Hi and welcome back to Maple History.
I'm Christina Austin and today my guest is my sister-in-law Vanessa.
Hello.
Today we're going to be talking about the enigma of the St. Lawrence Iroquois.
If you didn't have a chance to listen to the last episode, I encourage you to go back and
have a listen.
Just to catch you up, the St. Lawrence Iroquois were the people that Jacques Cartier kidnapped
and encroached on their territory near where modern Quebec City and Montreal are now.
It was thought that the only historical record of them for a while was in Jacques Cartier's
voyages and that by the time Cartier's nephew Jacques Noel returned to Quebec area, they
had disappeared.
They were just gone.
And Champlain noted that there was no people living in the St. Lawrence Valley.
Oh.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, which is, I'm like, it's awesome.
Why would there be people?
Why wouldn't there be people?
Yeah.
So it was notable.
It was assumed that by Champlain that they had all been killed by warfare.
He didn't say who, but the assumption was that it was the Haudenosaunee or by disease
or a combination of the two leaning towards the warfare part.
This was assumed by Champlain and the historians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
So that's why in our textbooks, if you remember, you're talking like two paragraphs
in like a grade seven, eight textbook where they're saying, oh, the story of Cartier
and then the next thing you get is Champlain and all of those people were gone.
Okay.
So that's why we kind of had that because they're kind of working.
Textbooks work on old information.
They're not quite up to date.
Yeah, especially the ones from the eighties.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So eighties.
Yeah.
Well, I bet you're a textbook work from the eighties.
I think mine were from the seventies on the start.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what really happened is much more interesting if we switch our gaze from the European perspective,
which is what we got from Cartier's voyages and honestly, most historians of the 19th
and 20th century and turn it toward the indigenous perspective and we get a much more complicated
story, not of mystery, but of a richer understanding of the indigenous world at the time.
Christian Gates St. Pierre writes in his article, Ear Coins in the St. Lawrence River Valley
before European contact from the Ontario Archaeology Journal that the St. Lawrence
Earquah as a distinct people occupied the area from around 500 AD onward.
So as a distinct people.
Wow.
He makes the point that they could have been there a lot longer, but you don't get the
distinction from other kind of pre like the early woodland people living in that you wouldn't
get the distinction from say the Wendat or the Haudenosaunee, the different people because
their their life ways are quite similar.
So there's no distinction between the two.
Yeah.
Okay.
Because there's fewer people, first of all, and they hadn't kind of developed their own
culture in the same way.
So these early St. Lawrence Earquah were fairly typical of the other indigenous people in
the area and like New York and Ontario and Quebec and that whole zone.
And whole Saint Lawrence E.
Yeah.
And like up to really like like Lake Ontario and down to like Niagara and like all those
that whole swath.
That's where you get the, they call them the Iroquoian people.
Because it's a linguistic name rather than a cultural.
Is there Iroquoian language?
It would be like French and Spanish and that kind of idea of like the romance language.
Oh.
Like that's so Iroquoian is not.
Iroquoian is the type of the language kind of what's the word I'm looking for.
Family.
Yeah.
Family or?
Yep.
So you get distinction.
Oh gosh.
I don't know what I talked about this but I don't remember.
So you get the Algonquin language languages and so those are more like Northern and you'll
get the, I think the Magma are more Algonquin.
Right.
And also some of the Ojibwe.
Okay.
But then there's some blending right because they're kind of in the same way.
Ojibwe are more West and North.
Okay.
Anyways, but yeah.
That's really interesting.
I didn't know that there was like a family of languages.
I bucketed it in.
Yeah.
Like the Roomban language is yeah.
The group.
Yeah.
And they, and that's why it gets really confusing when people are talking about the Iroquoian
they're just like, oh, they're the Iroquois.
But they're not.
Iroquoian is specific to language.
Yes.
Rather than the Iroquois is the nation.
The nation.
Yes.
That's okay.
Oh, that's cool.
That's in that.
And also because they live in similar ways.
Like, you know, they hunt, they fish.
They grow corn and squash and like the three sisters of the three sisters.
So they, so they're kind of similar, but they're different in the same way that like the French
and English fight like they're, they got some similarities, but there's some, they're
going to war.
Yeah.
So yeah.
So the St. Lawrence Iroquois, like I said, they're, they're very similar.
Like in that all that area, they, they hunted, they fished, they did incorporated maize and
domesticated plants in their diet in this early time by 500 AD.
They were starting to do that.
They were, they're still, it was still newish.
And how do they know this?
How do these archaeologists know this?
And they know this by an archaeologist best friend pottery, pottery bits.
Ah, yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's not going to be helpful to the listening audience, but I'm going to show you some pottery
bits, not actual ones, photos.
Okay.
I can describe it.
Yeah.
So in this era, they've got, they're labeled Meloc-ville pottery fragments and they're characterized
by little indents and patterns over parts of the pot.
And so Gates St.
Parade, Scott Gates, St. Pierre describes it as a cord wrapped stick impressions and dentate
stamping, which I'm like, okay, sure.
I guess dentate like teeth.
I think they use teeth.
It could be.
Or similar.
Maybe they would.
I mean, or maybe animal teeth.
Yeah.
Like a bucket or bones.
Bones or something.
Yeah.
And almost systematically accompanied by deep circular exterior punctates, producing bosses
on the inner surface of the vessel.
Obviously half of that is really people who speak archaeology would understand that.
But yeah.
So I'm thinking something like embossed.
Like embossed.
Maybe.
That must be what it is.
That's the etymology of the word.
I would assume.
So the pottery style evolved again and a new type can be dated between 800 to 650 years
BP, which is basically 1200 to 1300 roughly.
Can you remind me again what BP is?
Before present.
Before present is what archaeologists use.
I think it's particularly related to when they do the carbon dating.
Oh, OK.
And they before present, they just picked 1950.
So anytime you see BP, it's before 1950.
Oh, OK.
That's what you know.
I was wondering if they'd set like a point of what is present.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the 1200 to 1300 50 like AD.
It's a more it's more elaborate with the design and structure.
They're using the indentations, but they created a band around the top and bottom of
the main indentation design.
So making the change, making the evolution, which you can see from you'd be able to see
from the earliest to the middle.
