hildren among the
Iroquois, like their grandchildren among the Algonquins, remembered
perfectly well the fact of their Huron and Algonquin wrongs, and led
many a war party back to scenes known to them through tradition, and
which it was their ambition to recover. It seems then to be the fact
that the Mohawks proper, or some of their villages, while perhaps not
exactly Hochelagans, were part of the kindred peoples recently sprung
from and dominated by them and were driven out at the same time. The
two peoples--Mohawks and Iroquets--had no great time before, if not at
the time of Cartier's arrival--been one race living together in the St.
Lawrence valley: In the territory just west of the Mohawk valley, they
found the "Senecas" as the Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas together were
at first called, and soon, through the genius of the Mohawk Hiawatha,
they formed with them the famous League, in the face of the common
enemy. By that time the Oneidas had become separated from the Mohawks.
These indications place the date of the League very near 1600. The
studies of Dr. Kellogg of Plattsburgh on the New York side of Lake
Champlain and of others on the Vermont shore, who have discovered
several Mohawk sites on that side of the lake may be expected to supply
a link of much interest on the whole question, from the comparison of
pottery and pipes. On the whole the Hochelagan facts throw much light
both forward on the history of the Iroquois and backwards on that of the
Huron stock. Interpreted as above, they afford a meagre but connected
story through a period hitherto lost in darkness, and perhaps a ray by
which further links may still be discovered through continued
archaeological investigation.
NOTE. Like the numbers of the Hochelagan race, the question
how long they had been in the St. Lawrence valley must be
problematical. Sir William Dawson describes the site of Hochelaga
as indicating a residence of several generations. Their own
statements regarding the Huron country--that they "had never
been there", and that they gathered their knowledge of it
from the Ottawa Algonquins, permits some deductions. If the
Hochelagans--including their old men--had never been westward among
their kindred, it is plain that the migration must have taken place
more than the period of an old man's life previous--that is to say
more than say eighty years. If to this we add that the old men
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