Trigger The Liberation of Wendake 3

The Liberation of Wendake*

Bruce G. Trigger

This paper traces the history of relating to the Wendat (Huron) people and evaluates its accom- plishments. The study of the Wendats is grounded in nineteenth-century efforts by the Jesuits to re-establish themselves in and, more generally, in Euro-Canadian nationalism of the confederation era. Early archaeologists shared the general view that Indians were primitive and unprogressive. Since 1945, archaeologists have become leaders in the study of the prehistoric archaeology of eastern North America. Extensive archaeological research has revealed the dynamic, changing nature of Wendat society and culture in prehistoric and early historical times. At the same time, archaeologists and modern Wendats have estab- lished mutually beneficial relations. Over the years Ontario archaeologists have played a socially important role in dispelling colonial views about the Wendats, and indigenous people generally, in Canadian society and have made progress in overcoming their own estrangement from modern indigenous peoples. These developments have contributed to a sense of achievement and relevance among Ontario archaeologists.

This paper considers three Wendakes and how and ethnographic significance of these records. they relate to one another. The first is the Wendake Linguistic studies of Jesuit dictionaries and of the seventeenth century, which once was and is grammars of the Huron language, especially by no more. The second is the Wendake of nine- John Steckley (1992), have provided additional teenth-century Euro-Canadian historical mythog- insights into Wendat culture and how it was per- raphy, which to some extent is with us still. The ceived and misperceived by European visitors. third is the Wendake created by archaeologists. I The European documentation of the seven- will consider the history of Wendat archaeology teenth-century Wendats is a precious historical and the transformations that it has brought about resource that archaeologists and ethnohistorians in the consciousness of archaeologists and are still slowly learning to use well. Canadian citizens over the past 50 years. Much of what I say applies equally to Iroquoian archaeolo- The Wendake of a Colonial Culture gy in southwestern Ontario and the St. Lawrence Valley and to Ontario archaeology generally. The Euro-Canadian mythographization of It is all too easily forgotten that, thanks to Wendake was initiated by the return of the Jesuit Champlain, Sagard, and Jesuit missionaries, the Order to Canada in 1842. Jesuit missionaries Wendats are the best documented aboriginal soci- from France began to study early Jesuit history in ety that lived north of Mexico prior to the second Canada in an effort to re-establish their priority half of the seventeenth century. In recent years among Roman Catholic religious orders. In anthropologists, historians, and literary specialists 1844, Pierre Chazelle penned the first descrip- have come to understand better how this docu- tion of the visible remains of the mission of mentation was shaped and biased by the conven- Sainte-Marie-among-the-Hurons and, beginning tions of European exploration and missionary nar- in the mid-1850s, Félix Martin and other Jesuit ratives of its time (Blackburn 2000; Jaenen 1976). scholars personally examined this and other sites This understanding has enhanced rather than associated with the seventeenth-century Wendat diminished our comprehension of the historical mission (Jones 1908). The work of these Jesuits

*Editors’ Note: This paper is a revised version of the keynote presentation at the Ontario Archaeological Society’s 27th Annual Symposium, entitled “The Archaeology of Huronia and the Great Lakes”, held in Midland in October 2000. We are grateful to Dr. Trigger for making his summary of the history of Huron archaeology available for publication. 4Ontario Archaeology No. 72, 2001 revived interest in the Huron mission and initi- both English and French Canadians. The two ated a movement that resulted in the erection of largest public monuments to this explorer and col- the Martyrs’ Shrine near Midland, in 1926, and onizer were erected in Quebec City and Orillia. In the canonization of the seventeenth-century the accounts of his visit to Wendake, the Wendats Jesuit martyrs in 1930. were assigned a supporting role in one of the most Interest in the history of the Wendat mission important narratives relating to Canadian histori- also resulted in Kenneth Kidd’s (1949, 1994) ography produced during the Victorian era. They excavations at Sainte-Marie between 1941 and became part of the static aboriginal backdrop that 1943. His report on these excavations is now rec- witnessed Champlain laying the foundations of ognized as one of the early classics of North what was to become modern Canada. In Daniel American historical archaeology, although at first Wilson’s (1884) words, the Wendats were a “typi- little attention was paid to it outside of Canada. cal race of American Aborigines”, representing a Wilfrid Jury’s further excavations at Sainte-Marie stage of cultural development that Europeans had from 1947 to 1951 provided the basis for his passed through long ago. The Boston historian reconstruction of the site (Jury and Jury 1954), Francis Parkman’s gripping book The Jesuits in but unfortunately neither they nor Jury’s other North America in the Seventeenth Century (1867), work approached Kidd’s high standards. The pri- published in the year of Canada’s confederation, mary goal of this religiously-inspired research was the main source of information concerning the was to document the Jesuit establishments in Wendats to which most Canadians had access. It Wendake and the material culture of the indige- disseminated beliefs that had become deeply root- nous people whom the Jesuits had sought to con- ed in American popular culture—but not yet in vert. The highest calibre archaeological work at a Canada—that all Indians were racially inferior sav- historical Wendat site was Kidd’s (1953) excava- ages, slow to learn, predisposed to violence, and tion of the Ossossané ossuary, which he identi- incapable of evolving a civilized way of life. fied as the site of a Feast of the Dead that the The best archaeological work emerging out of Jesuits had attended and described in 1635. this era was Andrew Hunter’s survey of 637 sites, In addition to its involvement in Christian reli- mainly Iroquoian and mostly in Simcoe County, gious projects, Wendake became caught up in the together with estimates of their size and a record political myths relating to Canadian nation build- of whether they produced many, few, or no ing that were formulated at the time of confeder- European artifacts. Hunter’s is one of the earliest ation. In their efforts to promote Canadian unity, site surveys carried out anywhere in the world English-Canadian mythographers stressed, con- that was designed to produce information about trary to historical evidence (Charbonneau and where people had lived in the past rather than Robert 1987), the Norman origins of most French simply aiming to locate sites that were suitable for Canadians. The implication of this claim, in terms excavation (Kidd 1952:71-72). Its importance of the racist beliefs of the time, was the seemingly went unappreciated at the time. Hunter’s reports generous assertion that both English and French received limited circulation and probably were of Canadians belonged to the same Nordic racial little, if any, interest to American archaeologists. stock and hence were equally capable of being While Euro-Canadians embraced patronizing partners in a new nation (Berger 1970). The and colonial attitudes towards indigenous peo- unspoken and much less generous subtext was ples, Canadian archaeologists found themselves that French Canadians, like the Norman con- at the lower end of an equally colonial relation- querors of England, should cease speaking French ship with their British and American colleagues. and adopt a language more akin to that of their Daniel Wilson had to visit the United States to Nordic ancestors. find books to read, while David Boyle later Because of his extensive travels in Ontario, served as a regional correspondent of the English-Canadian historians embraced Champlain Smithsonian Institution (Killan 1983). as a quintessential Canadian hero, acceptable to After the First World War, interest in early Trigger The Liberation of Wendake 5

Canadian history and archaeology waned as histori- amateur archaeologist, maintained. It was clear ans shifted to the study of post-confederation even to an undergraduate that Ontario archaeol- events. William Wintemberg, one of only a handful ogy, and Canadian archaeology generally, was of professional archaeologists in Canada, excavated shamefully underdeveloped, both theoretically Iroquoian sites in Ontario and reported on them and in terms of its data base. This view was using the formula that his mentor, Harlan Smith shared in high places. When I left Toronto in (1910), had used in Kentucky decades earlier. By 1959 to begin graduate studies at , 1930, Wintemberg recognized that sites belonging Thomas McIlwraith, the Head of the University to what we would call the Early, Middle, and Late of Toronto Department, informed Iroquoian periods represented a historical sequence. me that I would discover there that Canadian Yet he interpreted Early Iroquoian culture as a result archaeology and anthropology were a decade or of Iroquoian invaders absorbing elements of an more behind what was happening in the United indigenous Algonquian culture rather than as evi- States. He advised me to start off by keeping my dence of cultural creativity (Trigger 1978). mouth shut and my ears open, so I would not While archaeology forged ahead in the United irreparably embarrass either myself or Toronto’s States during the economic depression of the Department of Anthropology. 