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Archaeologists and historians in Ontario generally refer to the "prehistoric era" as the time before any direct contact between the Aboriginal inhabitants and the Europeans. The Aboriginal occupation of Ontario can be traced back to the Palaeo-Indian period over 11,000 years ago. By the fifteenth to seventeenth ceturies A.D. the Iroquoian-speaking Huron Indians had coalesced into the territory between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay and hence that area is known
as "Huronia". The historic Native era, as opposed to the preceding prehistoric era, technically began when the French explorer Samuel de Champlain and Recollect (Franciscan) priest Joseh Le Caron became the first Europeans to systematically travel through Huronia and interact with the Huron in 1615. Other Recollects settled amidst the Huron in 1623-1625, the in 1626 the Jesuits (Society of Jesus) established their first Mission there. The inital Jesuit Missions
were short-lived as they were forced to withdraw when the French lost their overall control of New France ot the English in 1629. However, the larger political sphere changed abruptly again less than three years later when the French regained dominance of the St.Lawrence Valley.

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Artists' conception of Fort Sainte-Marie I
circa 1963
Midland, Ontario, Canada


Credits:
Museum of Ontario Archaeology

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By 1634 the Jesuits had re-established Missions in Huronia, with Jean de Brebeuf as Superior. Subsequently Jesuit Superiors Father Jerome Lalemant and Father Paul Ragueneau selected as their central base the site and Mission of Sainte-Marie I (located just outside of present-day Midland, Ontario), where from 1639 to 1649 not only the Jesuits but also European donnes (lay brothers) and workmen lived alongside the Huron. The Iroquoian confederacy of present-day New York State began a campaign of war against the Huron and their allies, which reached a peak in 1648-1649.

After witnessing or hearing of the destruction of several Huron villages and their own Mission sites in Huronia, the Jesuits in June 1649 ordered the evacuation of Sainte-Marie I and they themselves set fire to it lest it fall into the hands of the attacking Iroquois. Some of the surviving Jesuits and Huron then relocated to the site of Sainte-Marie II on Christian Island for a short interval, then fled Huronia entirely. Before this occurred, however, eight Jesuits who had served in various locations throughout eastern North America had suffered terrible deaths in the cause of their faith. Since the mid-nineteenth century researchers have spent considerable effort in attempts to positively correlate certain archaeological sites with the Huron villages and Jesuit Missions such as Sainte-Marie I and II, St. Ignace I and II, St.Jean, Cahiague and Ossossane that were named in archival sources such as the Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. The Jurys' work in Huronia, starting in 1946, was no exception to this.