FIRST NATION HISTORY

(By Peter Bullock - amateur archeologist)

Photo: Peter Bullock, John Pollock and Jean-Marc Filion investigate strange depressions (about 2m in diameter) made in what could have been a historical fish spawning area back when the great lakes flowed East through the Trout Lake - Turtle Lake outlet. This photo is from the start of Werewolf lake, looking upstream (West) at the Turtle Lake dam. Turtle lake is directly downstream of Trout lake. Could these depressions have been made by early first nation people as catch basins for the fish that they might have been spearing or netting from the outflow ?

It is not known when the first indigenous people first ventured into the Trout Lake region. The subject is actually quite controversial and many first nations people dismiss archaeologically supported theories in support of traditional native views. There is no evidence to support the speculative view that indigenous people moved into this region soon after the last vestiges of glacial ice disappeared ten or eleven thousand years ago; but then, chances of finding any such evidence are extremely remote.

Most of the Trout Lake watershed was submerged beneath a prehistoric lake as soon as the ice disappeared and any exposed land would have been islands amidst a great fresh water sea. If humans did venture into this area any evidence left behind would now be extremely difficult to find due to the obscuring forces of nature and the acidity of the soils which dissolves everything but stone. It is possible that indigenous big game hunters, that we now know existed in other parts of North America, followed the last of the Woolly Mammoths into this area before the they were hunted to extinction some 10,000 years ago. In fact, it is even possible that these creatures saw their last days in close proximity to the Trout Lake watershed.

This was a time of mass extinction and much of the game that indigenous people had depended upon, not to leave out a few predators, met their fate. The warming climate caused abrupt global changes in habitat. That, in turn, wiped out 70 percent of the biggest animals in North America. Exotics such as mastodon, saber tooth cat, antlered giraffe, woolly rhinoceros and beaver that were as large as bears perished as their habitat disappeared. But humans adapted to these changes and they likely quickly inhabited the land as it was vacated by glaciation.

The oldest known archaeological site that is in remote proximity to Trout Lake is the Sheguiandah Site located on Manitoulin Island. This ancient quarry which, incidentally, was also situated on an ancient great lakes island, may be 10,000 years old or more. The site served as a rock quarry that indigenous people mined to obtained the desired materials used to manufactured stone tools. Archaeologists have studied this site for many years and its origin still remains a mystery.

Younger Sheguiandah rock artifacts that were manufactured in more recent times have been recovered in the Trout Lake watershed. The oldest evidence of humans in the Trout Lake watershed, based on stone artifacts studied by archaeologists, establishes a human presence in the area starting about 7,000 years ago. This date, however is only a starting point and, like the search for evidence of the first humans on earth, future chapters will likely be added to this story.