Discover the First Nations of our Region

The late-prehistoric Shield Archaic peoples (AD 500 – 1600) lived here prior to European contact, as evidenced by recovered stone implements, arrowheads and fire-cracked rocks.  

These artifacts show that they were intimately aligned with the natural world. Their lives revolved around hunting, fishing and gathering. Legend has it that many important spirits also inhabited the landscape at prominent lookouts and rock faces along these rivers.

Long before the arrival of the French and English fur traders, the confluence of the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers served as a natural meeting place for the well-established Amerindian trading network. 

This ‘meeting of the waters’ became an important trading destination for Cree from the north, Hurons from the south and west and the Algonkians of the east.

Ultimately, the fur trade was the start of 300 years of change for the Native peoples. Alignment with the two competing European powers (England and France) created both opportunities and conflict, forever altering their nomadic lifestyle.     The Algonquin hunter gatherers had a social structure focused on related families whose elders provided leadership and guidance. 

Villages were temporary and mobile. The people moved to locations of greatest natural food supply, often breaking into smaller units or recombining as the circumstances required. This custom resulted in a certain degree of cross-tribal mobility, especially in troubled times.

In warm weather, they constructed light wigwams for portability. In the winter, they erected the more substantial long houses, in which more than one clan could reside. They cached food supplies in more permanent, semi-subterranean structures.

The Algonquins made alliances with the French. However this did not prevent the Iroquois from driving the Algonquins from their territory along the St Lawerence and Ottawa rivers in the 17th and 18th centuries. You can find out more about the First Nations at The Museum which is on Explorers Point. More information on the Mattawa/North Bay Algonquin First Nation.