Hochelagans and Mohawks: A Link in Iroquois HistoryLighthall, W. D. (William Douw)
History
Hochelagans and Mohawks: A Link in Iroquois History
Lighthall, W. D. (William Douw)
Indians of North America -- Québec (Province) -- History; Iroquois Indians; Mohawk Indians
far south of them by the Hochelagans at that period. At the beginning of
the seventeenth century Capt. John Smith met the canoes of an Iroquois
people on the upper part of Chesapeake Bay.
We may now draw some conclusions. Originally the population of the St.
Lawrence valley seems to have been occupied by Algonquins, as these
people surrounded it on all sides. A question I would like to see
investigated is whether any of these built villages and grew corn here,
as did some of the Algonquins of the New England coast and those of
Allumette Island on the Ottawa. This might explain some of the deserted
Indian clearings which the early Jesuits noted along the shore of the
river, and of which Champlain, in 1611, used one of about 60 acres
at Place Royale, Montreal. Cartier, it is seen, expressly explains
some of them to be Huron-Iroquois clearings cultivated under his own
observation. The known Algonquins of the immediate region were all
nomadic.
In 1534 we have, from below Stadacona (Quebec) to above Hochelaga
(Montreal), and down the Richelieu River to Lake Champlain, the valley
in possession of a Huron-Iroquois race, dominated by Hochelaga, a town
of say 2,000 souls, judging from the Huron average and from Cartier's
details. The descendants of the Hochelagans in 1642 pointed out the
spots where there were "several towns" on the island. Mr. Beauchamp
holds, with Parkman, Dawson and other writers, that "those who pointed
out spots in 1642 were of an _Algonquin_ tribe, not descendants of the
Mohawk Hochelagans, but locally their successors." But I cannot accept
this Algonquin theory, as their connection with the Hochelagans is
too explicit and I shall give other reasons further on. The savages,
it is true, called the island by an Algonquin name; "the island where
there was a city or village,"[6] the Algonquin phrase for which was
Minitik-Outen-Entagougiban, but these later terms have small bearing.
The site of one of the towns on the island is conjectured, from the
finding of relics, to have been at Longue Pointe, nine miles below
Hochelaga; a village appears from Cartier's account of his third
voyage to have existed about the Lachine Rapids; and another was some
miles below, probably at Point St. Charles or the Little River at
Verdun. Fourteen skeletons, buried after the Mohawk fashion, have been
discovered on the upper slope of Westmount, the southern ridge of Mount
Royal, about a mile from Hochelaga and not far from an old Indian well,
indicating possibly the proximity of another pre-historic town-site
of the race, and at any rate a burying ground. The identification
and excavations were made by the writer. If, however, the southern
enemies, called Toudamans, five of whose scalps were shown Cartier at
Stadacona were, as one conjecture has it, Tonontouans or Senecas, the
Iroquois identity theory must be varied, but it is much more likely
the Toudamans were the Etchemins. At any rate it seems clear that the
Hochelagan race came down the St.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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