1930s, as a beneficiary of the American federal In fact I soon discovered that my undergradu- government’s efforts to provide jobs for unem- ate education at the was ployed labourers (Fagette 1996; Lyon 1996), the not nearly as inadequate as McIlwraith imagined. Canadian government cut back on its meagre Thanks to William Mayer-Oakes, who taught support. By 1945, basic cultural chronologies had briefly at Toronto, students there had been intro- been worked out across the United States and duced to the most recent trends in ecological and American archaeologists were moving forward to settlement-pattern archaeology in the United develop functional and processual approaches to States. Mayer-Oakes is an inadequately recog- archaeology. In Canada, government-funded nized pioneer in the development of Ontario archaeological research barely survived. archaeology. After the Second World War, Norman Emerson In the early 1960s, I attempted to introduce an began to teach at the University of Toronto and to ecological perspective into Iroquoian archaeology excavate various Iroquoian sites in the Toronto (Trigger 1963). Yet, when I published “The area as well as at Cahiagué. Trained at the Historic Location of the Hurons,” questioning University of Chicago, he was deeply committed whether there might not be an ecological explana- to the Fay-Cooper Cole school of culture-histori- tion for the concentration of the Wendat people in cal archaeology (Noble 1998). He was also influ- northern Simcoe County in the early seventeenth enced by Richard MacNeish’s (1952) demonstra- century (Trigger 1962), initial reaction in Ontario tion that Iroquoian pottery had evolved from was focused entirely on my paper’s relation to the Middle Woodland prototypes as a series of local Emerson-Ridley debate. Ridley (1963) publicly co-traditions around the lower Great Lakes. denounced me as a self-serving partisan of Emerson was first and foremost a teacher who Emerson, while Emerson remained silent, but used archaeological fieldwork, as he had learned it seemed displeased that what he regarded as an in Illinois in the early 1940s, to train his students. independent voice was intruding into this debate. While I was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, Ontario Iroquoian The Wendake of Archaeologists archaeology was dominated by a rancorous debate over whether the Wendats had migrated Ontario archaeology was radically transformed north from the Toronto area, as Emerson (1961) and invigorated by the publication of James and MacNeish (1952) claimed, or they had orig- Wright’s The Ontario Iroquois Tradition (1966). inated in the north and spread south, as Frank Conceived in terms of the culture-historical Ridley (1952a, 1952b), a talented and prolific framework, as it had developed after World War II 6Ontario Archaeology No. 72, 2001

(Rouse 1972; Willey and Phillips 1958), this This growing awareness of systemic change work utilized all the Late Woodland archaeolog- shifted the primary focus of Iroquoian archaeolo- ical research that had been done in southern gy away from a culture-historical approach Ontario to refine and update Wintemberg’s and towards an implicitly functionalist and later a MacNeish’s interpretations of Iroquoian develop- processual one. Conrad Heidenreich’s (1971) ment. Cultural units were defined and associated trail-blazing Huronia : A History and Geography of with the Early, Middle, and Late stages of the Huron Indians, 1600-1659 was the first Iroquoian development. Ontario Iroquoian cul- monograph to study the historic Wendats from tures were now seen as evolving from an Ontario an informed environmental and ecological per- Middle Woodland cultural base. About the same spective. The Penetang Project, directed by time, William Noble (1968, 1969) took the first William Hurley and Conrad Heidenreich (1969, steps towards trying to understand the social 1971) initiated the archaeological study of changes that had accompanied the development Wendake from an ecological viewpoint. Topics of Iroquoian culture in Ontario with his study of that were investigated included the impact of iron the evolution of settlement patterns, subsistence axes on house construction and of growing popu- strategies, burial practices, and pipes. He assumed lation density on faunal and hunting patterns. that the latter had special religious significance. It also became evident that the frequent relo- In these works archaeologists succeeded in cation of Iroquoian settlements, combined with using the available evidence to reject the idea that infrequent re-use of the same site, provided an aboriginal cultures had been essentially static easy-to-read, temporally fine-grained record of prior to European contact. Ontario Iroquoian site occupations that offered opportunities such culture was, on the