Location | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
---|---|
History | |
Periods | 17th century |
Cultures | Iroquois |
Site notes | |
Public access | No |
Official name | Bead Hill National Historic Site of Canada |
Designated | 1991 |
Bead Hill is an archaeological site comprising the only known remaining and intact 17th-century Seneca site in Canada. It is located on the banks of the Rouge River in Rouge Park, a national park in Toronto, Ontario. Because of its sensitive archaeological nature, it is not open to the public, nor readily identified in the park. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1991, [1] eventually becoming a unit of the national park system in June 2019.
The Bead Hill site is believed to be one of seven villages established along the north shore of Lake Ontario by the Iroquois in the 1660s. The Bead Hill site was settled temporarily as part of a mid 17th century push by the Iroquois Confederacy north, from their traditional homeland in New York state. The Huron Wendat Confederacy, had once occupied the north shores of Lake Ontario but had moved north toward Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe at the end of the 16th century.
Following extensive excavation undertaken in the 1980s it was determined that the Bead Hill site could be the historically documented village of Ganatsekwyagon. [2] Evidence from test excavations suggests that it was home to about 500 to 800 people for about 22 years (1665-1687). [3] Bead Hill was primarily a fur trading outlet, not a military or agricultural site. It was located at the nexus of major trade and transportation routes, including the lakeshore trail that follows modern-day Kingston Road and the historic Toronto Carrying-Place Trail. [4]
Bead Hill is adjacent to Glen Rouge Park and Campgrounds.
The Bead Hill site is believed to contain the archaeological remains of the village of Ganatsekwyagon. French missionaries and explorers arrived at Ganatsekwyagon in 1669. François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon passed the winter of 1669 in the village, which was the first recorded residence of Europeans in the neighbourhood of Toronto. [5] François-Saturnin Lascaris d'Urfé may have also spent the winter of 1669 in Ganatsekwyagon with Abbé Fénelon but the records are unclear. [6]
The village was an important fur trading post and was part of the regional power struggle between the French, British, and Iroquois. The Comte de Frontenac wrote to Louis XIV of France in the fall of 1674 that the Iroquois "have given their word not to continue the trade, which as I informed you last year, they had commenced to establish at Ganatsekwyagon, with the Ottawas, which would have absolutely ruined ours by the transfer of the furs to the Dutch."
Tensions between the Iroquois and French led to a number of conflicts over the course of the 17th century which are collectively known as the Beaver Wars, which would gravely affect Ganatsekwyagon. In 1687, the French, led by the Marquis de Denonville, began a campaign against the Senecas in northwest New York state. Denonville destroyed most of the Seneca villages in New York. It is unclear whether the French also destroyed Ganatsekwyagon and other Iroquois villages on the North Shore of Lake Ontario in his 1687 campaign, or if the villages were abandoned as the Iroquois on the north shore of Lake Ontario retreated to New York state. Iroquois villages were usually temporary and tended to shift to a new location every 10–20 years. Therefore, it is not unusual that villages were abandoned. [7] Regardless of the exact reason, following the 1687 campaign the Iroquois were restricted to south of Lake Ontario and Ganatsekwyagon was abandoned. [5]
The name likely means "among the birches". [8] Because early Europeans had difficulty in transcribing First Nations names into European orthographic systems, numerous spelling variations exist. Alternate names for the village included:
William Brown, who was renting a saw mill on the Rouge River, was one of the first individuals to describe Bead Hill in 1849. After his employees found the site and he inspected it, he wrote,
"There were pieces of broken pottery, broken guns, and flint heads of some very handsome tobacco pipes which the men brought away. They intended to go again ... But I persuaded them to allow the dead to rest in peace, going, however, to view the place myself; and I found that about 40 acres had been appropriated as a place of sepulture, and that no grave had been deeper than about two feet from the surface. The whole of the steep bank of the river had been used, and the graves being one above another in the hillside, they looked like steps from the top to the bottom." [4]
In 1885, C. Blackett Robinson published A History of Toronto and County of York, which described artifacts found "near the mouth of the Rouge River, where the site of what was once a considerable Indian village was indicated by the remains of the logs which formed a wooden palisade surrounding their habitations." Some of these artifacts, the account continued, "have all the characteristics of the stone age, and mixed with the rude weapons and implements of 'native industry' are those of copper and iron, and also glass beads, which were probably obtained by intercourse with the early French voyageurs and traders ... A few yards from the site of the village a number of graves containing aboriginal remains were discovered." [9]
By the late 1660s various Five Nation Iroquois had established seven villages along the shores of Lake Ontario where trails led off into the interior. In addition to Ganatsekwyagon at the mouth of the Rouge River, the following settlements have been identified by historian Percy James Robinson: [10]
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was a 17th-century French explorer and fur trader in North America. He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, and the Mississippi River. He is best known for an early 1682 expedition in which he canoed the lower Mississippi River from the mouth of the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico; there, on 9 April 1682, he claimed the Mississippi River basin for France after giving it the name La Louisiane. One source states that "he acquired for France the most fertile half of the North American continent". A later ill-fated expedition to the Gulf coast of Mexico gave the United States a claim to Texas in the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. La Salle was assassinated in 1687 during that expedition.
The Toronto Carrying-Place Trail, also known as the Humber Portage and the Toronto Passage, was a major portage route in Ontario, Canada, linking Lake Ontario with Lake Simcoe and the northern Great Lakes. The name comes from the Mohawk term toron-ten, meaning "the place where the trees grow over the water", an important landmark on Lake Simcoe through which the trail passed.
