CITY OF BONES
Many in the west ward have no idea what lies beneath their homes
By Colin McKim
Orillia, Ont.
Oct. 1, 2008
Lying forgotten under seven city blocks is a vast burial ground where the bodies of men, women and children rested for centuries, each one buried in a sitting position, facing east toward the rising sun.
The graves, believed to contain the remains of Algonquin people, were discovered along the Mount Slaven Creek between O’Brien Street and Westmount Drive in the 1870s, when the area was still a wooded expanse outside the city limits.
Orillia judge J. Hugh Hammond wrote more than a century ago about digging up bodies and artifacts along the creek as a youngster.
“In the early seventies (1870s) as a schoolboy I spent the greater part of some Saturdays and holidays with my playmates in excavating Indian graves on the lots north of the extension of Mississaga Street, on Mount Slaven, near Orillia Town. Our schoolmaster (Samuel McIlvaine) urged us to make available collections of any objects such as beads, wampum and the like.”
Hammond, whose account is quoted by historian Andrew Hunter in his 1903 study of 32 Indian villages in the Orillia area, gave a detailed description of the site.
“The graves were single and extended in long lines from the bank of the creek toward the hillside at the Coldwater Road, in a northwesterly direction. All of the bodies were buried in a sitting position, facing the east or morning sun.”
The lines of graves were about 20 feet apart, said Hammond, who drew a map in a notebook, showing more than 100 Xs where graves had been found running in lines from Mississaga Street northwest across Mary and John streets. The map also indicates the locations of ashpits and notes the character of the soil.
Digging around the bodies, Hammond found bugle-shaped beads, arrowheads, spear points and wampum — coin-shaped discs with holes drilled in the centre. In one grave, a black, bird-shaped amulet was found around the neck of a skeleton of a very large man.
“The lower jaw bone of this body was in place and I tried it over my own head and face and it passed clear of my face without touching it at any place.”
French iron axes from the 1600s indicate the site was inhabited after Samuel de Champlain and French priests arrived in the area, beginning in 1615. Copper kettles and knife blades and hatchets were also unearthed.
Hunter concluded the site, roughly 68 acres in size, was an Algonquin settlement, probably used in the winter when the community migrated south from hunting grounds north of the Severn River.