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number of the place-names in the mid- to upper Laurentians have come down to us from the original human inhabitants, the Weskarinis Algonquins. This tribe lived principally along the Ottawa River and its Laurentian tributaries, the Lièvre, the Petite Nation, the Rouge and the North. We can only imagine their lives, small family groups living in a hierarchy dominated by ancient traditions and coloured by myth. The summer must have been a time of plenty and of celebration. Families would gather in large groups, children would run together and the maturing older children and young adults would have the opportunity to meet, to court and to make decisions, marriages, alliances, plans.

The Ottawa was a plentiful source of food in the summer, but come autumn and the frosts, the food supply would dwindle rapidly. The summer harvest would be quickly consumed. Adapting to this seasonal environment, small family groups would travel up the rivers, hunting and spreading over a larger territory. If things went well, a family could find itself back at a winter homestead with a sister's new husband, her younger siblings, parents, aging grandparents and enough available game to wait out the fierce cold season.

One imagines returning to this wintering site and finding an old uncle who had declined to go down the river the previous spring. The family would have a lot of stories to share and catching up to do. Here, in a cocoon environment, holed up for the winter, there would be time for moral lessons and fanciful tales, spun about the past, about the spirit-beings, the great forces of nature.

The aboriginal culture did not separate spirit from body as we do. The spirit was in all things, in the rocks, the streams, not just in living things. The Manitou was the Great Spirit, but it would be wrong to say that the Manitou was resident in any one place. Their concept of the universe was so different from ours that we can only speculate and project what it really would have felt like to be one of them.

In their mythology was a story, probably repeated on long winter nights over many generations, about a great mountain, and how the Great Spirit was particularly present there. They called it Trembling Mountain, and the elders warned that if humans should upset the natural order, then the Great Spirit would cause this mountain to shake and tremble, demonstrating displeasure or anger.

If we could only get closer to the Weskarinis, maybe we would gain insights into our own ancestors, because the Judeo-Christian-Moslem culture from which most of us come also talks about distant beginnings around a mountain. Mount Sinai, the mountain where the Ten Commandments were given, could well have had a similar hold on our ancestors. Sadly, though, we cannot know more about the Weskarinis because this tribe, living in precarious balance not just with its food supplies, but also with its enemy, the Iroquois, was doomed to extinction thanks to the inadvertent interference of the French and English settlers.

The administration of New France maintained a policy of cooperation with the aboriginals. They could be taught religion, and trade was encouraged, but they should not be given arms. Thus the Algonquin and Huron peoples became fur-trading partners with the French. The English, by contrast, did not have the same philosophy, and settlers traded guns happily with their aboriginal partners, the Iroquois.

The French and English colonies were very different. The French attempted to simply transplant a peasant culture from France to New France, with all of the structures and hierarchies that existed at home. As a result, the French colony was seen as a part of the great French culture. In contrast, England functioned more like a rogue state where brigands set sail on the high seas and brought back their booty. The colonies were simply a place for people to go, or to be sent, who were not well adapted at home. The rules of the game were made up as they went along in a hierarchy where the greatest bandit and pirate on the high seas was recognised at home for his victories abroad. Thus two brothers, the ship's captains Kirke, captured New France in 1629 causing some diplomatic problems back home. Three years later, the English crown managed to buy their co-operation by giving them Newfoundland instead, and then gave New France back to the French in a treaty that had more to do with Europe than with North America.

In the meantime, though, the English Kirke brothers moved in, bringing their trading partners, the Iroquois, with them. This must have been a terribly difficult period for the Algonquin and Huron peoples, who suddenly discovered that they could no longer trade with the French. They had no guns, so they could not even stand up to the Iroquois. But worse was yet to come when the French regained control of New France in 1632, and the Iroquois did not go away. Instead, they tried to maintain the position that the Kirke brothers had given them, and thus began the French and Indian Wars.

The Iroquois harassed the Algonquin and Huron traders and fought with the French. In an uneven conflict that ended in 1653 the barely armed Weskarinis Algonquin made a last stand on the shores of Petit Lac Nominingue deep inside historic Weskarinis territory, where they were massacred, leaving only two survivors.

Still, even if we will never be able to get closer to the Weskarinis, somehow many of their place names have survived and come down to us today, and when we look out from the peak of Mont Tremblant we can feel its great influence in the imaginations of this extinct people and wonder how their name and story managed to survive these four hundred and fifty years since their demise.

Reference Histoire des Laurentides -Serge Laurin;
The Fatal Shore -Robert Hughes

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