seems to have been, next to Hochelaga, the most important
lodgment of the Huron-Iroquois Indians of the St Lawrence
valley.

As the French navigators wandered on the shores of the
Island of Orleans, they fell in with a party of the
Stadacona Indians. These, frightened at the strange faces
and unwonted dress of the French, would have taken to
flight, but Cartier's two Indians, whose names are recorded
as Taignoagny and Domagaya, called after them in their
own language. Great was the surprise of the natives not
only to hear their own speech, but also to recognize in
Taignoagny and Domagaya two members of their own tribe.
The two guides, so far as we can judge from Cartier's
narrative, had come down from the Huron-Iroquois settlements
on the St Lawrence to the Gaspe country, whence Cartier
had carried them to France. Their friends now surrounded
them with tumultuous expressions of joy, leaping and
shouting as if to perform a ceremonial of welcome. Without
fear now of the French they followed them down to their
boats, and brought them a plentiful supply of corn and
of the great pumpkins that were ripening in their fields.

The news of the arrival of the strangers spread at once
through the settlement. To see the ships, canoe after
canoe came floating down the river. They were filled with
men and women eager to welcome their returned kinsmen
and to share in the trinkets which Cartier distributed
with a liberal hand. On the next day the chief of the
tribe, the lord of Canada, as Cartier calls him, Donnacona