Stone Age in New Brunswick. 25 



language practised by the early settlers, in hearing residents 

 address the Indian with the prefix "Brother." Brother 

 Indian, forsooth ! He will never be a brother to the white 

 man, whom it might better become if, instead of fraternal 

 epithets, he contributed something more solid in the way of 

 material help ; at all events he might try to do his very 

 best, so as to let his poor brother die out in a respectable 

 manner. 



It is not four hundred years since the early voyagers, who 

 first came in contact with the natives of New Brunswick, found 

 them living in wigwams made of birch-bark, and using canoes 

 of the same material, without any apparent knowledge whatever 

 of metals save native copper, which they hung about their 

 persons in the shape of ornaments. In fact, like the aborigines 

 of other portions of the continent, they were nomadic hunters, 

 living entirely on the wild denizens of the forest and water, in 

 the pursuit of which they used weapons made entirely of stone 

 and bone, little aware of the vast mines of iron underlying 

 more than one encampment where we now pick up their 

 stone implements.* But rough as were their weapons in 

 general, not a few show the very perfection of polish and 

 finishing. They had flint knives of divers sizes and shapes 

 for skinning beaver, mink, otter, deer, and bears ; arrow- 

 heads to penetrate the thick fur of the first, and spear-points 

 of large size wherewith the reindeer and moose were slain, 

 and the sturgeon's mailed hide pierced ; axes to split fire- 

 wood and dig through the ice ; wedges of divers dimensions 

 and degrees of workmanship, and the war axe with which 

 they fought their deadly foes, the Iroquois of the banks of 

 the St. Lawrence, or the natives of Newfoundland, with whom, 

 according to tradition, they carried on wars and formed 



* For example, the vast iron mines of Woodstock, which furnish an 

 excellent quality of iron, giving an average ratio of 32 per cent, in the 

 samples. See Hind's Report, p. 161, and Prof. Bailey's Report on the 

 Mines and Minerals of New Brunswick, p. 58. 