And now by the time it's 1350 AD to 1500 AD is when you get what archaeologists find is
the true is a truly distinctive St. Lawrence Iroquoisan style.
And that's in the picture.
It's the large pot that they found.
And the one on the right or sorry, the left as well.
Those both of those.
These two?
Yeah.
So it's I don't know if you can describe that a little bit.
So for the listener, it's actually quite pretty.
And it's round around it, I guess, and it goes up into kind of like the type of vases
you'll see here.
But at the top, the indents that Christina was referring to earlier, they look like
tire treads.
That's what I see when I look at them.
Yeah, they do.
They look like little tire treads as the border around the opening at the top.
I think they have a much more geometric pattern now.
And when I was looking at them, like they kind of looked a little Greek.
There's just a whiff of...
There is some influence.
Definitely, I would say Greek influence or...
I mean, all of those...
I mean, there's only so many ways to make pots.
Yeah.
So when people are making pots in one place, when people start to make pots in other place,
they'll probably start to make them in a similar way.
Right.
People's hands are the same.
I would say this though.
If I were to describe it, I wouldn't call this a pot.
I would call it a vase.
Because a pot would be not...
Like flat bottom.
It would be flat bottomed and not as deep.
Because I would picture that it would be something that you would cook in.
I see the exterior.
But this is more of a vase shape with the little tire tread markings at the top.
Yeah.
It's very pretty.
Yeah.
So the distinctiveness of the pottery and the differentiations between the different
eras are what allow the archaeologists to track the movement on placement or expansion
of the St. Lawrence Iroquois territories.
So the presence of these pottery fragments can show the interaction between nations as
well.
And in the case of the Basque whalers, when we get European contact, whalers and fishermen
in Newfoundland and Labrador, you get the interaction between the two worlds.
So that's when you start seeing crossover.
Yeah.
Because people bring the pots because that's how they cook.
So they have to bring them with them.
So just to give of now we got kind of up to date of like the 1300 to 1500.
So they lived along the St. Lawrence, mainly clustered around what's now Quebec City
and Montreal.
Just to give, because I just keep using it because I'm not great at geography.
So when people are talking about geographic, I'm like, give me the city.
Give me the city.
I would say maybe by the Chateau Frontenac is what I keep picturing.
Yeah.
When you say St. Lawrence and then you say Quebec City, I'm like, well, of course, it
must be by the Chateau.
Probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So in the population estimate of when Cartier came, it seems low to me, but it's a say
around 1500 in that.
But you have to think about the size of the villages.
These aren't cities.
These are palisaded villages.
So there'd be maybe one palisaded village and then there's smaller satellite villages.
Okay.
So the Chona was with the main village that Cartier went to.
And down the river at Montreal was Hochilaga.
Okay.
And then the little ones, the little satellite villages are around there.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, and also the archaeologists don't seem to quite group the Hochilagans with the Stadakonans,
but they seem to be similar, but not enemies necessarily because they're so close.
They would be fighting all the time if they were true enemies.
But I remember when I was reading about the, with the Cartier, when Cartier came and was
dealing with the Stadakonans and the Stadakonans did not want him to go to Hochilaga because
they didn't want the Hochilagans to get the French trading relationship.
So there seems to be some sort of tension between the two kind of towns, villages.
So yeah, they lived in similar way with the Stadakonans.
And really the, if you say, okay, the Stadakonans, and forgive me, I can't pronounce things
the way you're pronouncing that.
I've been working at this in Hochilagans.
Hochilagans?
Hochilagans.
Wow.
I know.
And those are the easy ones.
They'd be hours and hours away from one another, right?
Yeah.
Because Cinex City and Montreal are quite far from each other.
Yeah, they're like four hour drive, aren't they?
Yeah.
I imagine it by canoe or...
My canoe, it probably, you know, those guys can book it on the canoes though.
That's true.
They didn't have horses.
Right, they didn't have...
That's why you heard me go...
It blows my mind.
You heard me go horses.
It's like, wait, they're not there yet.
Not yet.
Not yet.
That blows my mind.
I know, it still does.
Yeah.
Okay, so...
And some of the archaeologists in the journals, articles that I read, they think that maybe
the Stonoconans had a hand in dispersing.
That's the term they use a lot.
The Hochologans, because I think maybe the Hochologans were gone before the Stonoconans
were.
So when you say they use the word dispersing.
Yes, war.
Okay.
Maybe they didn't do it themselves, but maybe they didn't stop the influence that they had
in a Shone.
Okay.
And that's another interesting thing about, because you think about...
So we're talking about kind of like an indigenous nation that's 1,500 people.
Yeah.
That's...
Everybody knows everybody.
Like, if you're thinking about the lived experience of like a whole kind of group, you
know everybody.
Right.
Or at least like maybe you're not...
Maybe you don't know the person necessarily in the next village over, but you know their
uncle.
Yeah.
Your mom might be cousins.
Like, he's getting sick in a situation ship with.
Like they might know...
Yeah, so that's just the intimacy of these relationships.
Even with your kind of almost enemies, you really know them personally.
Of course.
Because you have a lot of time on your hands.
Well...
Or...
Or they don't.
Because the women did the farming.
So they were...
That was another thing that, well later, it was more the...
Jesuit stuff would notice like, well the women are doing all the work.
Like, yeah, yes and no, but the men had to clear the fields anyway.
Yeah, they had to clear the fields.
And clearing a field with no acts is really hard.
Well, no acts.
What was it in your last episode or a couple of episodes ago?
I think you guys were talking about you and Simon were talking about how they would
clear the fields.
And I was driving when I was listening to this episode and it stressed me out.
Because I live in a fairly...
There's a lot of farmland.
And I was looking around at the fields as I was listening to this.
I thought, how in the world?
Because he mentioned the rotting the roots or something.
And then that's how they clear them.
Yeah, they have to choke the roots so they can pull the trees down.
So I found that so interesting.
I actually, like, I relowned it.
Yes, we'll do it.
And listen to it again, because I'm, you know, here I am driving along by the farms.
Yeah.
On my house.
And like, what?
And they have these machines that honestly look like Mad Max trucks.
Yeah, yeah.
To take the roots back.
Because we had a tree taken at once.
Yeah.
And it was like, that root was...
Or that, uh...
Yeah.
That was gone.
That stump was gone.
The stump.
