Aug 14 - 'Exploit de Place d'Armes', Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve (founder of Montreal) nonchalantly shoots an Iroquois warrior in this plaque (1895) on the base of his statue, Place d'Armes, Montreal
This commemorates "Chomedey's defense of the young French settlement against the Iroquois, against whom [his] allies the Hurons were fighting". (Wikipedia) Conflict with the Iroquois defines the city's history in its first 60 years from its founding in 1640 to 1701, the year of the negotiation of 'the Great Peace' at Montreal, a comprehensive treaty between representatives of the French and all First Nations in the greater region. In those first 60 yrs., violence in this conflict was a leading cause of death for local pioneer Canadiens.
- Part of the first cemetery in 'Ville Marie' (Montreal's original name in the mid-17th-cent.) has been excavated and is preserved with wide open graves and partial coffins in situ in an atmospheric exhibit in the basement of the Pointe-a-Calliere museum, with French and local Algonquian First Nations buried closely together but on either side of a low fence running through the cemetery. The disinterred corpses were reburied elsewhere upon excavation, but a telling list of the dead buried there from 1643 and the cause of death for each is on a plaque on the wall. It reveals that Ville Marie was in a war zone in the 1640s and 50s as most of the interred were killed in Iroquois raids. youtu.be/vk78g7JEZSI?si=uWYhU795_42NYzjI
Aug 14 - 'Exploit de Place d'Armes', Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve (founder of Montreal) nonchalantly shoots an Iroquois warrior in this plaque (1895) on the base of his statue, Place d'Armes, Montreal
This commemorates "Chomedey's defense of the young French settlement against the Iroquois, against whom [his] allies the Hurons were fighting". (Wikipedia) Conflict with the Iroquois defines the city's history in its first 60 years from its founding in 1640 to 1701, the year of the negotiation of 'the Great Peace' at Montreal, a comprehensive treaty between representatives of the French and all First Nations in the greater region. In those first 60 yrs., violence in this conflict was a leading cause of death for local pioneer Canadiens.
- Part of the first cemetery in 'Ville Marie' (Montreal's original name in the mid-17th-cent.) has been excavated and is preserved with wide open graves and partial coffins in situ in an atmospheric exhibit in the basement of the Pointe-a-Calliere museum, with French and local Algonquian First Nations buried closely together but on either side of a low fence running through the cemetery. The disinterred corpses were reburied elsewhere upon excavation, but a telling list of the dead buried there from 1643 and the cause of death for each is on a plaque on the wall. It reveals that Ville Marie was in a war zone in the 1640s and 50s as most of the interred were killed in Iroquois raids. youtu.be/vk78g7JEZSI?si=uWYhU795_42NYzjI