Ontario Prehistory

From the days of Jacques Cartier and the early missionaries, there have been recorded accounts of the way of life of the tribes encountered by the white man. This is all part of the history of our country.

What is the story of the Indian peoples before the coming of the Europeans? The study of prehistory is a fascinating realm of the archaeologist who, by what he observes in his excavations and analysis in the laboratory, can piece together the clues as in a detective story, to form an idea about the way of life of earlier cultures.

In the process of uncovering the remains of early sites of occupation, the archaeologist is, in fact, removing the 'evidence'. Therefore, techniques have been developed in excavating layer by layer (some sites can be fairly shallow and involve only one occupation layer) and keeping very exact records in the form of notebooks, drawings and photographs. All artifacts are carefully numbered and recorded.

It must be emphasized that the time and geographic divisions by which we approach the subject are used as a convenience only; that times are approximate, and periods overlap.

Dates of occupation can be estimated by various methods, three of which are comparison of known historic sites with unknown but related prehistoric sites, stratigraphy (the study of the various levels in the dig), and by the Carbon 14 method of dating organic materials, particularly charcoal.

The archaeologist can learn about the life of the people by the bones of animals scattered around hearths, or in middens, by their type of pottery, by the type of tools they used and how they buried their dead.

For our study purpose, Ontario has been divided into a northern and southern region, with the Algonkian-speaking people and their antecedents to the north, and the Iroquoian-speakers to the south.

PALAEO-INDIAN PERIOD
(11,000 to 7,000 years ago)

The earliest inhabitants of Ontario were those of the CLOVIS culture which spread across North America east of the Rockies and south of the glacial ice sheet. Their ancestors came from Asia across a land bridge that existed in ancient times.

These people were hunters of caribou, and maybe of mammoth and mastodon. Their distinctive dart heads have been found in southern Ontario (click here to see a distribution map of Palaeo-Indian sites).

The PLANO culture followed the CLOVIS, and appears to have developed on the plains and penetrated northern Ontario from the west. These people, too, were hunters of large game.

A number of sites have been found where taconite and quartzite were quarried to provide materials for tools.

Palaeo-Indians fashioned their tools by choosing a piece of an appropriate type of rock, which was fashioned into a 'preform', and then a knife or dart head (click here to see some examples). The flakes struck off were made into smaller tools such as scrapers.

THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
(7,000 to 3,000 years ago)

The Palaeo-Indians were followed by the Archaic peoples, who developed in southern Ontario the LAURENTIAN culture (click here to see a distribution map of Archaic sites), and were related to others of the same culture found in the eastern United States and Canada (click here to see the excavation of an Archaic site on Lake Huron). These people were mainly hunters of deer, elk, bear and beaver, but their diet was supplemented by smaller game, fish, shell fish, berries, and other wild plants.

Religious beliefs influenced the burial practices of the LAURENTIAN people. They sprinkled their dead with red ochre, and placed in their graves tools and ornaments of stone, bone and native copper, and sometimes of shells from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast, indicating far reaching trading contacts. The hunter's helper, the dog, was sometimes buried with adult males (click here to see an Archaic dog burial dating to 1500 B.C).

In northern Ontario, the Archaic people are known as the SHIELD culture, as their remains have been found across the Canadian shield, where they moved following the re-appearance of game as the continental glacier retreated.

Caribou and fish were their staple ciel, probably supplemented by bear, beaver, hare and waterfowl. They probably used birchbark canoes, and may have made snowshoes. Their way of life was similar to that of the later Algonkian-speaking tribes.

The burial sites of these people give evidence of contact with their southern neighbours in what is now the United States, and also with the LAURENTIAN peoples of southern Ontario.

Unfortunately, the bone remains left by the SHIELD culture have not survived the acid soil of the North.

