Archaic Missisquoi 

A tiny stone bowl, likely used as a hand-held stone mortar to grind nuts and seeds, was found years ago near Walbridge Creek, in Mystic, Quebec. According to archaeologists, it represents the first people who lived in this region sometime between the Late Archaic and Early Woodland eras; roughly 3,000 to 5,000 years ago. 

Human history in the Champlain Valley begins in the Paleoindian period (12,000 years ago) when nomadic people moved into the territory as the Laurentide ice sheet was retreating north. Their migration was gradual, influenced by the movement of animals and the growth of vegetation in the wake of the receding glacier. While no evidence of these early peoples has yet been discovered in this region of the Eastern Townships, Paleoindian stone points have been found near Lake Megantic. 

The material evidence of prehistoric peoples increases in the subsequent Archaic period which spanned nearly seven thousand years, from 10,000 years to 3,000 years Before Present (BP).  Excavations by the Université de Montréal in the 1990s, uncovered the first traces of Laurentian Archaic people at the Bilodeau and Gasser sites (named after the landowners) located along the Rivière aux Brochets, near the village of Pike River, Quebec. The discoveries from these excavations pushed the timeline of this region back thousands of years into the past. 

The oldest evidence of people, based on charcoal samples, was found on the Gasser site. Dating from 5,000 years BP, this site held a strategic position by the rapids. Bone fragments revealed that these nomadic people fished pike and hunted beaver and deer, and they travelled to the open waters of Missisquoi Bay for waterfowl and other fish species. 

While local stone was used for tools and arrowheads, a superior quality of stone called Onondaga chert, originating more than 500 kilometres away, was also discovered. This evidence of trade indicates that the Archaic people had not only adapted to the resources of their environment, but they likely created alliances with distant groups and were possibly trading organic materials such as shells and furs too. 

The Bilodeau site was utilized into the Woodland time period, extending 3,000 to 500 years BP. In this period, groups of hunter-gatherers belonging to a common language family, came from the Great Lakes to occupy part of the St. Lawrence River Valley. This campsite uncovered evidence that their diets had expanded to include corn, squash, beans, sunflowers and tobacco. The site also revealed signs of a dwelling large enough to shelter two family groups in a seasonal encampment. The emergence of pottery on the Bilodeau site is a key element in distinguishing sites in the Woodland period from those of the Archaic and Paleoindian periods. The pottery shards were made from local clay, but their decorative patterns were fashioned in the style of the St. Lawrence Iroquoian culture. 

The St. Lawrence Iroquois were found along the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City to Lake Ontario and near tributaries of the Richelieu River and at the northern end of Lake Champlain. Even though a number of their social attributes were shared with other Iroquoian-language speaking nations, archaeologists believe that the Saint Lawrence Iroquoians were a distinct people. They were the ones who met Jacques Cartier in the Gaspé in 1534, and again in 1535 at Stadacona (Quebec) and Hochelaga (Montreal). When Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1603, they were gone. 

No single theory about their identity or their disappearance has gained unanimity among scholars or with modern-day First Nations communities. One theory for example, holds that the five nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), are directly descended from the St. Lawrence Iroquois; meaning they did not disappear, but merely relocated. Another idea suggests that the St. Lawrence Iroquois were weakened militarily by Algonquin tribes and were absorbed into the Wôbanakiak (Western Abenaki) First Nations people. 

Frequently, the history of the Lake Champlain Valley is said to begin in 1609 when Samuel de Champlain travelled the “Rivière des Iroquois” (Richelieu), and with his Algonquin allies, battled the Haudenosaunee on Lake Champlain. However, the archaeological records demonstrate that people were here many millenniums earlier and were engaging in meaningful cultural and social interactions with complex intersecting patterns of trade. 

Heather Darch

Sources:

Claude Chapdelaine, Up the Pike River: Five Thousand Years of Amerindian History in Brome-Missisquoi, 1996.

Roland Tremblay, The St. Lawrence Iroquois: Corn People, Musée Pointe-à-Callière, 2006.

Eric Pouliot-Thisdale, “Here we are Gathered: Tiohtià:ke and the Origins of Mohawk Nation Settlement in New France,” in Quebec Heritage News, Vol. 14 #4, Fall, 2020.

Thomas R. Jamison, Filling the Archeological Void: Saint Lawrence Iroquoians in Alburg, Vermont 

Thomas R. Jamison, Clay to Ceramics: St. Lawrence Iroquoian Sites in Alburgh, Vermont

Judith Blais, The Bilodeau Site Near Missisquoi Bay: Postmolds, Fishbones and Corn Ear Motifs. In: Essays in St. Lawrence Iroquoian Archaeology, James F. Pendergast and Claude Chapdelaine (editors), Occasional Papers in Northeastern Archaeology No.8, 1993.

Christian Gates St-Pierre, Iroquoians in the St. Lawrence River Valley before European Contact