Stone Age in New Brunsimck. 27 



America were not so far advanced in civilization as many of 

 the neighbouring tribes, to whom the use of copper and iron was 

 known long before the advent of Columbus. This, however, 

 may have had something to do with the climate and physical 

 condition of the locality, and more particularly the abundance 

 of means of subsistence which did not necessitate excursions 

 beyond their own native forests and rivers. The aborigines of 

 New Brunswick then comprehended, as now, a seaboard and an 

 inland tribe, speaking dialects for the most part similar, and 

 related by blood to the great Algonquin race of the St. Law- 

 rence and westward.* According to the French missionaries, 

 the seaboard tribe, Micmacs or Souriquois, alone were esti- 

 mated, in 161 1, at from 3,000 to 3,500, not to speak of the 

 St John and other Indians of the inland race called the 

 Etchemins, Eteminquois, better known at the present day as 

 the Melicites, who were then probably more numerous. Now, 

 I believe, the two tribes do not number over a thousand souls. 

 The stone implements met with throughout the Canadian 

 Dominion and Northern United States present similarities in 

 form and workmanship. But what appears remarkable as 

 compared with the Old World, is the finding of very rudely 

 chipped tools along with the highly polished, — a circumstance 

 suggestive of their contemporaneity. It appears, as I shall 

 observe presently, that when we come to examine the Cana- 

 dian celts, and take into account the exact purposes for which 

 they were fabricated, and consider carefully the conditions 

 under which a primitive people would have existed as regards 

 climate, food, and so forth, these discrepancies in regard to 

 the sequence of the stone ages in the two continents admit of 



* Moreover, the similarities of many words to Old World roots have 

 been considered by American philologists as eminently suggestive of a 

 European migration westward, and this is considerably strengthened by 

 comparison of the languages of the Old World with the various dialects of 

 the great Algonquin language, as pointed out by Mr. Rhand, missionary 

 to the Micmac Indians of Nova Scotia, in an appendix to " Dawson's 

 Geology." 