INITIAL WOODLAND PERIOD
(3,000 to 1,000 years ago)

The Woodland period is marked by the appearance of pottery. The life style of the different cultures of this period was essentially the same as that of the Archaic cultures, with the addition of the ability to make and use pottery. Indeed, the Initial Woodland people are simply the Archaic people, but as the former possessed pottery, it is convenient for the archaeologist to make a distinction in order to have some control over the rational division of time periods (click here to see a distribution map of the Initial Woodland Period). The MEADOWOOD culture was the earliest, existing in what is now New York State and the St. Lawrence Valley of Quebec Province, and spilling over in a very limited way into adjacent southern Ontario. Their pottery is different from that of other Ontario Woodland peoples and their elaborate grave furnishings include mysterious 'birdstones', and tubular pipes, ground slate pendants, triangular flint blades, and other items of copper and stone.

Co-existing with the small, scattered bands of MEADOWOOD peoples in southern Ontario, and blending with time, were two cultures; the POINT PENINSULA culture of the eastern area (click here to see a POINT PENINSULA pottery sherd); and the SAUGEEN of the west.

The POINT PENINSULA people were subject to three main influences on their pottery development. The major one was the ceramic design of neighbours to the North; a minor influence was from the simple MEADOWOOD pottery, and there was also a large admixture of influence from the HOPEWELL culture of what is now the mid-western United States. These influences were melded into a native pottery design uniquely their own. Most POINT PENINSULA pottery is decorated with a toothed implement.

The influence from the South extended to religious practices, and the custom of constructing earth burial mounds was adopted, together with the use of an increasing variety of exotic burial furnishings, until this practice declined about A.D. 400.

Further to the west was the SAUGEEN culture, which was very similar to the POINT PENINSULA culture. The main differences were in pottery style, and the fact that the dead were not buried in mounds but in small cemeteries. Remains of post moulds suggest that rectangular houses were erected at summer fishing settlements.

The SAUGEEN culture was superseded by the PRINCESS POINT culture (click here to see a PRINCESS POINT pottery sherd) in the most southwesterly portions of southern Ontario. The pottery, different from that of SAUGEEN, is decorated with designs imprinted by a cord wrapped around a stick. These people introduced corn-growing to Ontario. Corn had been domesticated in northern Mexico about 5,000 years ago and had gradually penetrated northwards until it reached Ontario in A.D. 500. This gave the people control of their food production and resulted in a population increase.

In northern Ontario, the Initial Woodland period people were those of the LAUREL culture, who occupied a large area in the centre of the Canadian forestland, and developed out of the earlier SHIELD ARCHAIC people.

In one area of northwestern Ontario, many communal burial mounds have been found, evidence of influence from the HOPEWELL culture to the south.

TERMINAL WOODLAND PERIOD (ALGONKIAN)
(approximately 1,000 years ago to Historic period)

The Algonkian-speaking people of northern Ontario were in all probability direct descendants of the Laurel culture people preceding them. There have been many names given to Algonkian-speaking tribes that have been incorporated under the names ALGONKIN, OJIBWA and CREE, but generally speaking the names have applied to many small groups of hunting bands, very loosely related to each other, mostly by language and life style (click here to see a pottery bowl from northern Manitoba).

The pottery of these people is varied due to the fact that the wives (who made the pottery) were obtained from different outside areas, each wife importing the pottery style of the area from which she came. The reason for seeking wives elsewhere was due to the nature of the environment, in which scanty food supply could only support small groups of population in any given area; they therefore found difficulty in obtaining marriageable women who were not in some way related to them. Stone tool types are much more consistent than pottery types, as these were made by men.

Due to the mobility of small hunting bands, and to the mobility of the women, related Algonkian languages are spoken by Indians from northern Saskatchewan to Labrador.

In the eastern area, the ALGONKIANS adopted the pottery and pipe-making styles of the neighbouring Hurons (click to see an EASTERN ALGONQUIN clay pipe, copied or obtained by trade from the Hurons or Petuns) and, to a certain degree, their burial practices and corn agriculture. Other pottery styles were adopted from adjacent cultures in the Upper Great Lakes. Dog burials have been found in these sites.

