Between
1600 and 1700, westward-migrating Ojibwa around the Great Lakes
in northeastern North America, drove out other nations, the
Fox, Winnebago and Dakota, living east of the Mississippi River,
taking over the rich wild rice growing regions here. For the
native peoples living on and along the Canadian Shield, where
climate and soil limit farming, the wild rice or manoma crop
was the most important harvest of the year. For nations such
as the Ojibwa and their Algonkian-speaking neighbours, hunting
and fishing provided the staple foods, supplemented by berries,
nuts, maple syrup and other plants found in season. Manoma grows
in shallow lakes and streams, and it was usually harvested by
the women. In years when the wild rice crop was poor, people
would go hungry during the long winters.
To the south and east of the Algonkians were the Iroquois-speaking
nations. Iroquois towns and villages dotted the St. Lawrence
River valley in what is now Quebec. In Ontario were the Wendake
(Huron), Petun and Attiwandaronk confederations. South of the
Great Lakes were the Erie and the Hodenausaunee, the Five Nations
confederacy. While the Iroquois nations did hunt and gathered
wild plants, their staple foods were grown by the women on farms.
The most important foods were called the "three sisters":
squash, beans and corn.
The Italian Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot in English), working
for the English king, reaches what is now the east coast of
Canada in 1498. The Frenchman, Jacques Cartier, arrives in the
St. Lawrence River in 1534. The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam
is founded 1621. It later becomes New York. Within decades of
the first European settlements, small pox and other diseases
introduced by the newcomers kill hundreds of thousands of native
Americans. Many villages and towns are completely depopulated.
The Hodenausaunee (Five Nations) aided by traditional Wendake
attack the settlements of the Christianized Wendake in 1649.
Missionary settlements, of the French Jesuits, like St. Marie
on Lake Huron's Georgian Bay, are also destroyed. The French
then abandon their missions among the Huron. The Wendake are
dispersed. Numbers join the Haudenausaunee, while others flee
west of the Great Lakes. The Attiwandaronk and Petun confederations
are also broken by the Five Nations' attack and suffer the same
fate as the Wendake. European penetration of what is now southern
Ontario is delayed for three or four generations.
In 1539, the Spanish captain De Soto lands in Florida. He leads
an expedition inland throughout the southern United States.
Many Spaniards are killed by native resistance or die from disease.
De Soto himself dies near the Mississippi. Rather than turn
back, where nothing awaits them but hostile natives, the remnants
of his men try to walk to Mexico to the Spanish settlements
there. They of course, have no idea how far it is, but are forced
to turn back by the mountains and deserts of what is now Arizona
and New Mexico. Turning back the survivors are picked up by
chance on the Gulf of Mexico near the Mississippi River in 1542
by a passing Spanish ship.
See
an original map of the new settlement of Montreal, around 1645
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