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First Nations Communities
Lake of the Woods area First Nations communities
located within Treaty # 3 include: Buffalo
Point, Northwest Angle No. 37, Northwest Angle
No. 33, Shoal Lake No. 40, Washagamis Bay,
Iskatewizaagegan No.39 First Nation, Big Island,
Big Grassy, Ochiichagwebabigoining, Wauzhusk
Onigum, Naotkamegwanning and Onigaming. (There
are other communities within the Treaty that
are not located at Lake of the Woods.)
Archaeologists and anthropologists suggest
that the Lake of the Woods region was inaccessible,
buried under ice, during the Pleistocene Epoch
(1,600,000 to 10,000 years ago) of the Wisconsin
Glacial Age. From 10,000 – 8,000 B.C.,
the area’s environment had changed to
a tundra vegetation province dominated by
the remnants of Lake Agassiz.
The tundra was part of a sweeping arc of newly-exposed
land that spread across the continent, along
the edge of the receding Laurentide Ice Sheet,
extending west and north over the prairies,
up to Alaska. The Palaeo Indian and Plano
Cultures may have been active in the Lake
of the Woods area during the latter part of
this period, but evidence is not conclusive.
As the ice melted, native cultures faced a
new and changing world. During the warming
period following the Pleistocene Epoch, (15,000
– 8,000 B.C.), great numbers of both
flora and fauna became extinct, including
many plants, mammoths, horses, camels and
some bison types. New land types converged
at Lake of the Woods from 8,000 – 4,000
B.C: the northeastern Boreal Forest (east)
and a prairie grassland (west).
Each land type supported unique species, and
the unique native populations that followed
the evolving edges of the hunt are known as
known as Early (14,000 – 8,000 B.C.),
Middle (8,000 – 4,000 B.C.) and Late
Shield (4,000 – 1,000 B.C.) Cultures
in the east, and similarly-timed Early, Middle
and Late Plains Cultures in the west.
Rice, Fish, Woods:
From 1,000 B.C. to 500 A.D., two cultures
lived in the Lake of the Woods region, the
bison-hunting Plains people and the forest-dwelling
Western Shield natives. The area was an ideal
water and portage travel and trade route from
the western prairie regions to the Great Lakes
and eastward. It is likely that the Plains
and Shield tribes traded goods and gathered
together for hunting and celebration.
Because of a thousand-year cooling period
from 1,500 – 500 B.C., the Boreal Forest
expanded west, eclipsing the eastern edges
of the prairie Parkland vegetation, where
the bison roamed. The Plains hunters moved
west to follow their quarry; however, many
settled in the southern Manitoba grasslands
region to the west of Lake of the Woods. The
Shield peoples moved west also, from the northern
Great Lakes region, following the forest’s
expansion, to hunt bear, moose and deer, and
to harvest both fish and rice from the waters
of Lake of the Woods and southern Manitoba.
The Late Western Shield people are thought
to be the ancestors of the Ojibway and the
Western Cree that currently live in the Lake
of the Woods region.
Travel Food: Archaeological evidence found
in the region, including hearths, boiling
pits and bone mash, suggest that both cultures
made pemmican as sustenance for their extensive
hunting travel and as a winter food supply.
To produce pemmican, dried and pounded bison
meat was mixed with fat boiled from bones
and marrow. It was packed in portable pouches
made from the bladders of bison.
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