The purpose of this essay is to provide an outline of the prehistoric events that have taken place in the province of Ontario over the last 11,000 years. Technical terms and concepts have been avoided but in attempting to present a general picture of Ontario's prehistory, it has been necessary to make the complex appear simple, the poorly known appear well known, and to favour one interpretation when, in fact, several conflicting interpretations exist. Most archaeologists, however, will be in essential agreement with the major themes as presented here.
Archaeology is a discipline that attempts to reconstruct human events and developments that took place prior to written records. Samuel de Champlain was able to make many important observations concerning the Hurons with whom he wintered in A.D. 1615-1616, but he was unable to comment on where the Hurons originally came from, how they learned to plant corn, beans, and squash, and when they first began smoking tobacco. The how, why, when, and where of the past are the questions that must, for the most part, be answered by archaeology. To achieve these ends, archaeologists have developed a wide range of field and laboratory techniques which assist in the reconstruction of past cultures. Admittedly, most of these reconstructions of what was are only rough approximations but they are continuously being built upon, modified, and in general, refined.
The vast bulk of material studied by archaeology consists of such things as broken tools and discarded food bones and, in a very real sense, archaeologists are glorified collectors and analyzers of prehistoric garbage. Unfortunately, most of the cultures that archaeologists attempt to reconstruct disappeared a long time ago. If you look around the room in which you are now reading and exclude everything except glass, china, brick, and a few other imperishable objects, you will have some idea of how little future archaeologists will have to work with in terms of our own culture. Despite these limitations, sufficient information survives the ravages of time and nature to permit the archaeologist to at least partially decipher the past. Different prehistoric cultures made different stone and bone tools, built their houses, and buried their dead in different ways. Some were hunters and others were farmers, some made pottery vessels and others did not. These similarities and differences allow the archaeologist to recognize various prehistoric cultural groups and to trace their development through time.
In writing about prehistoric cultures, archaeologists usually begin with the earliest known groups and advance towards the late or historic period when European explorers recorded their observations. The reason for going from early to late is probably related to the fact that in so doing we progress from the simple (more ignorance) to the complex (less ignorance). During the actual process of establishing sequences, however, the archaeologist often begins with the historic period and works successively further back into prehistoric times. In other words, one works from the known to the unknown.
Historic native villages, recorded by early explorers and missionaries, are located and their identification is supported by the presence of European trade goods and other evidence. The native artifacts of pottery, stone and bone associated with the European metal tools and glass beads are then compared with those of a nearby site not containing European artifacts. If the comparisons are close then it is assumed that the latter site was occupied by the ancestors of the people who lived in the historic site. The artifacts and other evidence from the prehistoric village are then compared with other prehistoric villages and, on the assumption that the degree of similarity reflects a relationship in time, it is possible to extend a series of site relationships down through time with the identified historic sites as a starting point. This sequence of sites is taken to represent the prehistoric development of the native people identified by the historic sources.
The great value of this approach is that it allows the archaeologist to make more meaningful cultural reconstructions through the use of historic and present-day studies of native peoples. Such cultural information could not possibly be provided by the limited remains recovered from prehistoric sites.
In order to re-create history from the fragmented and vague evidence left by prehistoric man, the archaeologist must be a jack-of-all trades. One must know sufficient geology to be able to distinguish man's work from that of nature, to identify varieties of stone, and to interpret the manner of soil deposition and modification. An adequate knowledge of biology permits the accurate identification and interpretation of the animal and plant remains recovered from sites. The archaeologist must also know some chemistry, physics, mathematics and a range of other disciplines that will assist in archaeological research.
Above everything else, however, the archaeologist must attempt to know and understand man. The broken tools and other items found around an ancient camp fire are only garbage. The vague outlines of ancient houses and other features are only ghostly reflections of what has been. But, all of these things are the products of man, man with his infinite variety and complexity.
The Northern and Southern Regions
Ontario and the Archaeological Periods
The prehistory of the Indians who occupied Ontario can best be understood by dividing the province into two major regions, a Northern region and a Southern region. Most of the Northern region is within the Canadian Shield and has predominantly coniferous forest, whereas the Southern region has predominantly hardwood forest.
