He Is Tall, Erect, Well Proportioned, Dignified In Face
And Deportment; When Habited In His Indian Regalia:
Blue frock coat, with
bright buttons and medals, plumed fur cap, leggings of colored cloth,
bright sash and armlets, with war axe, he looks the beau ideal of a
respectable Huron warrior, shorn of the ferocity of other days.
Of the
line of Huron chiefs which proceeded him we can furnish but a very meagre
history. Adam Kidd, who wrote a poem entitled the Huron Chief in 1829,
and who paid that year a visit to the Lorette Indians and saw their oldest
chief, Oui-a-ra-lih-to, having unfortunately failed to fulfil the
promise he then made of publishing the traditions and legends of the tribe
furnished him on that occasion, an omission which, we hope, will yet be
supplied by an educated Huron; the Revd. Mr. Vincent. Of Oui-a-ra-lih-
to, we learn from Mr. Kidd: "This venerable patriarch, who is now (in
1829) approaching the precincts of a century, is the grandson of Tsa-a-
ra-lih-to, head chief of the Hurons during the war of 1759. Oui-a-ra-
lih-to, with about thirty-five warriors of the Indian village of Lorette
in conjunction with the Iroquois and Algonquins, was actually engaged in
the army of Burgoyne, a name unworthy to be associated with the noble
spirit of Indian heroism. During my visit to this old chief - May, 1829 - he
willingly furnished me with an account of the distinguished warriors, and
the traditions of different tribes, which are still fresh in his memory,
and are handed from father to son, with the precision, interest and
admiration that the tales and exploits of Ossian and his heroes are
circulated in their original purity to this day among the Irish." Mr. Kidd
alludes also to another great chief, Atsistari, who flourished in 1637,
and who may have been the same as the Huron Saul Ahatsistari, who lived
in 1642.
Of the powerful tribes of the aborigines who, in remote periods, infested
the forests, lakes and streams of Canada, none by their prowess in war,
wisdom in council, success as tillers of the soil, intelligent and lofty
bearing, surpassed the Wyandats, or Hurons. [309] They numbered 15,000
souls, according to the historian Ferland, 40,000 according to Bouchette,
and chiefly inhabited the country bordering on Lake Huron and Simcoe; they
might, says Sagard, have been styled the "nobles" among savages in
contradistinction to that other powerful confederacy, more democratic in
their ways, also speaking the Huron language, and known as the Five
Nations (Mohawks,[310] Oneydoes, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas), styled
by the French the Iroquois, or Hiroquois, from the habit of their orators
of closing their orations with the word "Hiro" - I have said.
'Tis a curious fact that the aborigines whom Jacques Cartier had found
masters of the soil, at Hochelaga (Montreal,) and Stadacona (Quebec,) in
1535, sixty-eight years later on, in 1603, when Champlain visited these
Indian towns, had disappeared:
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