In the winter, they speared fish through the ice as they were needed. When the chiefs of the tribes met, or later when newcomers began to arrive, there was always a ceremonial exchange of gifts, with fish a symbolic mark of respect.
There may have been many waves of newcomers moving across the land, but it is now believed the final migration could have been that of those people who braved the ice of Arctic Canada as they followed herds of caribou and musk ox into this unknown territory. They built winter homes of snow and summer homes framed with whalebones and covered with skins. They travelled in hide-covered watercraft called umiaks and kayaks, or by foot and eventually by dogsled as they moved across the frozen tundra in search of food.
Fish, seals, whales, caribou, bears, and waterfowl were their quarry; harpoons and spears were their weapons. They, too, used their ingenuity to settle into the harsh environment of northern Canada and become self-sufficient, exploiting everything available to them to survive.
Despite their diversity of cultures, lifestyles, traditions, languages, and beliefs, and the rivalries that sometimes led them to war, these first peoples developed well-organized barter systems that spanned the continent from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond. This feat may have been accomplished through a multitude of hand-to-hand transactions. Thus, diverse items such as tobacco, feathers, seashells, furs, copper, mica, and chert were moved into new regions of the country to supplement what may originally have been found there.
Just as important were the food items that could have been exchanged on that barter system, long before European contact. Consider plums, maize (corn), wild rice, beans, squash, hazelnuts, black walnuts, butternuts, sunflower seeds, maple syrup, maple sugar, and more!
Hence, long before contact with the rest of the world, the First Nations had learned how to use the indigenous plants, trees, animals, marine life, and other resources that surrounded them, not only for food but for medicines, insecticides, clothing, tools, construction materials, and firewood. Eventually, food for their dogs (probably European stock that had interbred with North American wolves) came from the same source.
Was life for those First Nations just an endless round of hunting, fishing, foraging, farming, and making weapons, tools, and equipment so there was food for the next meal? Until the fifteenth century, when newcomers began their quest for the precious spices of the Indies, the history of the First Nations is, for the most part, an oral one, as their traditions, beliefs, and legends have been recounted through the centuries by their elders and storytellers. In addition to this oral history, we have some artifacts and images created by the First Nations. They range from spectacular crest (totem) poles to tiny bone carvings and delicate moose-hair or porcupine-quill embroidery that have endured. We also have the description by Sarain Stump, a First Nations artist who in the following excerpt from Two Forms of Art published in Saskatchewan in 1973, identifies her people by the names given to them when newcomers from Europe arrived:
Although it is generally accepted that no proper writing was invented and used by North American Indians before historic times, it is certain that our ancestors supplied their need for a graphic recording system by using ideograms. These were usually codified symbols … the Ojibwa Indians and related Algonkians of the Great Lakes region fixed on birch bark rolls instructions for the proceedings of their complicated ceremonies. The Plateau people engraved, by burning, on chips of wood. Petroglyphs (messages concerning a particular location) are found in many areas of the continent.... The Wanapum (Wampum) belts of the Iroquois, capes and collars worn by Wabnaki dignitaries, quilled and bead embroidery created in the Plains and McKenzie Delta region and many of the ornamental designs on the baskets, pottery and textiles are informative symbols combined in artistic compositions. The creator is also trying to transfer, as faithfully as possible, the physical beauty of the natural world and all its creatures.[12]
Elizabeth Simcoe, the wife of Upper Canada’s first lieutenant-governor, illustrated the food traditions of the First Nations in pictures, as in this sketch, and in words. Archives of Ontario
Little did the First Nations know that their natural world would one day be turned upside down. Life would never be the same again after people they had not even known to exist began to brave the northern Atlantic Ocean in search of the exotic and elusive foods and other resources they either needed or desired at home. Two worlds were about to collide, and when they did, the newcomers realized they had stumbled on a land of incredible harshness, beauty, and bounty. That bounty was at times destined to appear not only on Canadian tables but on the tables of the hungry around the world.
CHAPTER TWO
They Had Never Known Anything to Taste So Sweet
WERE THEY SETTLERS OR SOJOURNERS? Or were they simply searching for wood, so desperately needed at home in Greenland to build and repair their vessels, dwellings, and farm and household items? The “Men from the North,” also known as Norsemen and Vikings, were reputed to be pirates, raiders, traders, and at times colonists. They were feared and respected from Russia to the Mediterranean Sea for their bravery and exploits. Many aspects of their life were simply a continuation of the ancient customs and traditions they had practised in their home countries — such as their long sea voyages, their construction of houses from stones and turf, their clearing of rocks and stones from patches of meadow, their hunting of whales, seals, and wild reindeer, and of course fishing. They lived by raising livestock as well as by hunting and fishing. In their native lands it was not possible to grow grain, but the sparse vegetation was nutritious and enabled them to keep many cows, sheep, and horses. They also made butter and cheese. Their most important implements and weapons were axes, knives, scythes, sledgehammers, blacksmith’s tongs, harpoons and other fishing gear, bows and arrows, and spears.[1]
For centuries the Vikings were known for their daring adventures, which were recounted in their sagas, told and retold around the long fires at home in Iceland and Greenland by hardy sailors and storytellers.[2] A fascinating parchment map, known as “The Vinland Map,” bears the inscription:
By God’s will, after a long voyage from the Island of Greenland to the south towards the most distant remaining parts of the western ocean sea, sailing southward amidst the ice, the companions Bjarni and Leif Eiriksson discovered a new land, extremely fertile, and even having vines, the which island they named Vinland.[3]
The sagas differ in some details, but have much in common. One of the sagas describes the voyage of the merchant Bjarni Herjolfsson, who was en route from Iceland to Greenland when his vessel was caught in a violent storm with strong north winds and dense fog that carried him off course to the west. There he and his crew saw an unfamiliar forested shore. When the storm abated and the sun came out, Bjarni was able to get his bearings and sail his vessel to Greenland, where he described what he and his crew had seen. His description raised a number of questions. What was the new country like? Was it a good and fertile land, a place where perhaps one could settle down and live permanently?[4]
It was Leif “The Lucky” Eiriksson, son of Eirik the Red, who decided to investigate. His ship was fitted out, the women busying themselves with the big woollen square-sail, mending and strengthening it, while the men and eager youngsters carried provisions and equipment on board, including dried fish, smoked meat, butter, cheese, and water for the large barrels. They also brought axes, tongs, and a sledgehammer for a smithy, various kinds of gear for hunting and fishing, and weapons. It was rather sparse equipment for a long voyage into the unknown, but the thirty-five people on board knew how to live off the land. The next autumn a weatherbeaten ship returned. Yes, the new land in the west had been found; it was a large and strange country, with riches of many kinds — pastures for cattle, forests, game, seals, walrus, and fish. Leif had built substantial houses in the new country, and he had called it Vinland.[5]
The Vikings’ distinctive wooden ships and the men who sailed them were known and feared from Russia to the Mediterranean Sea and beyond. Tom Henighan
Detailed references are included in the sagas, not only about what this group