Title:  Hochelagans and Mohawks

Author:  W. D. Lighthall

Release Date:  January 24, 2005 [eBook #14777]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ISO-646-us (us-ASCII)

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From the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada

Second Series—­1899-1900

Volume V Section Ii

English History, Literature, Archaeology, Etc.

HOCHELAGANS AND MOHAWKS

A Link in Iroquois History

by

W. D. Lighthall, M.A., F.R.S.L.

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 the same inference from the mention made to Cartier by the Hochelagans of certain enemies from the south whose name and direction had a likeness to later Iroquois conditions.  Charlevoix was persuaded by persons who he considered had sufficiently studied the subject that their seats before they left for the country of the Five Nations were about Montreal.