It's so cool though.
And that's why I say maybe they did have, you know, you'll say there's a lot of time
but well, maybe they didn't.
I mean, because there's so much to do and it's...
Everything takes so long.
Yeah.
Because there are no iron tools.
They had stone tools.
Yeah, no bees to burden.
Yeah.
So no oxen.
That's the other thing.
Because it like an oxen.
If you had chains and an oxen, it's still extremely laborious for men to dig that root
out.
Sorry.
I just...
I just remembered a heritage commercial.
Oh, what?
The woman that's pregnant in the fields.
Oh, remember?
Where did he get...
Is it the one the...
The...
In Saskatchewan?
Yes.
And when they're in the Saudi?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's...
Sorry, for the listener, we were talking about how many heritage commercials we can remember
earlier today and then we started naming them all.
I forgot about the Saudi.
They're so embedded in their brains.
Yeah.
As soon as you start talking about oxen, I was like, wait a second.
There's a heritage commercial about that.
Yep.
Sorry.
Yep.
Anyway, the 1880s or something like that.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Sorry.
There's no veins, no oxen or no more horses, you know, like dreahorses.
You don't have those.
Nope.
Nothing.
Because moose aren't great at pulling stumps.
They are not helpful.
No.
Neither are deer.
No.
I guess we're just squirrely.
No.
They're not helpful.
Useless.
Okay.
So in some ways, the St. Lawrence Eroquar, like we said, were very similar as the other
Eroquar people, like the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee.
So that they lived in villages.
Some were palisaded.
Some were not.
And they were agricultureists.
So like I said, they grew the beans and the corn and the squash and that made up a large
part of the diet.
But in a way that differed from the Wendat was that their annual trips to the coast.
So the St. Lawrence, what do you call that?
Not Hudson Bay.
That's too far.
Anyways, they went to Hunt Beluga and Seals and like Mackerel.
What caused by here?
I can't remember.
Say LaRseeway?
Seeway.
I think that's it.
Yeah.
We got there.
Yeah, we got there.
All right.
Now I have a nerd word for you, but I had to look up.
Bring it.
Okay.
So don't tell me what it is.
No, you'll see.
You'll see.
Okay.
So like so they went there.
And the whales and seals and Mackerel and other sea creatures in what archeologist Michael
Plurid called an annual cycle of horizontal transhumans.
Yeah.
There you go.
It's a nerd way to describe the annual following following of a herd or the movement of a herd.
But in this case, it's the St. Lawrence earquas or wintering on their corn, beans, et cetera.
And then they travel the coast to see for the sea creature hunting of the seals because
that they meet them where they are.
They're following the herd, but they can only leave the seals.
The seals come back for that during this time, for the time period of mid February to mid
April.
So it's trans.
Yeah, I know.
Listen, I looked it up because I'm like, what the hell is transhuman is human.
It's human ants.
Like it's TRA.
It's not transhumanants.
It's transhumans.
Okay.
I know.
It's transTRANS-H-U-M-A-N-C-E.
Yeah.
There you go.
So for the listener, initially I thought she said transhumans.
No.
And I was like, well, maybe they could just call them nomads.
But no.
So transhumans.
Transhumans.
Yeah.
And that's like a word for herders, essentially.
Really?
Yeah.
Of how they, the following of the herd.
Listen.
So people that follow the herd.
Yeah.
That's really interesting.
Yeah.
Did you look up the root word of humans?
No, I did not.
But I imagine herd romance, maybe.
Maybe it's human, human, but like an active.
Human.
I don't know.
Yeah, that's weird.
Yeah.
It's a new one for me.
And I'm like, I'm going to write that down.
I'm going to tell Vanessa.
I thought I had one.
Yeah.
A lot of that.
You work on that.
See what you can do.
Yeah.
All right.
So they would send like considering there's about 1500 people in these, all these little
villages, they would send 200 people.
Whoa.
Yeah.
So a quite a large contingent.
I'm not going to attempt to do that.
But that's a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they went up to the regions that they called Honeda.
That's Segane, which is like kind of like up and whatever a bit.
And Honguido.
That's a gas bay.
So it's more, yeah, east looking towards New Brunswick more and Labrador and whatnot.
So the arrival of the Spanish Basque on the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador would be
game changers for the indigenous people there.
So that's Spaniards.
I know.
I'm, they might even get insulted that you called them Spaniards though.
Oh, shoot the Basque.
Yeah.
Perdom.
Perdom.
No, hang on a sec.
No, let's not get the, the Basque separatists.
I know.
I know.
So they, so I had vaguely, I'd been vaguely aware of the idea of Basque fishermen coming
to, it might have been a heritage moment.
Was it them that found the cod?
See, okay.
Was it them or was it the English men or, but maybe they, maybe that's a rewriting.
Maybe that's a, yeah, that might be a rewriting of it.
Because because it sounds like it may have been the Basque.
What, what is the, what is that cod area called?
What is that?
I feel like I'm in greedy writing a test.
The Grand Banks.
Is that it?
Yes.
The Grand Banks, that's where the, that's where they got the cod where they were just
cutting through cod with their ships because it was so chocolat, chocolat full of them.
And so the Basque, they, they may have been among the first Europeans to have more than
a fleeting interaction with the indigenous people on the coast.
And I had it in my mind that the Basque were a little footnote compared to the French and
English, but they had a far more influential part to play in the relationship with the
Inuit, Mi'kma and St. Lawrence Iroquois.
So they would trade their goods like iron tools and pots.
But what the indigenous people really had an eye for it, were their small wooden sailing
vessels.
You're going to help me with this.
Chalupa, T-X-A-L-U-P-A.
T-X-A-L-U-P-A.
Chalupa.
Chalupa.
Okay.
I think so, yeah.
Yeah.
So the Basque called it that and they called the French called them Chalupes.
So that makes sense?
Yeah.
So in the book before Canada, Northern North America and a connected world, added by Alan
Greer, Brad Lowen has a chapter where he goes into great detail about the effect the Basque
had on the region.
So these little boats, I stopped, I stopped riding Chalupa and Chalupa and I just called
them little boats.
They were all boats.
In my notes here.
The Basque.
So they're going to come after you.
Yep.
So little boats had sails but they could also be rode.
So it made them really effective and highly maneuverable.