In the western area, the prevailing type of pottery is known as Blackduck, which may have evolved from the preceding Laurel culture (click here to see a WESTERN ALGONQUIN stone amulet in the form of a beaver). These people continued the earlier western Laurel practice of constructing burial mounds. Copper from western Lake Superior was used for making awls, beads, bangles and knives. Dog burial was practised here also. These people have been equated with the historic OJIBWA.

The northern area Algonkians of Ontario were related culturally to those of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The dominant pottery is known as Selkirk, made by the CREE.

As mentioned earlier, the tool traditions in all three areas were similar. Further evidence of common culture is the fact that scattered rock paintings have been found in all areas.

(click here to see a distribution map of TERMINAL WOODLAND PERIOD sites)

TERMINAL WOODLAND PERIOD (IROQUOIAN)
(approximately 1,000 years ago to Historic Period)

By the tenth century A.D., two populations possessing the essentials of IROQUOIS culture were developing in southern Ontario; the PICKERING culture in the east (click here to see a PICKERING polished stone adze used in woodworking)and the GLEN MEYER in the west. PICKERING pottery appears to have evolved from the POINT PENINSULA tradition, and that of the GLEN MEYER people from the PRINCESS POINT tradition.

About A.D. 1300, the PICKERING population expanded to the southwest and replaced the GLEN MEYER. From the mixed culture of the two groups, the NEUTRAL-ERIE tribes of southwestern southern Ontario and southwestern New York Stale evolved(appuyez ici to see a NEUTRAL-ERIE box turtle shell modified into a rattle). The HURON-PETUN tribes (click here to see a HURON_PETUN clay smoking pipe) developed directly out of a PICKERING culture base.

Some essentially distinctive features of an IROQUOIS culture are:
(1) corn agriculture, supplemented by fishing and hunting;
(2) large palisaded villages containing communal longhouses ;
(3) pipe;
(4) 'bundle' burials of bones of the dead. (An individual would be placed on a scaffold or in a shallow grave; later, his bones would be taken apart and buried as a 'bundle'.);
(5) the use of the dog for food and possibly sacrifice.

By about A.D. 1400, the four tribes mentioned had separated from their common cultural base. By that time also, all these people had added sunflower seeds, beans and squash to their diet and depended less upon hunting.

In 1615, the Récollet missionaries and, in 1625, the Jesuits began to work among the Huron. The Ontario IROQUOIS passed into the Historic Period, becoming directly involved in the intrigues and rivalries of the European powers. They were eventually dispersed and absorbed in the middle of the 17th century by the IROQUOIS League of Five Nations based in New York State.

When Jacques Cartier visited the village of Hochelaga in 1535 he encountered another group of IROQUOIS people, the ST. LAWRENCE IROQUOIS. In 1603, by the time Samuel de Champlain visited the same area (now the Island of Montreal and Upper St. Lawrence), these people had disappeared, probably having been conquered and absorbed by the HURONS.

SUGGESTED READING LIST

Dewdney, S. H. & K. Kidd. Indian Rock Painting of the Great Lakes, University of Toronto Press, 1962 Jenness, Diamond. Indians of Canada, (5th ed.), Ottawa, National Museum of Canada Bulletin 65, 1965 Rogers, E. S. The Indians of Canada/A Survey, Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, 1970 Rogers, E. S. Iroquoians of the Eastern Woodlands, Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, 1970 Rogers, E.S. Algonkians of the Eastern Woodiands, Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, 1970 Wright, J. V. Ontario Prehistory, Ottawa, National Museums of Canada, National Museum of Man, 1972 Wright, J. V. Six Chapters of Canada's Prehistory, Ottawa, National Museums of Canada, National Museum of Man, 1976