eople were not
in such close communication with the town of Hochelaga as to have the
same opinions and perhaps the Canada view of the Hurons as good persons
was the original view of the early settlers, while the Hochelagans
may have had unpleasant later experiences or echo those of the Ottawa
Algonquins. But furthermore they told him of the Richelieu River where
apparently it took a month to go with their canoes from Sainte Croix
(Stadacona) to a country "where there are never ice nor snow; but where
there are constant wars one against another, and there are oranges,
almonds, nuts, plums, and other kinds of fruit in great abundance, and
oil is made from trees, very good for the cure of diseases; there the
inhabitants are clothed and accoutred in skins like themselves." This
land Cartier considered to be Florida,--but the point for our present
purpose is the frequenting of the Richelieu, Lake Champlain and lands
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