Hochelagans and Mohawks: A Link in Iroquois History

by W. D. Lighthall

The likeness of the names Tekenouday and Ajoasté to that of the Huron town Tekenonkiaye, and the Andastean Andoasté, shows how close was the relationship. Nevertheless the Hochelagans were quite cut off from the Hurons, whose country as we have found, some of them point to and describe to Cartier as inhabited by evil men. As the Stadacona people, more distant, independently refer to them as good, no war could have been then proceeding with them.

In 1540 when Roberval came—and down to 1543—the conditions were still unchanged. What of the events between this date and the coming of Champlain in 1605? This period can be filled up to some extent.

About 1560 the Hurons came down, conquered the Hochelagans and their subject peoples and destroyed Hochelaga. I reach this date as follows: In 1646 (Relation of 1646, p. 34) Père Lalemant reports that "under the Algonquin name" the French included "a diversity of small peoples," one of which was named the Onontchataronons or "the tribe of Iroquet," "whose ancestors formerly inhabited the island of Montreal," and one of their old men "aged say eighty years" said "my mother told me that in her youth the Hurons drove us from this island." (1646, p. 40.) This makes it clear that the inroad was Huron. Note that this man of eighty years does not mention having himself lived on the island; and also the addition "in her youth." This fact brings us back to before 1566. But in 1642, another "old man" states that his "grandfathers" had lived there. Note that he does not say his parents nor himself. These two statements, I think, reasoning from the average ages of old men, carry us back to about 1550-60. Champlain, in 1622, notes a remark of two Iroquois that the war with the Hurons was then "more than fifty years" old. The Huron inroad could not likely have occurred for several years after 1542, for so serious an incursion would have taken some years to grow to such a point out of profound peace. 1550 would therefore appear a little early. The facts demonstrate incidentally a period of prosperity and dominance on the part of the Hurons themselves, for instead of a mere incursion, it exhibits, even if made by invitation of the Algonquins, a permanent breaking through of the barriers between the Huron country and the Montreal neighbourhood, and a continuance of their power long enough and sufficiently to press forward against the enemy even into Lake Champlain. It also shows that the Superior Iroquois were not then strong enough to confine them. Before the League, the latter were only weak single tribes. When Dutch firearms were added to the advantage of the league, the Hurons finally fell from their power, which was therefore apparently at its height about 1560.

Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, end of Bk. V., after describing the first mass at Ville Marie, in 1642, says: "The evening of the same day M. de Maisonneuve desired to visit the Mountain which gave the island its name, and two old Indians who accompanied him thither, having led him to the top, told him they were of the tribe who had formerly inhabited this country." "We were," they added, "very numerous and all the hills (collines) which you see to the south and east, were peopled. The Hurons drove thence our ancestors, of whom a part took refuge among the Abénakis, others withdrew into the Iroquois cantons, a few remained with our conquerors." They promised Maisonneuve to do all they could to bring back their people, "but apparently could not succeed in reassembling the fragments of this dispersed tribe, which doubtless is that of the Iroquois of which I have spoken in my Journal."

A proof that this people of Iroquet were not originally Algonquins is that by their own testimony they had cultivated the ground, one of them actually took up a handful of the soil and called attention to its goodness; and they also directly connected themselves in a positive manner with the Hochelagans by the dates and circumstances indicated in their remarks as above interpreted. The use of the term "Algonquin" concerning them is very ambiguous and as they were merged among Algonquin tribes they were no doubt accustomed to use that language. Their Huron-Iroquois name, the fact that they were put forward to interpret to the Iroquois in Champlain's first excursion; and that a portion of them had joined the Iroquois, another portion the Hurons, and the rest remained a little band by themselves, seem to add convincingly to the proof that they were not true Algonquins. Their two names "Onontchataronons" and "Iroquet" are Iroquois. The ending "Onons" (Onwe) means "men" and is not properly part of the name. Charlevoix thought them Hurons, from their name. They were a very small band and, while mentioned several times in the Jesuit Relations, had disappeared by the end of the seventeenth century from active history. It was doubtless impossible for a remnant so placed to maintain themselves against the great Iroquois war parties.

A minor question to suggest itself is whether there is any connection between the names "Iroquet" and "Iroquois". Were they originally forms of the same word? Or were they two related names of divisions of a people? Certainly two closely related peoples have these closely similar names. They were as clearly used as names of distinct tribes however, in the seventeenth century. The derivation of "Iroquois" given by Charlevoix from "hiro"—"I have spoken" does not seem at all likely; but the analogy of the first syllables of the names Er-ié, Hur-ons, Hir-oquois, Ir-oquet and Cherokee may have something in it.

