"The Land of Our Savage Paradise"

One can only imagine what the scene would look like: A huge face of ice stretching as far as eye can see, melting into great bodies of water drained by what would become the great rivers of our continent.  Hunting at the edge of the ice, as they had been ever since their ancestors had ventured into this land from another far to the north and west, generations of people noticed as the ice would keep melting away until new lands would be uncovered and slowly advancing spruce forests would encroach upon their open tundra hunting grounds.  Some would follow the ice, some would stay in the forests but then move north as the woods changed, and some still would remain in the changed forests and warmer climes, joined still by newcomers from further south who favored something a bit less warm themselves.  In truth, we really do not know what life was like so far back even into the history of lands where records were easier to come by.  We really do not have a great idea about what life would be like in the Ottawa and Petawawa valleys as the ice gradually melted further north.

The evidence we do have, however, gives us pieces of a story of a nation of people whom the French and those who came after them would call the Algonkins (Algonquins).

Taken from Francis Vachon's blog.  Monsieur Vachon is a photographer in Quebec with a bi-lingual blog that can be found at  http://www.francisvachon.com/blog/.

 By 7000 BC or so, these people came to a land that was already establishing itself into great forests of spruce and fir, but also for the first time pines, birches, maples, and hemlocks.  The land they came to was rugged, very hard to live in come wintertime, and in some places more rock than soil, which was often sand anyway.  Golden waters poured down mountainsides to fill large sandy basins and remaining pools of meltwaters which were as black as the night.  Little in the way of crops could grow here well, which would later be the salvation of the forests.  Wolves howled, bears roamed the woods, and the cry of the loon pierced the cool air of the land, a powerful reminder to the people that this land was the relic of something far more ancient, majestic, and mysterious than themselves.  The people did not stay.

Courtesy of Bob and Diana McElroy:  http://www.mcelroy.ca/view/v20070729.shtml.

They did, however, gather here in the summer months, often in large numbers.  Families put aside differences, often to fish the deep black lakes that were full of trout and eel.  The people would discuss the movements of the Moose and the feeling they felt in the cool winds, and they would also keep track of the people who dwelled to their south, on the far shores of a vast lake, people they considered enemies.  More often, they gathered simply for companionship.  In the winter, they would set apart from one another into smaller groups of families that stuck together in the harsher months, floating down the rivers out of the mountains and into the valleys of two great rivers, one of which flowed to the ocean.  The land would be wild again, as it had been at the time of creation, until the people would return when the snows melted and the lakes were free once more.

Courtesy of Bob and Diana McElory:  http://www.mcelroy.ca/view/v20071117.shtml.  The valley of the first great river, the Ottawa, near Deep River, Ontario.

Now and then, the people to the south of the Algonkin, various nations who spoke one language and would come to be called the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), would venture north of their mountains and the blue waters of their great lakes.  They found the land of the Algonkin desirable, if a little different and not the best place to grow corn.  They were aggressive people, and they might have easily taken the land for themselves had the Algonkin not been as ferocious in defending their land as the attackers were in trying to seize it.  At times, control of the valleys leading into the mountains seemed to be quite contested.  The Algonkin prevailed time and again, however, and even found an ally in one of the nations of the Haudenosaunee, a people known as the Wendat (Hurons).  For that matter, the people not only loved their land enough to be willing to die to the last warrior for it, but the land of the mountains was a great bulwark protecting something just as valuable, a great meeting of waters that connected various nations far beyond their lands.  Even if the Algonkins would lose their land, they would most likely get it back quickly, for the nations of the western lakes and northern forests would not tolerate the passage being controlled by a hostile people.

The great power and determination of the defenders and their allies aside, the Haudenosaunee found the land  of black water, granite outcrops, and powerfully brutal winters was lacking what they loved about their own blue waters, towering deciduous forests, and limestone cliffs.  They would fight the Algonkins for centuries, even forming a great council of six of their nations, but would never come close to seizing the meeting of waters or the majestic mountains that protected them.  The Algonkin would continue returning to their blessed land every spring, and leave it to the spirits and ancient forests every winter.

Things would go on like this for some time.  The nations would move about, some heading into the vast lands of the west, some retreating from the advance of another, but for the most part, nothing grand or catastrophic happened to change the ancient ways of life.  500 years ago, however, news started traveling up from the distant south beyond the mountains of the Haudenosaunee, news of men very different from the nations of the people.  Along with news ventured trade which slowly passed between the nations and the newcomers.  Finally, some newcomers of a different nation made a small settlement for themselves at the fringe of the lands of the relatives of the Algonkin, the Montagnais at a place they called Tadoussac.  Though this was a mysterious new nation that had landed on the eastern shores, little changed other than the fate of the beaver.  One summer though, in 1608, as the people were in the blessed lands, a man sailed further inland along the great river that lead to the ocean, a man who would change their lives and their land forever.

Courtesy of Library and Archives of Canada, C-011016, Artist: George Reid, 1908.