The Quebec Settlement:
A Page of Historical
Archaeology
by
Françoise Niellon
The Settlement From 1608 to 1612:
The Founding of Quebec
To meet the objectives set by Pierre Du Gua de Monts, the Quebec
settlement was both a warehouse and a residence, and it was protected by
defence works.
Called a "storehouse", the warehouse was the base for the fur trade
and contained the goods offered to Native people at the various trading
posts. Food and drink for the residents of the settlement, and perhaps tools
and materials needed to maintain the site, were also stored there. As the
core site of the community, the settlement served as the residence of the
person in charge and everyone who worked there.
The Work Done in 1608, According to Champlain
Champlain had 17 professionals working on the construction of the
settlement. They arrived at the site at the beginning of July and had to
render it suitable for occupation before the winter. Champlain described the
settlement as follows: ". . . our quarters, which contained three main
buildings of two stories. Each one was three fathoms long and two and a half
wide. The storehouse was six long and three wide, with a fine cellar six
feet high. All the way round our buildings I had a gallery made, outside the
second story . . . There were also dithches fifteen feet wide and six deep,
and outside these I made several salients which enclosed a part of the
buildings, and there we put our cannon. In front of the building there is an
open space four fathoms wide and six or seven long, which abuts upon the
river’s bank. Round about the buildings are very good gardens, and an open
place on the north side of a hundred, or a hundred and twenty, yards long
and fifty or sixty wide"..
The site was enclosed by a palisade that was "completed" in 1610
(Fig. 4). Champlain also mentioned that he had all kinds of vegetables
planted in the "gardens", as well as wheat and rye on "land that had been
cleared". He also had wild vines transplanted there.
The settlement did not withstand the rigours of the climate very
well, however; it had to be repaired three years after it was built. Even
worse, upon his arrival at the site in 1613, Champlain noted that it was
falling in "dilapidation".
The Archaeology of the
First Settlement: Limited
Evidence
The layout of the settlement is not clear, especially since the
letters that correspond to the store and the kitchen in the legend
accompanying Champlain’s drawing are not visible in the drawing. The
reconstruction proposed here is therefore completely hypothetical (Fig. 5).
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| Fig. 5 - The settlement in
1608,
a possible configuration
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The settlement was quite small: the buildings were apparently
contained within a square measuring 8 to 10 toises on each side. In this
respect, it resembled the second settlement built in Acadia, at
Port Royal,
which "was ten fathoms in length and eight in breadth". The latter was built
for 40 to 50 people, whereas only 28 spent the winter at Quebec in
1608-1609. Champlain must have also drawn inspiration from the layout of the
buildings at Port Royal, which were arranged in a square around a small
courtyard.
The location of the first settlement is also uncertain. No vestiges
of its structure were found in the section of the site that was excavated.
However, the configuration of the point, the way Champlain describes the
work that was done later, and the presence of a number of objects at the
site of the second settlement that were already there before construction
began tend to indicate that the first settlement was on the same site as the
second. It was located where Notre-Dame-des-Victoires Church now stands and
extended towards the river.
Vestiges of the interior (floor tiles, bricks, nails) were scattered
here and there, more often than not mixed in with the fill of the
foundations of subsequent buildings. For example, a fragment of plaster
found near what is assumed to be its original location in soil dating to
before 1624 may have come from the dwelling in which Champlain resided
(Fig. 4, H). Could it be from the walls of his apartment?
Continued
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