contrary, demonstrated to as are encountered only very rarely in the archae- have undergone extensive development in the ological record for studying short-term ecologi- millennium prior to the arrival of the first cal, demographic, and social change. Recently, by Europeans. It was also made clear that these were demonstrating through his study of the Calvert systemic changes rather than the additive result site in southwestern Ontario that it was possible of cultural contact, as Wintemberg had believed. to unravel the overlapping records of early Late Dean Snow’s (1994, 1995a) recent hypothesis that Woodland site occupations, Peter Timmins Iroquoian-speakers spread north through the (1997) has shown that, contrary to previous Lower Great Lakes region around 1100 years ago assumptions, these sites were characterized by as or, as he now believes, 300 years earlier (Snow much formal order at any one time as were later 1996), has no substantial archaeological support ones, although this order was masked by longer (Crawford and Smith 1996). Yet, even if it were occupations and/or more varied uses. true, most of the changes that distinguish the In 1971, James Wright (1974) took another Early, Middle, and Late stages of Ontario major step forward with his systematic total exca- Iroquoian development must continue to be vation of the Middle Iroquoian Nodwell site, understood as the product of in situ development. near Port Elgin. This excavation documented an There is no possibility of returning to the sort of unanticipated amount of intrasite diversity, migrationary view of Iroquoian origins that which raised questions about Iroquoian social archaeologists held when they still believed that organization. William Finlayson’s (1985) almost native peoples shifted about, but native cultures total excavation of the prehistoric Wendat did not change. Thus, in the 1960s, without fan- Draper site revealed the repeated expansions over fare, the racist myth that the cultures of Ontario a short period of what became a large and com- had been static prior to European contact defin- plex community, as well as much about the loca- itively melted away as a consequence of the work tions, spacing, orientation, and internal features of archaeologists. Archaeologists had begun to of longhouses, the location and extent of mid- free themselves, and all Canadians, from the cor- dens, and how certain types of artifacts were rosive heritage of colonial mythography. reused and later disposed of at the site (von Trigger The Liberation of Wendake 7

Gernet 1985). The work at the Draper site stim- 1979). The idea that the in situ theory of ulated the total, or near total, excavation of Iroquoian cultural development eliminated the Iroquoian village sites elsewhere in Ontario, study of migration is patently untrue. What it including the Ball site in historical Wendake. did was to replace speculative theories involving These excavations encouraged general studies of massive ethnic movements with the study of vil- changes in Ontario Iroquoian longhouses and lage movements. It appears that, because of their village plans (Dodd 1984; Warrick 1984). location on the northern extremity of Iroquoian Specialized hunting sites, fishing sites, and agri- settlement, Ontario Iroquoians had more free- cultural field camps began to be identified, mak- dom of movement than did the New York State ing possible the archaeological study of econom- Iroquois, who were confined within much nar- ic activities that took Iroquoians away from their rower tribal territories (Tuck 1971). Micro- main settlements (Williamson 1983). The rapid migrations do not explain cultural change, but accumulation of archaeological data also facilitat- accompanied it and therefore, constitute part of ed new insights into the development of the reality in relation to which the Iroquoian European trade and the impact that European material culture that is preserved in the archaeo- goods had on Wendat culture. Marti Latta logical record must be understood. (1976), in her study of Wendat acculturation, Gary Warrick’s (1990) innovative study of was one of the first archaeologists anywhere to Wendat population trends indicates the origins address gender issues, in this case as they related of the populations that eventually colonized the to the procurement of European goods. north (Sutton 1996, 1999). The Malthusian— The most important effect of settlement pat- rather than the Boserupian—nature of the dra- tern studies was to shift the attention of archae- matic population increase that he has document- ologists away from the study of archaeological ed in early Iroquoian times contradicts the pre- cultures to the study of communities. Iroquoian dictions of many archaeologists, including myself, history came to be viewed increasingly as the his- who viewed the pattern of population growth in tory of villages periodically relocating from an pre-contact