f the houses was
occupied by several families, as the head of each house shared his
shelter with his kinfolk. When a daughter was married she brought her
husband home, as a rule, and her father added an apartment to his house
by the simple device of taking out the end wall of bark and building on
another section. Each household had its own stone hearth, the smoke
escaping through openings in the roof. A common passage-way led through
the middle of the house. On the sides were rows of bunks covered with
furs. Weapons hung on the walls, and meat broth or messes of corn and
beans simmered fragrantly in their kettles. Some of these long houses
held fifty or sixty people each, and there were over fifty of them in
all. In that climate, with warlike neighbors, the advantage of such an
organized community over scattered single wigwams was very great. All
around were cleared fields dotted with great yellow pumpkins, where corn
and beans had grown during the past summer.

To the sons of Norman and Breton peasants it was evident that these
fields had not been cultivated for centuries, like those of France, any
more than the wall around Hochelaga was the work of stone-masons toiling
under generations of feudal lords. If this were the chief city of these
people, they had no Norumbega. But it was very picturesque in its sylvan
barbaric way, among the limitless forests of scarlet and gold and
crimson and deep green, which stretched away over the mountains. Upon
the rude cots in the wigwams as they passed, Cartier's men saw rich and
glossy furs of the silver fox, the beaver, the mink and the marten,
which princesses might be proud to wear. Curious bead-work there was
also on the quivers, pouches, moccasins and belts of these wild people,
done in white and purple shell beads made and polished by hand and not
more than a quarter of an inch long and an eighth of an inch thick.
These were sewn in patterns of animals, birds, fishes and other things
not unlike the emblems of old families in France. Belts of these beads
were worn by those who seemed to be the chief men of Hochelaga.
Porcupine quills were also used in embroidery and head-bands.

The people thronged into the open central space, which was about a
stone's throw across, some carrying their sick, some their children,
that the strangers might touch them for healing or for good fortune. The
old chief, who was called Agouhana, was brought in, helpless from
paralysis, upon a deerskin