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John Long's journal, 1768-1782

Note 38 — VOYAGES AND TRAVELS

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The Lake of Two Mountains is an enlargement of the Ottawa River, near its mouth, above Montreal. On this lake is situated the Sulpitian mission town of Oka. This is a union of two early missions—one, founded about 1677 on Montreal Island for Iroquois converts, weakened during the Iroquois War, and removed in 1704 to the Sault au Récollet, being finally located on the Lake of Two Mountains about 1720; the second, or Algonkin mission, was first called La Présentation and situated on Montreal Island near Lachine; the site was abandoned in 1685, and the remnants of the mission Indians gathered at Bout de l’Isle (the other end of the same island), where the mission was called St. Louis. Again removed (1706–07) to the Isle aux Tourtres, it was permanently located on the Lake of Two Mountains between 1721 and 1726. There are still about four hundred Indians located on the reserve at the lake. See Canadian Department of Indian Affairs Report, 1901, p. 49. The account given by Long in the following pages, of the Chippewa division of this mission, is the best known—their intermarriage with the Indians of the other mission villages at Caughnawaga and St. Regis, their cultivation of the soil, and their semi-civilized habits.—Ed.

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