History of Montreal

The Story of a Great North American City

By Paul-André Linteau, Peter McCambridge

Baraka Books

Copyright © 2007 Les éditions du Boréal
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-926824-77-2
CHAPTER 1

Hochelaga

Montreal was born in 1642, but the area’s history obviously dates back much further. And yet knowledge of this part of the city’s past remains, even today, far from complete. We know that the island was frequented — and even inhabited — by Iroquoian people before the French arrived, but experts do not agree on what happened to these first populations.

An enviable location

To understand the reasons that led to groups settling, temporarily or permanently, on the island of Montreal, first we need to take a closer look at the island. Thousands of years ago, only the summit of Mount Royal peeked out above the waters of the Champlain Sea. As the waters retreated, the mountain acted as an anchor for the land that formed the island of Montreal, and remains a focal point of the cityscape today.

The St. Lawrence River played an even greater role in shaping Montreal’s history. All around the world, mighty rivers have cradled civilizations, favouring the emergence of great cities, especially for centuries when water was the main means of transporting people and goods over long distances. The St. Lawrence was no exception. But why did Montreal and not Sorel or Trois-Rivières become the biggest city along the river? As we will see later, this can partly be explained by the city’s history as a whole, as well as the constraints of geography.

Coming from the Atlantic, travellers along the St. Lawrence hit a major obstacle at Montreal: the Lachine rapids. Goods had to be unloaded and portaged all the way to Lachine, with things being no better for those heading the other way. This obligation to unload and reload boats would make Montreal’s fortune over the years.

Prehistoric Montreal was likely a temporary camp for groups passing through the St. Lawrence Valley. With game, fish, and berries in abundance, it even offered ready access to food. Yet there is scant archaeological evidence of human activity on the prehistoric island of Montreal. We know that occupation of the St. Lawrence Valley began some 6,000 years ago, but artifacts uncovered beneath the city seem to date back no further than a handful of centuries before the Europeans arrived. It is plausible that the island was frequented long before, but this has never been proven. Nor do we know exactly when Aboriginal peoples permanently settled on the island of Montreal. What we do know is that in 1535, when French explorer Jacques Cartier travelled across the island, he found a sedentary population living in a large village: Hochelaga.

The Iroquoians

These people were part of a group known as the St. Lawrence Iroquoians. The St. Lawrence Iroquoians belonged to the broad linguistic family of the Iroquoians, along with other nations like the Hurons and the Iroquois, but were a distinct people. Little is known about their origins. The St. Lawrence Iroquoians are thought to have formed a specific cultural group around 1300, and are believed to have emerged from groups previously established in the area. Specialists have observed differences within this people, particularly between the groups that settled around Quebec and Montreal.

The St. Lawrence Iroquoians, like the Hurons and the Iroquois, were sedentary and lived mainly from agriculture. They mostly grew corn, but also beans, squash, and tobacco. They fished and hunted to complete their diet, and traded with Algonquin hunter-gatherers,