Hochelagans and Mohawks: a Link in Iroquois History

Part 1

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From the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada

Second Series--1899-1900

Volume V Section Ii

English History, Literature, Archæology, Etc.

HOCHELAGANS AND MOHAWKS

A Link in Iroquois History

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. The late Horatio Hale put the more recently current and widely accepted form of this view as follows: "The clear and positive traditions of all the surviving tribes, Hurons, Iroquois and Tuscaroras, point to the Lower St. Lawrence as the earliest known abode of their stock. Here the first explorer, Cartier, found Indians of this stock at Hochelaga and Stadacona, now the sites of Montreal and Quebec. Centuries before his time, according to the native tradition, the ancestors of the Huron-Iroquois family had dwelt in this locality, or still further east and nearer to the river's mouth. As the numbers increased, dissensions arose. The hive swarmed and band after band moved off to the west and south."

"Their first station on the south side of the lakes was at the mouth of the Oswego River. Advancing to the southeast, the emigrants struck the River Hudson" and thence the ocean. "Most of them returned to the Mohawk River, where the Huron speech was altered to Mohawk. In Iroquois tradition and in the constitution of their League the Canienga (Mohawk) nation ranks as 'eldest brother' of the family. A comparison of the dialects proves this tradition to be well founded. The Canienga language approaches nearest to the Huron, and is undoubtedly the source from which all the other Iroquois dialects are derived. Cusick states positively that the other families, as he styles them, of the Iroquois household, leaving the Mohawks in their original abode, proceeded step by step to the westward. The Oneidas halted at their creek, the Onondagas at their mountain, the Cayugas at their lake and the Senecas or Sonontowans, the great hill people, at a lofty eminence which rises south of the Canandaigua Lake." Hale appeals also to the Wyandot tradition recorded by Peter Dooyentate Clark, that the Huron originally lived about Montreal near the "Senecas," until war broke out and drove them westward. He sets the formation of the League of the Long House as far back as the fourteenth century.

All these authors, it will be seen, together with every historian who has referred to the League,--treat of the Five Nations as always having been one people. A very different view, based principally on archæology, has however been recently accepted by at least several of the leading authorities on the subject,--the view that the Iroquois League was a compound of two distinct peoples, the Mohawks, in the east, including the Oneidas; and the Senecas, in the west, including the Onondagas and Cayugas. Rev. W.M. Beauchamp, of Baldwinsville, the most thorough living student of the matter, first suggested a late date for the coming of the Mohawks and formation of the League. He had noticed that the three Seneca dialects differed very greatly from the two Mohawk, and that while the local relics of the former showed they had been long settled in their country, those of the latter evidenced a very recent occupation. He had several battles with Hale on the subject, the latter arguing chiefly from tradition and change of language. "The probability," writes Mr. Beauchamp--privately to the writer--"is that a division took place at Lake Erie, or perhaps further west; some passed on the north side and became the Neutrals and Hurons; the vanguard becoming the Mohawks or Hochelagans, afterwards Mohawks and Oneidas. Part went far south, as the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, and a more northern branch, the Andastes; part followed the south shore and became the Eries, Senecas and Cayugas; part went to the east of Lake Ontario, removing and becoming the Onondagas, when the Huron war began."

It is noticeable that the earliest accounts of the Five Nations speak of them as of two kinds--Mohawks and "Sinnekes," or as termed by the French the Inferior and Superior Iroquois. For example Antony Van Corlear's Journal, edited by Gen. James Grant Wilson, also certain of the New York documents. The most thorough local student of early Mohawk town-sites, Mr. S.L. Frey, of Palatine Bridge, N.Y., supports Mr. Beauchamp in his view of the late coming of the Mohawks into the Mohawk River Valley, where they have always been settled in historic times. According to him, although these people changed their sites every 25 or 30 years from failure of the wood supply and other causes, only four prehistoric sites have been discovered in that district, all the others containing relics of European origin. Mr. Beauchamp believes even this number too large. Both put forward the idea that the Mohawks were the ancient race of Hochelaga, whose town on the island of Montreal was visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535, and had disappeared completely in 1608 when Champlain founded Quebec. "What had become of these people?" writes Mr. Frey, in his pamphlet "The Mohawks." "An overwhelming force of wandering Algonquins had destroyed their towns. To what new land had they gone? I think we shall find them seated in the impregnable strongholds among the hills and in the dense forests of the Mohawk Valley."

It is my privilege to take up their theory from the Montreal end and in the light of the local archaeology of this place and of early French historical lore, to supply links which seem to throw considerable light on the problem.

The description given by Cartier of the picturesque palisaded town of Hochelaga, situated near the foot of Mount Royal, surrounded by cornfields, has frequently been quoted. But other points of Cartier's narrative, concerning the numbers and relations of the population, have scarcely been studied. Let us examine this phase of it. During his first voyage in 1534, in the neighbourhood of Gaspé, he met on the water the first people speaking the tongue of this race, a temporary fishing community of over 200 souls, men, women and children, in some 40 canoes, under which they slept, having evidently no village there, but belonging, as afterwards is stated, to Stadacona. He seized and carried to France two of them, who, when he returned next year, called the place where they had been taken Honguédo, and said that the north shore, above Anticosti Island, was the commencement of inhabited country which led to Canada (the Quebec region), Hochelaga, (Montreal) and the country of Saguenay, far to the west "whence came the red copper" (of which axes have since been found in the débris of Hochelaga, and which, in fact, came from Lake Superior), and that no man they ever heard of had ever been to the end of the great river of fresh water above. Here we have the first indication of the racial situation of the Hochelagans. At the mouth of the Saguenay River--so called because it was one of the routes to the Sagnenay of the Algonquins, west of the Upper Ottawa--he found four fishing canoes from Canada. Plenty of fishing was prosecuted from this point upwards. In "the Province of Canada," he proceeds, "there are several peoples in unwalled villages." At the Isle of Orleans, just below Quebec, the principal peace chief, or, Agouhanna of "Canada," Donnaconna, came to them with 12 canoes from the town (ville) of Stadacona, or Stadaconé, which was surrounded by tilled land on the heights. Twenty-five canoes from Stadacona afterwards visited them; and later Donnaconna brought on board "10 or 12 other of the greatest chiefs" with more than 500 persons, men, women and children, some doubtless from the neighbouring settlements. If the same 200 persons as in the previous year were absent fishing at Gaspé, and others in other spots, these figures argue a considerable population.

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