THE MUTABILITY OF INDIAN RACES. 



161 



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 Cham- 

 plain 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 Peninsula, is described as full of Hurons, 

 and of Algonquin, Ottawa, Mpissing, and other allied 

 tribes. Amongst the Hurons alone, in the limited area 

 between Matchedash Bay and Lake Simcoe, he reckons 

 eighteen walled villages, numbering 2,000 fighting men, 

 and Sagard puts the whole population down at 30,000 or 

 40,000 souls.* Yet, within thirty 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 ex- 

 terminated, and the paltry remnant which had not been 

 either destroyed or incorporated with other tribes, were 

 collected and brought down to Quebec, where their de- 

 scendants 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, 



* It would not appear that this estimate can have been very greatly ex- 

 aggerated, from the account given of the missionary establishments. They 

 numbered in their most flourishing period, about the year 1645, forty-two 

 missionaries besides their attendants. Of these two or three only remained 

 at the principal station of Ste. Marie, at the mouth of the Wye, five other 

 villages were called residences, where one or two missionaries remained per- 

 manently, and the rest moved from village to village often having as many 

 as ten under their charge. As several of these villages are mentioned as 

 containing from 100 to 200 cabins, and four to five families residing in 

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



VOL. II. M 