The more kindly endowed Southern region always supported a far greater prehistoric population than the harsh Northern region; the same situation persists today, as is demonstrated by modern population densities. The richer archaeology of the south, however, has been complicated by the development of local cultural groups which interacted with each other and outside areas in a highly complex fashion. On the other hand, the Northern region is characterized by a high degree of cultural similarity which allows certain general interpretations to be drawn from relatively limited archaeological data. The available evidence suggests that the prehistory of these two regions has been distinct and different from the earliest times to the historic period. Certainly cultural interactions and contacts took place along a broad span of the somewhat ill-defined boundary between the two areas but such events appear to have had relatively little impact on the respective populations.
The prehistory of Ontario will be considered under four periods: the Palaeo-Indian period (9000 B.C. - 5000 B.C.); the Archaic period (5000 B.C. - 1000 B.C.); the Initial Woodland period (1000 B.C. - A.D. 1000) and the Terminal Woodland period (A.D. 1000 to the historic period). This last period ended shortly after the appearance of Europeans who introduced the historic period and provided written records on the indigenous people.
The aforementioned, four periods are artificial devices created by the archaeologist to assist the study of the approximately 11,000 years of Ontario prehistory. It is very convenient to be able to slice up the time column into four layers which can then be described as separate entities but, in truth, matters are not that simple and there are very fuzzy areas between and within these major periods. Each period, however, does possess certain characteristics which differentiate it from the other periods.
The Palaeo-Indian Period
(9000 B.C. - 5000 B.C.)
The earliest inhabitants of Ontario have been given the archaeological name Clovis. Clovis culture spread across North America east of the Rocky Mountains and extended as far south as Central America. It is believed that these people crossed from Asia into North America at a time when the two continents were joined by a broad land bridge in the area which is now the Bering Strait. The similarity of their archaeological remains over an enormous area suggests that they must have spread quite rapidly throughout North America. In Ontario these people were probably caribou hunters, although it is possible that they occasionally stalked the now extinct mammoth and mastodon. Their distinctive dart heads have been found only in Southern Ontario since Northern Ontario was still covered by the continental glacier. Recently, campsites of these early hunters have been found along the old beachlines of Lake Algonkian, an ancient glacial lake that covered a large area of Southern Ontario which is now dry land.
The Plano culture followed Clovis culture and appears to have developed mainly on the Plains, penetrating Northern Ontario from the west and, to some extent, from the southwest. These people, too, were hunters of big game. A number of Plano culture quarry sites have been found along the coasts of Lake Superior and Lake Huron where suitable stone such as taconite and quartzite were fashioned into tools. Some of these sites, which were originally on an ancient shoreline, are now as much as six miles inland and nearly 200 feet above the level of Lake Superior. It can be readily seen that an archaeologist must know something about the local geological events that altered lake levels and land surfaces if he hopes to discover Palaeo-Indian sites.
Typical tools of both Clovis and Plano culture are distinctive dart heads used for killing game, knives for butchering and other tasks, scrapers for shaping tools of wood and bone and for preparing hides, and small gravers for delicate carving work.
Reconstructing the way of life of these early hunters from the few stone tools that have survived the passage of time is a difficult task. From our knowledge of the climate at this early period we can assume that the Palaeo-Indians wore tailored skin clothing and had some form of shelter from the rigorous elements. Their religious beliefs were probably closely tied to the successful hunt upon which their survival depended. For much of the year they hunted in small family groups which would periodically gather into a larger grouping or band during a favourable period in their hunting cycle, such as the annual caribou migration.
Palaeo-Indian cultures did not cease to exist; they simply changed and, thus, have been given new names by the archaeologists. Various Archaic groups developed out of Clovis culture in eastern North America. In the west, Plano culture evolved out of the early Clovis base and, in its turn, developed into a number of cultures which archaeologists have assigned to the Archaic
The Archaic Period
(5000 B.C.-1000 B.C.)
