Manitoba dig gives insight into pre-contact Indigenous life

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This article was published 22/07/2022 (1338 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Researchers are getting a glimpse into the lives of pre-contact Indigenous people as they unearth artifacts at a nature reserve in southwestern Manitoba.

A team of researchers from Brandon University and the Manitoba Archaeological Society has uncovered unique farming tools dating back to the 1400s and early 1500s at the Pierson Wildlife Management Area south of Melita.

The research team began searching the area in 2019 after Eric Olson, at the time a University of Manitoba student, found two modified bison scapula (shoulder blades) that were used as hoes in the fall of 2018. In 2020, the team concluded that the area had been a tool-making hub.

Now, they are poised to confirm there was farming in the area, too.

“It’s been theorized that there were farmers in the area, but we’ve never been able to find evidence until now,” said Alicia Gooden, president of the Manitoba Archaeological Society. “The bison scapula hoes that were found are only used to farm.”

The team is looking into the type of crops that might have been farmed. Researchers are closely studying the designs on the pottery to locate patterns and connect histories, Gooden said.

Mary Malainey, a project director and professor of anthropology at Brandon University said the wildlife reserve is archeologically unique for several reasons. She said it’s one of two sites in Manitoba that have strong evidence of pre-contact Indigenous farming. “It’s pristine. It’s never been cultivated,” Malainey said. “It’s exactly where people left it hundreds of years ago.”

The second site is in Lockport, which is harder to excavate due to industrialization.

For decades, archeologists suspected Indigenous farming activity in southwestern Manitoba. There was evidence that people in the area were sedentary, not moving from place to place in a hunter-gatherer style. According to carbon dating, Indigenous farmers would have left the area by the time Europeans arrived, Malainey said.

The research team frequently corresponds with Indigenous communities and knowledge keepers to bridge connections between their findings and oral histories. The project is a unique opportunity to give Indigenous communities more knowledge about their ancestors, Gooden said.

“We’re connecting it with the knowledge keepers and their oral histories,” Gooden said. “We are taking their interpretations and perspectives and applying it to the data we’re pulling out of the ground.”

Malainey believes the discovery marks a new era of knowledge on pre-contact Indigenous farming.

“The whole purpose of this project is to learn about how the people lived, how those Indigenous farmers lived,” Malainey said. “We’re looking at where their houses were… We’re looking at the ground where we think they had their garden, and we’re focusing on their lifeways.”

The archeological group will offer tours of the site at 10 am and 12 noon until Monday.

cierra.bettens@freepress.mb.ca