Saint Marie Among the Hurons

One Saturday we all drove to a place called Midland located on the southern Georgian Bay area, part of the Greater Lakes, but veering north west of the road to the Northlands. We visited a place called Saint Marie Among the Hurons. This was a settlement built in Ontario’s first European Community, and was the headquarters for the French Jesuit Mission to the Huron Wendat people. In 1639, the Jesuits, along with French lay workers, constructed a fenced community including barracks, a church, workshops, residences, and a sheltered area for Native visitors. The latter information came from the website http://www.saintemarieamongthehurons.on.ca/sm/en/Home/

These were some buildings within the fenced area.

Interior of the 'kitchen/cookhouse' area.

The vegetable garden

This is a beautiful Native American legend about three vegetables used and grown by them.

"Growing the Three Sisters, corn, beans & squash, is an ancient practice that seems to have originated among the Huron-Wyandot and Mohawk Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) peoples and is now widespread among North American Indian tribes.

The legend of “Three Sisters” originated when a woman of medicine who could no longer bear the fighting among her three daughters asked the Creator to help her find a way to get them to stop. That night she had a dream, and in it each sister was a different seed. The first sister was corn, she grew tall and strong and helped the second sister, bean, by allowing her vines to climb up her stalk. In return, bean gave corn the nutrients she needs to grow. Squash was the third sister and she grew low to the ground, throughout the corn field. Her large leaves helped to keep the weeds under control and the soil moist.

In her dream, the mother planted all of them in one mound in just the way they would have lived at home and told them that in order to grow and thrive, they would need to be different but dependent upon each other. They needed to see that each was special and each had great things to offer on her own and with the others. The next morning while cooking breakfast, she cooked each daughter an egg, but each was different: one hard-boiled, one scrambled, and one over-easy. She told her daughters of her dream and said to them,

“You are like these eggs. Each is still an egg but with different textures and flavors. Each of you has a special place in the world and in my heart.” The daughters started to cry and hugged each other, because now they would celebrate their differences and love one another more because of them. From that day on, Native people have planted the three crops together." http://www.threesistersyoga.com/tales-and-folklore/

Another lovely version of the legend can be seen on the same website.

This is a Huron Wendat wigwam made from bark, reed or thatching and was small and portable. Larger more permanent tipi's were made from animal pelts and wooden poles. The latter was used mainly by the Plains peoples.

A Long House was the basic house type of northern Iroquoian peoples such as the Huron and Iroquois,it sheltered a number of families related through the female line. It was established throughout the Iroquoian area by the 12th century. They were 8 m wide but of the length varied. There were sleeping structures along the length of the walls at about chest height, a level where the smoke from the communal fires settled just above. This meant that the area beneath where the smoke settled was a safe area for people to operate and sleep, and not become asphyxiated by the smoke. We noticed this as we entered the Long House at Saint Marie Among the Hurons (see photo below).

For more information please go to the following link http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/longhouse/