Drawing by Cathy Merritt

Introduction | What Is The Charity Site | The Final Years In Huronia | Prisoners On Christian Highland | The Final Retreat | Charity Site: The Excavation | Future Work & Acknowledgments

The Final Years In Huronia

What we now called Christian Island was once known to the Hurons as "Gahoendoe". For thousands of years to Hurons, and their ancestors, and occupied a huge area of land in Ontario, from the Kawartha Lakes to Georgian Bay to the north shore of Lake Ontario. By the 1600's their centers of power had largely become concentrated in present-day Huronia, between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay. It was at this stage that the French moved in, armed with trade goods and preaching Christianity.

The powerful Huron Nation, made up of four tribes, had traditionally been sworn enemies of their Iroquois neighbours who lived south of Lake Ontario. Relations between the two worsened as the Iroquois watched the fur trade grow between the French and here on, jealous of the Huron control over European trade goods entering Ontario. What's neither of these powerful Confederacy's could foresee was the conflict with the Europeans would bring them more than just guns, copper kettles, and iron taxes. The European's ultimates legacy would be the tragedy of disease and loss.

By the late 1640's the Hurons were living in terror. Their immune system were unable to fight the unfamiliar European diseases and devastating epidemics swept through the entire region. Droughts cost food shortages for a culture that heavily dependent on their annual corn crop to feed them through the long winters. Hence, it was a severely weakened and fearful Huron population that had to face increasingly frequent rats from the Iroquois. They were unable to mount successful counterattacks, and early in 1649 the Iroquois attacked and destroyed four strong villages. Realizing the hopelessness of their situation, many of the remaining Hurons abandoned their villages, burned them to the ground so they could not be used by the Iroquois. This was the beginning of the period of cultural devastation that has since gone unparalleled in this province.

According to records written by Jesuit missionary priests who lived amongst the Huron, the threat from the Iroquois a mass exodus of Huron out of their homeland. Even the Jesuits abandoned their fortified mission, Ste. Marie, burning it as they fled. A number of Huron sheets persuaded that Jesuits to a company than to resettle on Christian Highland. So, in the spring of 1649 the Jesuits and thousands of Huron's moved to the island seeking refuge from the devastation on the mainland.