274 
an animal; and to give them good fortune in their hunting they 
carried ceremonial pack-straps ornamented with representations of 
their visions. 
Contact with Europeans was disastrous to both tribes, although 
the Montagnais welcomed Champlain with enthusiasm when his 
musket gained them a signal victory over the Iroquois. For the 
latter, armed by the Dutch of Pennsylvania, raided far into the 
Montagnais territory, exterminating several bands and scattering 
others. Later, the game supply diminished owing to intensive 
slaughter with firearms; the moose disappeared entirely from certain 
districts, and on the barren grounds the depleted herds of caribou 
ceased to visit many of their ancient haunts. The struggle for exist- 
ence then became harder and starvation more frequent. The fur 
trade helped the Intlians until white men encroached on their best 
trapping and hunting grounds; then it called for greater effort and 
yiehled diminishing returns. Measles and other diseases decimated 
their ranks, and many of the interior natives, urged by missionaries 
to settle on the coast, fell victims to lung afflictions aggravated by 
the damp sea air.^ 
So botli the INIontagnais and the Xaskaj^i declined rapidly. To- 
day the two tribes combined number less than four thousand, 
although the IMontagnais (with some Algonkin and Malecite allies) 
once mustered 1,000 warriors at the mouth of the Saguenay river. 
Mooney gives them a pre-European ])opulation of 5,500, which seems 
a very conservative estimate.- iMost of the survivors are still hunt- 
ers and trappers, more or less enchained to the trading-posts where 
they dispose of their furs for lifles, ammunition, woollen clothing, 
cloth tents, sewing-machines, gramaphones, and other products of our 
modern civilization. The Naskapi in the centre and north of the 
Labrador peninsula have been too isolated to mingle inuch with 
Europeans, Imt the majority of the Montagnais carry an infusion of 
white blood in their veins. 
AUiONKIN 
Adjoining the Montagnais in the east, and merging in the west 
with the Ojibwa of the Great Lakes region, were a number of 
scattered bands commonly classed together as Algonkin, from the 
1 Cf. Jaint’s: “ Ttii* ro'^ls”; m Mussoii, op. c-it. li, i'. 426. 
2Mooiie\': Op. cit., p. 34. 
