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. Lawrence as a spur (probably an
adventurous fishing party) from the great Huron-Iroquois centre about
Lake Huron[7]; for that their advent had been recent appears from the
fewness of sites discovered, from the smallness of the population,
considering the richness of the country, and especially from the fact
that the Huron, and the Seneca, and their own tongues were still
mutually comprehensible, notwithstanding the rapid changes of Indian
dialects. Everything considered, their coming might perhaps be placed
about 1450, which could give time for the settlements on Lake Champlain,
unearthed by Dr. D.S. Kellogg and others and rendered probable by their
pottery and other evidence as being Huron-Iroquois.[8] Cartier, as we
have seen, described the Hochelagan towns along the river.