Ontario as gradual. His population existing site to a new one. This orientation accord- curve also refuted Henry Dobyns’ (1983) sugges- ed with William Fenton’s (1978:306-307) long- tion that very high Iroquoian populations were standing observation that among the Iroquois, the cut dramatically by European epidemic diseases community—rather than the tribe or confedera- in the early sixteenth century. By addressing cy—was the primary focus of identity and associ- major theoretical and substantive issues that are ation. The principal goal of many archaeologists of hemispheric or general significance, Warrick’s was now to trace Iroquoian communities through work marked the coming of age of Iroquoian, and time by identifying the various village sites they specifically of Wendat, archaeology. had in turn occupied. That required achieving Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The ever greater chronological precision and identify- achievements of Ontario archaeologists have ing more precise material indications of commu- stimulated emulation, most notably in Dean nity identity. Tracing community sequences was Snow’s (1995b) Mohawk Valley Project. Snow’s made more difficult by the frequency with which application of settlement archaeology methods to many communities came together and split apart; studying the history of Mohawk village move- both processes being attested in the historical as ments, community patterns, and population well as the archaeological record (Ramsden 1988). trends is a major contribution to Iroquoian A vast amount of research remains to be done archaeology. He has duplicated Warrick’s finding before Wendat and Petun history can be compre- that massive population declines resulting from hensively understood in terms of community European diseases did not antedate the 1630s, relocations. Nevertheless, significant segments of the decade from which the earliest written some village relocation sequences have been records of such diseases among the Iroquoian identified (Finlayson 1998; Ramsden 1977, peoples also date. 8Ontario Archaeology No. 72, 2001

The success of the Mohawk Valley Project is a archaeology’s inferences are based are by defini- warning to Ontario archaeologists not to rest on tion derived from the comparative study of sys- their laurels. Yet that project also confirmed what temic, and hence ethnographic, contexts Ontario archaeologists had quietly known for (Binford 1977 [ed.]; Binford 1978, 1981). A some time. The era of colonial dependency on growing understanding of the nature of symbol- American archaeology had ended in the 1970s. ism indicates that the investigation of culturally- In the 1950s, the upcoming generation of specific meaning in archaeology must involve the Canadian archaeologists was embarrassed by the use of written or oral sources that are historically backward state of their discipline, even in south- closely related to the archaeological data being ern Ontario, which was the best studied region of investigated. The relative availability of such the country. It was cold comfort that the pathet- sources is why postprocessual approaches to ic situation of archaeology resulted from the archaeological data have been so successful and unwillingness of successive Canadian govern- productive in historical archaeology (Andrén ments to support archaeologists—or any form of 1998; Deetz 1996; Johnson 1996; Leone and pure scientific research—at a level that even Potter 1988), while they trail off into wild spec- remotely approximated that of the United States. ulation in situations for which relevant historical The achievements of the last forty years, made information is not available (Gosden 1994; possible by a more liberal funding policy, have Thomas 1996; Tilley 1994). Processual archaeol- allowed Ontario archaeologists to become intel- ogy’s taboo against the use of historical data pro- lectually self-supporting, in the sense that their vides yet another example of zealots trying to own findings and methodological innovations impose on the whole of archaeology methodolo- balance what they learn from others. A major gies that are appropriate in some situations but stimulus for the transformation of Ontario not in others. For archaeologists studying the archaeology came from the investigation of Wendats, the challenge is to learn how to inter- Wendat archaeology in the 1950s and 1960s and pret linguistic, historical, ethnographic, and much of the stimulus for that work was derived archaeological data thoroughly and completely from a continuing public fascination with the on their own terms before synthesizing the role that the Wendats had played in early Euro- results to see what synergistic benefits emerge. Canadian history. For those who, like myself, What is required to do this is a methodology were embarrassed by the undeveloped condition for attributing historically-particular meanings of Canadian archaeology