from Historic Sites of Tay by Andrew F. Hunter, M.A., reprinted from the Author’s “Notes on sites of Huron Villages in Tay” with Additions, Barrie Ontario, 1911. Bulletin of the Simcoe County Pioneer and Historical Society, November 1911, pp. 13-16
St. Identified with the Newton Village Site
The position of St. Ignace has
been an open question for many years. As at least half a dozen places had been
suggested, the writer, in 1899, visited all the Huron village sites within
reasonable distance of Ste. Marie on the Wye, and after carefully considering
the question in all its bearings, arrived at a conclusion substantially as
follows.
The physical features of the land
governed the courses of the forest trails of the Hurons. The,continuous high
ground, along which trails could pass, makes its nearest approach to the
Georgian Bay at the head of Victoria Harbor. Here then was the commercial
centre of the Hurons, as it has also been of later Algonquin tribes. In other
words, the physical features of the district were such that Victoria Harbor
naturally became the focus or centre of the Huron population, the trails
radiating from the head of the harbor in several directions inland along the
higher ground. It appears to have been this very centre, the heart of the Huron
confedee.acy, the Iroquois attacked in 1649; otherwise the Hurons would not so
precipitately have deserted their country immediately after the capture of only
two of their villages, had these villages been of the ordinary unfortified
kinds. (It should be borne in mind that Ducreux's map is a guide for the
position of the earlier St. Ignace and not that of 1649).
Through the farm of Chas. H.
Newton, Esq., the west half of lot. 11, concession 6, Tay, the Hogg River has
cut a deep path in the old take-bed deposits to a depth varying from fifteen to
twenty feet. In this part of its course the river makes a loop something like
the letter U, which encloses an ideal spot for a village requiring means of
defence. (See illustration)
Hurons selected for one of their
villages this plot of ground containing about five acres in the bend of the
river. This ground is covered with ashbeds and blackened soil, mixed with
relics. The latter consisted of iron tomahawks, knives, pieces of metal cut out
of worn-out brass kettles, and pottery fragments in endless quantities. All
these relics show that the site was one of those occupied down to the very
latest period of the Huron occupation of the district. There are empty caches
at the site, and a pottery just south of it, where the clay is of such good
quality for plastic work, that Mr. Newton experimented successfully in making
terra cotta from it. What appears to have been "the village
corn-patch" occurs southward near a house on lot 10, and it may have
extended as far north as the site itself, although the cultivated ground no
longer shows any traces of the corn hills. From this site to Ste. Marie the
distance is 3.5 miles.
A trail comes from Orr Lake by
the way of Waverley, and just before reaching this village site divides into
two strands, one passing down each side of the river. These meet again at the
"Indian Clearing" further north on lot 12, as the diagram shows. The
trail down the east side as far as the "Indian Clearing," and thence
to the mouth of the river, was widened many years ago into a Government timber
road, but is now disused. It is probable this so-called "Indian
Clearing" is due to the gravelly soil, which would not permit of the
growth of trees, rather than to actual clearing by the aborigines. But whatever
its origin it was certainly a resort of modern Algonquin Indians, who followed
pretty closely the paths of their predecessors, the Hurons.
It is most probable this site in
the river's bend was St. Ignace, the Huron village captured by the Iroquois in
the early morning of March 16, 1649, and the place to which they brought as
captives Fathers Brebeuf and Lalemant a few hours later, and there tortured
them to death. Its distance from Ste. Marie coincides pretty well with the
records, all the writers agreeing that it was less than two leagues (five
miles), and about a league from St. Louis, which agrees well with the site at
Mr. McDermitt's. But the strongest evidence is in the configuration of the
ground The Rev. P. Ragueneau's account of the place (Relation, 1649) suggests a
plan of the village and its surroundings, and tells us beforehand what
appearances we may expect to find there. He says;—
"It was surrounded by a
palisade of posts from fifteen to sixteen feet high, and by a deep trench
(fosse), with which Natuie had powerfully strengthened the place on three
sides, a small space alone remaining weaker than the others. It was through
that part the enemy forced his entrance."
While this description of St.
