On the St. Lawrence, between the Gulf and Quebec, there were wandering Algonquin tribes, generally known as Montagnais or Mountaineers, living in rude camps covered with bark or brush, eking a precarious existence from the rivers and woods, and at times on the verge of starvation, when they did not hesitate at cannibalism. Between Quebec and the Upper Ottawa there were no village communities of any importance; for the _Petite Nation_ of the river of that name was only a small band of Algonquins, living some distance from the Ottawa. On the Upper Ottawa we meet with the nation of the Isle (Allumette) and the Nipissings, both Algonquin tribes, mentioned in a previous chapter. They were chiefly hunters and fishermen, although the former cultivated some patches of ground. On Georgian Bay we come to a nation speaking one of the dialects of a language quite distinct from that {116} of the Algonquins. These were Hurons, numbering in all some twenty thousand souls, of whom ten thousand or more were adults, living in thirty-two villages, comprising seven hundred dwellings of the same style as Cartier saw at Hochelaga. These villages were protected by stockades or palisades, and by some natural features of their situation--a river, a lake, or a hill. Neither the long houses nor the fortifications were as strongly or as cleverly constructed as those of the Iroquois. Maize, pumpkins, and tobacco were the principal plants cultivated. Sunflowers were also raised, chiefly for the oil with which they greased their hair and bodies. Their very name meant "Shock-heads"--a nickname originating from the exclamation of some Frenchmen, when they first saw their grotesque way of wearing their hair, "_Quelles hures!_" (What a head of hair!) Champlain speaks of a tribe whom he met after leaving Lake Nipissing, in 1615, and called the _Cheveux Releves_, or people with the stiff hair, but they were wandering Algonquins. Champlain called the Hurons, Attigouantans, though their true name was Ouendat, afterwards corrupted to Wyandot, which still clings to a remnant of the race in America.