And the indigenous people, they would basically just nick them when they saw their chance,
which I like good on you.
So at first there may have been tension from the Basque when their little boats got stolen,
but they quickly saw how the Mi'gma, Inuit and St. Lawrence E. or Croc could help them
with their hunting and fishing.
So they would bring old Chalupa and let them take them.
So they would just store them as part of their trade goods, like the extra pots and knives
and axes and whatnot.
They would just like, they would bring the old boats that we don't want anymore.
And in general, they had a pretty positive relationship.
Obviously, they are fishermen and indigenous warriors and hunters and kind of tough people.
There it is.
So they're going to fight against the shaco sideways sometimes.
Always.
But in general, it's pretty darn good.
But like on the grand scale, the Basque enjoyed the opportunity to trade with them in what
they called duad de pecoteal, which was the right to petty trade.
So they would be able to trade their little pots and their knives and axes and whatnot
for some furs and things like that.
And they would be able to keep the profits.
It wouldn't go to the ship's owner.
Whereas like the whatever they got on the fishing trip, whereas the cot or if they got
a whale, these ships owner owned that, right?
Right.
Like they would bring it home and the profit would go to the whoever had that.
Whereas these like they got to keep their the furs to trade and make the money.
It was mainly the captains and the officers who got it, but they would share that with
the regular sailors as well.
So generally, yeah, we want to see those guys there.
Yeah.
And so then they would trade would take place on the ship itself.
They wouldn't land.
They would just stay at sea.
And then so that's where those little boats are really helpful.
Like pop up shop.
Yeah, come up.
And so yeah, that's basically what they were.
That's a Basque or the pop up shop for the indigenous people.
Oh, they're back.
Oh, wow.
That's so okay.
So that's why they're able to because they came aboard, so they spent time with them,
right?
So you're able to make a relationship with these people because these guys were, they
were like, you would want the same guys who came the year before, right?
The year before because you can, you build that trust and they know where the nasty
shoals are and they know, you know, they know the area.
And then the indigenous people would be like, Oh, hey.
So around what year did the Basque show up?
15 17 was their first noted, like recorded.
15 17.
Mm hmm.
Okay.
So and Carche was 1534.
So we're talking 27 years or whatever before of opportunities of relationships to be built.
And yeah, the MiGma and the Inuit used the Chalupa to be much more mobile and they used
it to expand their territories.
So it was really valuable to them.
Okay.
Well, because they were Mariners, yeah, more so than the St. Lawrence, Iroquois, St. Lawrence
Iroquois, they were, they would come and they would definitely go on the sea, but they
weren't quite, it wasn't quite.
They're not going across.
Yeah.
And they were not there.
Right.
And the Bay of, sorry, I always say this wrong, the Bayothic, they did trade with the
Basque, Basque as well.
Bayothic?
Bayothic.
I know.
I thought it was Bay attack, but it's not Bayothic.
It's okay.
Listen, there's a guy, I'm reading this book right now.
He was on a podcast and he and the other podcast guy kept saying Bayothic and the guy who wrote
the book spoke with people who are descendants of the Bayothic.
So I'm like, it's going to be Bayothic.
It's Bayothic.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm trusting him that he was correct.
Yeah, I would too.
So they got pushed out of some of their coastal areas by the Mi'kmaa at this time on Newfoundland.
So they were, the Mi'kmaa were making a play for Newfoundland.
But again, this, these are not, there's not that many people.
It's not like, we're not like millions of.
I know.
It's thousands.
Not even.
I mean, you saw the other one was 1500.
I know.
Yeah.
So by the time Cartier had come to Canada, the St. Lawrence Iroquois had had some contact
with the Europeans, but not quite as much as the Mi'kmaa or any of it because they were
not there the year, the full year round.
So they would only kind of get these little, and they were busy.
They had to get their food.
They had to have like, so they couldn't devote, you know, a week or a month.
Whereas maybe the Mi'kmaa could work.
Okay.
Because they're locals.
Yeah.
Okay.
But they were aware of the potential gains of establishing a strong relationship with
the newcomer.
Of course.
Because they've been there for 20 years.
They've, they keep seeing these guys and they have awesome shit.
They got little boats that we like.
They got pots, knives, axes, beads.
They love the beads.
They do.
Yeah.
So you see the interaction between the, like, it's a good, it's good archaeological evidence
because it can be tracked from the style of beads that the Europeans made and brought
over.
Right.
No, that's so.
See, I just find it really interesting that so often we just hear about, like you said
earlier, the French and the English, right?
And then, but then you've got the bass.
Yep.
And that's just, I find it really fascinating because I don't think I'd ever heard about
that.
Yeah.
Because that's why it's me.
They were always just a footnote.
Yeah.
The bass were there and then they weren't.
And then they weren't.
But they obviously had.
But they were there for like 200 years.
Yeah.
They were, they had these relationships.
And then, yeah.
So in the previous episode, I had covered the third and last of Cartier's Voyages to
Canada and how he had made a hasty retreat with his treasure trove of medals and crystals
that would sow well in a children's museum gift shop.
And children.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
He liked those too.
You said children's museum only capital the kids.
Yep.
They got the shiny rocks.
Yep.
And like four children.
So weird.
So I had mentioned that Cartier left in part because of the attritional attacks that the
staticonans were making on the Scholzburg Royale fort.
But the basket also set up armed whalers at the Strait of Bel Isle.
So unlike the St. Lawrence, your seaway in 1530, 1543.
So they were probably did that in cahoots with the staticonans to choke off support
of Cartier's colony for Cartier's colony.
So they were playing an active role in that demise.
And that is not something that is like, oh, okay.
And to me, that gives even more, it wasn't just Cartier's failures.
It was the agency of the staticonans using their friends to get rid of these strategic
things.
Yeah.
They're like, these guys suck.
Yeah.
You guys are cool.
You guys have awesome stuff.
Help us out.
That's really, yeah.
Mm.
And so they were like, the Basque were part of this under the umbrella of the Spanish
crown.
Yes.
So there was imperial Spanish support for this to happen because they wanted to keep control
of these resources and keep it away from the French and the English.
So maybe there are some Spanish influence out there.
Yeah.
What?
What?
This is Canada.
This is Canada.
There you go.
Spanish people are always coming.