Ignace will suit in some measure almost any palisaded site, because these were
as a rule placed on a spur of land, the completeness of its fortification by a
trench, effected by Nature in this case, was such as to attract the attention
of the chronicler who wrote the description just quoted. (As the destruction of
the place occurred in March, when the Hogg River would be covered with ice, its
own existence in the gulley or trench would not be conspicuous enough to
attract a recorder's attention). After a diligent search through all the sites
of the locality, I can find none that so exactly agrees with this description
of St. Ignace as this site on Mr. Newton's farm.
LATER EXAMINATION OF THIS SITE.
The foregoing account is substantially the one the writer prepared after his
examination of the site in 1899 and published a few months later. Since that
time he has
Cross Section of Palisade and Bracing.
given further attention to the
site at various times, and has become even more firmly convinced that it was
St. Ignace. The following particulars relate to evidence from examinations
since the first account appeared.
At different times, when
re-examining the palisading I used a light iron crow-bar (three-quarter inch,
four feet long), driving it into the ground repeatedly along numerous lines of
tests selected from where the ashbeds and signs of habitation ceased, and
passing outward across the margin of the village site. At every stroke the
crowbar sinks to the depth of the plowing, but along every line of tests made
in this way it shows two places with softer subsoil, by sinking to much greater
depths. In most cases these are about five feet apart, and occur at the
palisade line, the outer being the palisade and the inner the feet of its line
of braces. The spade always shows disturbance in the color of the subsoil
wherever the crowbar indicates the line by sinking deeper than usual. The
silted sand on this site was good material for the insertion of palisades by
aboriginal methods, but not good for preserving traces of the palisades
themselves, being too porous. Some traces, however, of the palisading are left,
in the blackening of the sandy subsoil below the plow's depth. -
A conspicuous refuse heap toward
the northwest quarter of the site received our attention. This yielded the
usual ashes mingled with pot- shreds and waste of Huron food supplies,
especially animal- bones, and teeth, clam shells, etc. But the significant
feature was an abundance of traces of bark in the upper part of the heap,
evidently debris from a collapsed bark cabin, and in this particular it
differed from the former ordinary refuse heaps of my experiences.
On April 28, 1902, the plow
turned up a small bronze medal or token at a place near the easterly end of the
site. On one side this bears the German motto "Gotthsgaben sol man
lob." (God's gifts ought to be praised). The other side has the name of
Hanns Krauwinckel, with the letters, "IN NU," i.e. "In
Nuremberg," which was famous for its manufactures in bronze, the material
in the medal itself. It was not easy to obtain information of the maker, Hanns
Krauwinckel, in Canadian libraries, but the writer was able to get a few
particulars about him through the courtesy of Dr. Wilberforce Eames of the New
York Public Library and Mr. Lyman H. Low, a specialist on coins and medals, 287
Fourth Ave., New York. The medal is what is called a counter, and Harms
Krauwinckel was a maker of these at Nuremberg during the period from 1580 to
1601. These counters were restruck at later periods, in thinner issues, to
which class this thin specimen belongs.
Within the northerly side of the
palisade, there is a line of whitish substance mixed with the soil, though now
faintly defined from having been disturbed by the plough. A fragment of this
crumbled deposit, when examined by a chemist at my request, proved to be old
mortar. This line of deposit resembles the shape of the letter L as if from two
sides of a cabin, with lengths of about 10 feet and 15 feet, the angle of the
letter pointing in a northerly direction. Its position is on the highest rise
of this some-what fiat site, and at its north side. As the Indians did not make
and use mortar, this was doubtless the work of the Frenchmen. (The records
contain evidence that the Jesuits maintained a lodge of some kind at St.
Ignace.)
Indications, such as the
foregoing, tend to show that this was St. Ignace. The Rev. A. E. Jones selected
a spot about three miles farther from Ste. Marie since I fixed upon this Newton
site, but the more distant place has not even yielded any indications of a
Huron village site of any kind, as I have pointed out elsewhere. The proof of
the question rests not so much upon theoretical assertions or claims, as upon
what evidence the ground itself furnishes. And the authentic evidences at the
Newton site, as furnished by the use of the spade, have been gradually
increasing.
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