Abstract

Recently discovered information clearly identifies Hull Landing in Gatineau as the location of a burial place first documented in 1843 and, since the late nineteenth century, believed to have been located across the river in Ottawa. It appears to have been chosen for the burial of generations of people beginning sometime between 4,500 and 4,900 years ago. That same location was the beginning of a major portage. Nearby was a place of great spiritual significance and power: the Chaudière Falls. The delta of the Gatineau River downstream from Hull Landing was a summer gathering place with a wealth of food and lithic resources. People travelled down the Gatineau, Rideau and Ottawa rivers to meet, trade and exchange information beginning some 4,600 years ago. When combined with additional archaeological evidence, accumulated over the past 170 years, it is now apparent that the north shore of the Ottawa River between the Chaudière Falls and the mouth of the Gatineau River constituted a cultural landscape that had been used for somewhere on the order of four to five millennia.