128 



NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



shield which covered the body up to the shoulders." Van der 

 Donck, 5 :2ii 



The people of Hochelaga seem to have had armor in 1535, which 



they showed to Cartier when they described some enemies : " an 

 evill people, who goe all armed even to their fingers' ends. Also 

 they shewed us the manner of their armour, they are made of cordes 

 and wood, finely and cunningly wrought together." Dawson, p.37 



Mr Walter Hough has illustrations of various kinds of coats of 

 mail in his paper, Primitive American Armor, from specimens in 

 the National Museum, dividing these into slat, rod, skin, plate, band 

 and cotton-padded armor. The first three he ascribes to the Iro- 

 quois. For the use of slats bound together he adduces only a 

 remark made by Charlevoix, that, " when they attacked any intrench- 

 ment, they covered their whole body with small, light boards." The 

 remark applies but to one instance, where boards were hastily made 

 and then thrown aside. For the use of skins he quotes from New 

 England Prospect, that the Mohawks " wear sea-horse skins and 

 barks of trees made by their art as impenetrable, it is thought, as 

 steel, wearing a headpiece of the same." There is nothing to sup- 

 port this, the reference being to woven armor, and the error is in 

 the material. At the time Wood wrote, the "Mohawks had no access 

 to the sea, and he probably had never seen one. This leaves the 

 woven rods as the usual Iroquois body armor. 



Many early writers may be quoted beside those given. Lafitau 

 said " their cuirasses were a tissue of wood, or of small sticks of 

 reed cut of proportionate lengths, strongly pressed against each 

 other, woven and enlaced very neatly with small cords made of 

 deer skin." They had similar armor for the limbs. The testimony 

 of Charlevoix is much the same. Figure 59 is from Champlain's 

 picture of a warrior in armor, which agrees well with those which 

 follow. 



Figure 57 is a rear view of a western coat of mail, made of sticks 

 and twine, which may fairly represent that of the Iroquois. Several 

 New York pipes and carved heads have helmets like that in figure 

 58. They seem made of a series of hoops, gradually becoming 

 smaller and sometimes with a knob at the top. They were woven 

 with twine. Another kind was cylindric, with some animal's head 

 in front and a cover for the neck behind. 