Two quite different Archaic cultures occupied Ontario. In Northern Ontario the Shield Archaic culture appears to have developed out of the preceding Plano culture and to have followed a very similar way of life. This culture was so named since sites have been found throughout much of the Canadian Shield from Labrador to northern Manitoba and into the central Keewatin District of the Northwest Territories. Dietary staples were probably caribou and fish, supplemented by bear, beaver, hare and waterfowl. This statement, however, is largely conjectural since little bone has survived the acid soils of the north. To judge from the location of sites along waterways and on islands, the Shield people must have possessed some form of watercraft, probably the birch bark canoe. For mobility in deep snow they probably produced snowshoes. In short, their way of life appears to have been quite similar to that recorded for the northern Algonkian-speaking peoples of the early historic period. Indeed, it has been proposed that the Shield people were the ancestors of the historic Ojibwa, Cree, Algonkin and Montagnais.
The hardwood forests of Southern Ontario were occupied by a people who possessed a distinctively different culture from their Shield Archaic neighbours to the north and have been termed Laurentian Archaic. They hunted deer, elk, bear and beaver with the aid of dogs and also supplemented their diet with smaller game, fish, shell fish, berries and other wild plant foods. In addition to chipped stone dart heads, knives, and scrapers, they manufactured polished stone axes and adzes for wood working, ground slate darts, lances and knives and had a wide variety of bone items such as barbed fish harpoons, chisels, fish hooks, awls, needles, beads, and combs. Through trade with the Shield Archaic people they obtained native copper from Lake Superior which they fashioned into dart heads, awls, needles, bracelets, beads, adzes and many other necessary or ornamental objects.
From the evidence of excavated Laurentian Archaic cemeteries in adjacent Quebec and New York, we know that the people were of robust build and suffered, to a minor degree, accidental bone fractures, arthritis, and some tooth loss through gum disease. Death by violence is occasionally noted in the form of skull fractures, projectile points lodged in bones or the chest cavity. and evidence of beheading. There is even one recorded instance from New York of unsuccessful surgery to remove the tip of a dart head lodged in a human forehead.
The Laurentian Archaic people participated in a wide ranging trade network. Conch shells made into ornaments were obtained from the Gulf of Mexico, shell beads from the Atlantic coast, copper from Lake Superior, and exotic flints from widely dispersed locales. These items almost certainly arrived in Southern Ontario as a result of many individual, hand-to-hand transactions rather than by actual trading parties traversing enormous areas of North America.
Nothing is known of the kinds of houses that the Laurentian Archaic peoples of Ontario lived in. This is perhaps not too surprising when it is realized that the sites dug by archaeologists are summer camps and that flimsy structures must have been used, leaving no trace. There is also evidence that 5,000 years ago the warmer climate that then prevailed would have resulted in an extra month of summer, thereby even further reducing the need for substantial houses. In the late fall, when the individual families dispersed to their winter hunting grounds, it is very likely that more solid structures were built. Such winter sites, however, would be very small and extremely difficult for the archaeologist to find many thousand years after they had been abandoned.
The Woodland Period
(1000 B.C.-- Historic Period)
The Woodland period begins with the first appearance of pottery vessels in Ontario sites. No major cultural changes take place other than the introduction of this single item, pottery. Pottery, which is durable and frequently abundant (one pottery vessel will break into many pieces), provides the archaeologist with a convenient means of separating Woodland sites which yield ceramics from Archaic and earlier sites where no ceramics are found. Considerable evidence now exists that the preceding Laurentian and Shield Archaic peoples adopted pottery and were thereby transformed, for the archaeologists' convenience, into Woodland peoples. The cultural developments that began with Palaeo-Indian through Archaic, however, are unbroken. Pottery vessels were made in the southeastern United States as early as 2000 B.C. By 1000 B.C. the knowledge of how to manufacture pottery had spread north into portions of Southern Ontario.
Far more is known about the prehistory of the Woodland period than the preceding Archaic and Palaeo-Indian periods. Not only does there appear to be an increase in population and, therefore, more sites, but the passage of time has had less effect upon the archaeological remains. In order to handle the much increased body of information, the Woodland period has been divided into an Initial Woodland period and a Terminal Woodland period. The Initial Woodland period includes those Archaic peoples who first adopted pottery between 700 B.C and 1000 B.C. and their descendants up to approximately A.D. 1000. The Terminal Woodland period refers to prehistoric cultures that can be traced to historic native peoples such as the Cree and Huron. As archaeological research progresses the Terminal Woodland period will certainly be pushed further back in time and the artificial separating point of A.D. 1000 between the Initial and Terminal Woodland periods will have to be adjusted accordingly.