Yeah.
We're always coming and taking stuff.
I know.
Taking stuff.
But being...
Turning everyone Catholic and being nice.
And then bouncing.
Well, some of them are nicer.
Some of them are nicer.
That's really...
Just FYI, Vanessa is Spanish.
Yeah.
That's not just saying.
That's like, hold up.
It's like, what's wrong with these people?
No.
But I still argue that it was Carche's failure and his inability to develop a diplomatic
relationship and that pushed the staticonans to more towards their Basque friends.
I think the staticonans wanted the French allies because they were coming to them.
And so like, wow, this is great.
We got someone else because the Basque had a bit more of a relationship with the Mi'gma
and the Inuit and the staticonans were kind of enemies of the Mi'gma because in 15...
When was it?
1533.
Okay.
The Mi'gma had killed 200 staticonans.
Right.
So it's pretty brutal.
So they...
It was not all friends.
No.
You know, it wasn't big.
My job went up in St. Lawrence.
Are we allowed to say...
I don't know if we are.
Probably not.
Maybe Sam is going to edit that out.
Yeah.
Okay.
So if he'd been more respectful of the staticonans, then maybe he would have been able to put
the French between the staticonans and the Spanish Basque.
The Basque did not seem to have any desire to colonize while they were there.
That's weird.
Yeah.
And they were under the thumb of the Spanish crown, but they didn't want to...
They were not trying to get inland.
They were not trying to make settlements for themselves in like a fort.
And what's interesting is the Basque are an identifiable indigenous European culture.
Still.
Yes.
So listen, I could be reading into it that like they are indigenous people and then they're
meeting another indigenous people and then they've got like, I don't know what's going
like.
Yeah.
So it's interesting.
I'm just putting it out there as food for thought.
What do you think is interesting about it?
Do you think they were being...
They recognized each other, but they were working...
They were doing what they did.
The Basque were especially on the coast.
They said they're inland as well in the mountains.
Right.
But the coastal Basque were fishermen and they went out.
They had always gone out and been seafaring.
And so they were just doing their thing.
Whereas in the indigenous people were just doing their thing as well.
Right.
So they were just like, you know why?
We don't want to live here.
We just want the food.
We do the thing.
And we'll go back and to our own homeland.
We are happy we're in our own homeland.
You're happy in your homeland.
Cool.
Peaceful people.
Yeah.
Sometimes.
Sometimes.
Sometimes.
They'll smash your head in with a...
Oh yeah.
Whatever.
Both of them.
There's definitely some stuff that's pretty nasty.
It's almost like they...
What's the word I'm looking for?
Like they were collaborating.
Yeah.
Rather than conquering.
Conquering.
Yeah.
Whereas the French were...
And the Spanish, the Spanish crown, we're looking to conquer the lands and take it over
as their own.
Rather than using the resources for mutual benefit.
For mutual benefit.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, although the Stadaconans had run off carci and rubber val, things were not all sunshine
and roses in the St. Lawrence Valley.
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was becoming more and more of a problem for them.
And the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, they'd been around for several hundred years by now
and had been growing in power, which influenced the beginnings of the Wendec Confederacy.
Okay.
And that would...
They influenced them in the 14th century.
That's when they became a Confederacy.
Some say 15th century.
But you're looking at maybe 100 to 200 plus years that the Wendec Confederacy, which is
about four nations coming together in opposition.
And Haudenosaunee and Wendec were about equal in size.
So by the time they shan't play in came, we're looking at 25 to 30,000 each.
Pretty like matched.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Yeah.
And at this time, the Wendec were moving away from the North Shore of Lake Ontario.
That's when they were moving into the Morissimco County area.
And the Stadaconans and the St. Lawrence Iroquois had begun to their move from their long-held
territory in the St. Lawrence River Valley.
Archaeologists found clear evidence of warfare between the Haudenosaunee and St. Lawrence
Iroquois in the St. Lawrence area in the form of bone fragments that had been turned into
different things, like rattles.
Not baby rattles, they like for shaman beads and tools.
Yeah.
Nice.
But that's the stuff that stays, right?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
And so, okay.
So they left the St. Lawrence area and came down towards Simcoe County.
So the Wendec were in on the North Shore of Lake Ontario.
So they were separate.
Okay.
Sorry.
But we'll see the connections in a second.
But in the St. Lawrence Iroquois, they're the ones in the Quebec in the St. Lawrence River
Valley.
Okay.
So yeah, so like I said, the tools, they were the bone, anything made of bone you're going
to find.
And you don't make things out of the bones of your family.
You're a bit of a bull.
You may make it out of your enemies.
Yeah.
So that's fun.
So the abandonment of Stadacona in the surrounding areas was slow and then all of a sudden.
So for several decades up until the full abandonment as a permanent residence, the St. Lawrence Iroquois,
we're using their myriad of connections in the regions of Quebec, Ontario and Labrador
to find new homes for all of their people.
It was not a brutal dispersal by an enemy, but a purposeful transition into familiar communities
when faced with increasing threats by the Haudenosaunee.
Mm.
Yeah.
So some of the St. Lawrence Iroquois gradually moved to join the Wendec communities, specifically
the archaeologist Gary Warwick and Louise Lesage believed that upwards of a thousand
St. Lawrence Iroquois moved to join the Arendar, the Arendar Honan nation over a period of
time like decades.
Okay.
And that bumped that population of 50% of the population.
Okay.
Like that's a lot.
Yeah.
Wow.
But of course this could not happen in one fell swoop.
It had to happen over time because they were subsistence farmers and hunters.
So you could not take a thousand refugees in two years.
It would have to be like, I mean, not with your subsistence farmer.
We can stay a lot now.
Yeah.
We have, we have industrial agriculture now.
Right.
Huh.
But what they would have done is negotiate with their kinship networks.
Like, like I said, everybody knew everybody.
Right.
And I've gone quiet because I'm just trying to picture it all.
Yeah.
Like you need a, you know, those maps with the little strings on them.
I do have a, when you're pinpointing, like when you put a pin somewhere and they take
a string and you map it to something else.
Yeah.
So that's what I'm trying to do in my head because there's so, so much of that area is
familiar.
So I'm trying to picture how all of that would go down with the traveling, you know, like
of who's where.
Yeah.
