28 DISCOVERIES AT A VILLAGE OF THE STONE AGE. 
ETHNIC RELATIONS OF THE PEOPLE. 
Finally, as regards the origin of the people who made these 
kitchen-middens at Boeabec a few words may be said. 
The habits, manners and customs of the people who were 
known as the aboriginal inhabitants of this country when 
Champlain discovered the Bay of Fundy have greatly changed 
through the corrupting influence of contact with the new 
comers. Enough of their old habits and mode of living re- 
main, when considered in the light of the accounts that have 
come down to us from the early explorers, to establish the 
similarity of their habits and mode of living to that of the 
men of the Stone Age who lived at Bocabec. Furthermore, 
the indication of a conical form to the huts, which I think is 
sufficiently shown by the over-lapping of the kitchen-midden 
upon the sleeping bench, and by the great width of the base 
of the doorway of the hut, point strongly to a resemblance 
between these huts and the well-known wigwam of the 
Indians. 
The choosing of a small beach for the village site, the 
fact that they appear to have had canoes or boats of some sort 
to transport the vast quantities of clams which formed an im- 
portant article of their diet, and which could not have been 
dug with ease or found in sufficient quantities in front of their 
village (for, as I have said, the principal clam-flats are at some 
distance from the village), the capture of fish which would 
not take the hook, but must have been taken by spear, har- 
poon, weir or net ; the dependence of the people on hunting 
for the more acceptable variety in their food ; the character 
of the rude pottery ; the use of coarse woven fabrics, and a 
variety of other features of their culture and mode of life, are 
such as we know to have been common to them and the 
Indian tribes of Acadia. 
We are, however, far from having absolute proof that 
these stone-age people were of the same race as the present 
(so called) aborigenes of the country. One needs only to read 
Sir Wm. Dawson’s “ Fossil Man ” to see how many points of 
analogy there are between customs, tools and weapons, the 
remains of art, the methods of the chase, and the mode of 