The Initial Woodland Period
(1000 B.C.-- A.D. 1000)
Five major Initial Woodland cultures have been identified in Ontario: the Meadowood, Point Peninsula, Saugeen, and Princess Point cultures of Southern Ontario and adjacent Quebec and New York State and the Laurel culture of Northern Ontario and neighbouring provinces and states.
From their main homeland in Quebec and New York, Meadowood people appear to have occupied only the margins of Southern Ontario. Their distinctive pottery vessels are found throughout much of Southern Ontario but generally in association with the Point Peninsula and Saugeen cultures. What little is known of the Meadowood people comes from sites in Quebec and New York, particularly from accidentally discovered cemeteries. The burial ceremonialism of the late Archaic period is continued and elaborated upon with cremation of the dead becoming quite common. Graves are often richly provided with grave goods manufactured from stone and copper and particularly large numbers of carefully flaked triangular flint blades that appear to have been manufactured with the single purpose of placing them with the dead. Natural minerals such as hematite, limonite and graphite, presumably used for painting the body and other objects, are a common occurrence in the graves. Meadowood culture flourished between 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C. and then eventually changed or was absorbed into Point Peninsula culture.
Point Peninsula culture occupied Southern Ontario from Toronto eastward into Quebec and New York for a period of roughly 1,000 years, from 700 B.C. to A.D. 700. A number of village sites as well as cemeteries of the Point Peninsula people have been investigated by archaeologists. Most are small camp sites but a few cover many acres and must have been used seasonally for many years by successive generations of Point Peninsula peoples, as well as by earlier and later populations. Such sites usually have some rich seasonal food resource, such as spring sturgeon runs, that attracted people to the same spot for many thousands of years.
In their seasonal cycle of activities the Point Peninsula people continued to occupy the same sites as their Archaic ancestors. Internal change, of course, did occur in the manner in which tools were made, certain practices were discontinued, and some new ideas were adopted. On the whole, however, there are no major changes and one has the impression of small groups of hunters following the interminable rounds necessary for survival and not being overly interested in events outside their immediate territory. At about the time of the birth of Christ, however, outside ideas about burial practices begin to penetrate Point Peninsula culture. These ideas, associated with religion, came from the Hopewell culture of the Ohio area via New York state. The most dramatic feature adopted from the south was the construction of earth burial mounds. During this period stone implements in the graves are frequently made from flint originating in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and eastern New York. The earlier Archaic period trading patterns, marine shells from both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast to the east and native copper from Lake Superior are maintained. Items made from Ohio pipestone and Ontario silver (from Cobalt) appear in the graves. Ohio Valley items such as copper ear spools, stone platform pipes, worked wolf and bear skull parts (probably portions of headdresses) and copper panpipes also appear for the first time. Certainly the most impressive expression of the new burial practices is to be seen in the 194-foot-long "Serpent Mound" at Rice Lake southeast of Peterborough. Southern Ontario sites directly involved in mound building and Hopewellian ceremonialism, however, are relatively few in number and are restricted to the St. Lawrence Valley and southern edges of the province.
Saugeen culture shared Southern Ontario with Point Peninsula culture but occupied the region between Lake Huron and Lake Erie to the west of Toronto. The culture of these people was, in most respects, quite similar to that of the Point Peninsula people. Differences between the two cultures appear to be the result of their slightly different Archaic ancestry as well as their geographic locations.
Most Saugeen culture village and camp sites discovered to date are found along rapids or at the mouths of rivers and creeks emptying into Lake Huron and Lake Erie. Discarded food bones from these sites are predominantly of fish that spawn in rivers from spring to early summer. Such sites must represent one segment of the seasonal rounds of the Saugeen people when individual families gathered at a favourite fishing location during the spring and formed a larger community. Perhaps marriages were contracted and various other ceremonies, involving the population as a whole, were carried out at this time. The villages may have been occupied throughout the summer and into the fall. Certainly for the first time substantial rectangular house structures with hearths and pits can be recognized from the molds left in the soil by the house wall and interior posts. Apparently with the coming of winter these villages were abandoned and the individual families travelled to their winter hunting territories. Such a move was necessary for, in the absence of stored foods such as corn. Large numbers of people could not find enough food in the area during the winter months and they were forced to scatter across the country in small family groups.
