In their oral history, the Heiltsuk people describe how the area around Triquet Island, on the western coast of their territory in British Columbia, remained open land during the ice age.
“People flocked there for survival because everywhere else was being
covered by ice, and all the ocean was freezing and all of the food resources
were dwindling,” says Heiltsuk Nation member William Housty.
And late last year, archaeologists excavating an ancient Heiltsuk
village on Triquet Island uncovered the physical evidence: a few flakes of
charcoal from a long-ago hearth.
Analysis of the carbon fragments indicates that the village site —
deserted since a smallpox epidemic in the 1800s — was inhabited as many as
14,000 years ago, making it three times as old as the pyramids at Giza, and one
of the oldest settlements in North America.
“There are several sites that date to around the same time as the very
early date that we obtained for Triquet Island, so what this is suggesting is
that people have been here for tens of thousands of years,” says Alisha
Gauvreau, a scholar at the Hakai Institute and a PhD candidate at the
University of Victoria, who has been working at the Triquet Island site.
But how was it that Triquet Island remained uncovered, even during the
ice age? According to Gauvreau, sea levels in the area remained stable over
time, due to a phenomenon called sea level hinge.
“So all the rest of the landmass was covered in ice,” she explains. “As
those ice sheets started to recede — and we had some major shifts in sea levels
coastwide, so further to the north and to the south in the magnitude of 150 to
200 meters of difference, whereas here it remained exactly the same.”
The result, Gauvreau says, is that people were able to return to
Triquet Island repeatedly over time. And while nearby sites also show evidence
of ancient inhabitants, people “were definitely sticking around Triquet Island
longer than anywhere else,” she says. In addition to finding bits of charcoal
at the site, she says archaeologists have uncovered tools like obsidian blades,
atlatls and spear throwers, fishhook fragments and hand drills for starting
fires.
“And I could go on, but basically, all of these things, coupled with
the fallen assemblage, tell us that the earliest people were making relatively
simple stone tools at first, perhaps expediently, due to the parent material
that was available at the time,” Gauvreau says.
The site also indicates that these early people were also using boats
to hunt sea mammals, and gather shellfish, she adds. And later on, they traded
or travelled great distances to obtain nonlocal materials like obsidian,
greenstone and graphite for tools.
For archaeologists and anthropologists, the find bolsters an idea,
called the “Kelp Highway Hypothesis” hypothesis, proposing that the first
people who arrived in North America followed the coastline in boats to avoid
the glacial landscape.
“It certainly adds evidence to the fact that people were able to travel
by boat in that coastal area by watercraft,” Gauvreau says.
And for the Heiltsuk Nation, which has worked with the archaeologists
for years to share knowledge and identify sites like Triquet Island, the
updated archaeological record provides new evidence, as well. The nation
routinely negotiates with the Canadian government on matters of territory
governance and natural resource management — negotiations that depend in part
on the community’s record of inhabiting the area over long periods.
“So when we’re at the table with our oral history, it’s like me telling
you a story,” Housty says. “And you have to believe me without seeing any
evidence.”
But now, he explains, with the oral history and archaeological evidence
“dovetailing together, telling a really powerful tale,” the Heiltsuk have new
advantages at the negotiating table.
“That’s really going to be very significant … and I think will definitely
give us a leg up in negotiations, for sure,” he says.
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