in the 1950s, the over- to archaeological data that is equivalent in rigour coming of this backwardness has been a source of to Binford’s middle-range theory, which was great satisfaction over the years. devised for inferring cross-culturally regular The continued advancement of Ontario behaviour from archaeological data. Such a archaeology requires openness to new methods. methodology has been emerging for the past two Peter Ramsden (1996) has suggested that the rich decades (Trigger 1995). The first task is to estab- textual sources relating to early seventeenth-cen- lish the comparability of the archaeological and tury Wendake are a burden that has retarded textual sources of data. This is not a problem rather than advanced the archaeological investi- when both relate to the same time period, local- gation of Wendat history. I appreciate what ity, and ethnic group. More difficulties are Ramsden is saying. All too often textual sources encountered as the archaeological and textual have been used to short-circuit detailed studies of sources grow more distant from one another in archaeological data, with the result that archaeo- terms of any or all of these three criteria. The logical investigations have fallen short of their direct historical approach traditionally has potential and what we know about the Wendats sought to establish relevance by demonstrating is less than it might have been. Yet archaeology (usually archaeologically) the existence of clear has never been an autonomous discipline. The and continuous historical links between the soci- universal generalizations on which processual eties for which textual and archaeological data Trigger The Liberation of Wendake 9 are being combined. Alexander von Gernet and in the future. If Ontario archaeology is to keep Peter Timmins (1987) have shown that it may be abreast of new developments in the discipline, it appropriate to combine the two even in some sit- is vital that innovative studies of this sort should uations where such links cannot be demonstrat- be encouraged. ed. These include situations where burial cults Given the extraordinary richness of the textual wax and wane in popularity, and hence evidence and archaeological data bases for Wendake in the of these cults appears and disappears in the early seventeenth century, as well as the fine- archaeological record, while the ideas underlying grained chronology of Wendat socio-cultural them remain constant. Sometimes cultural conti- development both prior to and following nuities persist for millennia (Hamell 1987). European contact, this region offers material of Problems are invariably posed, however, by the unsurpassed richness for the development of his- arbitrary nature of symbols. Sometimes mean- torical, symbolic, and cognitive approaches to ings shift while symbols remain unchanged; on archaeology. This is an opportunity that Ontario the other hand, new symbols are invented to archaeologists must not miss. An enhanced abil- express old meanings (Goodenough 1953-68; ity to study how Wendat beliefs are reflected in Panofsky 1939, 1960). Trying to cope with these the archaeological record would complement the problems requires archaeologists to formulate successes already achieved in ecological research test implications, in the form of archaeological and the study of the evolution of Wendat configurations that culturally-specific beliefs sociopolitical organization. In the past, the study might be expected to produce, and then check- of Wendat archaeology has flourished as a result ing to see whether or not these predictions are of the timely adoption and development of new confirmed. Only contextual approaches of this methodologies; now is not the time to stop. sort can rescue symbolic and cognitive archaeol- Over the years, archaeologists have created ogy from degenerating into uncontrolled specu- their own vision of Wendake. At the beginning, lation and purely intuitive approaches. this vision was very similar to that of Euro- A recent example of a symbolic study in Canadian nationalist mythographers. The Iroquoian archaeology is Joyce Wright’s (1999) Wendats were represented as examples of arrest- examination of the possible significance of num- ed cultural development and as people who were bers of horizontal lines on Iroquoian ceramics. technologically, politically, morally, and racially Through a systematic survey of Champlain, inferior to Europeans. Over time the views of Sagard, and the Jesuit Relations, she sought to archaeologists changed, as they discovered that establish the symbolic meaning that different the archaeological record did not accord with numbers had in early seventeenth-century such crudely evolutionary and racist assump- Wendat culture. She then contextualized these tions. Yet archaeologists long paid little, if any, findings by comparing the number of horizontal attention to living Wendats. lines on Middle Ontario