ones, on deer's
antlers, buffalo horns, sticks, sharp shells, beavers' incisor
teeth,[3] the claws or spines of crustaceans, flints, and suchlike
substances--in short, they were leading the same life and using almost
exactly the same tools as the long-since-vanished hunter races of
Europe of five thousand to one hundred thousand years ago--the people
who pursued the mammoth, the bison, the Irish "elk", and the other
great beasts of prehistoric Europe. Indeed, North America represented
to some extent, as late as a hundred years ago, what Europe must have
looked like in the days of palaeolithic Man.

[Footnote 3: Of which they made very serviceable chisels.]

* * * * *

The AMERINDIANS of the Canadian Dominion (when the country first
became known to Europeans) belonged to the following groups and
tribes. The order of enumeration begins in the east and proceeds
westwards. I have already mentioned the peculiar _Beothiks_ of
Newfoundland.[4] In Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick,
and the Gaspe Peninsula there were the _Mikmak_ Indians belonging to
the widespread ALGONKIN family or stock. West and south of the
Mikmaks, in New Brunswick and along the borders of New England, were
other tribes of the Algonkin group: the Etchemins, Abenakis,
Tarratines, Penobscots, _Mohikans_, and Adirondacks. North of these,
in the eastern part of the Quebec province, on either side of the Gulf
of St. Lawrence, were the _Montagnais_. This name, though it looks
like a French word meaning "mountaineers", was also spellt Montagnet,
and in various other ways, showing that it was originally a native
name, pronounced Montanye. The Montagnais in various clans extended
northwards across Labrador until they touched the Eskimo, with whom
they constantly fought. The interior of Labrador was inhabited by
another Algonkin tribe, the _Naskwapi_, living in a state of rude
savagery. The _Algonkins_ proper, whose tribe gave their name to the
whole stock because the French first became acquainted with them as a
type, dwelt in the vicinity of Montreal, Lake Ontario, and the valley
of the St. Lawrence. In upper Canada, about the great lakes and the
St. Lawrence valley, were the Chippeways, or _Ojibwes_, and the
Ottawas. West and north of Lake Michigan were the Miamis, the
Potawatomis, and the Fox Indians (the Saks or Sawkis). Between Lake
Winnipeg and Lake Superior were the _Cheyennes_ (Shians); between
North and Sou