So here's, here's, so here's a general picture.
So you've got the Wendat in and around Berry, Hanateh, Midland, Boston country.
Yeah.
And Elliot country.
And Elliot country.
And down.
And then you have the neutral around, like, Alistin.
Okay.
And the tie on the tie something.
Sorry.
I was not in front of me.
So I can't.
It's okay.
That platoon is what the French probably call them, their Niagara area.
Okay.
And they were more, they were more neutral between the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee.
Same as the neutral were neutral.
Right.
Right.
Right.
And so that's where you have, so those people.
Alistin and Haudenosaunee are on the other side.
So they're more New York state and they were New York state and more East.
So they would push against say the indigenous people in Maine.
Yeah.
Okay.
And yeah.
So that's Maine and like, Migma is New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and P.E.I.
Maritime.
Yeah.
And then north of Simcoe County, you have the Algonquin nation.
So like in new textbooks, they called them the Montagnet.
They called the Inu and yeah, the Algonquin and other and then kind of.
So it's almost like go up highway 11 off the 400.
Yeah.
And then you're in that territory.
Yeah.
And then in some, and a jibway as well, but there's more that they kind of moved in a
bit later.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
It does.
Thank you for using places that I am familiar with.
Yeah.
But I have to do that too.
Because otherwise I don't.
Yeah.
Right.
They put up in the history books, they put up like the maps and then I have to go Google
maps and see what cities there now.
Yes.
Because I'm like, wait, you want me to know what this is.
Okay.
And we're talking, you know, like, yeah, we're talking really, and we're talking Barry and
we're talking Midland and Penitane and for the Wendat.
That's, and then we're going to be getting into that later.
No, that's really cool.
And then they're going to Shone are coming over, but they don't actually ever live.
And then a Haudenosaunee kind of move in later to where we are now in Grand River.
Okay.
Okay.
So I actually, James and his class just went on a trip to Crawford or something conservation.
Oh, yeah.
Up by Milton.
I think so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm such a good mom.
I have no idea what I signed the permission for.
But he was telling me about how you, you would think it was really cool.
Yeah.
And I had the kids because he went and he said, you should tell auntie because there
was indigenous, there's indigenous writing and they were able to see things at the indigenous
people.
And there's a log house there too.
Yes.
Yeah.
And he started telling me all about the log house and how he'd heard it on your podcast.
And oh, you should tell auntie.
So yeah.
Yeah.
I'm going to go.
Yeah.
You can take a picnic there.
Yeah.
So cool.
Yeah.
That's.
And then for later episodes, you can listen to the one we'll talk about for the Saint Marie
among the heroines.
Oh.
And go there.
Yes.
That's coming later.
And that's going to be some good stuff because that's when you get, that's the Jesuits and
everything.
I love the Jesuits.
It's going to be wild.
I don't love the Jesuits, but I mean, like, it's fine.
I know, but the Jesuits of now, I guess, of like the education.
Yeah.
They were always good educators.
I know.
They were all.
They were all, I know.
They were counter reformation warriors.
That's what they were there for.
Okay.
Which is fine.
Yeah.
It's like that was my dad.
The reformation.
Oh, Jesuits.
Well, Jesuits school.
Well, that's what they love to do.
They were good at that.
They were good at it.
Yep.
And some of them were really not so good because we'll get into that later and years to come
of the residential schools.
Oh.
Yeah.
That's going to be like a kick in the solar plexus.
It's so bad.
Yeah.
It's so bad.
And now the kids are learning about it, right?
Yeah.
And so the kids actually talk about it with me and I'm like, I'm not prepared for this
because we didn't hear about it when we were kids.
No, but now they're, you know, no, talking about it was great.
I didn't learn about it in school, but there was a movie that CBC did and I was home
alone one afternoon.
Oh, no.
Never home alone.
I was probably 11, whatever.
Well, of course.
I was the 80s.
They were probably home alone when you were eight.
It was in 90s.
It was in 90s because it was in...
But yeah, it was about the residential schools and I had never heard of them before and I
watched this movie by myself.
I'm like, wow, that's intense.
And it was a girl my age.
But honestly, it was great.
It was a very good movie.
Oh, man.
I'll have to look up the title some other time.
Yeah, there's so many interesting things.
I'd like to hear, I'm looking forward to those episodes.
Those are the only episodes.
I've never been to Samaria.
It's very good.
I've heard it's beautiful.
I've never been.
And I'm in Ireland.
Yeah.
Gajondo.
That's what they actually called.
All right.
So they couldn't take everybody out once, right?
Because these are subsistence people.
You were hunter-gatherers.
So you would, in different hunting times, you wouldn't be hunting with 100 people.
Because these are not like in the West, in Saskatchewan, in Manitoba, where you have
the herds of buffalo, right?
Where you need.
Where you would have hundreds of people doing this hunt.
It's a totally different type of hunting.
Right.
So you've got small groups.
Okay.
And they'd have hunting parties.
And like, you know, they would be like, oh yeah, my family will go with your, my husband
and son and uncle will go with your family and will go do our thing.
You know, they all group together.
And there is strong linguistic evidence for the amalgamation of the St. Lawrence Iroquois
joining the Wendat.
So, Cartier had created an 80-word dictionary, like a travel dictionary, like Uelis El-Dabay,
kind of thing.
Okay.
So the first thing we learned.
Oh yeah, see we play.
So you did when you traveled Europe.
Yeah.
The St. Lawrence Iroquois words and the anthropologist, John Stackley, used this in his examination
of the dictionary, Dula Long Huron by the Recolab brother, Gabrielle Seggard.
So the Recolab came first before the Jesuits.
Just drama with the Catholic church.
Drama, drama, drama.
So they created this, he wrote this in like 1623, 1624 when he was living with the Wendat.
And so Stackley went through Seggard's dictionary and found that Seggard was not recording
three Wendat dialects, but it was in fact regarding two Wendat dialects and the St. Lawrence Iroquois
language.
So and he went through it fairly systematically in the way an anthropologist of languages
would do.
Yeah.
I'm like, I'm not going to go through that because I don't understand.
It's complex.
I'm not great with languages.
I got English and that's it.
You got three.
I have, I have the one and I have grade 12.
I was listening to a podcast the other day about with the lingo, there was a linguist.
Oh, of course.
