Revisiting an ancient water route
In 1798, William Burke began pushing a road north from Liverpool to what became South Brookfield, while a group of men from Nictaux began pushing south. Before that, the best way to get across the province was by water.
On Thursday night, the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute, in Kempt, was packed to the walls to hear an archeology student named Ben Pentz talk about his work last summer to determine if a particular canoe route - utilizing both the Mersey and Allain Rivers - was one of the important waterways in southwestern Nova Scotia.
Ben Pentz's talk was part of the summer seminar series at the MTRI, which next Thursday will see Leif Helmer, of the province's Department of Environment and Labour, give a talk on the Tobeatic Wilderness Area. Helmer is the province’s point man on the Tobeatic.
Pentz is finishing a Masters degree in archeology at Memorial University, St. John's. For his graduate work, he wanted to show that the Mersey and Allain Rivers were used as a major transportation corridor linking the Bay of Fundy area to the South Shore at Liverpool. The Allain River is a short river that descends from the South Mountain to meet the Annapolis River, near Annapolis Royal.
The Mersey, which as Pentz points out contains the largest drainage area in the entire province, has waters that are close to the Allain, and together they form a route which runs from Annapolis through Kejimkujik, Rossignol and on to Liverpool. There were a number of water routes between the two coasts, and evidence shows the Mi’kmaq heavily used the Mersey’s southern reaches, but little similar evidence exists for the Allain and northern Mersey watershed.
Pentz told the audience that he began with historical evidence, including journals and maps. The king’s representative in New France hired Mi'kmaq guides to take him across the province to what is now Liverpool in 1686, that evidence demonstrating that the route was a viable option and providing an historic basis to extend the evidence into the archeological past. Pentz said the question could arise as to whether the route was only used because there were European settlements at either end, or whether the Mi’kmaq used this route for many years, long before the arrival of the Europeans.
This, Pentz said, was the question he set out to answer. He noted there had been several archeological projects on the southern Mersey in the past 35 years, but limited research in the northern area. Five Mi'kmaq sites had been found in the Allain area and 230 in the lower Mersey, the latter number representing more than a quarter of the total of Mi'kmaq sites in the province.
So, last summer he set out with an assistant to travel the route, to see if he could fill in some of the missing data as to the importance these rivers served. The area under study included the Allain River, from Annapolis, up through Grand Lake, through the height of land between the Allain and Mersey drainages, into the Milford lake system, and then into Kejimkujik and Jakes Landing, a linear total of 65 kilometres.
Pentz and a companion began in late May of 2006, doing a reconnaissance trip. Pentz then divided the route into six regions, with the goal of identifying at least one site in each region. He also approached people in the various communities, identifying those who had collected Mi'kmaq artifacts, both examining and photographing the artifacts and recording stories about where the artifacts had been found. Many of the artifacts were more than 3000 years old.
After arranging for permission from landowners and obtaining the necessary permits, Pentz and his helper, Devin Fraser set up grids in various areas and began the search for artifacts. In doing careful digs, they found stone chippings, tools, bits of pottery with decorations, cook fire remains, and recorded everything in a systematic manner.
Pentz said in the six study areas they identified 12 new Mi'kmaq campsites and four fish weirs, meeting their goal of finding at least one in each of the six areas. He said they had confidently established that the area was significant to the Mi'kmaq in ancient times. He kept the gathering entertained with stories of seeing fish weirs clearly from the air and how he sat on a boulder once occupied by Mi'kmaq tool-makers.
At the end of the talk, Ben Pentz thanked a number of people for helping with the project, including his parents, artist Don Pentz, and Louise, a potter. The talks continue each Thursday, at 4:30, with the Tobeatic up next, then a talk by Kejimkujik warden Sarah Chisholm on researching penguins in Antarctica, followed by Joseph Lefebvre on monarch butterflies on July 26.
- Tom Sheppard can be reached at twsheppard@gmail.com