The Iroquets or Hochelagans attributed their great disaster,—the destruction of their towns and dispossession of their island,—to the Hurons, but Charlevoix[9] records an Algonquin victory over them which seems to have preceded, and contributed to, that event, though the lateness of Charlevoix renders the story not so reliable in detail as the personal recollections of the Iroquets above given: His story[10] given "on the authority of those most versed in the old history of the country", proceeds as follows: "Some Algonquins were at war with the Onontcharonnons better known under the name of Tribe of Iroquet, and whose former residence was, it is said, in the Island of Montreal. The name they bear proclaims, they were of Huron speech; nevertheless it is claimed that it was the Hurons who drove them from their ancient country, and who in part destroyed them. However that may be, they were at the time I speak of, at war with the Algonquins, who, to finish this war at one stroke, thought of a stratagem, which succeeded". This stratagem was an ambush placed on both sides of the River Bécancour near Three Rivers, with some pretended fishermen out in canoes as decoys. The Iroquets attacked and pursued the fishermen, but in the moment of victory, a hail of arrows issued from the bushes along both shores. Their canoes being pierced, and the majority wounded, they all perished. "The tribe of Iroquet never recovered from this disaster; and none to day remain. The quantity of corpses in the water and on the banks of the river so infected it, that it retains the name of Rivière Puante"; (Stinking River).

Charlevoix[11] gives, as well supported, the story of the origin of the war between the Iroquois and Algonquins. "The Iroquois had made with them a sort of alliance very useful to both." They gave grain for game and armed aid, and thus both lived long on good terms. At last a disagreement rose in a joint party of 12 young hunters, on account of the Iroquois succeeding while the Algonquins failed in the chase. The Algonquins, therefore, maliciously tomahawked the Iroquois in their sleep. Thence arose the war.

In 1608, according to Ferland[12] based evidently upon the statement of Champlain, the remnant of the Hochelagans left in Canada occupied the triangle above Montreal now bounded by Vandreuil, Kingston and Ottawa. This perhaps indicates it as the upper part of their former territory. Sanson's map places them at about the same part of the Ottawa in the middle of the seventeenth century and identifies them with La Petite Nation, giving them as "Onontcharonons ou La Petite Nation". That remnant accompanied Champlain against the Iroquois, being of course under the influence of their masters the Hurons and Algonquins. Doubtless their blood is presently represented among the Huron and Algonquin mission Indians of Oka, Lorette, Petite Nation, etc., and perhaps among those of Caughnawaga and to some extent, greater or less, among the Six Nations proper.

From the foregoing outline of their history, it does not appear as if the Hochelagans were exactly the Mohawks proper. It seems more likely that by 1560, settlements, at first mere fishing-parties, then fishing-villages, and later more developed strongholds with agriculture, had already been made on Lake Champlain by independent offshoots of the Hochelagan communities, of perhaps some generations standing, and not unlikely by arrangement with the Algonquins of the Lake similar to the understanding on the river St. Lawrence, as peace and travel appear to have existed there. The bonds of confederacy between village and village were always shifting and loose among these races until the Great League. To their Lake Champlain cousins the Hochelagans would naturally fly for refuge in the day of defeat, for there was no other direction suitable for their retreat. The Hurons and Algonquins carried on the war against the fused peoples, down into Lake Champlain. When, after more than fifty years of the struggle, Champlain goes down to that Lake in 1609, he finds there the clearings from which they have been driven, and marks their cabins on his map of the southeast shore. This testimony is confirmed by that of archæology showing their movement at the same period into the Mohawk Valley. Doubtless their grandchildren among the Iroquois, like their grandchildren among the Algonquins, remembered perfectly well the fact of their Huron and Algonquin wrongs, and led many a war party back to scenes known to them through tradition, and which it was their ambition to recover. It seems then to be the fact that the Mohawks proper, or some of their villages, while perhaps not exactly Hochelagans, were part of the kindred peoples recently sprung from and dominated by them and were driven out at the same time. The two peoples—Mohawks and Iroquets—had no great time before, if not at the time of Cartier's arrival—been one race living together in the St. Lawrence valley: In the territory just west of the Mohawk valley, they found the "Senecas" as the Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas together were at first called, and soon, through the genius of the Mohawk Hiawatha, they formed with them the famous League, in the face of the common enemy. By that time the Oneidas had become separated from the Mohawks. These indications place the date of the League very near 1600. The studies of Dr. Kellogg of Plattsburgh on the New York side of Lake Champlain and of others on the Vermont shore, who have discovered several Mohawk sites on that side of the lake may be expected to supply a link of much interest on the whole question, from the comparison of pottery and pipes. On the whole the Hochelagan facts throw much light both forward on the history of the Iroquois and backwards on that of the Huron stock. Interpreted as above, they afford a meagre but connected story through a period hitherto lost in darkness, and perhaps a ray by which further links may still be discovered through continued archæological investigation.