[ Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1640, 88 (Cramoisy). His words are,
"de feux enuiron deux mille, et enuiron douze mille personnes." There
were two families to every fire. That by "personnes" adults only are
meant cannot be doubted, as the Relations abound in incidental evidence
of a total population far exceeding twelve thousand. A Huron family
usually numbered from five to eight persons. The number of the Huron
towns changed from year to year. Champlain and Le Caron in 1615,
reckoned them at seventeen or eighteen, with a population of about ten
thousand, meaning, no doubt, adults. Brebeuf, in 1635, found twenty
villages, and, as he thinks, thirty thousand souls. Both Le Mercier and
De Quen, as well as Dollier de Casson and the anonymous author of the
Relation of 1660, state the population at from thirty to thirty-five
thousand. Since the time of Champlain's visit, various kindred tribes or
fragments of tribes had been incorporated with the Hurons, thus more than
balancing the ravages of a pestilence which had decimated them. ]

The region whose boundaries we have given was an alternation of meadows
and deep forests, interlaced with footpaths leading from town to town.
Of these towns, some were fortified, but the greater number were open and
defenceless. They were of a construction common to all tribes of
Iroquois lineage, and peculiar to them. Nothing similar exists at the
present day. [ The permanent bark villages of the Dahcotah of the
St. Peter's are the nearest modern approach to the Huron towns. The
whole Huron country abounds with evidences of having been occupied by a
numerous population. "On a close inspection of the forest," Dr. Tache
writes to me, "the greatest part of it seems to have been cleared at
former periods, and almost the only places bearing the character of the
primitive forest are the low grounds." ] They covered a space of from
one to ten acres, the dwellings clustering together with little or no