within 30 years from that 

 time this region was also a desert, and the remnants of the former in- 

 habitants had retreated to the Northern Lakes, and as far west as the 

 Sioux. The Hurons indeed were almost exterminated, and the paltry 

 remnant which had not been either destroyed or incorporated 

 with other tribes, were collected and brought down to Quebec, 

 where their descendants still occupy the village of Lorette. All 

 the tribes of the Western Peninsula, and the Eries on the South 

 shore of that Lake, seem also to have been utterly exterminated, as 

 well as the greater part of the Illinois, and other Western tribes 

 and the Iroquois were dominant over all Upper Canada, and all 

 the northern part of New York and Ohio. All this occurred with- 

 out the intervention of the white man, and there has been no disap- 

 pearance of a savage race since from the diseases and vices which civil- 

 ization brings in its train, which has surpassed, even if it has equalled 

 in completeness and rapidity, the desolation which the conquering 



* It would not appear that this estimate can have been very greatly exaggerated, from 

 the account given of the missionary establishments. They numbered in their most flourish- 

 ing period, about 1645, 42 missionaries besides their attendants. Of these two or three only 

 remained at the principal>tation of Ste. Marie, at the mouth of the Wye, five other villages 

 were called residences, where one or two missionaries remained permanently, and the rest 

 moved from village to village often having as many as 10 under their charge. As several of 

 these villages are mentioned as containing from 100 to 200 cabins, and 4 or 5 families residing 

 in each, the whole population cannot have fallen far short of 30,000. 



