Real history on display in Montreal

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Canadian visitors to the Pointe-a-Calliere Museum's exhibit dealing with the Great Peace Treaty of 1701 can be heard to ask the same question over and over again: Why didn't we learn about this in school?

A good question.

All summer long, the city of Montreal is celebrating an important and impressive accomplishment involving a rarely remembered governor of New France and the Native peoples living in the surrounding area. They managed to negotiate a peace treaty in the early days of the 18th century that makes one wish they could be re-incarnated and put to work in the Middle East or Northern Ireland or any other place where troubles seem insurmountable.

In 1701, the infant settlement on the northern shore of the St. Lawrence River at the foot of Mount Royal (Mont Real, in the language of the colony's French founders) had a population of about 1,200. Tensions in the region among the 39 Indigenous nations and the European newcomers were high, and hostilities were almost constant.

All parties were feeling the strain of the constant warfare and, when Governor Louis Hector de Calliere sent forth emissaries inviting all nations in the region to a peace conference in Montreal, all 40 parties made plans to make their way to the colony, some travelling from as far away as west of Lake Superior. Amazingly, considering the wide range of competing interests among them, the parties completed an agreement on Aug. 4, 1701.

Archeologist Virginia Elliott took Windspeaker and other journalists and film-makers on a tour of the Pointe-a-Calliere exhibit on June 16. She noted that history has largely forgotten the 1701 treaty.

"Everybody remembers Frontenac, the governor who conducted the wars," she said. "But nobody remembers Calliere, the man who sought peace."

The feeling among most people-Native and non-Native- who have seen the historical documents and artifacts in the museum, is that Frontenac is a name known to every Canadian student because he symbolizes the romantic, but ultimately false, notion that daring, heroic European explorers conquered North America's Indigenous peoples. That Calliere, Frontenac's immediate successor, felt the need to bring a negotiated end to the hostilities, shows that the colonizers' version of history, as taught in primary schools, is a biased version of events that contributes to the tensions between Native and non-Native peoples.

The peace lasted until just before Montreal fell to the English in 1760. A fact that allowed the European presence in North America to take root and flourish. Elliott pointed out that 1,200 chiefs attended the peace conference, a number equalling the entire population of Montreal at the time. Other observers, who didn't want to be quoted, took that fact to its logical conclusion: If there were as many chiefs as there were colonists in New France, that meant there was enough Native warriors to put an end to the colony, sooner or later, had the wars continued. That fact flies in the face of the notion that Natives are conquered peoples.

Located in Old Montreal, a popular tourist area where the streets and buildings in the city's original centre still have a 19th century European appearance, the Pointe-a-Calliere Museum is a stylized, renovated version of the former Custom House. Beneath the museum, archeological digs have been turned into a museum exhibit. As you descend lower and lower into the bowels of the building, the history of the site is peeled back, layer by layer. In the lowest levels, artifacts from the earliest days of the settlement reveal the presence and effect of the Indigenous peoples in the region.

Another exhibit at the McCord Museum, located in the downtown Montreal of today, also provides visitors with a look at ceremonial Native regalia of the period and parts of the original peace treaty. Many of the exhibits in both museums are on loan from the Musee de l'Homme in Paris.

Across town, at Montreal's famed botanical gardens, 39 totems cared in the way of the northern peoples of what is now called Quebec surround a 40th pole that represents the governor of New France. It's expected that 800,000 people will visit the display that was created by several well known Native artists from across Quebec. An art gallery in a loft overlooking St. Catherine Street, the bustling centre of Montreal's tourist area, also features artwork by Native artists from Quebec.

It's all part of a summer-long celebration of Native culture in the city organized by a group called Land InSights (Terres en Vues). The group was founded in 1990. The founding members, Andre Dudemaine, Daniel Corvec and Pierre Thibeault are part of an 11-member board of directors representing the Mohawk, Huron-Wendat, Abenaki, Innu and Cree nations. Myra Cree, a Mohawk from Kanesatake, chairs this board.

Land InSights is the driving force behind the First Peoples' Festival, held this year from June 14 to 24. The group, in concert with the provincial government, the museums and several corporate sponsors, is extending their efforts this year to commemorate the Great Peace. Events continue until the anniversary of the treaty signing in August.