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A

ccording to Serge Laurin, the author of Histoire des Laurentides, the Algonquin Amerindians who lived in this region were the Weskarinis, a small branch of the Lower Algonquin tribe. The Upper Algonquins lived in the Abitibi region.

The Weskarinis lived along four river systems, the Lièvre, the Petite Nation, the Rouge and the Nord. Their principal summer encampment was at the mouth of the Petite Nation River at Montebello, which was probably a permanent camp. It was the French who gave them the name Petite Nation. It is surprising to learn that for centuries before 1600, they summered in large numbers on the Ottawa River, and then in autumn returned upriver on the tributaries to spend the winter in small family groups along their lakes and valleys. Imagine the excitement of travelling downriver each spring, the group of cousins growing larger and larger, sharing the news of births and deaths, of difficult winters and all manner of adventures, until the whole Petite Nation was reunited for a short summer season. Imagine the return upriver, the changes that summer may have wrought: a daughter married and gone with another family, or a new daughter-in-law returning; an elderly member deciding that the rigours of the journey would be to much and staying... The challenges of winter must have been great. Serge Laurin suggests that these groups would have been as small as 15 people when they arrived at their winter encampments, and that this would have improved their chances of survival. They must have had to hunt through the fall to prepare their winter supplies.

Their beliefs, as mentioned last time, obligated them to respect the natural order. The Manitou, or mysterious being, lurked in all things in some form. There was no natural concept of good and evil, nor any objective perspective on the world. They had vague awareness of their territory and had formed alliances with the Huron and Montagnais in order to protect themselves from the Five Nations of the Iroquois, an aggressive, more organised group of tribes which touched their southern border at Lake of Two Mountains.

The Lake of Two Mountains area will figure heavily in the future of the Native Peoples, but it has a mysterious past. Artifacts found there seem to jump in time from the 8th to the 14th centuries, suggesting that for 600 years the region was avoided. It could have simply been strategically untenable and therefore, for a long period, was viewed as a no-man's land between two different tribes.

At the time of the arrival of Champlain, the Weskarinis formed part of the alliance that was maintaining its territory against the Iroquois. Champlain began to trade with the Algonquins, and thereby alienated the Iroquois. Therein lay the beginning of a long story of tension that endures even today. Champlain actively took the side of the Algonquins, chasing the Iroquois south in 1610-11. His presence seems to have surprised and routed the Iroquois who only returned later in greater numbers. So began the French-Indian Wars of the 17th century. The Weskarinis as well as other Algonquins benefited from the fur trade with the French until 1629 when the Kirke brothers captured New France for the British. During the three years that the British held the colony, the Iroquois monopolised the fur trade, but when the colony was returned to the French in 1632, trade with the Algonquins and the Hurons resumed. This infuriated the Iroquois who set out to systematically eliminate the competition. They were better equiped to do so, since the British merchants continued to supply them, and between 1640 and 1648, the Huron Nation fell completely. By 1653, the Weskarinis, or Petite Nation, were cornered on the shores of the Petit Nominingue in the Laurentians, where they were massacred without mercy.

The remaining Lower Algonquins, the Kichespirinis, took refuge with their cousins in Abitibi, and with the Cree even farther north.

Despite their dominance, the Iroquois could not control the fur trade, and the huge Outaouais tribe from Georgian Bay moved in to replace the Algonquins as the trading partners of the French. The Iroquois resorted to guerilla tactics and harrassed and ambushed the French voyageurs, and terrorised the French colony for the next 50 years.

In 1701, after a French victory, an uneasy peace was negotiated with the Iroquois, and slowly the Algonquins began to return to the Ottawa River. The lands of the Petite Nation remained vacant, the indigenous people of the Laurentians having been eliminated.

Joseph Graham has written a book that features a select number of stories of Laurentian places and how they got their names. To learn more, click here.

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This material may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the author. © Joseph Graham