Text from the Plaque
Approximately 500 years ago an Iroquoian agricultural community of about 1600 persons occupied this site. Archaeological excavations suggest that approximately 40 communal longhouses, averaging nearly 100 feet in length, stood in this village, palisaded with a stout double stockade. The farmers on the site grew corn, beans, squash, sunflowers and tobacco. A similar village, Hochelaga, on the present site of Montreal, was visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535. After this first contact with Europeans, these Indians, related to other Iroquoian-speaking peoples in northern New York and southern Ontario disappeared, although archaeological evidence suggests that some of the survivors were absorbed by the Hurons on the Trent River system.
|