I love learning about it.
It's fascinating.
Did you know this is totally off topic, but what is the singular form of you?
Is it not I?
No, what is it?
Thou?
So this linguist was saying that we should bring back the thou.
It was a revisionist history with local or local boyfriend Malcolm.
Yeah.
And I think it's amazing.
Is he from El Myra?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or Waterloo.
He likes to say he's from Waterloo.
Yeah.
Myra is probably the case from El Myra.
People will be like, excuse me.
But but yeah, so he had someone on there and here they were and they were talking about
his Canadian isms and yeah.
And this linguist was saying that thou, thou bring back thou.
Do you know what the biggest driver of language change, this is from another nerdy thing
I read, biggest driver of language change in the past few hundred centuries, few centuries,
sorry, teenage girls in their writing, the writing of letters and how they communicate.
And that's why you get because they're prolific writers, communicators.
And that is how language kind of got codified and spelling and language and it continues
to be a major driver in language change.
Interesting.
Of young women.
Listen, just wanted to put that out there.
That's very useful stuff.
That is very useful.
Sorry.
Anyway, back to.
So I'm sure the Wendat and St. Lawrence Ear coin young women were.
The power drivers between all the line they were and they were probably the drivers of
the they were the ones doing the work of creating this these relationships and the men were
the men had their own ways of doing things.
But then anyways, that's going to be I haven't read it.
It's really hard to get art.
I do want to get more articles and books on indigenous women, but it's they are few and
far between.
So story of our lives.
I'm working on it.
So I know this has been very much a traditional male centered history so far.
I am trying to find resources.
It is tough.
Maybe you can connect with like a.
Yeah, there's a indigenous woman or who's like a what do they call it?
Language keepers or knowledge keeper knowledge keepers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's there's people at the universities as well.
Of course water UW Waterloo has a good connection because they have a campus in Brantford.
And there's the horse reserves it there.
So they're they're developing that.
I just thought by that campus last week.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the St. Lawrence Earquah were they moved in with the when that that was one of a large
part because you think about the.
A lot of them were the sedentary.
Agriculture is some of them weren't some of them they came home, but they went out for
a quarter of the year.
Right.
So these would have been some of the people who went with the Algonquin who are more north
and some of them just didn't come.
They just stayed in Saginaw and Gaspar.
Okay.
So there's a fair amount of evidence of the shift of by way of the earquah St. Lawrence
Earquah's friends the Basque.
So this is going to be really interesting.
So Gervais Carpen wrote a book wrote about the history of the word Canadian and in it
he writes how the Basque referring to a group of indigenous people as Canadian or Canada
qua doing 16 hundred and 1650 well before it was a name for French sellers.
So Brad Lowen believes that these Canadian are the descendants of the St. at Conan's
who left the St. Lawrence Valley for good.
So he writes the their earquah identity as Canadian's survived to about 1650 after which
they assimilated as Mi'kma and Inu to complete the indigenous cultural boundary shift in
the estuary.
So there we have who are the first Canadians St. Lawrence Earquah.
So that's that is a little bit how you get the a little throwback to our heritage moment
of Canada.
So they are the Canadian and they were.
It means the village.
Yeah, they were the people that that's what the Basque referred to them as.
That is so cool.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
I've never heard about that.
Nope, I was I was so excited to when I read that I'm like, wow, we're figuring this out
now because there are people are the historians and archaeologists, right anthropologists are
looking at what were the Basque up to?
Like how do we because it's hard we don't have we have the archaeology, right?
But how do you tie that into what was happening?
You still need the historical record and it's just that we still have it and you find those
patterns and then you find how you see what the connections are.
Right.
That is so interesting.
Okay.
So the story of the St. Lawrence Earquah did not end with Carche's departure.
No, they continued to live and move within the area of St. Lawrence for several decades
as they made their purposeful migration out of the area because of the increasing danger
from the Haudenosaunee.
I know they're going to be there.
They're going to have a whole story.
It's going to be great because they can attack a sedentary village.
They can attack a village that has agriculture.
Like you can only fortify so much.
You're going to get picked off is when there is the fields aren't fortified.
And if you are being attacked in the field, you cannot cultivate your field.
You're going to get killed and it's women who cultivated the field.
And the men could only protect them so much because you're talking acres.
So, anyway, so instead they use their centuries-long kinship networks and knowledge of the land
in Ontario, Quebec and Labrador to carry on.
So they continue to be part of the story of the development of the relationships between
the French and English settlers well into the 17th century when they finally became
indistinguishable from the indigenous nations they had migrated to.
They are the First Canadians and their descendants continue to call Quebec home to this day
as members of the Huron-Wendat Nation.
Wow.
Yeah.
They're still stewards of the land.
That's amazing.
That's amazing.
Honestly, I find that so interesting.
So, yeah.
That's...
When I first read about this, I was so excited.
I was always curious, like, what happened to them?
Where did they go?
Right.
They didn't go...
They just...
They just...
They separated, but they're still watching over the land.
Aww.
So, they're still here.
They're still here.
They're still here.
So...
Wow.
And I think it's really important to understand that...
So we have these really cut and dry ideas of what a nation is and a culture and that
there is a boundary between it and that never the tweens shall meet.
And so...
But they do not have that.
The indigenous people, some do, I'm sure, to a degree.
I mean, you do have major battles between the Wendat and the Honoshone and that's going
to be devastating.
I mean, forward, going forward.
But even then, they have a blending.
Like they do...
Like they...
It's very complicated, but they still do mix and create culture together and live together
and move forward together.
Well, that's true of so many nations that we know of now.
Yep.
Right?
So it's not surprising that that would happen because that's just...
How people are.
It's how people...
People.
Yep.
And that's when you get an...
It's when you get an outside philosophy that's kind of trying to generate power over groups
and by separating them, that's how you do that.
Like nationalism.
Like, no, you are...
These people are bad.
We can't let them in.
These people are fine, but it's when you create these...
And again.
Yeah.
So...
It's always relevant.
It's always relevant, right?
It doesn't repeat.
It just rhymes.
Yeah.
It just keeps coming.
And so that's why I think it's really important to understand the concept of the kinship networks
and working in community with one another that the indigenous people did and that's how
they have maintained the relationships over the centuries.
And that's how they maintain their relationships over...