Iroquoian ceramic ves- sels and pipes; hypothesizing that, because the Archaeologists and Wendats pipes had a close connection with shamanistic rituals, they would be most likely to exhibit I first became conscious of the potential of Euro- numbers associated with such rituals. While Canadian scholarship to be of value to aboriginal more might have been done to justify continuity peoples when I gave a lecture in a continuing between the textual and archaeological data education course at what is now Concordia being compared in this study, Wright’s combina- University that was attended by many indige- tion of textual studies and a contextual analysis nous people living in the area. I dis- of archaeological evidence conforms to sound cussed the important role played by the archaeological procedures and her study thus Mohawks of Kahnawake in the economy of points the way to how more detailed and com- Montreal during the ancien régime as a result of prehensive symbolic studies might be carried out their conduct of a clandestine trade between 10 Ontario Archaeology No. 72, 2001

Montreal and Albany. After my talk, a Mohawk tions command respect as those of an established lady said how interesting she had found my Canadian academic. Talented Wendat writers and remarks. “It is good to know”, she said, “that we performing artists also draw fresh inspiration were once good at commerce because that is how from their traditional culture. Thus, in express- Kahnawake will have to survive in the future”. ing their own identity, modern Wendats draw Archaeological pronouncements about aboriginal upon the work of Euro-Canadian archaeologists. peoples have at various times been very damaging In René Sioui’s recent National Film Board doc- to them, as Robert Silverberg (1968) first demon- umentary Kanata, which studies Wendat history strated in of Ancient America, his and identity, the archaeology of Wendake plays a detailed analysis of the social and political roles prominent role. One scene records the visit of a played by the Mound Builder myth in the United group of Wendats to the Ball site and their reac- States in the nineteenth century. That does not tions to what they saw there. In the course of the mean, however, that archaeological findings can- film, the views of Euro-Canadian scholars as well not be of positive value to native people. as those of Wendat elders, scholars, politicians, The first recorded participation of indigenous and ordinary people are presented. This film people in an archaeological excavation in Southern demonstrates the informed and positive use that Ontario occurred in 1972. It involved children Wendat intellectuals make of what Euro-Canadian from the Alderville Indian band assisting in Walter archaeologists have accomplished. The Wendake of Kenyon’s (1973) excavation of a campsite on East archaeologists has come to be of value to the Sugar Island, in Rice Lake, which contained Wendat people and Wendat scholars, such as Iroquoian as well as earlier and more recent Georges Sioui, are engaging Euro-Canadian remains. The estrangement between archaeologists archaeologists and ethnohistorians on the basis of and Wendats came a little closer to an end when professional equality. I hope that in the near William Finlayson invited about a dozen Wendat future one or more Wendat professional archae- students from Quebec to participate in the 1978 ologists will be exploring their homeland along- excavation of the Sprang site, as part of the New side Euro-Canadian colleagues. Even before that Toronto International Airport Archaeological happens, however, Wendat interests and con- Survey. Their physical contact with the cultural cerns should have begun to influence Wendat remains of their ancestors played an important archaeology by encouraging archaeologists to role in reinforcing a renewed interest among the investigate questions that are of special interest to Wendats of Quebec in their history, culture, and modern Wendats. Flexibility and innovation are historic homeland. The Wendats, a dynamic peo- required if archaeology is to accommodate this ple who offer living proof that the survival of cul- new and important clientele. tural identity does not depend on language, now regularly visit Simcoe County to traverse the land Conclusion from which their ancestors came, view the artifacts their ancestors made and used, visit archaeological Ontario archaeologists have never been an ideo- sites, rebury their dead, and renew political logically-driven lot, nor have they been strongly alliances. The same is also true of the Wyandots of inclined to spell out and debate their theoretical Oklahoma since Charles Garrad made contact presuppositions. Their work, like that of most with them. The Wendat historian and philosopher other archaeologists, has been motivated mainly Georges Sioui (1999) has made extensive use of by a healthy curiosity to know more about the archaeological data in his recent book Huron- past. The point of departure for the study of pre- Wendat: The Heritage of the Circle. While the inter- colonial Ontario was Wendake—as the memories pretations that Sioui offers of Wendat history dif- of that dynamic society were preserved, enshroud- fer significantly from those of Euro-Canadian ed in cultural misunderstandings, in the detailed archaeologists and ethnohistorians, his interpreta- and varied records of early seventeenth-century Trigger The Liberation of Wendake 11

