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W

hen the Europeans first arrived in the Americas they had very little comprehension of the civilisation that they found here, and, as a result of the contact, the original American civilisation was shattered. Its vulnerability lay in the fact that it was not a herding culture and had domesticated very few animals. They had, however, concentrated their efforts in cultivating plants and vastly surpassed the Europeans in that field. Today, the basic sustenance of our society is based not on the foods of Europe but on the varieties of plants that the indigenous Americans had developed over many thousands of years. Obvious examples of these are potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn and squash, but there are many others including peppers and chocolate. Sadly, the exchange of bacteria and viruses between domestic farm animals and their European owners had created a people that was resistant to a whole series of diseases but that was highly contagious to the people living here. If the original civilisation had been able to protect itself from the European diseases, the Americas may have evolved similarly to the way China or India have, and Europe would have fared very poorly.

The Algonquin were a remote, northern nation far removed from the Central American seat of this civilisation, but they traded goods with the Iroquois and others and were dependant upon crops, such as corn, squash and tobacco that had been developed farther south. In exchange they gave dried meat and furs. They are thought to have been in the Ottawa Valley since about 2000 BCE and in other parts of the region before that. The Europeans found a people living with an agricultural system so vastly different from anything that they had experienced that they failed to see it as a system at all, and we today are only beginning to realise what was destroyed. Used to grassy hills covered with sheep, they saw vast forests that had to be removed. While the evidence is less available in the studies of the Algonquin, the Iroquois to the south were known to burn in a controlled fashion that did not destroy the larger trees, but enriched the soil with ashes and encouraged tender new growth on the forest floor. After that, they could cull the stock of wildlife that grazed it. As a result they created forests that provided their protein and their grains and greens.

The Algonquin people managed their resources by dividing territories up among families, and they respected each other's 'titles' to their hunting areas. They had rules that said that one could not trap in a neighbour's territory, but that if faced with need such as hunger, then a neighbour could not stop you from taking game to survive. Their control of their forests was so advanced that, if necessary, they could simply clean the wildlife right out of an area. The animals were not 'hiding' from the Algonquin hunter, but simply living at his behest.

The word Algonquin comes from Algoumequin, first used by Champlain to describe the people who came from the Ottawa River in 1603. He was likely influenced by the Montagnais word Algoumekuots, meaning those who paint themselves red. Champlain noted that the Algonquin painted their faces red, or crimson. He attributed the colour to a dye extracted from a root found in a sandy soil. The people he met could have been the Weskarinis Algonquins, the people who lived here before us but who perished in the French and Indian Wars. They called themselves Anichinabe, which means 'people'. The Weskarinis were one of many clans, including the Kichespirini, the Matouweskarini and the Ononchataronon who all occupied contiguous territories on both sides of the Ottawa River at the beginning of the 17th century. They were all Algonquins, or Anichinabe, and they all spoke dialects of the same language. Although their language is different from the Cree, Micmac, Abenaki and Montagnais (Innu) they all form part of a cultural and linguistic family called Algonquian, leading to some confusion between the names. These same Algonquin people, either the Weskarinis or the Kichesperinis, named Lac Nominingue. The word itself, Nominingue, or Onamani, refers to the red clay found in the lake, and it may have also given rise to the name of the Rivière Rouge. The two lakes, Lac Nominingue and Petit Lac Nominingue were tucked away at the source of the river and were probably the most secure location in the vast territory of the Weskarinis. Here, their closest neighbours were their closest kin and their enemies were on distant rivers, days of paddling downstream. The clay was used in body painting ceremonies and it is possible that the dye that Champlain saw on the bodies of the Algonquin actually came from the Lac Nominingue area.

There is a legend that may have been inspired by the lake, called The Colours of Sunset. This is the story of a boy who cries each evening as the sun goes down, and his family cannot console him. Kisisokôe, the Sun Woman, explains to his family that the boy is saddened to see the colours go out of the sky at the end of the day. She tells them that they must retrieve the colours of the sunset from a certain lake where the colours can be found on the lake bottom. The legend does not name Lac Nominingue, but it could have been the lake imagined, given its vermilion clay. In the story, the father sets off to the lake and finds it heavily guarded. One of the guards is a pollywog named Podonch, and he manages to catch it and glue its lips together so that it cannot warn the other guards. Then he dives into the lake and retrieves the powdered colours of the sunset for his son. The story goes on to explain that Podonch was punished by having to breathe through gills after that, and concludes that since that time, pollywogs have been born with gills and small, puckered mouths.

Whatever lake inspired the story, Lac Nominingue figured in the life of the people who lived here before us and, tucked securely into the furthest, safest reaches of their world, it must have seemed the safest place in their thousands of years of presence. It was on the shores of Petit Lac Nominingue that the Weskarinis made their last stand in 1651, having been continuously pushed back by the well-armed Iroquois.

Thanks to Laura Redish of Native Languages of the Americas. Other references include Indian Givers by Jack Weatherford, La Langue geographique de Cartier et Champlain by Christian Mouressonneau and The Algonquins edited by Daniel Clement. A very special thanks to Sheila Eskenazi, my wife, for her editorial input and encouragement.

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