In this area, it would be like 12,000 years because it was before that it was covered with
ice.
Right.
But then even other areas, much longer.
Like, of course, like the west coast was particular.
The west coast.
You were talking, what was it?
30,000.
And then in the south, like South America, maybe longer.
Oh yeah.
For sure.
So yeah.
It's very interesting.
And it's really...
We got to kind of break our brain to get out of this trap that we've set ourselves.
And that's...
I think that's what we talked about in the last time we chatted.
Because it was interesting to hear things pre-contact.
And now we're at contact.
We're at contact.
It's just...
Yeah, doing that shift in what we've learned and filling it in some of those gaps and
just building on what the actual story is.
Because the narrative is changed.
It's changed.
And we're the better because we have a better understanding.
It's like my brain just starts to...
I'm trying to do some recall.
And I'm like, but wait, now that's not...
No, that's not full.
Like, that's not the full story.
And so it's exciting to hear this stuff.
And it's so important because then it helps us understand better than...
Rather than just surface stuff.
Yeah.
And people get their back up and it's like, well, that's not the story I learned.
Well, like, yeah.
No.
But I learned about the water system when I was in grade three.
But then I learned that there's a lot more to do with the water system in science than
what I learned in grade three.
Exactly.
So this is more of the story.
And now you're a grown up or even a kid or teenager listening to it.
And there's a lot more to it.
So the story that you learned, yeah, so the carche part is not wrong.
No.
But it's not the only version.
It's not the only story.
Like, it's not the big picture.
Not to use like that, like, you know, that term is...
People say that one the time.
I know what you're saying.
But having all those different pieces, it's like we always refer to Canada as a mosaic.
Yeah.
So it's having all those pieces together because there is more to just the little bits that
we learned in grade eight or grade seven, right?
And I always refer to grade eight and grade seven and eight because that's where for
me history, I remember it really well.
And that's when I started to really enjoy learning about history.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's adjusting what you've learned, but not because it's what you learned.
Like you said, what you learned was wrong.
It's because now you can know more and understand it rather than just...
It's how do you fit that story that you learned as a kid into a technical version?
There's a black and white.
This is the story that you learned.
You learned two paragraphs, right?
Or maybe three pages in a textbook.
I mean, you see my desk.
Yeah.
Yeah, for the listener, it's just full of notes and books.
There's eight journal articles.
Yeah.
Like eight inch thick book.
That's good.
And that's not even known.
Like, listen, this is my boy Bruce.
This is Bruce Trigger.
Okay.
It's a doorstop.
It's how many people?
It's four.
It's four.
That looks like the anthologies.
Oh, Norton's anthology.
As soon as I saw...
Even the sound, will you put it down?
Yeah.
The way it kind of flops.
That sounds like a Norton anthology.
Yeah, yeah.
You know which one I'm talking about.
I do.
I have several.
I have several.
Yeah, of course you would.
Yeah.
And I still...
I can't part with them.
No.
No.
They're so pretty.
Yeah.
That's...
Yeah, that one...
Listen, it was...
I'm gonna be...
I haven't even...
We're only here in this book.
There's so much more.
And so we're only at a centimeter and a half.
It's bigger than a Bible.
Two inches of...
It's like a Bible size.
And she's not even cracked the old testament.
No.
No, we're in Moses.
You're so...
Yeah.
Wow.
Oh my gosh.
But yeah, there's...
So there's a lot more.
And you see beside those other journal articles.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
Lots of journal articles are a way to go.
Because that's when you get the most up-to-date information.
Because the journals come first and then they go into microfiche.
From microfiche?
No, that's the primary sources.
Those are even.
Those are...
It's been a long time since I've...
But just through that microfiche.
Microfiche.
Microfiche.
Oh, I can hear it.
I can smell it.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
No, but it's so...
Honestly, this is...
Again, really, really interesting.
So the next time, if you listen to this and then the next time you go to that...
You go see a place...
Or in the States, they have place, you know, living history museums and have long houses
and things like that.
Oh, right, yeah.
This gives you...
So yeah, like a living history museum.
Like St. Raymond the Hurons.
And I think it is Crawford.
It's Crawford Lake.
Crawford Lake.
Yeah.
In Milton area.
And I don't know what they have in Quebec.
I'm sure they have living history places in Quebec as well.
Quebec City.
I'm sure.
I mean, they have the forts and stuff like that, but I don't know what they have outside
of it in more of like a reserve.
Like not indigenous reserve, but like a conservation area.
Conservation.
Conservation area.
But yeah.
So that's what we have.
So now we can do a new heritage moment and have the Canadian and they are not the Canadian
of the Lake.
It's in Quev'e.
But now, okay, I hate to make it about hockey.
I know.
They're not the habs.
They're not the habs.
They're not the Habito.
They have a ton.
Canadians.
No.
No.
They are the Stadaconan Canadian.
Canadian.
And I don't...
Unfortunately, I don't...
I think that's what we have.
Like that's what they call themselves.
They're the village of Stadacona.
And then there's a bunch of other villages, but that's...
So I don't know if that's what they call themselves as a nation.
Whereas the Haudenosaunee Confederacy calls themselves the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
And then they had their separate, the five founders that started it.
And then they added some more.
See my little brain now, it's just...
I keep trying...
I said earlier, I keep trying to recall.
And then trying to find where those little pieces that I have fit into.
But now you have more of a bigger picture, and then you have that nugget of early knowledge.
Yeah.
In the middle.
Thank you.
And they can fill it out.
So cool.
Yeah.
So cool.
I told you there was going to be pottery.
Linguistics.
Love linguistics.
Yeah.
And love linguistics.
All right.
Let's go get a big glass of rose.
Like it's Mother's Day.
Oh yeah.
Happy Mother's Day.
Yeah.
To all people who are mothering.
All people who are mothering.
I hope you have had a good day.
And if you're listening to this later on, I hope you just had a good day.
Yeah.
Whatever day it is.
Whatever.
Yeah.
And if you want rose, go get a rose.
Now's the time.
Definitely.
Okay.
Bye everybody.
Thanks.
Oh, and sign up and like and share and all that stuff.
Follow, share, save, download.
All your friends and your enemies.
Tell everybody.
Yeah.
All right.
Thanks everyone.
Bye.
Bye.