The Beaver Wars, also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout the Saint Lawrence River valley in Canada and the Great Lakes region which pitted the Iroquois against the Hurons, northern Algonquians and their French allies. As a result of this conflict, the Iroquois destroyed several confederacies and tribes through warfare: the Hurons or Wendat, Erie, Neutral, Wenro, Petun, Susquehannock, Mohican and northern Algonquins whom they defeated and dispersed, some fleeing to neighbouring peoples and others assimilated, routed, or killed.
The Rouge River is a river in Markham, Pickering, Richmond Hill and Toronto in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada. The river flows from the Oak Ridges Moraine to Lake Ontario at the eastern border of Toronto, and is the location of Rouge Park, the only national park in Canada within a municipality. At its southern end, the Rouge River is the boundary between Toronto and southwestern Pickering in the Regional Municipality of Durham.
Fort Frontenac was a French trading post and military fort built in July 1673 at the mouth of the Cataraqui River where the St. Lawrence River leaves Lake Ontario, in a location traditionally known as Cataraqui. It is the present-day location of Kingston, Ontario, Canada. The original fort, a crude, wooden palisade structure, was called Fort Cataraqui but was later named for Louis de Buade de Frontenac, Governor of New France who was responsible for building the fort. It was abandoned and razed in 1689, then rebuilt in 1695.
Teiaiagon was an Iroquoian village on the east bank of the Humber River in what is now the York district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was located along the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail. The site is near the current intersection of Jane Street and Annette Street, at which is situated the community of Baby Point.
Jacques-René de Brisay, Marquis de Denonville was the Governor General of New France from 1685 to 1689 and was an important figure during the intermittent conflict between New France and the Iroquois known as the Beaver Wars.
François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (1641–1679) was a Sulpician missionary in New France. He was ten years older than his half-brother, François Fénelon, Archbishop of Cambrai.
Ganondagan State Historic Site, also known as Boughton Hill, is a Native American historic site in Ontario County, New York in the United States. Location of the largest Seneca village of the 17th century, the site is in the present-day Town of Victor, southwest of the Village of Victor. The village was also referred to in various spellings as Gannagaro, Canagora, Gandagora, Gandagaro and Gannontaa.
Fort de Buade was a French fort in the present U.S. state of Michigan's Upper Peninsula across the Straits of Mackinac from the northern tip of lower Michigan's "mitten". It was garrisoned between 1683 and 1701. The city of St. Ignace developed at the site, which also had the historic St. Ignace Mission founded by Jesuits. The fort was named after New France's governor at the time, Louis de Buade de Frontenac.
Jean de Lamberville was a Jesuit priest who arrived in New France from France in 1669. He was the older brother of Jacques de Lamberville. Jean became a missionary to the Onondagas and had success in converting their chief, Garakontie. He also was well known for his knowledge in the medical treatments of his time.
Rouge is a neighbourhood in the northeastern area of Toronto, Ontario, within the former city of Scarborough. It is Toronto's largest neighbourhood by surface area; however, unlike other neighbourhoods, most of its area remains undeveloped, as the neighbourhood is adjacent to Rouge National Urban Park.
Fort Denonville was a French fort built in 1688 at the current site of Fort Niagara. It replaced Fort Conti which had been built on the site in 1679 and had burned later that year.
Taber Hill, also spelled Tabor Hill, is a Wyandot (Huron) burial mound in Toronto, Ontario. It is located northeast of the intersection of Lawrence Avenue and Bellamy Road in Scarborough. It is estimated to date from the 14th century and contain the skeletons of over 500 Huron/Wendat. It is believed to be the only First Nations ossuary protected as a cemetery in Canada.
The Aurora Site, also known as the "Old Fort", "Old Indian Fort", "Murphy Farm" or "Hill Fort" site, is a sixteenth-century Huron-Wendat ancestral village located on one of the headwater tributaries of the East Holland River on the north side of the Oak Ridges Moraine in present-day Whitchurch–Stouffville, approximately 30 kilometres north of Toronto. This Huron ancestral village was located on 3.4 hectares of land and the settlement was fortified with multiple rows of palisades.
The Ratcliff or Baker Hill Site is a 16th-century Huron-Wendat ancestral village located on one of the headwater tributaries of the Rouge River on the south side of the Oak Ridges Moraine in present-day Whitchurch–Stouffville, approximately 25 kilometers north of Toronto. The Ratcliff Site is located on the east side of Highway 48, south of Bloomington Road in Whitchurch–Stouffville. The ravine on the village site was infilled during the early 1950s to allow for the expansion of a neighboring quarry.
Ganneious, also spelled Ganneous, is a former village, first settled by the Oneida, located on the North Shore of Lake Ontario near the present site of Napanee, Ontario, Canada. Starting in 1696, it was occupied by the Mississauga.:10 The name is most likely a likely misprint for the French "Gannejout(s)", meaning Oneida.
Between 1665 and 1670, seven Iroquois settlements on the north shore of Lake Ontario in present-day Ontario, collectively known as the "Iroquois du Nord" villages, were established by Senecas, Cayugas, and Oneidas. The villages consisted of Ganneious, Kente, Kentsio, Ganaraske, Ganatsekwyagon, Teiaiagon, and Quinaouatoua. The villages were all abandoned by 1701.
Totiakton was a town of the Seneca Nation located in the present-day town of Mendon, New York. It is located "on the northernmost bend of Honeoye outlet" two miles from the current village of Honeoye Falls. The Seneca name for the town was De-yu-di-haak-doh, meaning “the bend," because of its location at a bend of Honeoye Creek. The archaeological remains of the site are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Tinawatawa, also called Quinaouatoua, was an Iroquois village of the Seneca people on the western end of the Niagara corridor, described as "a fertile flat belt of land stretching from western New York to the head waters of the Thames River". It was located on the western end of Lake Ontario.