When Europeans first reached America all these Amerindian tribes, and also the Eskimo, were still, for all practical purposes, in the Stone Age. Those who lived in the north had discovered the use of copper and had shaped for themselves knives and spear blades out of copper, but not even this metal was in use to any great extent, and for the most part they relied, down to the end of the eighteenth century, for their implements and weapons, on polished and sharpened stones, 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 palæolithic 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 Gaspé 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 Montanyé. 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 _Ojibwés_, and the Ottawas. West and north of Lake Michigan were the Miamis, the Potawátomis, and the Fox Indians (the Saks or Sawkis). Between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Superior were the _Cheyennes_ (Shians); between North and South Saskatchewan, the _Blackfeet_ or Siksika Indians (sections of which were also called Bloods, Paigans, Piegans, &c). North of Lake Winnipeg, as far as Lake Athabaska, and almost from the Rocky Mountains to the shores of Hudson's Bay, were the widespread tribe of the _Kris_, or _Knistino_.[5] The Gros Ventres or Big Bellies--properly called _Atsina_--inhabited the southern part of the middle west, between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri basins; and the Monsoni or Maskegon were found in eastern Rupert Land.