Outremont park transforms into archeological dig site

Two Outremont parks are now apart of an archeological survey to uncover Iroquois settlements in and around the city.

The city of Montreal in partnership with a joint research project between McGill University and Universite de Montreal said  project Hochelaga aims to find the lost Iroquois city that Jacques Cartier visited in 1535.

“When Jacques Cartier came to  Canada at that time, he met First Nation Iroquoians living around Mount Royal,” head archeologist Michel Plourde said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "When Jacques Cartier came to  Canada at that time, he met First Nation Iroquoians living around Mount Royal," head archeologist Michel Plourde said.

They have 18 potential dig sites and four of which are in Outremont — the targeted parks are Beaubien, Joyce, Outremont and Pratt. They believe that underneath the grass and earth, one of those sites lies the lost Iroquois settlement.

The Iroquois people were sedentary Aboriginals and only packed up and moved every 20 years, Plourde says.

Plourde believes that the Iroquois were near a stream that used to go through the now residential area.

Elea Gutierrez, a student studying at Universite de Montreal, said being in a field with a potential discovery such as this, is a longtime dream of hers.

“It’s great, we research artifacts in the laboratory but now we can find artifacts and after … we can tell the story,” Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez believes the village of the past would most likely have Iroquois longhouses with up to 10 families living under the roof of one of these homes.

The process of unearthing these delicate artifacts is long — much of the dirt needs to be put through a special mesh screen. Most of the tools used need to have soft edges so as not to damage the specimens.

The researchers will be digging 50-centimetre-deep holes that will span one metre across. The holes will be placed every 10 metres throughout the parks to survey the area.

Since they started digging Monday, Gutierrez says they have found pieces of animal bones and ceramic shards, small evidence of a village settlement.

The archaeologists say the Iroquois lived in the surrounding area for almost 100 years, then suddenly disappeared. This has puzzled archeologist Plourde who says he hopes to uncover the reason why they left the lands.

“We don’t have much knowledge of why they disappeared after Jacques Cartier’s visit,” Plourde said. “They were around 10,000 living in St. Lawrence valley and when Samuel de Champlain came in 1603, all these people left the area.”

The project will go on from July 3 and continue until July 11.