THE INDIANS OF CANADA 
PART 1 
CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 
When Samuel Champlain in 1603 sailed up the St. Lawrence 
river and agreed to support the Algonkian Indians at Tadoussac 
against the aggression of the Iroquois, he could not foresee that the 
petty strife between those two apparently insignificant hordes of 
“ savages ” would one day decide the fate of New France and of the 
vast territory that stretched for an unknown distance to the west. 
At the time no other choice lay open to him. The migratory Algon- 
kians and their allies, the Hurons, controlled most of the territory 
wliich he hoped to explore, possessed the best means — birch-bark 
canoes and snow-shoes — of travelling through that territory, and 
supplied the furs from which he hoped to finance his explorations. 
Of the Iroquois to the southward he knew little except that they 
])ractised agriculture, built permanent or semi-permanent villages, 
and were far less rich in the furs which at tliat time seemed to be the 
most important of the country’s natural resources. Had Champlain, 
like his predecessor Cartier, encountered first the Iroquois on the 
St. Lawrence river and discovered their military strength and genius 
for political organization, France might to-day be the dominant power 
in North America. But fate decreed that the hostility of a few 
thousand Indians should check the expansion of the new colony and 
determine the course of history. 
When the Dominion was discovered, its inhabitants, if we may 
trust one of our foremost authorities,^ numbered only about 220,000; 
3 'et they roamed over all the tei’ritory from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
and from the Great Lakes to the Arctic coast. There was only one 
section of the country (apart from the mountain peaks and some 
islands in the Arctic archipelago) to which perhaps no tribe laid 
claim, namely, a tract of a few hundred square miles in the foothills 
1 Mooiiny, .1.: " AlwriKinnl Pormlation nl’ Ainerico." ; Snntii. Misr. Coll., vol. 80. No. 7, p. 33 
(Wasliingtoti, 1928). The i»‘esc-nt population, lai'gely of mixed blood, is rouglily llO.flOfl. 
1 
