 An alternative explanation has been claimed in which "Osheaga" meant "people of the shaking hands", tricking Cartier into recording the settlement's name as a word that was actually a mocking comment directed at him; in some versions of this story, the Iroquoian people were bewildered by Cartier waving his hands wildly to attract their attention as he first approached the settlement in his boat, while in others they were bewildered by his European custom of greeting them with a handshake.These latter explanations are favoured by the Mohawk people at Kahnawake, as in the Mohawk language the phrase "people of the hands" can be expressed as "O she ha ga" or "Oshahaka".They cannot, however, be easily confirmed or refuted, as the few known surviving remnants of the extinct Laurentian language that was spoken by the Iroquoian people at Hochelaga are only moderately similar to the distantly related Mohawk language, which was not spoken anywhere even remotely close to Hochelaga at the time of Cartier's contact.