Although the development of Saugeen culture out of an earlier Archaic population around 700 B.C. is well documented, what eventually happened to these people is a puzzle. They may have, in a manner yet unknown, developed into the following Princess Point culture.
Princess Point culture occupied the north shore of Lake Erie and the western end of Lake Ontario between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1000. Relatively little is known about Princess Point culture; the sites are small and often located in the river valley flats where they became buried under the sediments deposited during spring floods. One extremely important fact about this culture, however, is the evidence that its people were the first to adopt corn agriculture in Ontario. All of the cultivated plants used by the native peoples of Canada had been domesticated far to the south and only gradually penetrated into the North. Corn was domesticated in northern Mexico about 5,000 years ago but did not enter Ontario, through the Windsor and Niagara areas, until A.D. 500. It took time for the various plants to adapt to the shorter growing season and more rigorous climate as they spread northward. Also, the various domesticated plants did not move as a group. Some form of tobacco had probably entered eastern Canada as long ago as 1000 years before corn. Beans, on the other hand, did not appear until nearly 900 years after the adoption of corn.
Archaeological research in Ontario is only now beginning to concentrate on what happened when mobile, hunting peoples accepted corn and were transformed into sedentary farmers.
While the preceding events were taking place in Southern Ontario the Laurel culture inhabited Northern Ontario as well as western Quebec, central Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and northern Minnesota from approximately 700 B.C. to A.D. 1000.
This widespread culture in the northern forests of the Canadian Shield represents the preceding Shield Archaic people with the addition of pottery. Laurel pottery is related to the pottery of the Point Peninsula and Saugeen cultures of Southern Ontario and it is probably from this region that the northerners obtained their knowledge of ceramics.
Stone scraping tools for working hides, wood and bone dominate the Laurel culture tool kit although arrowheads, lances, knives, hammerstones and net-sinkers are common. Bone tools consist of awls, harpoons, beaver incisor knives, snowshoe netting needles, and pottery markers. The copper items are mainly beads, bangles, awls, parts of composite fishhooks, and chisels. Nothing, of course, remains of the wooden, bark, and leather goods that probably represented the most common and elaborate items in the material culture of these people.
It is now apparent that these hunters of the harsh northern forests did not live in complete isolation from the outside world. Meadowood culture and Saugeen culture materials have been found in Laurel sites, and vice versa. In the west, between Lake Superior and the Manitoba border, particularly along the Rainy River, numerous burial mounds were constructed by the Laurel people. These mounds are the largest prehistoric structures in all of Ontario and can be over 100 feet in diameter and 24 feet high. There is no doubt that the mound ceremonialism of the Laurel people was derived from the Hopewell culture of southern Minnesota. Hopewell burial ceremonialism. however, appears to have expressed itself in only a very peripheral way as far as Laurel culture was concerned. Indeed, these mounds are only found in a very restricted portion of Northern Ontario and are totally absent from adjacent Quebec and Manitoba.
This brief description of Laurel culture ends our consideration of the Initial Woodland period. As will become apparent in the examination of the Terminal Woodland period, however, the subsequent cultures are in all likelihood the direct products of the Initial Woodland period cultures.
The Terminal Woodland Period
(A.D. 1000 - Historic period)
Three major cultural groups will be considered in this section: from Southern Ontario, the Ontario Iroquois who gave rise to the historic Huron, Petun, Neutral and Erie; the St. Lawrence Iroquois, a distinctive population encountered by Jacques Cartier in A.D. 1535 but who had disappeared by the time Samuel de Champlain returned to the same area in A.D. 1603; and, from Northern Ontario, the prehistoric groups that gave rise to the historic Algonkian-speaking people, the Cree, Ojibwa and Algonkin.
The Ontario Iroquois
There is no question that the information available for the Ontario Iroquois exceeds that of any other archaeological group in Ontario. This does not mean that there are not gaps in our knowledge nor areas of controversy, quite the contrary. It does mean, however, that of all the archaeologically recognized populations of the province, we can speak with the greatest authority on the Ontario Iroquois and particularly the Huron.
