courtesy Yap Films, Inc.
A St. Lawrence Iroquois examines an axe shard, from a
historical re-enactment featured in the documentary film 'The
Curse of the Axe.'
Tonight, July 9th, Canadian cable channel History Television
will present
Curse of The Axe, a documentary about the
archeological discovery of Mantle, the largest Huron First
Nations village discovered to date. The site, located in
present-day Stouffville, near Toronto, once contained 90 long
houses and 3 rows of defensive walls which required chopping
down 60,000 trees for their construction. Beyond those walls the
Huron cultivated over 2,000 acres of corn that stretched 2
kilometers (slightly less than 1¼ miles) in every direction from
the village. The land mass the village and the corn fields
covered would have been as large as a contemporary city.
The site also had thousands of Native artifacts on it.
However, amid all of these artifacts there was a part of a
European axe that could be traced back to Spain. What makes the
axe extraordinary is that all evidence points to it being buried
100 years before Europeans were believed to have set foot in
that part of the continent. The lead archeologist on the dig,
Dr. Ron Williamson, believes the Iroquois traded the piece as
they went up the St. Lawrence River. The archeological evidence
shows the axe head was not just discarded, but buried in the
middle of the village, possibly in the middle of a central long
house. There has been a lot of speculation about the iron’s
significance to the people who buried it over half a millennium
ago and what it means to the Huron people today.
All of these discoveries—the large village, the abundance of
artifacts and the metal piece—have convinced Williamson that the
history of the Huron needs to be rewritten, literally. “We not
only needed to change the textbooks, we needed to write one
about it,” Williamson said. He has just submitted such a book
for publication. His narrative is the heart of the History
Television documentary.
Dr. Ron Williamson holding the piece of metal found at
Mantle that is featured in 'Curse of the Axe.'
The axe piece is the earliest European iron ever found in the
North American interior. “The first thing that needs to happen
is to simply recognize that European material was reaching the
interior continent at least a half-century or more before people
thought, and that’s a profound kind of understanding,”
Williamson said.
“Mantle was certainly a center of interaction at that time
and totally unknown until 2003 when we found it,” Williamson
continued. He always believed these small communities could come
together into one large site, due to the warring that was going
on in the Great Lakes region at that time, but nothing prepared
him for the size, complexity, or the sheer volume of artifacts
that were found at Mantle. But everything comes back to that axe
piece.
“For me, sitting in my office in Toronto and digging a site
just North of Toronto and finding a Basque artifact from 1500 or
1520 was absolutely mind blowing,” Williamson said.
Once the iron piece was discovered Williamson had one of his
team members attempt to date it. She recommended that they x-ray
the piece to see how much of the original form was underneath
all the corrosion and to determine whether it was wrought iron
or cast iron, which would also help date the piece. The idea
that there could be a maker’s mark on it never occurred to
anyone until the technician spotted it on the x-ray.
“Leading researchers with early European objects have said to
me directly that this will change the way research is done with
iron from this point forward; everybody will be x-raying their
iron,” Williamson said.
It took a long time to identify, but the maker’s mark was
finally traced back to Basque Country in northeastern Spain.
Williamson and his team have even pinpointed the ships that came
from the region to what is now Canada, one of which would have
brought this particular piece across the ocean.
“I could send you textbook pages where it literally says that
you won’t find European trade items until the last half of the
16th century,” Williamson laughs. “Who was looking for it? We
weren’t looking for it. It was literally just like it shows in
the film; when it showed up on my desk it had very good context,
it came from the bottom of this pit that had been excavated just
to bury it. Why would a farmer do that? And how could it end up
in a long house so nicely in the right spot.”
Re-enactment of the construction of a longhouse at the
village of Mantle as depicted in 'Curse of the Axe.' Image
courtesy Yap Films Inc.
Williamson’s theory is that an axe was brought over from
Europe and was traded to the Iroquois, who eventually traded it
to the Huron. The axe head was cut into three pieces and at
least one piece was fashioned into an axe that would have
resembled a Native American stone axe. Something happened, the
documentary makers play up the idea that the Huron saw it as an
ominous herald of things to come—European culture. Regardless of
what happened, the evidence shows that the piece was purposely
buried in the center of the village, and that a long house did
stand there at one point, which gives rise to the notion that it
could have been buried ceremonially.
For all of its historical significance, the piece means much
more to the Huron people.
“We believe it’s probably a part of the answers we are
looking for regarding the Iroquoian on the St. Lawrence,” said
Luc Lainé, a member of the Huron Wendat Nation and a Huron
ambassador involved with repatriation for the nation.
“There is a big issue in Quebec about who are the Iroquoians
of the St. Lawrence and we, the Wendat people, believe we are
the descendants of the Iroquoian of the St. Lawrence, but of
course we do not have a lot of evidence to support our
position,” Lainé continued. “When we deal with other first
nations in Quebec, with the government or the provincial or the
federal government, they say there are some good chances that we
are the descendants, but we don’t have a direct claim or
anything to prove this. With this piece of axe we believe we
have something solid to support our position and that’s why the
axe itself is so important to us. It probably came from
Newfoundland, and the Huron traded for it over there and brought
it to Mantle. This has been our political position for a very
long time; we were in the fur trade, we were in the trades, so
we traded this along the St. Lawrence River, up to the Georgian
Bay and up to this area.”
The Huron position is not stated in the documentary. “I don’t
want to blame [production company] Yap Films, because when you
make this kind of documentary you have 50 hours of shooting and
you have to cut a lot to make a one-hour or two-hour story,”
Lainé said. “I would have liked there to be more [of our
viewpoint] because when I was interviewed I spoke a lot about
the Iroquoian, the St. Lawrence, and again, it’s the decision of
the director to take it or not. But one thing sure for us, the
Huron-Wendat, is that this piece of iron is so fundamental, and
again, based on the archeology, we have the pottery and
artifacts that we believe supports our point of view, but again
this piece of iron is another brick in the wall to come and
support our position.”
Curse of The Axe, produced by
Yap Films and narrated by Robbie Robertson of The Band, will
premiere on
History Television’s “History Presents” on Monday, July 9th
at 8PM ET/PT and it will be repeated that night at 12 midnight,
Tuesday July 10 at 1 pm, and on Friday, July 13 at 1 pm, 9 pm
and 1 am.
Researchers Andrea Carnevale and Dr. Michael Barkham examine
a collection of Basque iron tools from the 16th Century.
Image courtesy Yap Films Inc.
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