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Laurentian | |
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Native to | Canada |
Region | Saint Lawrence River Valley |
Ethnicity | St. Lawrence Iroquoians |
Extinct | late 16th century |
Iroquoian
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Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | lre |
lre | |
Glottolog | laur1250 |
Territory occupied by the St. Lawrence Iroquois, circa 1535 |
Indigenous peoples in Canada |
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Indigenous North Americas Canadaportal |
Laurentian, or St. Lawrence Iroquoian, was an Iroquoian language spoken until the late 16th century along the shores of the Saint Lawrence River in present-day Quebec and Ontario, Canada. It is believed to have disappeared with the extinction of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, likely as a result of warfare by the more powerful Mohawk from the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy to the south, in present-day New York state of the United States.
The explorer Jacques Cartier observed in 1535 and 1536 about a dozen villages in the valley between Stadacona and Hochelega, the sites of the modern cities of Quebec City and Montreal. [1] Archeologists have unearthed other villages farther west, near the eastern end of Lake Ontario. St. Lawrence Iroquoians lived in villages which were usually located a few kilometres (miles) inland from the Saint-Lawrence River, and were often enclosed by a wooden palisade. Up to 2000 persons lived in the larger villages.
By the time the explorer Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1608, however, he found no trace of the Iroquoians visited by Jacques Cartier some 75 years earlier. [2] Scholars have developed several theories to explain the complete disappearance of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, among them devastating wars waged by the Mohawk from the south, epidemics of Old World infectious diseases, or migration towards the Great Lakes region. Archeological evidence points most strongly to devastating wars with neighbouring Iroquoian tribes, the Huron and the nations of the Iroquois League, especially the Mohawk. [3]
Several dialects of Laurentian may have existed in the 16th century in the St. Lawrence River valley. The sparse records made by Jacques Cartier during his voyages cannot be considered conclusive, and the Laurentians may have spoken several distinct languages. [4] A few Laurentian words are still in use today as toponyms: most notably the word canada, meaning "village" in Laurentian. Jacques Cartier used the word to describe both the region and the river that crosses it. The name of Donnacona, the Iroquoian chieftain Cartier met at Stadacona, remains in use as the name of the town of Donnacona, Quebec. Hochelaga remains in use in the Montreal borough of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and the alternate spelling "Osheaga" serves as the name of Montreal's annual Osheaga Festival.
On the basis of the Laurentian vocabularies of Cartier, the linguist Marianne Mithun concludes that Laurentian was an Iroquoian language, and its speakers were "clearly in contact with the Lake Iroquoian peoples [Huron and Iroquois]" (Mithun, 1981). Charles Julian analyzed the available lexicon and compared it with those of Iroquoian languages still spoken (to some degree) in the 21st century and found that it shared the highest number of cognates with Huron, Mohawk, and Onondaga, with 47 cognates found for all three. Many sound changes are found in common with Huron such as the reduction of consonant clusters containing /j/, however Laurentian also shares features with other Northern Iroquoian languages that Huron lacks. For example Laurentian shows the existence of an epenthetic vowel like found in Susquehannock, Old Mohawk and, Old Onondaga but not in Huron. Because of this he concludes that Laurentian forms its own subgroup within Northern Iroquoian. [5]
In 1545 Jacques Cartier published a journal of his voyages, including the first list of Laurentian words. Here are some examples (numbers and parts of the human body), as written by Cartier:
English (from French) | Laurentian |
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one | segada |
two | tigneny |
three | asche |
four | honnacon |
five | ouiscon |
head | aggourzy |
eyes | hegata |
ears | ahontascon |
mouth | escahe |
teeth | esgougay |
tongue | osvache |
village | canada |
A second shorter vocabulary list was appended to his journal of his first voyage, which was published much later, first in Italian and later in English and French.
Jacques Cartier was a French-Breton maritime explorer for France. Jacques Cartier was the first European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, which he named "The Country of Canadas" after the Iroquoian names for the two big settlements he saw at Stadacona and at Hochelaga.
Ogdensburg is a city in St. Lawrence County, New York, United States. The population was 10,064 at the 2020 census. In the late 18th century, European-American settlers named the community after American land owner and developer Samuel Ogden. The city is at the northern border of New York at the mouth of the Oswegatchie River on the south bank of the St. Lawrence River. The only formally designated city in the county, it is located between Massena, New York to the east and Brockville, Ontario to the west.
The Wyandot people are an Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands of the present-day United States and Canada. Their Wyandot language belongs to the Iroquoian language family.
