The two
nations were confederate in their form of government; they had all the
fury of Aztecs, and resemblances of a sufficiently marked kind are
found between Sioux or Dakota and the Iroquois dialect, while their
skulls follow the Dolichocephalic type of cranium. With fire and sword
the invaders swept away the Toltecs; their mines were deserted and
filled up with debris; their arts of agriculture, metal working and
pottery making were lost; and up to the extreme limits of our country
of the Takawgamis, only the mounds and their contents were left.
OUR HISTORIC ERA
saw the expiring blaze of this tremendous conflagration just as the
French arrived in Canada. Cartier saw a race in 1535 in Hochelaga, who
are believed to have had Brachycephalic crania, who were
agriculturists, used at least implements of metal, dwelt in large
houses, made pottery and were constructive in tendency. In 1608 when
Champlain visited the same spot, there were none of the Hochelagans
remaining. This remnant of the Toltecans had been swept out of
existence between the Algonquin wave from the east and the Iroquois
from the southwest. The French heard of a similar race called the
Eries and of another the Neutrals, who had the same habits and customs
as the vanished Hochelagans, but who had been visited by the scourge
of the Iroquois on the Ohio as they ascended it, and had perished.
Thus from the twelfth century, the time set for the irruption of the
savage tribes from New Mexico, two or three centuries would probably
suffice to sweep away the last even of the farthest north Takawgamis.
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