The archaeological information indicates that for sometime prior to A.D. 900 and up to A.D. 1300, Southern Ontario was occupied by two related populations practising corn agriculture, supplemented by hunting and fishing. To the east was the Pickering culture that had developed out of the preceding Point Peninsula culture. To the west was the Glen Meyer culture, a direct descendant of Princess Point culture. The presence of warfare is indicated by the location of palisaded villages on easily defended hillocks. The presence of longhouses indicates that a number of different families lived in each dwelling in contrast to earlier small one-family houses. A burial pattern is in evidence that leads to the large pits containing the remains of many people, typical of a later period. In short, a whole series of cultural practices in both Glen Meyer and Pickering cultures foreshadowed historic Iroquoian culture.
At approximately A.D.1300 a portion of the Pickering population expanded to the southwest and conquered the Glen Meyer people. This major event resulted in a relatively uniform culture in Southern Ontario that also overlapped into southwestern New York state. It was from this common base that the historic Huron, Petun, Neutral and Erie gradually developed.
Significant events that can be recognized in the archaeological record are as follows: sunflower seeds, used mainly for their oil, appear in the garbage dumps by A.D. 1300; by A.D. 1400 beans and squash become a common occurrence; evidence of cannibalism appears at A.D. 1300 and reaches a peak shortly after A.D. 1500; tobacco smoking in pipes becomes a common practice by A.D. 1350; and village sites become larger and more abundant after A.D. 1400.
As early as A.D. 1400 the regional developments that terminated in the historic Ontario Iroquois can be recognized. The Neutral eventually occupied the region around the west end of Lake Ontario while the Erie were situated near the southeast shore of Lake Erie in New York state. A large number of villages gradually moved up the rivers draining into the north shore of Lake Ontario and joined a related population near the south end of Georgian Bay. They became the historic Huron and Petun.
The first close contact of the Ontario Iroquois with Europeans came in A.D. 1615 when the Recollets and then later (A.D. 1625) the Jesuits began missionary work among the Huron and, to a lesser extent, the Petun. Also, Samuel de Champlain became involved in the wars of the various Algonkian and Iroquoian-speaking peoples. A close relationship between the French and the Huron-Petun was maintained until A.D. 1649. The involvement of the Ontario Iroquois in the fur trade and the political intrigues of European powers, however, was to prove disastrous. The culture of these people terminates with their destruction by the Iroquois League of Five Nations (Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca, and Cayuga) between A.D.1649 and 1654.
The St. Lawrence Iroquois
In A.D. 1535 Jacques Cartier visited the village of Hochelaga on the present site of the city of Montreal. In A.D. 1603 Samuel de Champlain found that the village of Hochelaga and related villages along the St. Lawrence River were abandoned and that a Huron-Algonkian alliance was contesting possession of the territory with the Iroquois League of Five Nations. Archaeological evidence now suggests that sometime between A.D. 1535 and 1603 the Hurons participated in the destruction of the St. Lawrence Iroquois. Huron sites of this period along the rivers draining into Lake Ontario frequently contain large quantities of the typical St. Lawrence Iroquois pottery vessels but not the equally typical pipes or bone tools. It is known from the historic records that in their warfare Iroquoian peoples frequently adopted the conquered women and children but killed the men. It is also known that women made the pots and men made the pipes. Thus the St. Lawrence Iroquois pottery on Huron sites was very likely made by captive St. Lawrence Iroquois women who had been adopted into Huron society.
St. Lawrence Iroquois sites are not only recorded in Quebec; as well, numerous villages have been found in eastern Ontario and adjacent New York State near the St. Lawrence River. From the evidence it can be tentatively suggested that out of a regional expression of Point Peninsula culture the St. Lawrence Iroquois developed in the upper St. Lawrence River valley.
The St. Lawrence Iroquois lived in large, stoutly defended villages and were farmers who grew corn, beans, squash, sunflowers and tobacco. Some of these villages contained as many as forty longhouses which could have sheltered close to 2,000 people.