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 16th century in Canada saw the first contacts, since the Norsemen 500 years earlier, between the indigenous peoples in Canada living near the Atlantic coast and European fishermen, whalers, traders, and explorers.
The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking.
Kanesatake is a Mohawk settlement on the shore of the Lake of Two Mountains in southwestern Quebec, Canada, at the confluence of the Ottawa and Saint Lawrence rivers and about 48 kilometres (30 mi) west of Montreal. People who reside in Kanehsatà:ke are referred to as Mohawks of Kanesatake. As of 2022, the total registered population was 2,751, with a total of about 1,364 persons living on the territory. Both they and the Mohawk of Kahnawake, Quebec, a reserve located south of the river from Montreal, also control and have hunting and fishing rights to Doncaster 17 Indian Reserve.
Stadacona was a 16th-century St. Lawrence Iroquoian village not far from where Quebec City was founded in 1608.
While a variety of theories have been postulated for the name of Canada, its origin is now accepted as coming from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning 'village' or 'settlement'. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. Cartier later used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village but to the entire area subject to Donnacona ; by 1545, European books and maps had begun referring to this small region along the Saint Lawrence River as Canada.
Chief Donnacona was the chief of the St. Lawrence Iroquois village of Stadacona, located at the present site of Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. French explorer Jacques Cartier, concluding his second voyage to what is now Canada, kidnapped Donnacona and brought him to France, where he died. Later Cartier would make a third voyage to the same area.
Hochelaga was a St. Lawrence Iroquois 16th century fortified village on or near Mount Royal in present-day Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Jacques Cartier arrived by boat on October 2, 1535; he visited the village on the following day. He was greeted well by the Iroquois, and named the mountain he saw nearby Mount Royal. Several names in and around Montreal and the Hochelaga Archipelago can be traced back to him.
Agouhanna was the St. Lawrence Iroquoian term for chief or leader.
Donnacona is an industrial town located about 40 kilometres (25 mi) west of Quebec City in Portneuf County, Quebec, Canada.
The St. Lawrence Iroquoians were an Iroquoian Indigenous people who existed until about the late 16th century. They concentrated along the shores of the St. Lawrence River in present-day Quebec and Ontario, Canada, and in the American states of New York and northernmost Vermont. They spoke Laurentian languages, a branch of the Iroquoian family.
Odanak is an Abenaki First Nations reserve in the Central Quebec region, Quebec, Canada. The mostly First Nations population as of the 2021 Canadian census was 481. The territory is located near the mouth of the Saint-François River at its confluence with the St. Lawrence River. It is partly within the limits of Pierreville and across the river from Saint-François-du-Lac. Odanak is an Abenaki word meaning "in the village".
The Osheaga Music and Arts Festival is a multi-day music festival in Montreal, Quebec, that is held every summer at Parc Jean-Drapeau on Île Sainte-Hélène. The festival takes place on six stages with various audience capacities. Translated from their French equivalents, they are called "River Stage", "Mountain Stage", "Green Stage", "Trees Stage", "Valley Stage", and "Zone Piknic Electronik". Each performance area is paired with a sponsor. Band set times fluctuate based on the status of the performer within the festival. Emerging artists play 30-minute sets, and headliners conclude each day with 90-minute plus sets. The 2006 festival attracted a crowd of around 50,000 people. The 2012 festival reached its 80,000 attendance capacity each day.
Fort Ville-Marie was a French fortress and settlement established in May 1642 by a company of French settlers, led by Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, on the Island of Montreal in the Saint Lawrence River at the confluence of the Ottawa River, in what is today the province of Quebec, Canada. Its name is French for "City of Mary", a reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Cartier-Brébeuf National Historic Site is a National Historic Site of Canada and so designated by the Historic Sites and Monuments board of Canada in 1958 under the recommendation of John Diefenbaker, the Prime Minister of Canada at the time. It is administered by Parks Canada and located at the confluence of Saint-Charles and Lairet rivers, in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, more precisely in La Cité-Limoilou borough. On the site you can find an interpretation centre and a 6,8 hectares inner-city park characterised by an uneven landscape and divided into two sectors "East" and "West" separated by the Lairet river. Several commemorative monuments and elements are also present.
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Bref récit et succincte narration de la navigation faite en MDXXXV et MDXXXVI is a literary work published in 1545, which recounts Jacques Cartier’s second voyage to the St. Lawrence Valley region of North America and details his interactions with the local St. Lawrence Iroquoian peoples. The book was more than likely written by Cartier's secretary, Jehan Poullet.