For Sale by J. Hope & Sons, Ottawa; The Copp-Clark Co., Toronto
Bernard Quaritch, London, England

1899







II. Hochelagans and Mohawks; A Link in Iroquois History.

By W. D. LIGHTHALL, M.A., F.R.S.L.

(Presented by John Reade and read May 26, 1899.)


The exact origin and first history of the race whose energy so stunted
the growth of early Canada and made the cause of France in America
impossible, have long been wrapped in mystery. In the days of the first
white settlements the Iroquois are found leagued as the Five Nations in
their familiar territory from the Mohawk River westward. Whence they
came thither has always been a disputed question. The early Jesuits
agreed that they were an off-shoot of the Huron race whose strongholds
were thickly sown on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, but the Jesuits
were not clear as to their course of migration from that region, it
being merely remarked that they had once possessed some settlements on
the St. Lawrence below Montreal, with the apparent inference that they
had arrived at these by way of Lake Champlain. Later writers have drawn