The Algonkians
It would be very convenient if we could refer to the northern Algonkian-speakers who occupied Ontario as Algonkins, Ojibwa and Cree. These names, however, refer to groups of small, independent bands of hunters who were loosely related through marriage and clan affiliation and, more generally, through language and way of life. Tribal names equivalent to those used in describing the Iroquoian-speaking people of Southern Ontario cannot be applied to the Algonkian-speakers of Northern Ontario. Despite this difficulty there is sufficient archaeological evidence to propose three major areas of Algonkian development in Northern Ontario.
The Eastern Area
The Eastern area of Algonkian cultural development extends northward to Lake Abitibi, westward to the northeast shore of Lake Superior, and on the east is adjacent to the Huron, Petun, and the St. Lawrence Iroquois.
Pottery and pipe styles in this area are similar or identical to those of the Huron and Petun. Indeed, portions of the eastern Algonkians appear to have shared the same ceramic tradition with their Iroquoian neighbours from as early as A.D. 800. In addition to the Iroquoian style pottery, however, these people also made pottery in the same styles as related people in northern Michigan and Wisconsin. The mixture of pottery styles appears to be characteristic of the northern Algonkians. Within the small bands there would have been a limited number of marriageable women. As a result men would frequently obtain their wives from other areas. Imagine, for example, that there were three brothers living on a site near Manitoulin Island who required wives at the same time but that there were no marriageable women in their small, local community. If one man obtained a wife from Lake Nipissing, the second a wife from northern Wisconsin, and the remaining brother a spouse from the west end of Lake Superior, their three Algonkian-speaking wives would eventually be sitting together at the same site making completely different kinds of pottery vessels.
Despite the similarities between eastern Algonkian and Huron-Petun pottery, the stone and bone tools of these two peoples are distinctively different as were a number of other cultural traits.
Certain of the eastern Algonkians adopted corn agriculture from their Iroquoian-speaking neighbours but only in a half-hearted fashion. The crop was planted in the spring, abandoned during the summer and the remnant, which survived the ravages of raccoons, birds and insects, was harvested in the fall.
The Western Area
The Western area of Algonkian cultural development involved a region running from Lake Superior to the height of land separating the Hudson Bay drainage from the Great Lakes drainage, to southern Manitoba and the northern edge of Minnesota.
The dominant pottery style in this region developed out of the preceding Laurel pottery of the Initial Woodland period. The western area Algonkians also retained the Laurel cultural practice of constructing earth burial mounds. As was the case with the Laurel mounds, these later mounds are restricted to a narrow band along the Ontario and Minnesota border and extend eastward to the western end of Lake Superior and westward into Manitoba.
The stone tools of the western Algonkians are very similar to those of the eastern Algonkians. The former group, however, had more ready access to the native copper deposits of Lake Superior and, as a result, copper awls, beads, bangles and knives are relatively common. Stone smoking pipes appear as early as A.D. 950 and are shaped in a typical western style that has no relation to the pipe complex of the Iroquoian peoples to the east. In the rare instances where bone survives the acid northern soils, tools such as harpoons, beaver incisor knives, and awls are common and bone refuse consists mainly of fish and big game such as caribou and moose.
As was the case with the eastern Algonkians, a number of western Algonkian sites containing European (French and English) trade goods have been excavated. The historic period is thus ushered in.
The Northern Area
The Northern area of Algonkian cultural development was centred basically in north-central Saskatchewan and Manitoba, but also extended into adjacent Northern Ontario. Very little is yet known of the northern Algonkians of Ontario. What little information is available suggests that these people are fundamentally the same as the western Algonkians except for their development of a distinctive kind of pottery.
If one ignored the pottery and considered only the stone and bone tools, the Eastern, Western, and Northern Algonkian areas would be regarded as part of a large, general archaeological complex. This impression is supported by the occurrence in the same area of rock paintings and boulder constructions, both of which probably served some religious function. The different pottery traditions have, however, been useful in dividing the enormous area of Northern Ontario into the three geographic regions outlined above. The cultural and linguistic similarities seen among the present Algonkians of Northern Ontario are strongly reflected in their prehistory.
With the coming of Europeans and written records, the story of the native peoples of Ontario passes from prehistory to history. It should be pointed out, however, that more than ninety-seven percent of the time that man has occupied this province belongs to the dim and still largely unwritten pages of prehistory.
