CHAPTER XIX 
AGRICULTURAL TRIBES OF THE EASTERN WOODLANDS 
When Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence river in 1585 
ho found Iroquoians cultivating the land and controlling the country 
around the present site of Montreal; but when Champlain followed 
him sixty-eight years later this region was occupied by Algonkins, 
and the only part of Canada controlled by Iroquoians was the penin- 
sula of southern Ontario south and west of lake Simeoe.^ In the 
early seventeenth century, “the Hurons (or Wyandots), allied in 
origin and language to the Iroquois, numbered about 16,000 souls, 
and f I welt in several large villages in a narrow district on the high 
ground between lake Simcoe and Georgian bay of lake Huron. Their 
dwellings were bark cabins, clustered within stoutly palisaded walls, 
and near each fortified town were fields of corn, beans, pumpkins, and 
tobacco. Agricultural in habit, keen traders, and in the main sedent- 
ary, these semi-naked savages made short hunting and fishing excur- 
sions, and laid up stores for the winter. They were better fighters 
than the Algonkins- around them, yet were obliged gradually to 
withdraw northward and westward from Iroquois persecution, and 
during the period of the Jesuit missions wore almost annihilated by 
the latter. To the southwest, across a wide stretch of unpopulated 
forest, were the allies and kindred of the Hurons, the Tionontates, 
called also Petuns, or Tobacco Nation, a term having its origin in 
their custom of cultivating large fields of tobacco, which commodity 
they used in a widespread barter with other tribes. To the southeast 
of the Petuns, west of lake Ontario and on both sides of the gorge 
of Niagara, were the peaceful Atiwandaronks, who, being friends 
alike of Iroquois, Algonkins, and Hurons, were known as the Neutral 
Nation. To the eastward of the Neutrals, strongly entrencherl in 
the interlocking basins of the Genesee and the Mohawk, lay the dread 
confederacy of the Iroquois, who in time were to spread like a 
pestilence over the lands of all their neighbours.'’" 
1 Hewitt (J. .\. B., nrticle " llumns,'’ llunclbook of American Indians Xorth of Mexico) asserts 
that tlie xocidnilary collected by Cartier on Montreal island indicates that the inhabitants were 
Hurons, wlio must subsequently have retreated to the westward. Yet tlie pottery and other objects 
dug u|i at Montreal resemble most closely remains from Mohawk and Onondaga sites in New York 
and \’ermont, and the Iradition.s of these two tribes bring them from the St. Lawrence. The 
ainiiations of Cartier’.s Hochelagans are, therefore, still unsettled. 
- i.e. Algonkiaiis, inrluiling both tlie Algonkin proper and tin; Ojibwa. 
3 “ Jesuit Ilf'lations," vol. 1, p. 22. 