European visitors. Archaeologists have added to whose ancestors produced the historical record these textual records important archaeological that archaeologists study. Much has been accom- data concerning Wendat and Jesuit life along the plished in establishing good relations with the shores of Georgian Bay during the seventeenth Wendat people, but more can be done. It is in century. They have also traced the development of the interest of archaeology and natural justice that aboriginal society in Ontario back to the we not fail to make use of the exceptional oppor- Paleoindian period. Along the way, archaeologists tunities that are presented to us to eliminate the have shed a number of their own and their cul- last remnants of the distinctions between coloniz- ture’s intellectual burdens. By the middle of the ers and colonized in our own discipline. twentieth century, their findings were helping them to break free of the evolutionary and racist Acknowledgements. I thank Gary Warrick and stereotypes that for over a century had portrayed the Ontario Archaeological Society for inviting Indian cultures as static and had been used to jus- me to be the keynote speaker at the society’s 27th tify the seizure of Indian lands and the continuing Annual Symposium on “The Archaeology of exclusion of native people from Euro-Canadian Huronia and the Great Lakes” in October 2000. society. By creating a new and more dynamic view I also thank Charles Garrad, Paul Sweetman, and of Indian history prior to the colonial period, James Wright for sharing with me at the confer- archaeology has played a significant role in elimi- ence and later by correspondence their memories nating pernicious Euro-Canadian stereotypes of of Ontario archaeology in the 1950s, 1960s, and native people that have impeded the search by 1970s. indigenous peoples for justice and an integral and creative place within the Canadian social mosaic. References Cited Since the 1950s, Ontario archaeologists have secured a higher level of recognition and funding Andrén, A. 1998 Between Artifacts and Texts: Historical and overcome a debilitating backwardness by Archaeology in Global Perspective. Plenum, comparison with American archaeology. In the New York. course of that spiritual liberation, Ontario archae- Berger, C. ology has become dynamic and creative and has 1970 The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of begun in many respects to set the pace for archae- Canadian Imperialism, 1867-1914. University ology elsewhere. We must take care, both for the of Toronto Press, Toronto. sake of archaeology and for ourselves as archaeol- Binford, L.R. 1978 Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology. Academic Press, ogists, that in the new global economy Ontario New York. archaeology is not permitted to slip back into a 1981 Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths. state of colonial dependency and inadequacy. Academic Press, New York. That requires that we lobby hard to ensure ade- Binford, L.R. (editor) quate public and private support for archaeolog- 1977 For Theory Building in Archaeology. Academic ical research. It also requires us to avoid compla- Press, New York. cency and to keep our minds open in order to Blackburn, C. ensure that we maintain our position on the cut- 2000 Harvest of Souls: The Jesuit Missions and in North America, 1632-1650. ting edge of what is happening in archaeology. McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal. It is in our favour that historical archaeology is Charbonneau, H., and N. Robert becoming for the first time central to the develop- 1987 The French Origins of the Canadian ment of archaeological theory. We must strive hard- Population, 1608-1759. In Historical Atlas of er to make the most of Ontario’s dual legacy of rich Canada, Volume 1: From the Beginning to archaeological and textual data relating to aborigi- 1800, edited by R. C. Harris, Plate 45. nal history. Our third colonial legacy was archaeol- University of Toronto Press, Toronto. ogy’s long estrangement from the aboriginal people Crawford, G.W., and D.G. Smith 1996 Migration in Prehistory: Princess Point and 12 Ontario Archaeology No. 72, 2001

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Bruce G. Trigger Department of Anthropology, McGill University Stephen Leacock Building, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2T7 [email protected]