Mnjikaning Fish Weirs

Last updated

Mnjikaning Fish Weirs
Mnjikaning Fish Weirs NHS.jpg
Nearest city Orillia, Ontario
Coordinates 44°36′15″N79°22′11″W / 44.60417°N 79.36972°W / 44.60417; -79.36972
Original useHarvesting fish
Official nameMnjikaning Fish Weirs National Historic Site of Canada
Designated12 June 1982 (1982-06-12)

The Mnjikaning Fish Weirs are one of the oldest human developments in Canada. These fishing weirs were built by the first nations people well before recorded history, dating to around 4500 BP during the Archaic period in North America, [1] [2] according to carbon dating done on some of the wooden remnants. The weirs were built in the narrows between Lake Couchiching and Lake Simcoe, now known as Atherley Narrows, [1] over which Ontario Highway 12 passes today. They were preserved by the water and layers of protective silt.

Contents

The weirs were built as fences using local wood species, including eastern white cedar, sugar maple, and white birch for the stakes. [3] The weirs were used to trap the various fish species swimming through them. The early fishermen wove brush and vegetation among the weirs to make net-like fencing where the fish were guided to be speared, netted or kept for later use, particularly for consumption during the winter. [1]

The weirs – historically called ouentaronk (Huron) and tkaronto (Mohawk) – are believed to have provided the City of Toronto with its name, following a series of copy errors. [4] [5] They were in use for about 5,000 years, until about the early 1700s. [6] Samuel de Champlain recorded their existence on September 1, 1615, when he passed the weirs with the Huron en route to the battle with the Iroquois on the south east side of Lake Ontario.

The Mnjikaning Fish Weirs was officially recognized as a National Historic Site of Canada on 12 June 1982. [7] It is managed by the Rama First Nation, who created the Mnjikaning Fish Fence Circle to protect and promote the site. [8]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Munson & Jamieson 2013, p. 121.
  2. Johnston, Richard B; Cassavoy, Kenneth A (1978). "The Fish Weirs at Atherly Narrows, Ontario". American Antiquity. 43 (4): 697–709.
  3. Munson & Jamieson 2013, p. 121, figure 7.6.
  4. City of Toronto.
  5. Natural Resources Canada.
  6. Bernick 2013, p. 76.
  7. Parks Canada.
  8. Chippewas of Rama First Nation, Mnjikaning Fish Weirs, at current day, Atherley Narrows.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orillia</span> City in Ontario, Canada

Orillia is a city in Ontario, Canada, about 30 km north-east of Barrie in Simcoe County. It is located at the confluence of Lake Couchiching and Lake Simcoe. Although it is geographically located within Simcoe County, the city is a single-tier municipality. It is part of the Huronia region of Central Ontario. The population in 2021 was 33,411.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ojibwe</span> Group of indigenous peoples in North America

The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. They are Indigenous peoples of the Subarctic and Northeastern Woodlands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lake Simcoe</span> Lake in Ontario, Canada

Lake Simcoe is a lake in southern Ontario, Canada, the fourth-largest lake wholly in the province, after Lake Nipigon, Lac Seul, and Lake Nipissing. At the time of the first European contact in the 17th century the lake was called Ouentironk by the native Wendat/Ouendat (Huron) people. It was also known as Lake Taronto until it was renamed by John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, in memory of his father, Captain John Simcoe of the Royal Navy. In Anishinaabemowin, the ancestral language of the First Nations living around this lake, namely Anishinaabek of Rama and Georgina Island First Nations, Lake Simcoe is called Zhooniyaang-zaaga'igan, meaning "Silver Lake".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgian Bay</span> Large bay of Lake Huron, Ontario, Canada

Georgian Bay is a large bay of Lake Huron, in the Laurentia bioregion. It is located entirely within the borders of Ontario, Canada. The main body of the bay lies east of the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island. To its northwest is the North Channel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toronto Carrying-Place Trail</span> Portage route linking Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Peninsula</span> Peninsula in Southern Ontario, Canada

The Bruce Peninsula is a peninsula in Ontario, Canada, that divides Georgian Bay of Lake Huron from the lake's main basin. The peninsula extends roughly northwestwards from the rest of Southwestern Ontario, pointing towards Manitoulin Island, with which it forms the widest strait joining Georgian Bay to the rest of Lake Huron. The Bruce Peninsula contains part of the geological formation known as the Niagara Escarpment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ramara</span> Township in Ontario, Canada

Ramara is a lower-tier township municipality in Simcoe County, Ontario, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neutral Confederacy</span> Historic Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands

The Neutral Confederacy was a tribal confederation of Iroquoian peoples. Its heartland was in the floodplain of the Grand River in what is now Ontario, Canada. At its height, its wider territory extended toward the shores of lakes Erie, Huron, and Ontario, as well as the Niagara River in the east. To the northeast were the neighbouring territories of Huronia and the Petun Country, which were inhabited by other Iroquoian confederacies from which the term Neutrals Attawandaron was derived. The five-nation Iroquois Confederacy was across Lake Ontario to the southeast.

Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation is an Ojibwe First Nations band government who inhabit northern Kenora in Ontario, Canada. Their landbase is the 4,145 ha English River 21 Indian Reserve. It has a registered population of 1,595 as of October 2019, of which the on-reserve population was 971. As of October 2020, the community had a population of approximately 1,200. They are a signatory to Treaty 3.

The St. Lawrence Iroquoians were an Iroquoian Indigenous people who existed from the 14th century to about 1580. 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.

The Saugeen Ojibway Nation Territory, also known as Saugeen Ojibway Nation, SON and the Chippewas of Saugeen Ojibway Territory, is the name applied to Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation and Saugeen First Nation as a collective, represented by a joint council. The collective First Nations are Ojibway (Anishinaabe) peoples located on the eastern shores of Lake Huron on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, Canada. Though predominantly Ojibway, due to large influx of refugees from the south and west after the War of 1812, the descendants of the Chippewas of Saugeen Ojibway Territory also have ancestry traced to Odawa and Potawatomi peoples.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chippewas of Rama First Nation</span>

Chippewas of Rama First Nation, also known as Chippewas of Mnjikaning and Chippewas of Rama Mnjikaning First Nation, is an Anishinaabe (Ojibway) First Nation located in the province of Ontario in Canada. The name Mnjikaning, or fully vocalized as Minjikaning, refers to the fishing weirs at Atherley Narrows between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching and it means "in/on/at or near the fence".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgina Island</span> Island in Ontario, Canada

Georgina Island is the largest of the lake islands of Lake Simcoe, located in southern Ontario, Canada. The island is a Native reserve populated by the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, a band of Ojibwa people. It is also within the Town of Georgina and in the Regional Municipality of York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allandale Waterfront GO Station</span> Train station in Barrie, Ontario

Allandale Waterfront GO Station was built just south of Allandale Station, a historic train station that occupies a large property on the southern shore of Lake Simcoe in the waterfront area of Barrie, Ontario, Canada. The current station and former station were built on a burial site of the Huron indigenous peoples.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mantle Site</span> Remains of an indigenous village

The "Jean-Baptiste Lainé" or Mantle Site in the town of Whitchurch–Stouffville, north-east of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is the largest and most complex ancestral Wendat-Huron village to be excavated to date in the Lower Great Lakes region. The site's southeastern access point is at the intersection of Mantle Avenue and Byers Pond Way.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atherley Narrows Swing Bridge</span> Rail bridge in Canada

The Atherley Narrows Swing Bridge is a Canadian National rail bridge located at the confluence of Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching at the Atherley Narrows, near Orillia, Ontario.

The Donaldson site is an archaeological site in Ontario that was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1982. The 3-acre (12,000 m2) site is the largest within the Saugeen complex, and is representative of typical habitation and mortuary practices of the Woodland period before the European discovery of the Americas, from about 200 BCE until 700 CE.

William Yellowhead, or "Musquakie" or "Misquuckkey", as he was known in Ojibwe was the "head chief" of the Chippaweans of Lakes Huron and Simcoe and leader of the Deer clan of that people from 1817 until his death in 1864. He led his people in taking arms in defence of Upper Canada in the Upper Canada Rebellion, oversaw the sale of the bulk of their territory to the provincial government, and led them in their first attempts to adopt an agrarian way of life. Although the claims of several other persons have been advanced, it is generally believed that Musquakie is the origin of the name of the District Municipality of Muskoka.

John Aisance was a chief among the Chippewas of Lakes Huron and Simcoe and leader of the Otter clan of that people from at least 1815 until his death in 1847. He participated in the Lake Simcoe–Lake Huron Purchase in 1815, served the provincial government during the Upper Canada Rebellion, and was the first and founding chief of the Beausoleil First Nation.

Joseph Snake was an Ojibwe chief belonging to the Chippewas of Lakes Huron and Simcoe from sometime before 1842 until his death in 1861.

References