quence [of the round the Fathers made throughout all the villages] we were enabled to take the census not only of the villages and scattered settlements, but also of the cabins, the fires, and even, approximately, of the dwellers in the whole coimtry, there being no other way to preach the Gospel in these regions than at each family hearth, and we tried not to omit a single one. In these five missions [including the Petuns] there are thirty-two villages and settlements which comprise in all about seven hundred cabins, two thousand fires, and about twelve thousand persons." The average here, consequently, was six persons to a fire, or three to
a family, which seems
a low estimate; but
what the Relation immediately adds must
be taken into account: "These villages and cabins were
far more densely
thronged formerly",
and it goes on to ascribe the great decrease to unprecedented contagions and
wars during a few preceding years. In a
similar strain Father
Jérome Lalemant
wrote from Huronia
to Cardinal Richelieu,
28 March, 1640, deploring this depletion,
attributing it principally to war. He states
that in less than ten
years the Huron population had been reduced from thirty
thousand to ten thousand. But famine and
contagion were also
active agents in depopulating the Huron
homes, as the writers
of the Relations uniformly declare, and
this decimation went
on at an increasing
ratio until the final
exodus. The same
writer under date of 15
May, 1645, seems to
modify his statement somewhat, when he says: "If
we had but the Hurons to convert, one might still
think that ten and twenty thousand souls are not so
great a conquest that so many hazards should be
faced and so many perils encountered to win them to
God." But evidently Father Jerome Lalemant did
not here pretend to give the exact figures, while the
French expression may very well be rendered into
English by "that ten and even twenty thousand
souls" etc. But if, at the inception of the Mission, the
Hurons, Petuns, and Neutrals numbered all together
eighty thousand souls, and tlie Hurons alone thirty
thousand, in what proportion, it may be asked, are the
remaining fifty thousand to be allotted to the Neutrals and Petuns?
To answer this question satisfactorily, other state- ments in the Relations must be considered. On 7 August, 1634, Father Paul Le Jeune writes: "I learn that in twenty-five or thirty leagues of country which the Hurons occupy — others estimate it at much less — there are more than thirty thousand souls. The Neutral Nation is much more populous" etc. Again in Relation 1641 it is said: "This nation [the Neutral] is very populous; about forty villages and hamlets are counted therein." If Huronia had twenty villages and a population of thirty thousand, other conditions being alike, the Neutral country with forty villages should have had a population of sixty thousand. This conclusion might have held good in 1634, but it is at variance with facts in 1641: "According to the estimate of the Fathers who have been there [in the Neutral country], there are at least twelve thousand souls in the whole extent of the country, which claims even yet to be able to place four thousand warriors in the field, notwithstanding the wars, famine, and sickness which, for three years, have prevailed there in an extraordinary degree", and in the following paragraph the writer explains why previous estimates were higher. In the country of the Petuns, or Tobacco Nation, contemporaneous records leave no doubt as to the existence of at least ten villages, and very probably there were more. This, in the proportion just given, supposes a population of at least fifteen thousand. However, all things consideretl, it would be no exaggeration to say that the Hurons proper, when the missionaries went first among them, numbered upwards of twenty-five thousand, the Petuns twenty thousand, and the Neutrals thirty-five thousand. This would be in keeping with Dablon's estimate of the sum total.
5. Government.— The form of government among the Hurons was essentially that of a republic. All important questions were decided in their deliberative assemblies, and the chiefs promulgated these decisions. But the most striking feature in their system of administration was that, strictly speaking, there was no constraining power provided in their unwritten constitution to uphold these enactments or to enforce the will of their chiefs. "These peoples [the Hurons]", says Bressani, "have neither king nor absolute prince, but certain chiefs, like the heads of a republic, whom we call captains, different, however, from those in war. They hold office commonly by succession on the side of the women, but sometimes by election. They assume office at the death of a predecessor, who, they say, is resuscitated in them. . . . These captains have no coercive power . . . and obtain obedience by their eloquence, exhortation, and entreaties" — and, it might be added, by remonstrance and objurgation, expressed publicly without naming the offenders, when there was question of amends to be made for some wrong or injustice done or crime perpetrated. That their powers of persuasion were great may be gathered from the words which a chief addressed to de Brébeuf, and reproduced by the Father in full in Relation 1636 (Queb. ed., 123; Clev. ed., X, 237).
